18324/Arcade Anarchy

Arcade Anarchy
Date of Scene:	14 June 2024
Location:	Middle of Knowhere Cosmic Bowling
Synopsis:	A mysterious technomancer brings video games to life in the Middle of Knowhere Cosmic Bowling arcade. Captain Marvel and Black Widow beat the response times of police and fire, and find Tekkai already fighting with Space Invaders inside just as Pac-Mac bursts through the front wall.
Cast of Characters:	Carol Danvers, Shun Cruz, Natasha Romanoff

---

Carol Danvers has posed:
The Middle of Knowhere Cosmic Bowling and Pizza is usually a haven for family fun, but tonight, it has transformed into a scene of chaos. The once benign arcade machines in the corner flicker and spark, their screens glowing ominously before the characters within begin to materialize, stepping out into the real world.

A cacophony of terrified screams fills the air as pixelated characters from classic games start to wreak havoc. Donkey Kong, with his massive, hulking frame, hurls barrels through the air, smashing into walls and scattering patrons in every direction. A group of Space Invaders, glowing neon and relentless, marches forward, their laser blasts scorching the carpet and setting small fires.

Near the entrance, the iconic Pac-Man chomps his way through the front of the building, his enormous, circular mouth taking out chunks of the structure with each bite. He makes a sharp turn, the familiar "waka-waka" sound echoing eerily, before he begins devouring a row of parked cars. Metal crunches and glass shatters as he moves down the line, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.

Ms. Pac-Man, distinguishable by her pink bow, spins through the air, knocking over tables and sending pizza slices flying. The crowd, initially frozen in shock, erupts into panic. Families and friends grab their belongings, tripping over each other in a desperate attempt to flee. The black light illuminates the chaos, casting eerie glows on the pandemonium.

In the midst of this, a few astute observers notice something unusual: a faint, digital signature that seems to pulse in the air, almost like a trail leading back to the arcade machines. On closer inspection, one of the machines flickers with an image of a hooded figure, eyes glowing red beneath the shadow of his hood. The Technomancer's insignia briefly flashes on the screen before the image dissolves into static.

Sirens wail in the distance as police, ambulance, and fire begin to respond to the scene, but they're still blocks away. And in the street outside, not far away from the chomping Pac-Mac devouring those cars, there's a streak of light through the sky that comes to land in the middle of the asphalt.

Two figures, it turns out, arrive at once, as Captain Marvel opens one arm to allow the Black Widow out of her grasp.

"I knew I'd get you to an arcade one of these days," Carol muses with an amused little smirk tugging at one corner of her lips. "You good here?"

Shun Cruz has posed:
Into this mess is one Tekkai. He was there to work on some bowling and be a kid for once. Shun's been busy, and on edge with recent events going on. Now he was just wanting to be a kid for a while. Go out, maybe hang with friends if they are at the bowling alley, eat nachos and drink a soda. That sort of thing.

Once this erupts, he dives out of the way of flying pizza. Glancing around in the chaos, he uses a table to change forms before tossing up his mandala shields to stop the space invaders shots. Large, fiery orange tao mandalas are obviously not part of any video game. Nor is the dark green colored insect-man holding his hands out to stop them.

All he can do is complain about it, of course, as those seem to be the big dangers at the moment, "Oh, come on! Is this because I shot you guys like a million times!?" Tekkai's holding the fort so to speak, but losing ground as he shields civilians and himself. And apparently can't do more than just throw up those shields at the moment.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
And there she is with Carol having been dragged as politely as was possible, with the whole 'I can fly you if it helps' routine. So, acquiescing, and really needings omething to distract herself thanks to Bucky's actions and the influence of Clint on her -preferred- way of handling things, she had let herself go along wearing civilian wear. Of course, that means sufficient firepower on herself to level a small building, but it not showing. Wearing a dull faded brown wig and with a long vest on that lookeda bit heavy for the weather, Natasha would go to quickly assess targets.

Unknown projections, solid light. She had no EMP grenades. Were they capable of continuous projection or were they merely images? Time to find out.

Pistol comes up, two shots are sent into the Pac-Man machine. Then two shots over into Mister Pac Man. Or one of the ghosts. Or was the projected Mister Pac Man a Ghost?

Carol Danvers has posed:
So, through whatever magic the Technomancer was using to brings these things to life, they're not ghosts or projections. These things are _real_ corporeal entities that are _actually_ tearing stuff up.

And shooting. ALL the shooting.

The Space Invaders are keeping Tekkai's tao mandalas busy, but he's also shielding a family of five who spot his magical shields and decide to use him as cover instead of rushing out into the chaos. The dad turns over a long table to provide yet another layer of cover.

Natasha's shots ring out -- guns are LOUD -- and the bullets sink into the Pac-Mac machine, and it sparks and goes quiet, but the giant Pac-Mac on the street just keeps eating cars. Two more bullets, *bang-bang* sink onto Pac-Man outside and he starts blinking... whatever that means... and turning to 'waka-waka-waka' further down the street.

"I think you hurt it!" Carol calls over to Nat.

She hovers in the street, and one her fists come up, flaring with energy before a blast comes out and catches the Pac-Man in the back right before he rounds a corner. There's a 'womp-womp-womp' as it spins around a few times and then pops out of existence, but not before a car screeches and slides into a pole, knocking it over. People on the sidewalk join those from the arcade, screaming and yelling, and running.

Carol flies into the building through the hole that Pac-Mac left behind, right past Donkey Kong who waddles out and turns to hurls a barrel straight at Nat. But Carol's path takes her in a fiery streak right through a line of space invaders that blink out of existence.. leaving many more behind them. Maybe it at least buys Tekkai a few seconds to reposition or react, though.

Shun Cruz has posed:
A glance over his shoulder is given as Tekkai spots the family behind him. "Keep down!" He tells them.

Seeing an option before him now that a line is gone, Tekkai lowers a hand as the other mandala expands to cover his front facing the Space Invaders.

The lowered hand twists before more fiery orange-red appears with some harmless sparks that he lashes out to grab a bowling ball with them. "Right... too many and they get faster... so..."

He whips the impromptu large hard object at the end of the line of Space Invaders hard and keeps it going, trying to take out as many as he can before he lets go of the bowling ball to let it fly. And turns to snag another to do a few repeats while he keeps the shield up.

"I so need to learn more magic." He says more to himself than anyone else.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
This is lovely. At close quarters, they're going to be swarmed by those -things-. And backup will take five to seven minutes to arrive. By then it will be all over. And if she dies this way, she'll never live it down. Natasha's expression is almost unbecoming of herself as she goes to quickly evaluate things and how to best counter. Pistol shots do some damage to the projections, but not enough to immediately disable them. She can't use grenades in close quarters like these, nor can she do something with the power grid to overload it.

There are too many civilians over within range that could be caught up as collateral damage.

So Natasha goes to snap her hands around, moving to tug out the two large batons over on her back. Each one would glow over with a buildup of energy as she would go to charge in towards the nearest hostile projection. First strike goes out..

Presuming it impacts, the WIdow's Bite would give it a massive surge of electrical energy normally primed along the lines of being as disruptive to the humanoid central nervous system as possible. The next strike is a followup of a slightly lower power if it hits. Natasha is seeing how much energy she has to put into these things to break them.

Presuming the thing is disrupted, then Natasha is fallin back several meters, going to take out her pistol and moves to fire several shots over at some of the projections that are gonig after Tekkai. The shots if they hit are likely to only do minimal damage, but it's hopefully that they'll at least weaken the projections enough to let him deal with them somewhat more effectively.

She would speak to the short range Avengers comms <<Can you pickup any of the energy being used for these? It has to be external to the systems>>

Carol Danvers has posed:
It seems like the bigger they are, the more it takes to kill them. The giant car-eating Pac-Mac outside? He took a _lot_ of energy. The smaller ones seemed to be a _lot_ easier to take down.

Tekkai's bowling ball cleaves a clear arc through the space invaders, and Natasha's batons make short work of a Frogger leaping from one table to another and a Sonic that had been rolling across the ground towards her.

*pop* *pop* *pop* Natasha's pistol rings out, and three more space invaders around Tekkai pop out of existence, one from each bullet.

That Donkey Kong stomps angrily, though. He's _almost_ as big as the Pac-Man, and chucks another barrel that's lined up for both Natasha _and_ Tekkai, because he's evil like that. It lands on a table, shattering it and dropping to the floor, rolling menacingly towards them.

<< "I don't feel any unusual energy signatures. Chances these things are actually conjured by magic? That's a little out of my wheelhouse. Is that one of Strange's people by the Space Invaders? Can he... it... help?" >>

The thing about magic of this type is that there's usually _something_ that serves as the source of the spell -- a symbol, an artifact, _some_ way to channel the mystical energy.

Back over at the machines, one explodes, revealing two dozen little Dig Dug monsters that crawl up across the walls and the ceiling, half of them heading straight for her, half of them heading towards other families that are still hunkering down.

There's another ray of photon energy that Carol scorches along the ceiling, taking out four of the little guys in one fell swoop, but there are still _so_ many more to deal with.

Shun Cruz has posed:
Tekkai swings the bowling ball again before he spots the barrel coming towards him and the help. The Space Invaders mostly being taken care of at least gives him a bit of breathing room.

"Is that Captain Marvel?" He asks more to himself, then he realizes he has a barrel to deal with. A large one and he has to keep on the Space Invaders. He dives forward, almost taking a few shots as he has to angle his shield to avoid them, and shrink it. The last bowling ball he picked up is instead whipped and chunked at Donkey Kong's head.

"I hate that game." He says out loud.

Being so close to the Space Invaders now, Tekkai decides to switch to close range. The whip is spun around his hand and he literally tries just punching one. It might be normal human strength, but he's hoping that these things follow game logic. Otherwise, this might hurt a bit!

"Hey, Captain Marvel! The machine on the far right!" He calls out.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
As soon as they blast one set, another group seems to come up, but different ones. Maybe there's a limited amount that can be simultaneously projected? But it also means if they take out one group, another's just going to come out until they can figure out what's projecting them and take it out. So for that, they need to stall. Natasha once more is aggravated for not coming with a full combat loadout even to a civilian recreational area. Something that will be remedied. So much for the Avengers attempting to get her out for a 'night on the town'w ithout her being a walking armory two steps back from Frank Castle everywhere she went.

They are, however, at a point where most of the civilians seem out of the way and that any sort of collateral damage is more at risk from the projections attacking the place than to those in the crossfire. Now Natasha goes to pick up, prime, and launch a duo of flashbangs that are aimed over in the center of the Dig Dugs. Followed by a concussion grenade. The attempt is to see if the light and flash and then shockwave is disruptive to them or not.

Natasha then goes to switch to her pistols, taking quick potshots at targets of opportunity. "We need to setup a crossfire."

Carol Danvers has posed:
That bowling ball goes flying and clobbers Donkey Kong right in the head!

*Boo-woo-woo-woo*

As soon as it does, he and the two additional barrels he had thrown in different directions blink a few times and then disappear from existence.

*POP* *POP*

The flashbangs explodes and the Dig Dugs spent a second confused until the *BANG* of the concussion grenade sends out a blast that makes them all simply blink out, giving one of the last remaining families a chance to sneak out from behind the concession stand before they were overrun.

_Hey, Captain Marvel! The machine on the far right!_

Carol had been dealing with her own Dig Dugs, popping them off one after another like a wild-west speed shooter to reduce the amount of scorch marks she was dragging across the ceiling, but she hears that call, she whips her head around to Tekkai.

"On it!" she calls, running and leaping over the half-wall separating the bowling alley from the arcade games, and blasting a hole through the middle of the screen.

Nothing happens except for a shower of sparks, and she balls up a fist in frustration...

...until she notices a faint glow on the front of the machine. A weird symbol she's never seen before on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (yes, they have their own video game even in the same universe where they actually exist, because TMNTs are just that awesome). Unfortunately for the the awesomeness of the game, Carol crouches and sends a glowing fist through the middle of that symbol.

And all at once... there's peace.

All of the baddies simply flicker out of existence, like they'd never been there before, leaving behind little flickering fires, sparking overhead lights, a mess of tables and food, and water leaking from exposed, broken pipes.

Shun Cruz has posed:
About to be chomped on by the left over Space Invaders and whatever else closed in, Tekkai had a baton and a fist wrapped in the eldritch energies as an impromptu loaded fist.

He was in the middle of throwing a punch that has him stumbling, almost tripping over a gutter in the bowling lane before he catches himself. He turns every which way looking to make sure before he lowers his hands and lets the fiery orange sparks fade into nothing.

Then he walks over to check on people, looking around and shaking his head, "This place is wrecked." He looks slightly annoyed. "Just one time out without craziness... ugh."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would go to slowly take up her weapons, and then move to take each corner of the place with a quick stance. Each video game in turn is given two bullets to be on the safe side, like Natasha was going through the enemy ranks after a batlte and putting two shots between the eyes of each of them to make sure that they stayed down. She's rather formal with the way she goes about it. So quiet. So stilled.

And yes, the Ninja Turtles are awesome enough to get thier own game. But nto nearly as awesome as the Toxic Crusader.

Carol Danvers has posed:
The sirens are getting louder outside. They're only a block away now. There's a little whimpering from one corner, and one of the tables Tekkai looked under while helping people had a little girl of about nine under it that jumps off and runs off in terror -- apparently unsure if he was one of the insectoid video game creatures or not. Either way, she wasn't taking any chances.

She bumps straight into Carol's legs as she was walking out of the arcade area, and she crouches down to steady her. "Hey, are you hurt?"

The girl shakes her head, but she doesn't run.

"You're safe now. Can you be brave and stay with me for a couple of minutes until we can find your family?"

A couple of skeptical seconds pass before the girl nods, and Carol smiles a bit.

"Good." She holds out a hand, palm up. "You can hold my hand, if you want. And you don't have to let go until you see your parents. Deal?"

That gets a more enthusiastic nod, and she squeezes the girl's hand, rising back to her feet and taking a couple of steps back towards Tekkai. The girl, still holding onto her hand, tucks mostly in behind her legs.

"Thank you," she says, using her free hand to gesture over towards the machine, "for your help. I wouldn't have seen that symbol if you hadn't pointed it out." She extends that hand, then, to shake. "I'm Carol."

Even as she does, there are a few *pop* *pop* *pop*s from Nat's pistol as she puts the last remaining machines down.

"Better safe than sorry," Carol calls over, a friendly smile lingering on her lips even as the girl tucks even closer against her legs.

Shun Cruz has posed:
Tekkai pauses as he sees the girl's frightened look. The idea of using his appearance has him watching her carefully. He's no stranger to how he looks from what can be told. Insect like appearance, glowing yellow eyes. And he's tossing around what might as well be hell fire in some fashion. A look of regret comes over his face for a few moments before watching the interaction.

Seeing Natasha shooting the machines almost has him wanting to say stop, but he realizes that there may be something lingering. He didn't see what caused it despite being there. And he finally walks over to stand not far from Carol as he watches and seems to be looking around.

At Carol's words, he turns to look at her, then at her hand and hesitates before shaking hands, "Ah... thank you? I did not see who cast it or anything."

Now that the adrenaline is over, and he's not busy fighting, the teen looks very much uncomfortable and nervous as hell.

Carol Danvers has posed:
"That's a problem for another day. Finding it and getting everything under control -- that's the important part. We can piece things together after the fact, when we're not busy trying to keep people safe," Carol muses, still holding the girl's hand, but seeming to let her choose how much or how little she wanted to hide behind her legs without any coaxing one way or another.

If Captain Marvel was bothered by the insectoid form in the least, it didn't show. In fact, it didn't show so much that's it's pretty obvious it's going to take more than a carapace and some yellow eyes to freak her out.

"Hey..." Her voice softens a bit, apparently sensing that nervousness. "You did good. You helped a lot of people today." There's a pause, then, and a little tilt of her head.

"What's your name?"

Shun Cruz has posed:
"Oh, name? Um... I've been calling myself Tekkai like this." He gestures at himself.

"Mutant and all that." He shrugs, as if it wasn't a big deal.

"Erm... yeah, I guess... uh... wow..."

Tekkai shakes his head a few times. "... I guess? Still sad I'll have to go to another place to relax for a while." He sighs, folding his arms over his chest. "Kinda wish I knew more to help out than just be a big wall."

Carol Danvers has posed:
"I figured it was something like that. Some of my best friends are mutants," Carol muses with a little quirk of a familiar grin. "It's nice to meet you, Tekkai."

The girl peeks her head out, apparently finally trusting the easing of tensions and the fact that Tekkai was not, in fact, one of the video game characters that was trying to eat everyone... despite the insectoid appearance. With each passing second, she moved incrementally further around to Carol's side, still clinging to the woman's hand so hard that her little knuckles were turning white.

"Yeah," Carol responds to the comment about needing another place to relax. "It looks like they're going to closed for renovations for little bit." She nods, though, towards him -- as if she was indicating 'him' as a whole. "Sometimes a big wall is all you really need," she assures, "and it seems like you've got that down pretty well. Are you still learning? I knew a few people who can conure tao mandalas."

The sirens arrive outside, winding down to silence, and through the hole that Pac-Mac ate in the front of the building, there's shouting that can be heard along with the slamming of doors.

Shun Cruz has posed:
The sirens have Tekkai looking over in that direction, then back to Carol at her statements.

"Closed for renovations. Hah. Well, they did need a new kitchen." He says with a smile, "Pizza was like cardboard was still attached to it."

Her questions have him looking confused, "Um... yeah, not quite with them... mom's a former one, and yeah... well.. erm... won't tell me about them?" He rubs the back of his head, earning the odd sound of a slight squeaky scratching.

"Er... shoot... I hope I don't get in trouble for this. Bad enough they freaked over the museum stuff." He says as he looks around a bit more.

"Oh, right. Police on the way. I guess I should get out of here or something?" He says and turns to start walking. "Oh kami, they are going to ground me for the year after this..."

Carol Danvers has posed:
"I'm pretty sure it was. I'm not sure if it was the kitchen's fault or the cook's, but someone should have told them there's better ways to get fiber on your diet."

Carol offers a little shrug and glances down at the girl who's blinking up at her.

"Oh, come on," she encourages gently. "That was funny. Have you ever had pizza that tasted like cardboard?"

The girl nods, and Carol wrinkles her nose.

"It's gross, right?"

Finally, that gets a little chuckle out of the girl.

When Carol looks up again, she glances over her shoulder at the retreating form of of the insectoid mutant teen.

"Hey Tekkai... if you really want to learn more, you should stop by the Sanctum Sanctorum. Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. Ask for Doctor Strange, and tell him Carol sent you."

There's a little twinkle of mischief in her eyes.

Then she gives the girl's hand a happy little shake as firemen start to come in through the front.

"Come on. Let's go see if we can find your parents."