10498/Gamma Doomsday

Gamma Doomsday
Date of Scene:	18 March 2022
Location:	The Cube (Leader's Hidden Base)
Synopsis:	The Hulk, She-Hulk, Black Widow, Spiderwoman, and Hyperion successfully thwart the Leader's plans to create a gamma powered army, defeating Red She-Hulk in the process. Though both the Leader and Red She-Hulk escaped (the latter after pushing Red Hulk off a very high place), the stolen equipment has been recaptured and the Leader is on the run.
Cast of Characters:	Betty Ross, Natasha Romanoff, Jennifer Walters, Hyperion, Jessica Drew, Bruce Banner

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Betty Ross has posed:
    When we last left our heroes....

    Bruce Banner and Jennifer Walters came to Vista Verde, New Mexico, for the funeral of a friend, Betty Ross. Investigating, they determined that she had died at the local Hulkbuster base, that her father, General Ross, had resigned his rank and been discharged from the Air Force. Then they were attacked by gamma mutant dogs at the funeral, where, while fighting them off, they discovered Betty's body was not in the closed casket. Further investigation discovered that Ross had been killed by another recent gamma mutant, a man named Samuel Sterns, who had worked with Ross on a super-soldier project intended to replicate She-Hulk transformation, which was partially successful, in that Ross became the first volunteer and became the Red Hulk. However, Sterns betrayed Ross, murdering Betty, stealing the project data and equipment, and even Betty's body in one last dig at Ross. Shortly after Jen was arrested temporarily on suspicion of being a female gamma mutant who attacked Hulkbuster base, but was cleared. For unknown reasons, Bruce suddenly lost control and turned into the Hulk, who in a rage followed a gamma trail into the desert with She-Hulk in hot pursuit, where they were lured into Stern's hidden base, the Cube, and captured.

    The loss of the Hulk's tracking beacon brought Black Widow and Spiderwoman to investigate. Together they were able to convince the former General Ross to take them to where the tracker had disappeared, where they infiltrated the base, with Red Hulk going to find the control room for the Cube prison buitl specifically to contain Hulks, while Natasha and Jessica went to disrupt the base power by shutting down the gamma reactor. Arriving at the power station, they discovered that STerns had made a few modificatoins, rebuilding the reactor into some time of gamma-based weapon. Also a horde of robotic drones and local wildlife turned into obedient gamme mutants. Unfortunately they were discovered.

    So, to sum up:

    She-Hulk is currently in a cell designed to keep Hulk's off balance so they can't use their strength to break stuff. She's basically being held in the middle of the air by an anti-grave system that keeps her away from any of the surfaces to push off from.

    Natasha and Jessica are running from a horde of drones currently chasing them on orders from Sterns, now calling himself the Leader.

    Hyperion, flying not too far away, has noticed a gamma radiation spike out in the desert of New Mexico and come to investigate.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanoff is running along at full speed over with Jessica Drew. She's giving orders to Jessica, "If I'm being overrun, get out of here yourself. I'll manage on my own." Better to lose on eagent than two agents in impsible odds." Natasha herself is going to rapidly pop up a trio of grenades in her hands which she goes to arm with her fingers, managing to hold all three at the same time and charge them. They're flipped over and all hurled at the same time, her not bothering to aim them. The grenades are a somewhat dangerous combination; one of them a cryo grenade, another a small EMP grenade, and the third a plasma grenade. Hopefully enough to shock their pursuers some and to give them some breathing room. Tehre's so many things coming after them she's not even bothering to try and shoot over with her guns. Now it's time to run.

Jennifer Walters has posed:
    Jen has had better weeks. First there was Betty's funeral, and the revelation that she might not quite be dead, then there's General Ross as the Red Hulk, /then/ being arrested and falsely accused of mayhem, and /then/ getting stuck in this trap. Not a good week at all.

    At first she tried swimming in air to see if she could get out of the antigrav hold, then she clapped her hands together to create a sonic boom to see if that could shake her out, but all that did was make her ears ring for a couple of minutes, but nothing she's come up with so far has worked. So she just sits, crosslegged in the middle of the room, resting her head on her fist, "Aw, nuts."

Hyperion has posed:
    I mean, Hyperion is basically a walking star. I mean he is capable of generating the sort of radiation put off by stars. A part of that -is- gamma. But that's really just a small portion of what he does. The spike of Gamma Radiation however.. made him think back to the files he read about the Avengers after Black Panther and Wanda helped to rescue him from AIM. Long story...

    But he was really just out for a flight to clear his head. To get away from the sheer volume of sound that is New York City... and to be able to feel less pressed in on all sides.

    And so... at the upper level of the atmosphere, the Alternate Eternal known as Hyperion found himself staring down at the desert. New Mexico. At least on -his- Earth, that is where he would be looking. So... down he goes. And along the way, he learns that what -should- just be a natural stone mesa... is blocking his atomic vision.

    He was trying to track the source of the Gamma radiation, and it stood out -immediately-. So a few seconds later, he stands atop the mesa, peering down and studying the output hole. I mean... Gamma rays are dangerous. And this is raw, unfiltered stuff here. So he does the last thing anyone would ever expect a smart person to do. He basically treats the hole like a peephole, and sticks his eye directly over the Gamma hole to peer down inside. Maybe he can get a better idea of what is going on down there. But for anyone watching security feeds... there's some idiot in a black outfit and a gold cape who flew down and landed there, and is bathing an eyeball in undiluted Gamma radiation up there. Great, maybe we'll get someone with a single big green angry Hulk eye.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Racing at top speed with killer robots is hardly conducive to conversation. Jessica's head turns to regard the senior agent, only her super hearing allowing her to catch her words over the racket of pursuit in the tunnel. She seriously contemplates disobedience - loathe to leave a fellow agent in the path of ravening hoards of cybernetic murderers. But, she knows Romanoff's reputation for extracting herself from the most compromising situations and springs to the ceiling, leaving her on the ground but not undefended.

Turned toward the oncoming rush of attackers, she clings to the ceiling with a three-point hold and blasts the head of the second wave not affected by the grenades, drops and races back down the tunnel.

<Copy that> she replies after a few vital seconds.

Betty Ross has posed:
    The hole is fairly easy to see down, in that it's a good twenty feet across at this point. The rock around it appears to have been artificially cut free, so the hole is intentional. Looking down the hole, there's a giant technological tower that's having the last of its shielding put in place, the gamma energy starting to taper off as robotic drones fasten things in place. Hyperion will also be in time to see a HORDE of drones of all times, including some that look like minitanks, charging out of the room towards a door to the north.

    Which is about when several grenades come spinning into the doorway and detonate, shorting out, freezing, or melting, or a combination of all three as it leaves a brief gap in the horde, before the survivors charge heedlessly over their junked companions in pursuit of Natasha and Jessica in the hall outside. Another bunch are webbed in place...not all of the drones are combat capable, some are fairly weak. But there are a LOT of them.

    Meanwhile, Jen, in her cell, will hear a click, then some muttering, followed by Ross's voice saying. "Is this blasted thing or what? Hey! Walters!?" There's the sound of energy weapon fire. "Hold that thought..." There's a few large BOOMS and the volume of fire appears to slacken. "Goddamned robots. Hate 'em."

Jennifer Walters has posed:
    "Ross?" Jen asks, surprised. "I'd never thought I'd say this but I'm glad to hear your voice!" She perks up and uncoils from her sitting position. "Can you get me out of.. pth, ack! Hair... Can you get me out of here?"

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
There's a quick comment from Natasha over to Jessica that's sent along the tightbeam SHIELD frequency. <<Double back if you can and try and locate where the cell is. We have a rough idea.. they'll be pursuing me, and you'll be expected to be running away. I'll give you some cover>> Just as Natasha said one thing didn't mean she didn't have tricks up her sleeve. And in any case, having one agent go for backup while the specialist tried to make her own way out or go to ground was a very obvious, logical thing. Natasha is going to then pop a pair of smoke grenades over along herself. Along with a pair o fflashbangs that are using up many of the few grenades she has left. Now's not the time for hoardingsupplies. It's the time to try and put up as big a mess as hse can.

Hyperion has posed:
    Is that.. a couple of women running from a robo-horde? Hyperion shakes his head. That will never do. Especially as at least one of those women seems to be at least -mentioned- in some of the files he read. And so he simply steps off the edge of the Gamma Skylight and drops down to land in the path of the robo-horde.

    His feet strike the ground with almost no force, and he spreads his arms wide to intercept as many of those micro-bots as he can. "Do what you came here to do. I will hold them." he states simply as his eyes start to glow green... a sign of his intent to start melting things within his line of sight.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Jess is no blindly obedient robot, even to her seniors in the field. Reluctantly, she mutters, <Copy that. Going to the cells.>

The agent moves ahead of the clatter behind them, trusting in Romanoff's abilities. At the intersection she looks both ways and sniffs for the coyote and roadrunner guards before loping down toward the cells. She hears them before she sees them.

Betty Ross has posed:
    "Yeah, yeah, knight in shining armor and all that....lemme figure this control panel out...hmm...probably okay, it's only smoking a little bit...uh...." There's a sudden sense of motion for Jen, like she's in an elevator. "Wait, that't the reconfigure...keep your shirt on, I almost got this..."

    More rumbling from outside. "Wait, here's a door. I think."

    Down the hall from where Black Widow and Spiderwoman are running, up ahead, part of the wall suddenly retracts, then slide open, letting theim here the rumbling and hissing of machinery inside."

    "Nah. Damned egg heads, why don't they label anything normal!?! I got it, I got it....holy fuck, is that a giant road runner and coyote?! Augh!" There's hissing and howling and clattering and more big booms, but suddenly the floor under Jen opens and she's dropped through it towards the floor about fifty feet below. There's a brief impression of a giant cube of smaller cubes in constant motion as they're shifted from side to side, up and down, constantly changing the order and map of the interior. Also some faint angry roaring. This is much the same thing Natasha and Jessica will see as they draw even with the door, as well as a plummeting She-Hulk.

    The robots draw up short for a moment as Hyperion flies past and drops in front of them, the tunnel shaking as they're temporarily distracted from the two women they're chasing....at which point numerous tank like drones point weapon barrels and open up on Hyperion, with others attempting to swarm him with a variety of cutting lasers, heavy claws, electrically charged armatures, and a fire extinguisher from a small trash-can shaped one rolling along in the back.

Jessica will be able to track the scents straight into the door that just opened, though they're not immediately visible. Just falling green amazons, yup.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanoff would glance over at Hyperion with a 'what are you doing here' expression, but thankful. "We're here to rescue two of the Avengers. Bruce Banner and Jennifer Walters. We're here with Thaddeus Ross. The local lunatic is Samuel Sterns, who's been mutated by Gamma Radiation to have super intelligence and called himself the Leader." The primary infodump bit down, now Natahsa can break apart with an 'appreciated' muttered from her lips. Now she's going to dart along, another pair of smoke grenades deployed; likely the last of the ones she has on her, and she's moving to loop about as she suddenly sees a tumbling She-Hulk!
    She gives a rapid hand signal over to jennifer, hopefully catching her attention as they see her tumbling. Help has arrived. Seeing hte console, now Natasha is running over towards it.. Signalling Jessica to do the same. Two minds, both experts in different ways. Going to see if she could find a quick shutdown on it.

Hyperion has posed:
    It's not as if Hyperion is likely to really be more than inconvenienced by the swarm of robots. It is mildly amusing to see the sorts of varieties they come up with. The little trash can in the back makes him snicker, and he says, "I am going to call you Artoo Oscar." he says before he spreads his arms even wider apart, and does another of those tricks that the stupidly strong types are known for.

    He brings his hands together at supersonic speed, slamming them together with tons of force to cause a shockwave to roll forward from his body towards the robots. At least he might ... thin the herd. But again, his goal is not to beat them... it's to keep them from pursuing the others.

Jennifer Walters has posed:
    "Ack!" Jennifer cries as she's suddenly dropped fifty feet, only to land on her butt. "Ow." It's not like she's actually hurt. That's just the kind of thing you say when you land on your butt like that.

    It takes a moment to get her bearings, when she notices a waving out of the corner of her eye. "Oh! Black Widow!" she says getting to her feet. "What are you doing here?" She hurries over to meet up with her fellow Avenger, "Not that I'm not glad to see you."

Jessica Drew has posed:
Unaware of the arrival of someone on their side, Jess skitters to a halt awaiting eminent assault from the super-powered animals she had seen earlier.

The world goes topsy-turvy in a sense. Doors opens and she is witness to rooms shuffling in a chaotic pattern.

Her mouth drops open for a moment as she realizes that She-hulk is plummeting to ground. Her instinct is to help, but, reason says don't stand under someone that would make a piano dropped from thirty stories look light.

Standing next to Natasha, "Do you have a handle on stopping this cr...chaos?"

Betty Ross has posed:
    The shockwave is LOUD in the enclosed tunnel, even if the force is generated mostly away from Hyperion and the other Avengers behind him. But it certainly has its effect as robots go flying, many disintegrating as they smash into the walls, ceiling, or floor or are thrown back into the power room they were emerging from. The trashcan makes a mournful 'breeeeeeeet!* sound and is sadly one of those who does not survive the smashitude.

    But it does provide a moment of breath for all concerned.

    And that's when Red Hulk comes crashing through the glass of what appears to be an observation control room across from the huge cube, firing a comically overized rifle as he's tackled out the window by a pair of gamma mutants...a gigantic road runner with spines down its back and sharpened edges to its forward wings and scales and claws, and a giant-sized coyote with a pair of energy weapons at its hips, which is also firing at Ross. Despite this, both sides are managing to miss, though it's a very two page splash sort of scene as they fall.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Going to draw out her pistol, Natasha goes to take a pair of quick shots over at the Coyote, aiming over at any heavy equipment it might have. Maybe there was a set of rocket boots or deployable Bat-Man Flying Kite. Going to try and take a coule of quick shots if she could at it.
    Grinning at Jessica, "The normal thing. Stop Stearns and get everyone home and secure the area." And now they seem to have an actual chance at it.

Jennifer Walters has posed:
    Jen blinks at the coyote and roadrunner. "Boy, and they thought /my/ comic got too silly." She shakes her head and starts running full steam towards the roadrunner, "I'll take this one!" she shouts, "You all get the coyote!"

    She runs up to the roadrunner and hauls back and attempts to haymaker it. "Ross! Put the gun down and just /punch/ the thing. You're a hulk, now, dammit! /Act/ like it!"

Jessica Drew has posed:
"Stay on the panel, ma'am..." Not finishing the sentence, Jess leaps upward and propels herself along the wall to bio-blast a charging Coyote. The air fills with ozone as the blue bioelectricity plays up and down the furred back.

Unslinging her rifle she fires full into a Roadrunner racing toward them, beeping madly.

Hyperion has posed:
    Okay. Oscar the Grounchcan died. Hyperion shakes his head and begins brushing robot bits off of his body. And that's when Ross and the ACME duo show up. He just stares for a long moment. Almost like he's not sure if he's really seeing what he's seeing. But then he actually snaps out of that daze.

    Moving in a blur, he hears Natasha's orders, and then hears Jennifer's yelling. He shakes his head and looks to see if there are any other threats on the horizon. They seem to have this well in hand, and he didn't destroy -all- of the robot swarm... so he's making sure they are still occupied.

Bruce Banner has posed:
The Cube was built for a clear purpose: containing the Hulk. The main cell saw billions of dollars and hundreds if not thousands of hours invested into a meticulously arranged series of anti-gravity systems to prevent the brute from getting leverage and a barrage of lights and sounds and changing scenery to keep him from getting his bearings. It had never seen use until the Leader, targeting Bruce Banner with a dart, baited the Hulk into his waiting cell. Here he has spun, caged, disoriented.

Angry. Incredibly angry. Rage is all the Hulk knows, at times. Sometimes one wonders if it is all he knows. For days, possibly longer, Bruce Banner has waged a war inside his own mind to try and calm the Hulk down. To get him to think, to possibly give Banner the wheel to look for a way out. Thinks to the Leader's machinations it has been to no avail. But now...now power to the anti-grav room has been cut off. A heavy thump echoes through it, followed by a long pause, and then a roar. A bone-rattling roar of unbridled rage directed at the man who dared to lock the Hulk away.

There's a sound that resembles thunder, but it's too fast, too often, and coming from inside the base. It gets closer and closer until suddenly THE HULK bursts through the wall and roars. "WHERE IS HE?! WHERE IS LEADER?! HULK SMASH!!!"

Betty Ross has posed:
    Red Hulk lands with a grunt and oof as he hits the ground, making a small crater as it cracks around him, getting an arm up to keep the gamma runner from clawing open his chest with one of its legs. However it's forced by back She-Hulk charging, it, the bird blurring backwards with super speed, then zig zagging back and forth as Jessica tries to fire on it. The gamma coyote gets blasted out of the air however, yelping as the bioblast hits it, nocking it sprawling, before it rolls back to its feet, shaking its head, growlign as Natasha's shots hit him but don't seem to do more than really piss him off. The cannons on the coyote's hips track, then open up, sending grenade like balls of plasma in the general indiscriminate area of...well, everyone. Including the gamma runner, which has to blur out of the way again to avoid the explosions, then extends its wings, leaning down as it digs in its claws, preparing for a super speed driveby with its wing blades on Jessica....

    Then both it and the coyote pause, taken aback as the Hulk bursts out of the Cube, smashing his way free.

    There's a flicker as an oversized hologram of a tall, thin man with an enormously overgrown upper head wearing robes over a bodysuit appears, a crystal diadem glimmering in the center of his forehead as he idly rubs his head, getting a pained look. "And now both the monsters are out and they brought one of their thuggish flying friends. WONDERFUL." He glares down at the group, then snaps his fingers. "Fortunately I have planned for such eventualities. It would have been more helpful to have that green monster as an agent of chaos..." He smiles lazily. "But I'll have all the Hulks I want shortly, when my gamma transfigurator converts the population of Vista Verde into an army of then. And you...oh, you'll be...busy." He lets out a maniacal laugh, the hologram disappearing as several panels open on the wall opposite the cube. Towering dark green robots come stomping out....or not robots. But Redeemer suits, the sort made specifically for fighting Hulks by the Hulkbusters, but converted into AI systems.

    That, and there's a low whistle, before another figure jumps out of the observation room, landing easily in a three point crouch behind the advancing machines.

    "Well. Y'all fucked now." Red She-Hulk drawls as she straightens, a comically oversized sword on her back that looks more like a sharpened I-beam as she draws it easily with one hand as a rumbling vibration can be felt through the floor, the gamma coyote and bird moving to flank her.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Going to duck down over as Red She-Hulk appears, Natasha Romanoff goes to speak on the comm to Jessica <<That's the one that hit the convoy. S he's dangerous. She has moderate combat training, heavy weaponry, and is a good shot>> And those.. Ridiculously upgunned weapons. <<Dammit. I never knew those two got out of prototyping>> Even with the huge mass and scale of Red She-Hulk, the things seemed like they were still taller than she was. Natash would quickly try and remember how they'd foguht..

<<She's suseptible to sensory disorientation. Try and target her eyes if you can. She has the asme rage issues as any Hulk>> Then she's glancing over at the giant mustached green head.
    "I take it you've also planned for how ridiculous this particular scenario is? Beyond all the absurdities, theatrics, and ridiculousness you've put in.. I've seen better Bond films. The plot of the original Casino Royale movie had more credibility than this." Natasha'sg oing to full on baiting mode while the Leader is monologuing as the Hulkbuster suits start to power up once more. Let's hope that they're just as vulnerable to Jessica's bio-shockb lasts as anything else technologically as they'd used so far.
    "I have yet to see anything more ingenious here that wouldn't have been discarded as a cartoon idea in the nineteen eighties for being too dumb."

Jessica Drew has posed:
The tunnel reverberates with noise as walls collapse and the anti-grav systems fail. A little lost robot skitters by, ignoring them as it flees before the terrifying voice of an angry Hulk. The agent prefers her spider's eye view down the tunnel. As the Road-runner makes its zig-zag charge, she tries to keep it in her sights but is blown flat onto a side wall by the concussive grenade blast.

Shaking herself, deafened, bleeding from a head cut, Jessica comes to on the floor not three feet from the two stock still gamma-animals. The rifle is still on her shoulder. She rolls to her feet and shoots them both at point-blank range.

Behind her all hell breaks loose when more walls open to unleash the anti-Hulk AIs as well as the Red She-Hulk. She turns, her eyes widening. <"Copy that. This can't be good.">

Hyperion has posed:
    Oh look, giant robot things. Hyperion knows what to do about those. Well mostly. He waits and lets them move forward, and then he is just standing right there in front of the one nearest to She Hulk. He is playing Road Block. While that might sting... those robots are no joke, he is pretty sure he can survive whatever one of them might dish out.

    And then he notices the Leader's comical show of being a dick. "Well, did he get that plan off the back of a Supervillain-O's cereal box?" he asks. "I saw some machinery when I came in. Looked like it was a bit fragile. Thing I should try to make it work less good?" he asks aloud.

Jennifer Walters has posed:
    "I know, right?" Jen says to Natasha with a helpless shrug. "You should have seen him when he first caught me! He monologued for nearly an hour!"

    When the Red She-Hulk shows up, Jen moves to square up with her. "Are you sure you want to throw your lot in with this cartoon villain? He's just using you, you know," she says, trying to deescalate the situation. "Whatever it is that he promised you, I can guarantee that he won't deliver on it." Still, she's ready to engage the Red She-Hulk should just talking to her fail. Hopefully all that training she's been doing with the Amazons will pay off.

Bruce Banner has posed:
"COME BACK HERE AND FIGHT HULK!" he roars at the projection of the Leader, undeterred by holographic tricks. The Hulk has a bit of a one-track mind, as it turns out. When Redeemers deploy, however, Mean Green has a new focus for his rage. Bruce Banner might have insight for Hyperion and the others. The Hulk, unfortunately, has only one plan: Smash.

He leaps in a giant bound, crashing into a Redeemer armor and taking it to the ground. He reels back, throwing an earthshaking punch, then another. This may not end well if the Leader has upgraded the machines, but ... the Hulk is also very, very angry.

Betty Ross has posed:
    The Leader looks annoyed. "Ah, pointless prattle and bluster. These are of my own design, upgraded to deal with the monster himself in a full rage. If you survive, perhaps I'll be able to make use of whatever's left of you." He waves dismissive. "Well, not the women obviously. Maybe She-Hulk." Red She-Hulk tilts her head to eye the hologram for a moment. "But you see, I already have one." Rulkie shorts at that. He smiles thinly. "Do enjoy your place as but a stepping stone to my triumph."

    Red She-Hulk tilts her head at Jen, stepping to the side as Hyperion squares off against one of the Hulkbusters. "He is the Leader." she says, slightly monotone as she rolls her neck. Then lunges, bringing her sword out in a vertical slash from down below her right hip up at She-Hulk.

    The Hulkbuster looks down at Hyperion, a few lights blinking...before its chest snaps open, revealing a weapon lens and it unleashed a titanic blast of energy at point blank range at the caped hero.

    As Jessica opens fire the roadrunner blurs into superspeed again, zig zagging then throwing itself forward at her as one of its wickedly clawed legs lashes out at her as it practically appears next to her. The coyote is less lucky, tanking the hits with a pained yelp, but shaking it off as it takes aim at Black Widow, sending another pair of plasma balls arcing towards her.

    The first Redeemer armor is carried backwards with a crash as the enraged Hulk smashes into it, sparks skidding off the floor as its smashed into repeatedly, flailing as it tries to get in counter shots while the Hulk begins smashing into its armored form, leaving sparking dents and leaking hydralic fluid behind. The remaining robot turns, then snaps open its chest as well, drawing a beed on the Hulk, the firing off another blast of gamma energy like the one at Hyperion.

Hyperion has posed:
    The energy weapon has one limitation. It runs off of capacitors. Capacitors far less efficient at storing energy than each and every cell of Hyperion's body. Seeing the buildup of energy, he unleashes atomic power from his own eyes. Three thousand degrees of hot thermal bloom and hard radiation.. In a classic moment, power is met with power.. the end result undetermined yet.

    "I admit. I am no engineer. But I believe the best way to prevent his idiotic plans would be to prevent his machinery from functioning." he says as he does his best to push that energy back into the blaster lens in the Redeemer. He's striding slowly towards the Redeemer, hoping to get his hands on the lens directly. But it'll take time to overcome the force of the incoming power.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
All right, it's time to deal with the group that's surplus to requirements. Natasha's been saving these particular toys for awhile. The first is a bulky looking, small compact plasma pistol that's been at her belt the entire time this fight. She goes to call out and over to Jessica <<Catch!>> The small pistol is oversized and looks like something that came out of a cardboard box toy that was bulky enough to need both hands to use. But when caught it would pulsate with heavy, heavy power to it if used as a weapon.
    Natasha is then going to do her own 'stealth' routine as she would hopefully vanish from view and from sound. She might not have any particular built in stealth abilities in her current loadout, but she was still damned quiet and in the midst of the chaos hopefully ignored if not being paid attention to. So.. Presuming she could manage to slip away, Natasha would go low to the ground and hopeuflly not be noticed.
    That hologram had to be broadcasting from somewhere inside here after all. No megaloamniac would want to be elsewhere on the planet when htier ultimate victory was at hand. That would imply cowardice and an expectation to lose. And Natasha is now.. Well.. There are only so many places in the base not run into yet that might be an auxiliary command center..

Jennifer Walters has posed:
    "Yes, he's the Leader," She-Hulk says, quickly stepping aside from that slash. Whew! That was close. Those lessons with Diana really paid off! "But he's done something to your mind, made you compliant!" She snaps out a hand to catch Red She-Hulk's wrist that holds the blade. That's her biggest concern.

    "Are you sure this is what /you/ want to do, or what /he/ wants you to do?" she asks, going for a strike on the arm that she has grappled. Hopefully with this she can disarm her. "Look, we can help you! You're not responsible for your actions right now. I don't think there's a single Avenger who /hasn't/ been mind controlled at one point in their career."

Jessica Drew has posed:
An inch further and the claw would have taken her in the femoral artery. The razor Meep-meep claw has raked through her tac suit like butter leaving a deep slash welling blood. Knocked to the ground by the force of the blow, she raises an arm and blasts the bird's tender underside with what is left of her reserves of blue electricity.

A plasma gun skitters to within her reach. Levering herself up and propping herself against a wall, smiling grimly despite the pain, "Are they working on ugly around here?" Jessica asks loudly over the din. "Because it can't be smart." She raises the newly acquired gun choosing a Hulk-smasher for a target. The gun discharges with a satisfying sizzle of energy.

Bruce Banner has posed:
The energy blast slams into the back of the Hulk, launching him clean off of the Hulkbuster that he is presently in the process of disassembling. The green behemoth slams into the dust and rolls, tumbling over. He does not pause. Instead, a fresh bellow of rage echoes as he rises up and charges toward it again, possibly taking another blast head on. It may have drive him back, even work at shredding into him, but he does continues to charge, to push against the beam, much like Hyperion with the other. His toes dig into solid stone, and the Hulk approaches, one step at a time.

"JEN! WHERE LEADER?!"

Betty Ross has posed:
    Red She-Hulk immediately blocks with a practiced martial arts block, then brings her knee up, going for a short but brutal strike against She-Hulk's side to try and make her let go of her wrist, grinning wickedly as she does. "Oh, you're trying to SAVE me, huh? Maybe I like this a lot more than where I was before..." She's interrupted when a colossal blast of energy hits her from the side, knocking her flying as Ross gets back to his feet. "Hah! Got her!" Red She-Hulk goes for a flight! Actually flying high enough to smash into the side of the Cube, before starting to dig herself free with a murderous expression as she spots Red Hulk. "Ow."

    The explosions from the coyote cover Natasha's attempt to break contact, seemingly disappearing from the midst of the blasts Vaporized?!? Well, the coyote isn't sure as it ceases fire, looking around for her before Ross's next blast smacks into it, sending it flying as well. "Two'fer!" he roars with a grin.

    Then is buried as one of the smaller cubes in the prison is sawed free by Red She-Hulk and dropped on him from her elevated position.

    The Redeemer armor appears to hav ea lot of power.....but not quite enough to overwhelm Hyperion the way it was attempting. It is, however, fast enough to twist to the side as it cuts off its energy, then swings a metal battlefist in a backhand, trying to catch him off guard and still using his eyebeams.

    The roadrunner squawks as its blasted, skidding out and slamming into the wall as it staggers, a bit dazed as it tries to shake off the impact, as Jessica opens fire on the second Redeemer armor trying to blast the Hulk off its companion unit, the white hot beam melting into its back warmor as it staggers, a small explosion escaping from the penetration. Oddly not built to shrug off plasma blasts that Hulks don't have for some reason. It does jostle the unit so it twists slightly, the beam going off course and allowing the Hulk to close before it can swing the firing arc back.

    The Leader turns away, dismissing the battle as he walks to a visible control panel behind him, before the hologram shuts off again.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Control panel.. Control panel.. That particular angle.. Leader probably won't have changed the layout of the base -that- much. Purpose, yes. But he won't have built entirely new rooms unless heh ad to. And there's only so many places in the facility that would -fit- that angle. Where the wall was, where the camera was pointing down. Natahs would try and map the facility in her head. What they had gotten from Ross. Where they had been so far. What they knew of the place. And where they had seen doors, nooks, and crannie. And now..
    Now she goes to switch to her UV lenses once more, hopefully evading the fight.. And going to start trying to track the power lines. If she cuold.. Intent on trying to track right where the hopefully most probable locations would be for a supervillain watching everything over in total dismissal with a sneer. She could figurte out where the wall was.. What direction the camera was facing.. And hopefully go from there as the coytoes went down the way of the giant rocket powered boulder and meep meep obliteration cannon cliff-side.

Hyperion has posed:
    Great, giant robot bitch-slap. Hyperion does get hit by it. He wasn't using his superspeed and as such, his reflexes weren't hyped up. So he is struck and flung back away from the giant robot. He impacts the far wall and narrows his eyes. "Okay then." he says as he pulls himself off of the wall. He surges back in... soaring closer to try to make himself a tempting target. But he -is- sped up as far as his reflexes go. So the next time one of those arms gets close... his plan is to blur closer, get a grip on the arm... Atomic Thermal vision the shoulder joint and RIP off a new robot arm club he can use to beat the thing down. And then... it's the Redeemerville Slugger! Swing for the fences time.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Visibly plasma-rifles tickle hard from the AI's reaction to Jessica's first opening salvo. She follows it with another prolonged blast before shortening the range and changing target.

"Damn you birds are tough. Back in the pot with you!"

Showering the bird with radiant plasma, the beam burns off feathers more effectively than a rubber-fingered bird plucker. A distinct odor of roast chicken joins the smell of ozone, fried electronics and blood. She sidles past the bird toward Natasha, intent on watching her back while she works her way toward the panel.

Jennifer Walters has posed:
    "I don't know, cuz!" Jen shouts back at Hulk. She doesn't get a chance to say much more when Red She-Hulk aims a vicious knee at her. She's able to block the brunt of it, grunting at the impact, but not without letting go of the sword arm.

    When she sees Red She-Hulk flying into the wall she charges after her, aiming to slam her fist right in her solar plexus. "I tried to play nice!" she tells her opponent. If she gets there fast enough it won't give Red She-Hulk time to recover.

Bruce Banner has posed:
Jessica creates an opening, and the Hulk demonstrates something that not everyone knows. He is savage, sure, childlike, even. At times, however, the Hulk is cunning. Frighteningly cunning. At least when it comes to smashing things. The plasma rips open a hole in the back, and Hulk takes his chance. Superhuman muscles pump and he darts around, slipping behind the Redeemer. His massive fingers thrust into the gap in the armored plating and Hulk lifts and rips with the awful sound of rending metal as he tries to tear the Redeemer not-so-cleanly in half.

And if he succeeds? The Hulk then thrusts his hands into the mess of wiring and circuits and turns the two Redeemer halves into...well, boxing gloves, essentially. Big, Hulkbuster-grade armored boxing gloves.

Betty Ross has posed:
    Figuring out direction from the hologram is difficult...it doesn't show everything behind the Leader, and there are no windows or signs that might suggest a direction to go off of. On the other hand, following the power lines works better, since she knows where the power room is and where the Cube is, which is likely the other major power draw. Which makes the other branch possibly the command center the Leader is in? She will find herself hurrying down corridors as she follows the path in a rush. Perhaps a little bit faster when those lights start to dim as power is redirected from the Cube and other systems to something else. Something big.

    The Redeemer is not as fast as Hyperion, and it shows, as it loses an arm, staggering from the of weight, then toppling as its own arm is used to smash into it, armor pieces flying as it goes flying across the room, crashing down as it sparks and twitches spastically, out of the fight.

    The stunned roadrunner tries to dodge but can't avoid all the plasma blasts as its blasted, its feathers catching fire as it staggers under the multiple hits, then topples over with a thud, twitching. Smells like slightly burnt chicken in here now, but gives her the chance to run past after Natasha. Unfortunately, the coyote spots her running and gives chase, sending a pair of blasts into the walls of the corridor in an attempt to catch her in the shrapnel. It is, by comparison to the bird, a super genius, after all.

    Red She-Hulk is perhaps gloating a tad too long about the Red Hulk catching a face full of cube, and grunts as she's hammers, sliding back among the suppots for the massive prison as it moves back and forth, grinding noises coming from some sections as the individual pieces move wildly, forming an obstacle course of moving metal blocks. Enough to hide Rulkie for a moment, but not so long that She-Hulk doesn't seem the sword swing coming as she rounds one of the moving boxes, the blade slashing clean through one of the Cube support structures and continuing towards Shulkie. "I don't do nice!"

    The stricken Redeemer staggers as the Hulk gets behind it, trying vainly to reach behind, before with a shriek of ripping metal it's torn in half. And used as a matching set of glove as it sparks and twitches, out of the fight. The original unit that the Hulk smashes up has gotten to its feet, trying to open its chest but finding its weapon hatch too bent out of shape...so instead hatches on its shoulders pop open as it sends a swirl of missiles spiralling in towards the Hulk.

Hyperion has posed:
    With his dance partner out of the fight, Hyperion looks skyward. Then he rips off through the air to angle himself up and out of the Gamma Skylight. He needs to get altitude so that he can see where any gamma radiation is coming out that might put nearby towns at risk. He's not entirely sure what he can do about it if there are a lot of sources, but he can at least report on them.

    Perhaps he can disperse them a bit by using his body to intercept the flow of energy. He's also hoping someone inside might destroy the facility's ability to sustain the radiation generation.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Lovely. Now there's something big and worse coming. Natasha goes to tap her comm over and would whisper, giving her location <<There's a massive power surge heading in this direcction. Moving to investigate>> She's had too many experiences with these sorts of things to not react with complete paranoia. Then she's going to slide along and moving to try and track it. Still staying as invisible as she could. Scouting ahead while the chaos in the distance would unfold. And hopefully Red She-Hulk would find that in the case of lean, green, and on the scene..
    That some were better dead than red.
    Now going faster, the Black Widow goes as best she can, continuing to track through the corridors and expecting the worst of what she's going to find when she hits the far end of it.

Jennifer Walters has posed:
    "Woah!" She-Hulk cries, reeling herself back so she isn't sliced in half alongside the cube. "This does give me an idea, though..." she mutters to herself. She dodges around the place, always making sure there's a cube or two that's in between her and the Red She-Hulk.

    Once she's got a good idea of how the cubes move she uses them to her advantage. Just as one starts moving, She-Hulk jukes, dives and swings a massive punch to the opposite one, hoping to catch Red She-Hulk in the middle of a cube sandwich.

Bruce Banner has posed:
The Hulk's feet pound against the terrain like the sound of an incoming train, stirring up dust and leaving footprints as he sprints toward the remaining Redeemer. Armored parts on his fist and slammed into each other with the sound of metal against metal, and the Hulk then barrels in as the missiles hammer against his makeshift weapons.

But he does not slow down, emerging from the black smoke singed and with fragments of shrapnel embedded in his skin, but still coming with a mighty roar. He slams a metal-armored fist into the Redeemer, then another, then another, beating it like a drum. Even as he does, shrapnel falls away, pushed out by rapidly regenerated gamma-infused tissue.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Sometimes fights can put you off your food. Jessica had really liked roast chicken and hopes she forgets the smell of roast Roadrunner soon. Spider sense propels her dodges as the Coyote gives chase. She bounces off of walls like a mad spider in pursuit of Natasha chasing down her power-surge.

Once, she skids to a stop when she has gained some distance on the wily Coyote and turns to lance a blast of actinic energy at it.

Betty Ross has posed:
    As Hyperion goes flying off, he'll discover the skylight is now mostly filled by the tower, now protected in a powerful force field as it warms up, the gamma energy capacitors on it pulsing to greater and greater power. He also discovers the external automated defenses as numerous weapons turrets and systems pop up and open fire on him, keeping him busy dodging or tanking hits. As it reaches full extension, the tower bends at the middle, reconfiguring into a cannon as it rotates, moving to bear on the distant town of Vista Verde.

    The cube punch rips free with a crack of metal giving and smashes into Rulkie, knocking her sprawling, her sword swinging wide as it misses Jen completely and cleaves through another support instead as she ass over elbows backwards to slam into another moving cube, jamming it in place with a grinding wail of hydraulics overstressing. And for just a moment, her hair at the back of her neck is flipped forward long enough to expose the back of her neck. Hidden under her hair is a spidery device attached just at the top of her neck and the back of her head. She shakes off the impact, stabbing the sword into the ground as she pushes herself up. "Nice hit..." she grates.

    On the ground, the smashed up cube that fell on Ross shifts, then pushes to the side as he digs himself out, looking a bit dazed, then down at his now smashed rifle. "...dammit. I loved this thing." he grouses, getting to his feet.

    The already battered Redeemer reels as the Hulk goes right through the explosions and starts pounding on it...which ends when one of those punches lands squarely on its missile battery and sets off the unfired ammo as it staggers back, then its right side is ripped apart by the internal explosions, sending parts flying in all directions. All three Redeemer units are down.

    The coyote, however, is hot on the trail as its fires, continuing to miss with Jessica's wild dodging. The bolt catches it in the chest, staggering it a bit as its fur catches fire, but it promptly twists and leaps to the side, the beam running along its side rather than giving it time to drill straight through, though it's definitely not happy from the pained yelp and the smoldering left behind. But Jessica has almost caught up with Natasha!

    Natasha, meanwhile, follows the power leads to another serious door. You know it's for serious because it has a pair of the tank drones guarding it and its closed.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Whatever it is behind the door is definitelywhat she's after. The tank drones stand out. Natasha goes to quickly give an update on her location, the giant very-obvious sealed target she's at.. And fortunately Sterns hasn't shown any level of creativity to put up a fake like this so she trusts the man to play to his so-far shown strengths. Now at it she goes to consider.. OUt of EMP grenades. But she has other things that are well within her nromal loadout.

She goes to pull out her nromal electro-batons, even as she would launch herself up to the ceiling. She wasn't Spider-Woman that could stick to walls. But SHIELD technology sometimes gave partial workarounds. Heavy suction cups and magnetic clamps on tips of boots and gloves. They made for a somewhat slow crawl along hte ceiling. Then hopefully up above the two things.. Natasha goes to flick two small explosive disks from her hands, hopefully landing each on the upper point of where the turret met the main unit.. Hopefully in as imultaneous blast the two explosives going off and tehn disabling the pair.. And if not, then Natahsa would be hopefully able to slam down atop them before they could react by moving to smash her own electro-stun batons over into them if at all possible on top!

Jessica Drew has posed:
Mad dogs and AI smashers don't avoid plasma guns. In her latest bound, Jess goes high, hoping the plasma gun's charge is still full enough to give her some punch. She points back at her pursuer. Singed fur is added to the panoply of noisome odors that fills the tunnel as she sprays the thing one more time.

Ahead of her, she is aware of Natasha halting long enough to drop two small but potent gifts on the door's guardians. Jess braces herself.

Jennifer Walters has posed:
    She-Hulk narrows her eyes when she sees the spidery web stretched across the back of Red She-Hulk's neck. "Bingo," she says. "Now, the hard part is getting that /off/ of her."

    She comes in hot, slamming another cube at her red double, weaving off to the side. This would be so much easier if she wasn't having to dodge a vibro-blade as well. One of the things that she's learned about fighting an armed opponent is that you either want to stay out of range of the sword, or get in close enough so they can't use it, so this is what she does.

    She comes in close enough to try to grapple with the Red She-Hulk. Once again she binds up the arm holding the blade but this is a mere distraction. With any luck, she'll be able to reach the back of the woman's head and tear off that device.

Bruce Banner has posed:
It'd almost be comic to see how Hulk taps the missile bay with a heavy metal fist and explodes it were it not a sizeable payload of explosives meant to fight gamma monsters. The explosion rocks the area, but the Hulk rises out of being launched into a nearby wall, digging his fingers into the dirt and climbing back to his feet. He looks left, then right, in search of something to smash. Where did the Leader go?

"Hulk," Banner calls deep in the Hulk's mind, lost in the sea of rage. "You have to destroy it. Smash the tower! Betty and Jen would want you to smash the tower, Hulk!" "Yeah, you big palooka," a second voice chimes in. "Don't just stand there like a numbskull! Not it down!"

Hulk leaps toward it, bounding through the air--mindless of the anti-air defenses assailing Hyperion.

Betty Ross has posed:
    The coyote is forced to stop firing and focus on trying to dodge...but it's not a very big corridor really. So it gets hit several times as it relentlessly pushes forward, with all the determination of a beast that's wanted to eat one particular bird for years but now has to finish off Jessica and Natasha before it can go back and dig in. The tank drones are just starting to react, gun arms swinging up towards Natasha and Jessica as the explosives attach, then go off, blowing both in half as the upper half is partially detaches before the baton smash into their sensor units and complete the job, both slumping nonfunctional.R
    Up close, She-Hulk is noticing a definite different in combat styles...in that Red She-Hulk has a trained military style of martial arts that's a mix of brutality and dirty tricks more than the brawling style her green opponent has. That said, she apparently is not an expert swordswoman, as she tries to swing again, her strength allowing her to move the sword like a willow switch and hack vertically clean through the oncoming cube as the half fall to either side...but it gives She-Hulk the chance to close and grab her wrist holding the sword. This time, Red She-Hulk just drops the sword, apparently perfectly willing to make it a hand-to-hand fight as she lashes out with a straight kick, army boot aimed for Shulkie's stomach even as she gets hold of the back of her hair. "Ah, bitch!" she yelps, grabbing for the hand at the back of her head as she tries to pry it off, struggling.

    The Hulk....launches. He doesn't need skylights. He makes his own. There's a loud crash as he smashes clean through the top of the mesa, emerging into the open air and landing on the rock service before bounding towards the now pulsing gamma weapon as it nearly is prepared to fire. Several of the weapons turrets swivel to open fire on the green machine, sending energy bolts and shells streaking towards him as he advances.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
She's through the two drones now. Anything inside knows she's there and that she's waiting. And is on the alert. Natasha now goes to move on to her next trick, going to just casually head up to the door and give a firm, solid, knock. Then darting to the side and waiting for the villain to hopefully arrive out dramatically right as she had announced herself. Very much hoping that Leader was one to go for the dramatics even moreso and readying to reveal himself over in his full glory..
    Right where Natasha would have deposited a small set of micro-explosives over on the ground for when he came out, as well as some very small little poison gas cannisters, the likes of which she had used over on Red She-Hulk in their melee however long ago it was.

Jessica Drew has posed:
The concussive blast adds to the fun. Jess tops up the coyote with three well aimed shots of searing plasma - one for his muzzle, the others for his fore legs. Looking on with approval, Jessica keeps a wary eye out for more gamma-animals joining their visit to the Wizard of Oz.

The sounds of Hulks facing off come to her distorted by walls and distance. The floor rocks with earthquake tremors as the big green guy punches through walls in the vicinity of the silo. The deep thump of weapons tell her that they haven't reached their goal yet. The agent gives Natasha a thumbs up of approval when she mines the entrance.

Bruce Banner has posed:
The Hulk flies through the air trailing pieces of roof in his wake. He lands on all fours with a boom---only to be suddenly assailed by a barrage of energy bolts and shells. They batter him his way and that, causing the green giant to stagger and stumble...but he does not stop. He is driven by rage, the voices in his head urging him on, to prove that he is the srongest one there is no matter what the Leader might create.

Rising out of the barrage of fire, the Hulk spreads his arms far apart and then slams his hands together in a mighty clap, the force of which sends forth a shockwave toward the turret defenses.

Jennifer Walters has posed:
    She-Hulk takes the hit to the stomach so she can continue grabbing at the back of Red She-Hulk's head. It takes the wind out of her, and has her drop Rshulkie's arm to cradle her stomach but she's still trying to get at that blasted device.

    "Will you just..." She grunts as she blocks a couple of other blows from her red double, "I'm /trying/ to help you here!" After a bit more scrambling she manages to get her hands on the device. "Got it!" She then rips it from Red She-Hulk's neck, praying that it wasn't, you know, directly connected to her nervous system. Oops. This may not have been the smartest move.

Betty Ross has posed:
    Natasha's plan is set as she heads to the side of the door, waiting. There's a pause, then the intercom by the door clicks on. "You MUST be joking."

    Jessica's Spider Sense goes crazy sudden, indicating immediate danger coming at her and Natasha. At which point a fourth customized Redeemer suit bursts through the wall, one of its oversized tri-finger hands reaching for Natasha...but Jessica has a moment to get to her first and get her out of the way. Its pilot grins smugly at her. "82 percent chance you would break away from the battle and attempt to isolate and eliminate me." The Leader glances over to where Jessica is battling the coyote. "With your fellow agent following, an additional 76 percent chance." Through the battlesuit sized hole, you can see the control room that the hologram showed earlier, though the circular control panel is missing....oh wait. Because it's integrated into the Redeemer suit the Leader is wearing.

    "No green monsters...which means they're either fighting my crimson companion, or they've existed the building to join that flying dolt in trying to assault the Automated Collator Maser Emitter before it fires its payload. The last time I depend on junk developed by lesser minds." He smirks through the clear armored composite cockpit. "Luckily, I improved this one personally. You have NO chance."

    The sonic boom caused but Hulk reverberates across the desert, the massive shockwave tearing several turrets free of their supports and going flying, some smashing into other weapon systems as they do, other weapons simply exploding as the shock sets off their internal ammo storage. At least temporarily it clears a past to the ACME cannon, as other automated weapons trying to change their aim from Hyperion to the Hulk to try and keep him back, only for Nyperion to eyebeam a few of them to add to the carnage.

    The two She-Hulks are evenly matched for strength...and for a moment, as Red She-Hulk tries to slam another fist into She-Hulk's side, she almost looks like she's going to pull free again.

    Almost.

    As She-Hulk's hand finally closes on the device, Red Hulk leaps up to land behind and kidney punches Red She-Hulk as she gasps, distracting her long enough for the device to rip free, sparking as she screams out, then staggers, before crumpling.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Nothing like the old spider tingle for a little bit of a toe to forehead buzz. Trouble is on the way. Not any trouble but BIG trouble. Jess reaches behind her with her considerable strength and pulls Natasha by the collar of her tac suit throwing her upward.

"Romanoff, hold on!" She had considered using her as a bowling ball against the Coyote which is still standing after a muzzle and double-leg shot.

If only she had Hulk skills or the Hulks had coms to come and save their behinds.

"You little dome-headed rat. Eat your percentages." She aims the plasma gun at the Redeemer, then follows it with an arc of bioelectricity unsure of how hardened the suit is against both types of attack.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
No matter how fast and reactive Natasha is, Jessica at full speed outdoes her by a considerable margin. Jessica is faster, Jessica is stronger, and Jessica has a danger sense. So Jessica goes to yank her along an dout of the way right over as the Leader is barely stopped from smashing her over as Natasha would hiss over in surprise.. But appreciation. "Thank you. Shall we slow him down together?"
    Natasha goes to draw out if she could her two heavy staves. Whistling them around. The ones that had been upgraded to go against Red She-Hulk. Jessica still has the plasma pistol and her own bio-shock blasts. Natasha goes to call out, "Hulk, Leader's here." This is yelled as loud as she can. Hulk might not hear her.. But hopefully Jennifer might. And be able to point. Or Hyperion would.
    Then Natasha is moving to go on the attack! Heavy staves out and going to attack the heavy mech from one end! Going to try and lash at it quickly, if she could going for chops at servos, joints, and other responsive places. Where seh could ge tin a good strike if posible and a vulnerable one, trying to give the full power of her Widow's Bites into it while then hopefully dancing away to avoid counter-hits!

Jennifer Walters has posed:
    "There! Finally!" She-Hulk says, crushing the device in her hand. "Get her out of here and try to find a way to shut down the machine," she tells Ross who may or may not listen to her. "I'm going to go help Black Widow and Spider-Woman."

    She turns and runs towards where she last saw the two going. Hearing Black-Widow call out that the Leader is there, she runs past the corpses of the roadrunner and coyote (really?) and up the corridor where she sees her fellow Avengers being cornered by Sterns himself.

    "Oh, man!" she says cracking her knuckles. "I'm going to have /so much/ fun punching your face in so that they'll have to wire your jaw shut so I don't have to listen to you monologue anymore."

    With that she engages the specialized Reaver. "He's got to have a way to get in there. Look for ... I don't know. A quick release button or something. I'll keep him distracted!"

Bruce Banner has posed:
The Hulk staggers, bullets clattering to the floor as they're pushed out of his hide and smoking blaster burns being snuffed out as new skin replaces the old. His chest rises and falls steadily before he lets out another roar, his feet pounding as he takes off once again with a speed exceeding any (normal) human athlete despite his mass. He bounds toward the ACME, launching again in a leap.

But then, the Hulk is left with a dilemma. Does he destroy it? Redirect it? Is it too late to do either? He pushes up, trying to wedge himself into a position to start shoving the array up and away from the town. "No...more...monsters! No more hulks! STOP COPYING HULK!"

Betty Ross has posed:
    With Jessica's assistance Natasha is narrowly saved from being grabbed as the large battle armor steps fully into the hall. The plasma pistol leaves a melted line across its front armor as the Leader twists, swinging an arm at Natasha as she leaps in to strike with her batons and venom, then the bioelectricity crackling across it, causing it to twitch. Unfortunately, neither slow the heavily armored suit down. On the bright side, it appears meant for strength and durability over quickness.

    On the other, it has weapons, as nozzles extend from the center of its try claws and it points them towards the two. And the now dead coyote, who has expired. Though its plasma launchers are mostly undamaged.

    Ross grunts. "H-hey! I'm not a damned first responder!" he sputters as he suddenly has an armful of Red She-Hulk. "...dammit." He looks up and leaps up through the hole to the top of th emesa as She-Hulk runs off, rounding the corner just in time to see the Leader levelling the ominous nozzles at Natasha and Jessica's general vicinity...which forces him to abort the attack from them and focus instead on She-Hulk as she lunges, sending twin gouts of flame pouring over her as she charges in. It probably doesn't hurt her too much. It might hurt her outfit more, depending how combustible it is.

    The ACME's hydralics strain as the Hulk grabs hold if it and wrenches it upwards, a squeal of breaking servos as they whine vainly to stop it not able to prevent him wrenching the machine up, just as it fires. An enormous green blast shoots upwards in an arc, high above, before exploding in a gamma wave of energy that spreads out in a sphere, before dissipating harmlessly.

    The LEader curses as he glances down at a screen inside his armor. "Curse that green menace! I believe that is my cue to leave. You're going to be busy anyway." He touches a control. "Preventing the gamme reactor from exploding and taking out fifty square miles or so." Boot jets fire as he rockets upward, swinging at the ceiling as he sort of tries to repeat the Hulk's exit...a bit less gracefully.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
The mecha-thug is going to leap up and over into the air. Natasha's not going to be able to stop it. but she can hopefully slow it.. She hisses, "If you want to destroy here.. Then you can stay as well" Yelling it.. Even as she's going to hurl out several rather powerful small micro-detonators she'd taken along with her to hopefully land on the inside of the jet boots as they would go to try and boost him away. Whether or not they hit, whether or not if they did and detonate to do even any sort of damage, Natasha is then running for the reactor while reviewing emergency shutdown protocols.
    Hitting her comm <<Ross! Do you have any sort of familiarity with these reactors? If this goes off then this place will be a wasteland!>> She's running otwarsd the room with the reactor in it, rapidly reviewing what protocols she knows on emergency shutdowns for various power plants. It's something she's trained in.. But nuclear.
    not gamma radiation. So all she can do is hope that there's enough overlap that she can at leas t-try- something. Not giving out any other orders now. Everyone will do whatever they can.

Jessica Drew has posed:
So much for plans laid in a mad panic. Jess drops to the floor next to the Coyote to grab his sweet plasma launchers. Heavy as they are she lifts them like they were a light-gauge sawed off shotgun and fumbles for the firing mechanism. As the Leader jet-shoes from the fight, she aims upward off-balance, compensating for the bleeding wound on her thigh and fires. The recoil knocks her back and on her butt despite her innate sense of balance.

Meanwhile, the reactors might blow. Just another day in the life of a government agent.

Jennifer Walters has posed:
    "No, no, nononono! That was my /good/ bra! Do you know how hard it is to find them in my size?" Jennifer shouts as she raises her arms to block the fire from getting into her face. The fire /stings/ and singes off the little hairs that cover her arms, and turning her skin an angry green.

    She staggers back a bit to take a breather from that, just in time to watch Stearns rocket himself out of the base. "DAMN YOU, STERNS! NEXT TIME I'M GONNA MAKE YOU PAY FOR THAT BRA!" She looks like she's about to leap up after him, but Jessica beats her to the punch as she tries to blow him out of the sky.

Bruce Banner has posed:
With the laser averted, the Hulk sets himself to his second mission: making sure the ACME is in no shape to make any more hulks. He smashes his fists into it over and over, rending and tearing with great green fists as he works at dismantling the machine with absolutely none of the finesse of Bruce Banner. As he works at it, however, he suddenly turns, as it realizing something.

The Hulk suddenly lunges, throwing himself toward the reactor like a man possessed, driving toward the overloading machine and all the gamma loaded within...

And if the Hulk can get to it, he starts to ... absorb it, somehow. To siphon the energy that created the Hulk, to take it into himself, to give the others time to work on defusing the situation even if he cannot absorb it all back into himself.

Betty Ross has posed:
    Red Hulk pauses at the edge of the mesa opposite where the ACME is, setting Red She-Hulk down on the ground as he turns to look back towards where the Hulk is busily messing with the massive device. "Like a big damned green monkey." he mutters to himself, then pauses as Natasha's radio comes through his headset as he reaches up to answer. <<What? The reactor? If it went critical, yeah, it'd be...bad. Real bad, for the area. At least for Vista Verde and Hulkbuster Base. But there should be a SCRAM override in the reactor space...big red button under a casing with yellow and black stripes...hit that and it'll shut it down the gamma reaction.>> Ross responds, then pauses. <<I mean, unless the freakshow removed it, anyway.>>

    Behind him, the crimson amazon on the ground stirs. Ever so slightly.

    The Leader is not expecting more sticky bombs from Natasha. He's definitely not expecting Jessica to join in with a pair of plasma grenade that slam into his lower left leg along with the explosives as they detonate, shredding the boot jets on that side and turning his more or less graceful departure into a spirally ascension complete with faintly echoing shriek of dismay as he fights to get the armor under control with the remaining jet. Guess they should have installed those Iron Man hand jets on it instead of JUST the feet.

    With a twist of his massive fingers and a flex of his arms, the ACME's shielded tower is cracked where it bends...a quick jerk to the side causes the already overstressed servos and armatures to snap like twigs with a screech of metal supports shearing as the cannon top of the tower breaks free and tumbles down to the ground next to the hole, smashing into several pieces before internal gamma capacitors overload and start exploding. It's lots of fireworks. And definitely not going to be recoverable.

    But as the Hulk jumps down, he finds himself in the power room, the reconfigure reactor that forms the bottom of the ACME tower shimmering brightly towards overload. Its designers never considered using a living control rod, oddly enough...but that's exactly what the Hulk becomes as he grabs hold of the reactor, the energy streaming into him as the reactor flickers, greatly slowing the path towards overload.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha is running along as fast as she can to the control room <<Thank you Ross>> Rapidly searchign over for those insturments, trying to find anything the likes of which was described.. <<If we can't stop it, do everything y0ou can to alert the authorities and have the area quarantined. Make sure they know what happened here>> That's all that Natasha will say now as she goes about the dangerous job of trying to assist Hulk in stopping a gamma reactor from overloading. Hulk may have it down himself..
    But he's an Avenger. ANd a friend. Natasha hasn't chased her friend all the way out this far to go anywhere else. She's going to try and desperately search the controls over for the mechanics that Ross described and other things as well that might do it. Not giving any orders to Jessica. The other agent's instincts serve her better than any commands right now. when seconds count.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Follow the leader. Jessica levers herself up, fighting exhaustion, out of bio-electricity blasts but able to keep up with the indefatigable Red Room graduate. She runs behind the other agent. No one wants Bruce Banner to succumb to the Leader's madness. Glad for She-Hulk's presence, she limps after them.

Jennifer Walters has posed:
    Jen watches as The Leader spirals out into the sky, too far now for her to leap up after him. She sighs and tries to arrange what's left of her blouse into something more covering. "At least this is a MUSH and I don't have to worry about getting ad revenue pulled," she grumbles.

    She hurries after Nat and Jess into the control room to help them find the off switch. "Between the Hulk and the Abomination, and all the other gamma monsters one would /think/ that they'd stop messing around with the stuff."

Bruce Banner has posed:
The Hulk continues to siphon stray radiation while the two spider-agents handle the the technical side of the problem. The Hulk groans and grunts against the strain, but his body holds, absorbing the gamma somehow. Metabolizing it, perhaps? He glows a bright shade of green as the energy pours through him, more than enough to kill a normal mortal, but for the Hulk---this is what he was born from, forged in.

Betty Ross has posed:
    Most importantly, the Hulk renders the power room safe enough for others to enter, as the gamma energy is pulled to him rather than irradiating the area, and holds it long enough for the lady Avengers to arrive. The SCRAM switch is still there, though partially concealed by hanging cables, but Natasha's eyes quickly fall on it. A flip of the casing and a hand slammed on the button and the gamma reactor sputters, then its constant rumbling hum dies as the greenish energy fades to nothing as it shuts down. Crisis averted....even if the Leader has made good his escape. Or crashed somewhere in the desert. One of the two. Or both.

    Meanwhile, up on the top of the mesa, Ross is watching as Hyperion systematically demolishes the remaining base defense to ensure they don't come back online, when the LEader goes rocketing up and awaaaaaay. "...god DAMMIT..." Ross snarls a bit as he turns, stepping to the edge of the mess with his hands in fists as he glares after the escaping supervillain. "When I get my hands on you, you big brained freak, I'm gonnaAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaa..aaa....aaa...aaaa.....aaaaa..."

    You can almost hear the classic Looney Tunes whistling noise as Red Hulk abruptly himself him self in midair, freefalling allllllllll the way down to the very bottom of the mesa, then straight into the river ravine next to it...a good twenty stories or so all told when that satsifying puff of dust explodes outwards where he hits bottom.

    Red She-Hulk watches the whole way down, leaning over the edge where she pushed him, a quiet little smirk on her face, before she glances back towards Hyperion and the hole down to the base, then flexes her legs to leap away into the night, disappearing rapidly into the overcast darkness beyond....