Welcome to Tesladyne! Science while you wait.

[tesla_bot]

The door is a free standing frame on a small plywood dais at the focus of a tremendous amount of cabling and particle emitters. The whole area smells of ozone.

"Watch the step. The platform's cheaper to replace than the floor if the focus wanders."

Tesladyne's high energy (dimensional) physics area is done in early twenty first century institutional - white walls, semi-random grid of light, but varied floor tile colors. The framework is from a school of design that favors being able to clean an area with a pressure washer, The drains are a hint. Decorations are spotty. Beyond the collection of calendars with scribbled notes and the cork board spotted with envelopes and scraps of paper it's still mostly bare. The warning signs are clear, bright, unobstructed and supplemented with signs like 'Do not look in laser with remaining eye.'

There are no windows and only one door to the rest of the facility.

"Welcome to Tesladyne."

Comments

[evilontheloose]

Oh, humanoid mecha... Jordan still hopes to overcome the design flaws of the concept and deploy one sometime soon.

But, business at hand: she jogs after Robo, keeping her arm ready to fire if needed.

Stun setting for now.

[tesla_bot]

It's probably not worth the work. Robo's world keeps pushing at them because it's the kind of idea that sticks in the brain, not because it does anything worthwhile.

"Oh hell."

The scene when they get to the trial space is one of roving spider tanks trailing strips of wet cement that foam to knee high fighting it out against tracked minidozers armed with drills on the ends of hydraulic arms. Two small teams of technicians are trying to restore control while the majority of the scientists visible have been stranded on scaffolding.

"Dozers. Mine," says Jenkins as he moves out.

[evilontheloose]

Ah, right.

Jordan is staying back for now; genius and impressive weapons aside, she is very much human, and not interested in becoming part of the landscape, buried in cement or crushed by haywire machinery.

While Jenkins goes show his stuff, she will wait back and just in case, charge up her arm-cannon.

[tesla_bot]

Idle hands, Jordan, are the devil's plaything but Jenkins is pretty watchable.

"Jordan," says Robo, "See about helping the medical teams running the evac. I've got the wall layers."

The evac teams are mostly medical, but there are a few with the kind of gun Robo had Jordan try out on the range that are zapping any of the automatons that get to close.

[evilontheloose]

Hm... minor mayhem from moral high ground, that looks good: Jordan could help with the medical part, but she prefers to power down her cannon, switch to a high stun setting, and find out how well insulated against localized EMP charges the automatons are.

Part of her is hoping the answer is 'very well insulated', so she can move on to more destructive methods.

[tesla_bot]

Indicator lights flicker with the stun shot but-

Vruuum!

-What kind of robot goes down from things like lightning strikes? That's when you need shelter most of all.

Enjoy.

[evilontheloose]

Oh, joy... property destruction from moral high ground!

Ominous 'huuummmmm' sound. Big honkin' WHROOM energy blast, aimed to knock a haywire bot into another.

Recharge, five seconds...

[tesla_bot]

There's a certain elegance in the application of high energy physics. Also, in savage violence. That'd be the lighting shooting canons and the Jenkin's respectively.

As for the bank shots? That seems to be working.

CRASH!

It's like stacking dominoes or marbles. Maybe it's more like playing marbles.

[evilontheloose]

Like marbles, indeed: hot, supercharged plasma bolts explode very nicely upon impact and send targets that are not firmly grounded flying.

WHROOM! CRASH! Like that.

[tesla_bot]

Glow in the dark marbles.

"Can you keep them off the road?" asks one Tesladyne employees in the official jumpsuit but marked with a red cross, "We're about to take the golf carts with the worst injuries out of here."

Three of the small carts hold individuals mostly marked by burns with the occasional bit of shrapnel visible between the first aid applied generously.

[evilontheloose]

"I can open a path." She takes a look at the injured people, curious, not emotionally involved. "Get ready to use it."

Time to go bowling with haywire machinery.

WHROOM! CRASH!

WHROOM! CRASH!

WHROOM! CRASH!

WHROOM! CRASH!

WHROOM! CRASH!

Hopefully that is enough, the heatsinks are working overtime and she needs to let the gun cool.

[tesla_bot]

It takes a special kind of driver to get tire spin out of a golf cart. It takes a special kind of golf cart too.

Skreeeeech!

Tesladyne does try to make these sorts of things possible.

"Why doesn't Jordan have a standard gun yet?" yells Robo from the center of a crowd of the spider bots as they try to swarm him with raw numbers, "And someone remember to dock Henry's pay for using the military drone code libraries for civilian projects."

It does a lot to explain the fact that they're sweeping into some sort of pincer formation on the people still around the scaffolding.

[evilontheloose]

Because people were busy telling her how to not use her own gun?

Hmm, Robo could use some help, probably... nope, still gun-cooling, another 40 seconds. While this she will back off a bit.

[tesla_bot]

They only do it because they care like have intact structural walls. Enough of the operation is underground that this is a deeply important factor.

Jordan may notice that, in the background, Jenkins has managed to apparently tear one of the dozers in half with his bear hands. Possibly just one - since he's shooting with a gun in the other one.

Missing it would be understandable though, since some of the wall layers are building emplacements to hide behind. That and sending something with their proximity alerts for signalers.

"-.-. --- -. - .- .. -. -.-. --- -. - .- .. -. . -..- - . .-. -- .. -. .- - . - .... . .... ..- -- .- -. ..."

That's, um, probably a bad sign.

[evilontheloose]

Oh, SHIT!

To-do list (in reverse importance order):

- Revise the structure of the AI hardware;

- Rewrite the AI code;

- Install failproof safe-locks on all automata (small explosive charge for instant kill);

- Kick the ass of whoever is responsible for this mess, thus making the universe a bit smarter;

- Survive this mess!

"We are going to need some heavy artillery FAST!" Because her arm needs more 25 seconds to cool down and charge up, and impressive as it is... there's a LOT of hostiles.

And she is not wearing her armored HE suit.

[tesla_bot]

Robo's list is different in some features.

- Cancel BBC America access. This won't stop anyone, but it will slow them down.

- Fire who ever though Daleks should be added to disaster relief equipment, even as an Easter Egg.

- Throw the construction equipment at each other in an attempt to keep them clear of Jordan and the others.

-Keep an eye on Jenkins as he demolishes his opponents.

"You are so fired who ever did that. INCOMING!"

THROW - Throw - throw.

[evilontheloose]

He's fired if Robo gets to him first.

While this, Jordsn is taking off after cover, ducking behind debris and wrecks.

Drat, still twelve seconds.

[tesla_bot]

Fired at, fired on. Picky's for after the fight.

"I want this back after," says one of the Tesladyne workers who's holed up behind the sparking remains of a dozer that Jordan just used to break line of sight with the spider things as he produces something that might be a phasers angrier cousin, "Sidearms come out of my pocket."

Limited charge without the battery belt packs, but it'll have ten or twelve shots in a pinch. More like twelve with the amount of energy being thrown around for the accumulators to tap into.

[evilontheloose]

"I will build you a better one." Jordan snags the gun, and grins at the beep and low ominous hum of her arm having cooled. "Bad news all around for the team 'Kill Humans'..."

WHROOM! Another dozer-bowling, then she opens fire with the phaser aiming for joints, connections, couplings and moving parts.

[tesla_bot]

The phaser cracks with the short discharge and the double kick that the Science Rifle had earlier. The grip is quickly noticeably, but not uncomfortably, warm. Less mass to dump any extra heat into.

Still punches holes like the big ones though. There are priorities. Spider tanks go down like a domino stacking demo.

Robo's rant - "So god awful fired they'll never work as an Action Scientist again-" is punctuated by the sounds of high speed metal sculpture work.

"I think that's most of them," says a young woman in the ubiquitous overalls (the decorative patch is a wrench - support maybe), "Who can see any more?"

[evilontheloose]

Jordan makes note of that double-kick again, to work on later. As the battle dies down, she sweeps the area, arm and blaster t the ready.

"It seems clear."

[tesla_bot]

Vroo-
The dramatically necessary spurt of motion from one of the dozers is cut off by Jenkins spearing it with a steel pole. Jenkins recognizes no dramitc cues but his own.

"Still willing to work here?" checks Robo as he pats out a small fire on his pants, "After I get rid of the latest round of dangerous Doctor Who fans anyway?"

[evilontheloose]

Jordan takes a deep breath... then grins. "Are you kidding me? This is the most fun I had in YEARS!"

"Can I talk to the guys who made this mess? I bet I can make them shit themselves with nothing but a phrase and a wave of a power tool."

[tesla_bot]

Asking is the equivalent of checking that the gun is unloaded when it's handed to you: Basic safety. Plus, you know, manners.

"If he hasn't taken off yet," says Robo, "I'll see what I can do."

Also, Jordan you now what that smells like. You really just want them to whimper and jibber.

[evilontheloose]

"If he did take off, I can put together a tracker to." Jordan is giggling madly, ready to follow Robo.