The ball was a nice touch. When Dragon King retracted back into armour Hunter found himself atop a damaged, but still moving Stalker. Wasting no time Hunter leveled his fusion blasters. Two Stalkers leapt at him and were met by the super heated blasts which rendered them little more than scrap.

Another four jumped towards him so Hunter flipped up and over, gunning down another pair. Landing on the shoulders of another he raised the fusion blasters to nail the others when a blow from behind knocked him off balance and off the Stalker. Rolling to his feet Hunter had enough time to raise his guns for another shot before he came under fire.

His shots took two more down before a blast caught him in the arm. While Dragon King took most of the blast, he only barely managed to keep hold of the fusion blaster. Flipping back over a Stalker Hunter narrowly avoided getting a tail through the ribs. "Dragon King, look after these," Hunter said, putting the fusion blasters on his back. Dragon King extended a protective coating around them, ensureing their most valuable weapons would be safe.

With his hands free Hunter was now ready to fight. Dragon King seemed to see what he was thinking and gave him a large pair of wrist blades. The Stalkers were on him, fighting as a pack of four and trying to drive him away from the charging mutants. Hunter ducked and weaved around their attacks, striking back with Dragon King's blades. He was managing to avoid being hit, but could only do so for so long. Never in his life had he been so hard pressed to just fend off his opponents, never mind try and kill them. His movements were a blur as he went all out, pushing his body to the very limit. He couldn't keep it up for long, and if help didn't arrive son he was going to be in a lot of trouble.

(OOC: Stalker count 22/60. There are 4 Stalkers attacking Hunter, 8 facing the rest of you in a line between you and Hunter and the damaged one lurking around. Don't forget him, as while damaged he's still dangerous)

A plan seemed to be formulating among the mutant group. Then, Abyss lifted Hunter and his metal coating off the ground and hurled them at the lined group of Stalkers. Eris didn't wait for him to hit the ground before she sprung unto action. Manipulating the gravity below her, Eris pulled herself into the air and flew towards the enemy line. Good gosh... I'm flying! She had flew before, but it was a rare and incredible experience. She took a moment to breathe in the air whipping around her as she headed to help out Hunter once again.

In mid-flight her mind started to go. Why exactly am I helping these people anyway? I don't care much for other mutants... maybe I just want the government threat to go away. Maybe I just want to restore my name. Yes, that's it. I'm here to restore my reputation with the Order. With justification on her mind, she came to the point where she was hovering over the four Stalkers Hunter was now engaged with. She spoke into the earpiece, "I'm above you Hunter, coming in.... now."

Just as she said the word 'now', one of the metallic beasts noticed her and fired a laser in her direction. She had to swoop to her left and the blast missed her by an inch, but a follow up shot slammed into her shoulder with severeness. She lost control of concentration on the gravity and tumbled downward, managing to slow her fall little, before hitting the ground with a thud. She rolled over onto her back and noticed she was about twenty feet from Hunter and his gathering of enemies.

The pain in her shoulder was searing, like someone had blowtorched it for hours. But Eris had been hardened by her kidnapping and was able to withstand it better now. Working through the agony in her shoulder, which incidentally had a large gap in it, and ignoring the blood still coming from her chest, Eris stood and staggered toward the Stalkers attacking Hunter.

The anger was still there, though less powerful now. She whipped out another flash grenade and threw it toward the center of the two Stalkers nearest to her. Then, as it flashed several times, she gathered the energy into two seperate balls of light. When the grenade was finished seconds later and the balls were finally complete, she fired them straight at the necks of the two Stalkers.

Success! The massive ammount of focus light damaged the internal wiring and the two Stalkers crumpled to the ground in heaps. Now Hunter and his metallic alloy friend should be to deal with the other two.

The sheer exhaustion and pain made her fall to the ground. She collapsed to her knees and then over to her side, then finally onto her back, staring at the war torn sky and smelling electricity and burning in the air. She choked up more blood, then activated her earpiece, "Eris to all teams, I'm hurt... *choke choke* I'll be okay though. It looks *choke* like there are still about..." she took a quick headcount, "nine Stalkers here that I can see, maybe more. Shields are down, if you have your chance, take it. *choke* Eris out."

All she could do for the moment was try to maintain consciousness and stay alive. She layed there waiting for something to happen, praying that a Stalker wouldn't approach her before she caught her breath.

Stalker count:
24/60 destroyed
2 attacking Hunter
8 lined against the mutant group

Voltaire stood in the plane, loading up his pulse rifle. He never was much of a gun user but sometimes you have to do things your not used too. As soon as the cargo bay doors opened he was sucked out of the plan drop landing towards the camp. As his nerves took over a bit, red shocks started appearing around his body. He just hoped that it wouldn't affect the pulse rifle or his suit. Luckely for him his suit worked fine and he stopped falling around 2 meters above the ground. He softly touched down on the ground and took of the suit. He put in a communication device in his ear to communicate with the others and said: "Voltaire landed."

Suddenly a stalker appeared in front of him. He loaded his rifle and tried to aim for the stalker. The stalker didn't waste time and attacked by shooting with his laser. Voltaire reacted out of fear and pulled the trigger. He got in a lucky shot before the rifle was shot out of his hand. The stalkers shield was down, but so was his rifle. Now it came down to who had the most brute force. Voltaire quickly ran forwards to attack the stalker straight on. The stalker jumped forwards and landed on him, holding his arms down. The stalker looked down with his head as he was ready to do some serious damage. Voltaire was lucky and his legs weren't trapped under the stalker and he kicked him with both his feet on the stalkers right leg joint hoping it would be a weak spot. It didn't do much damage to the outside of the stalker but the surge of electricity from his powers must have overloaded a system seeing as the stalker stood up with a malfunctioning right leg. "Aim for the joints"Voltaire kept repeating in his mind. Unable to jump propely, the stalker decided it would be best to fire a couple of laser rounds. Voltaire dodged all the shots and closed in on the stalker and hit it beneath his right shoulder overloading another system in the stalker. Now the stalker couldn't move propely anymore. Being unable to move propely the stalker still hit voltaire with his left arm into the ground. The stalker was trying to deal the final blow but Voltaire parried it, holding its hand in mid air trying to avoid certain death. Voltaire started putting all his energy into his powers trying to overload the stalkers entire system. Voltaire's eyes turned red as red electricity surged through his body into that of the stalker. With s big explosion the stalkers arm was blow from the inside of because of the overload. This was Voltaire's oppertunity to do some real damage as he punched his arm in the open joint and started pumping electricity in it. With a big explosion the stalkers system was fried and the stalker was disabled.

Voltaire got up and looked around. "One stalker down." He said through his communicator. as he walked towards the battle ahead he felt a stinging pain in his side. It seemed that a piece of metal was sticking out. It must have been blown into his side when the stalker exploded. He pulled the piece of metal out and tried to get to the rest of the group. He would be needing help taking down stalkers without a rifle of his own.

Nox focused on the impermeable line of Stalkers before her, knowing that if she allowed herself to get carried away questioning how Hunter had done what he’d done, or envying the flight ability the lady possessed, it could cost her her life. With the distraction the other two had caused the rest of them were faced with only eight machines, which in comparison to the odds they had faced earlier didn’t seem too bad. Charge. She heard one of the clones give the order and she followed; it was after all the fastest option, open to her anyway, to engage the enemy. Their assaulting wave crashed into the front line of machines, who had only managed to fire relatively few lasers into the approaching onslaught, owing to the fact their attention had been held occupied first by a strange metallic ball, and then by their surprise as they all lost their shield thanks to Eris and the clones.

Ducking under the welcoming fore-blades of a machine, Nox found herself in a crouch at eye level with an equivalent to a knee joint, and so without think Nox sent her latest blue tinged blade behind its knee. The action had been instinctive, since she was used to dealing with creatures who had hamstrings that could be severed, luckily for Nox, however, due to the small size of the joint in question, the creature’s wires were close to the surface. This meant that her embedded blade managed to disable its lower leg. The machine, not used to its disability, wobbled upon its legs and, unable to support itself, it fell, straight on top of Nox. As she saw the looming metallic beasts suddenly begin to fall closer and closer to her position, Nox realised how maybe next time she should invest in a bit of foresight in any of her future plans. What worried her the most were the thrashing fore-blades that were spread out before its main body, each of which in the right position could kill her. Having no time to roll away Nox could only hope for the best, she ended up pushed onto her back by the weight of the machine. One of its blade embedded itself above her head, the other, however, was pressed against her cheek. A centimetre more and she would have been in serious trouble, as it was the razor sharp edge pressed against her cheek broke her skin, causing a trickle of blood to run down her face. In light of what could have happened she counted herself extremely fortunate.

Having wasted a moment in slight shock, she forced herself into action, and after some messy thrashing of her own, she managed to come up beside the metallic beast. Turning, already with another blade in her hand, she struck the vulnerable neck, disabling the machine for good. Getting to her feet she noticed a body before her, as it faced the sky she could identify it as the lady who had flown over to meet the Stalkers. Taking the last steps toward the figure Nox turned and faced any approaching machines. She was going to fight, so why do it and protect the figure as well, who had certainly proven herself to be impressive.

Having joined the others in the airial assault Ali began bombarding guard posts while looking for her friends from the mansion. She decided that since her powers would take too long to pierce through the Stalker bots armor she would do the most damage/good by attacking the human guards and trying to clear the way for the camp detainee's to escape.

A few times the fire elemental had to do some evasive manuevers to avoid being shot at by a couple of very ticked off guards. Ali answered their shots with a volley of fireballs. The flaming spheres exploded upon impact catching the guards clothes on fire and sending them backwards a couple feet.

Hunter's job had gotten a lot easier. Eris had taken down two, and an Abyss a third, leaving Hunter with one. He was going to finish this, and finish it with his bare hands. "Dragon King," Hunter said calmly, "Bcak off an keep the guns with you, I've got this."

As Dragon King pulled back Hunter leapt back giving him distance to pull out a strange looking device. It was a needle with two vials of red fluid attached. Hunter jabbed them into his arm and emptied the first, and then the second vial of blood into his system. The changes began to happen almost immediatly. He began to grow, bulking out and increasing in height, ending up seven feet tall. His finger nails extended into claws and his hair grew into a thick mane. He could feel his teeth all sharpening and his fang grew into tusks. Finally his eyes shifted from silver to bright gold.

This time however he didn't suffer the secondary effect of being unable to breath. The second vial had been a concentrated dose of human blood, replanishing that which was lost in the transformation. Wasting no time Hunter drove into the Stalker with vengence on his mind. He barreled into the thing, lifting it off its feet and dumping it on its back. The machine lashed out with it's blades, but Hunter was unconcerned as the gashes closed almost as fast as they were made.

With the Stalker pinned Hunter went in for the kill strike. Using his now incredible jaw strength and fangs he bit into the Stalker's neck. The sound of mettal groaning under pressure was herd, before the armour finally gave way and Hunter's fangs pierced it's vital neck circitry. Electrical shocks coursed through Hunter, but he cared not as the machine went still. Standing he gave his body a moment to recover from the shocks while he assessed the battlefield.

(OOC: For those interested in where this transformation came from, I direct you to Blood Tests)

Stalker count:
31/60 destroyed
4 of this group remaining

(ooc: I assume that there are shieldless stalkers running around after Abyss took out allot of shields, if i interpretate this wrong then please tell me=) )

When voltaire joined the rest of the group he saw that most of the stalkers where already down. "Anybody keeping score" He yelled to the rest of the muntants before being attacked by a shieldless stalker. The stalker attacked Voltaire with his forearm blade trying to cleave him in half. Voltaire dodged it by a inch. When he turned his head and looked at the stalker, the stalker charged him with both arms trying to knock him down. He blocked both arms and it was now duel of strenght. Voltaire didn't give in easily and mustered his powers. His eyes turned dark red and shot of electricity shot everywhere. One shock hit the stalker right in the head, but with litle efftect. It just knocked his left eye out. More and more electricity shot around the area and both of the fighters where determined not to give in. Eventualy voltaire let the stalker move forward and tripped him into the ground. Voltaire was no longer able to hold his powers back and grabbed the stalkers body. The electricity made a overload in the stalkers circuits and most of the stalker started malfunctioning. Some part exploded from the inside by the malfunctions. Voltaire got struck in the face from one of the explosions. He was blown of the stalker and layed on the floor. Blood streamed down his face as a open wound was located at the right side of his face. " Another one down" He Yelled at the group

Just lying there, the wounds had done nothing but deepen... and shrapnel had flown through the air and into her chest, continuing to open her already open wound.

These circumstances could not be good for her, especially with her medical condition... whatever that may be. Eris lay there on the ground, bleeding out, while chaos was errupting all around her. Strange and ironic that the goddess of chaos was surrounded by chaos and personally doing nothing at the moment, though she had done quite a bit to get it started.

She saw through the blurred tears in her eyes (the pain was searing and she couldn't hold them back anymore) Hunter dispatch another bot. Good for him. It was always good to see an ally take out an enemy. Or maybe an enemy take out an enemy? Eris wasn't sure, she just knew the enemy of her friend's enemy was probably her friend's friend and thus her friend... but at this point she was a little delusional. The blood loss was taking account, and Eris was overdrawing without overdraft protection.

It's going to happen again. Despair set in, deep within her delusional mind. I'm going to be left on this field like they left me at Haywire. Menace will grab me again and put me through months more of torture. What do I have to live for. I'm better off if I die right here...

In the midst of this, she caught sight of one of the Abyss boys approaching her. She hadn't seen them since Haywire, and if she were healthy she would probably have a somewhat joyful (for her) reunion with them. But right now she wasn't in any position for fun, she was dying after all, and delusional.

Where did I put those bagels again..... ring ring.... keep it together!!!

Her whirring mind tried to pull itself together while she recognized Pluto coming up to her. He crawled up to her and said, 'let's get the hell out of here.' Indeed. Let's. She managed to get out a reply of "Yes." and then tried to control her breathing a little, which was going crazy and unpredictably by this point. But she so out of it that she couldn't and she started gasping for air like a artic whale on the desert island sand.

Choke. Gasp. Gasp. Choke. Blood poured out of her wounds and her mouth at intervals. This sucks. Plain and simple. The main idea was survive, she didn't know how she was going to do that at this point... hopefully Pluto would be her savior and help. Save her.

Just then, her alarm clock rang out with a warning ring. The reality set it hard:. She only had ten more minutes of power left, then she would be not only useless, but possibly dead in her condition. She spoke as loudly as she could, but it came out as a mumble, "Need.... *choke* to get... *gasp choke* away... *gasp* from here."

OOC: Side post with Pluto and Eris, Abyss? I guess we'd do some reunion stuff, maybe a herioc medical save by Pluto? Something along those lines I was thinking. Up to you.

The sight of Hunter’s transformation formed even more questions in Nox’s mind, all of which were firmly pushed back by a dominate sense of self-preservation. Glancing around Nox was also pleased to see that one of clones was taking care of the lady, since that meant her attention could now remain solely upon the remains of the stalker line. Talking about which, the closest Stalker to her current position had clearly just decided that she was worth trying to destroy. Having hoped to have acted with the advantage of surprise, it was now Nox who was taken back by the unpredicted tail sweep that closed in upon her current position. A rather hasty leap took her out of harms way, only for her to be faced by a directed kick from a second stalker, which seemed to have anticipated her reaction. Winded and so collapsed upon her knees, she reminded herself of one of the most important rules of the battle field: Always be aware of your surroundings. Otherwise you got yourself it to awkward situations like being on your knees with one Stalker in front of you, and another just off to the side. Great. A rasping breath tore itself through her lungs as she tried to regain her oxygen supply, the Stalker, however, had other plans and so wasted no time in sending its forearm blade to sever her neck.

A gulf of darkness pulsed out from Nox, stealing energy from any, and every, source it could in order to meet her emergency demand. It pulsed only once, and by the time in had retracted back the scene was a very different one. A Stalker’s head rolled off to one side, it body remaining upright for a lingering second, its extended fore-blade inches from her neck. Nox had taken the saying ‘ in the nick of time’ to its truest form. Her instant demand for energy had supplied her with a vast source, which she had directed solely upon one point in the creature’s neck, before allowing it to expand, and so blast through the whole neck. The act, however, due to amount of energy used in such a short time span, left a still gasping Nox, dizzy, as her mind tried to stabilise itself following its recent feat. So she was left, kneeling before the carcass, with her head swimming, as she realised that she to was coming to the end of her stamina. Little did she know, that the first stalker was now closing in on her position.

Dragon King withdrew from Hunter and formed. This was the first time that many people had seen him in full humanoid form. One could only see a cloth like substance seem to flutter away from hunter and touch the ground to reform into a human shape. First was his body, then his armour. He stood tall and imposing muscular, even more so as his body looked like it was encased in form fitting pale grey armour.

“Hunter, your guns, all four of them.” Said Dragon King tossing them to him, “Im gonna clear out the infirmary, meet up with you later.”

The turned and started to run in the general direction of the infirmary, as he ran His face became covered in a sort of mask so that only his eyes showed, even they were protected by some kind of whitish membrane, then something red seemed to emerge from his back, his cape. It was massive and unlike most capes, this one was alive, it was literally an extension of him. Stretching to a four foot diameter it first flared out behind him then lifted him into the air, undulating like a sped up manta ray. The red ‘blob’ paused in mid air for an instant, pulsated once and then shot off towards the infirmary, twining around and over buildings a flash of dull red. (into Stage2)

Seeing things from the air had it's advantages mostly due to the lack of obstacles. Ali could see the progress of the assault. It appeared to her that their attack was succeeding. Gaurds and robots were falling or being occupied to allow the camp inmates a chance to escape. All was going pretty well until she spotted Nox.

Nox looked like she was physically drained. In front of her lay a decapitated Stalker bot, but from another direction a second metal monster was closing in. Ali streaked down to Nox's aid. While in flight she began charging up her fire power which caused her hands to glow like two small suns. Ali landed so that she placed herself between Nox and the robot and unleashed her power in a focused beam of intense heat and concussive force. The blast knocked back the Stalker several feet though it didn't do any serious damage.

"You ok? Let's get away from here before we're both done for."

Taz looked around explosions and fighting was happeneing everywhere. He looked right a gaurd was running at him with his weapon raised. Without a second thought the man was falling to the ground several feet away with his chest blown open from Taz's spike.

Eris slipped into Pluto's arms. This was one of those damsel in distress moments, and it seemed Pluto was the hero. Then, suddenly they jumped into the middle of the black void. First, the pain she had been feeling and the dellusion she had been experiencing intensified, then was instantly gone. They were inside something, something black and dark, kind of cold actually. Eris didn't mind it, but it wasn't too comforting either. Still, she wasn't in pain anymore and could think straight, so she wasn't complaining.

She listened as Pluto spoke and then replied, "Great to see you too Pluto, thanks for your sentiments." She paused and wondered how to answer the question about where she had been, she decided to tell the truth... for once. "I was kidnapped by a maniacal freak who thought he could modify my behavior. I guess he suceeded to a degree, as my anger problem is a lot less now..." She trailed off, thinking about the horror of the captivity.

Then she spoke again, "I would hug you right now, but I don't know how that would work in here... for some reason I'm not bleeding anymore though." A quick thought entered her mind and her eyes raced down to her watch. She hadn't heard it ring. There it was, standing still in time, alarm not moving. Perhaps this place modified her cons?

My gosh... I'm inside someone's head!!

"What about you Pluto, how have you all been doing?" She spoke in a kind manner to her old friend.

Hunter caught and holstered the guns before survaying the scene. The first stage had been a success. While not without casualties, they had managed to destroy a significant number of Stalkers. Now it was time to move the plan forward.

"Time to split up," Hunter roared to the remaining mutants, "Move into the camps, assist the others in freeing the prisoners and engage any Stalkers you find." With that Hunter turned towards the wall and in one effortless bound leapt across it and into the camps.

(OOC: That's your que folks, Stage 1 is now over, move in to Stage 2)