((OOC: Specifications that may or may not be met by this nerfed psychic projection of a machine.))

The lance strike aimed towards Gawain missed, stabbing into topsoil. The robot's waist jerked hectically as it tried pulling the lance free. On the third yank, it came out, spilling chunks of grass and earth with it. Shin weaved through the falling debris, straight for the leg.

He hit it! It wasn't very effective...

As Shin's sword slashed uselessly against the robot's leg, a flash of annoyance rolled through the machine's cogs and gears. Its head tilted downwards to eye the pest, then glanced towards the roots clinging to its body. In the small child's mind, this was an alien planet. It made sense that alien flora would cause just as much pain as alien fauna. It shook the loose earth from its lance and addressed the situation.

The sleeping Setsuna bit his lip and rolled in his egg-shaped bed, hitting an imagined keyboard with an alarm-clock swat. Ports opened up on the machine's head.

Shin turned back from glaring at Detective Drake to take notice. Fear hit him like a semi truck. Vulcans. The metallic Gatling guns spun out. The head took aim on his location.

Shin jerked his hands out in front of him, summoning a quick-drawn opaque shield. He ran backwards as the triangular defense flew ahead of him, straight towards the guns. It was too small... Shin's eyes widened. The vulcans started spinning, and... Nothing.

He flinched.

Wait. Nothing?

His eyes crept open. Two flags fluttered on poles jutting from the ends of the vulcan barrels. Each flag said 'bang'.

"... What?" Shin blinked.

Detective Drake mirrored his statement, and raised him profanity.

Shin turned on him. "Watch that! There are women around!" It was not polite to swear in front of ladies. Especially his girlfriend.

Drake rolled his eyes. "Whatever." The robot was moving again. Flags retracted. Legs fought their restraints.

It was probably comical. Like if he could video tape this and watch it again later from the comfort of his room. With a bowl of popcorn. Then he would laugh at how everyone looked like little ants, scurrying around the shiny metal robot thing. He knew that he would be on the ground laughing when Shin tried to hit the thing with a sword. Really, sword v. lance-wielding giant robot? It was a no brainer who was going to win that little match-up.

A police detective, slightly slower getting to the scene than Shin and the other teenagers, yelled at him. >>"At least the one with the vines has the right idea."

Kai beamed at the praise, but sighed at the factual error. When would people learn the difference between vines and roots? Roots were the whole system that supported and nourished the plant by absorbing nutrients. Vines were more of a support system in most cases, allowing the plant to grow or climb in certain directions. Both were beautiful, but really, they were quite separate things.

He stopped, suddenly finding himself face-to-face, or rather, face-to-knee. "Whoa!" And now he was one of the little people dodging the arms and legs and lance.

Kai dove to the right as the leg lurched forward to take a step. And in his narrow escape of death by crushing, he lost track of... well.. everything. Panic filled his mind briefly and he lost all track of what the roots were doing. Except the one. The one that grabbed him around the waist and hauled him into the air, away from the robot. "Ahhh!" he yelped in surprise, his legs now dangling in the air. This is bad...

>>"Shinbo, quit slashing at that thing like an idiot! Do something useful! The same goes for YOU ALL! Attacking it directly isn't th' way to take this sort of behemoth down. At least whoever's controlling those vines has the right idea."

So, there was Shinbo, not making much progress with the sword; someone controlling vines (or watever those things were), trying to trip the robot over; there was Kealey somewhere in the background, probably working on making anyone more badass, or at least, less scared; and then there was some police guy yelling at them from a safe distance.

Arriving to the robot's leg just in time to see Shinbo retreating and the vines pulling the other guy away, Gawain fell against the leg and mrged with his own reflection. That looked like the safest place at the moment. Or at least, until someone found a way to blow the robot into pieces.

"So, what's the idea?" he yelled, walking from one leg into the other, testing how far and high he could move in the reflecting panels "Hey, y'all! What am I looking for in this thing?!"

Kealey was glad to see the detective arrive on. Shin was in official police gear, but now they had a true representative of both forces on the scene. It kept the confusion down. He got closer though, and Kealey got a brief look at his emotions.

She scowled.

”Eyes on the prize, boyo.” she commented, then turned her attention back to the battle as the Detective yelled out instructions…rude instructions.

”Shhh…you're awful quick to judge from 20 ft away. He knows what he’s do-“ Kealey started, then cut off in a horrified gasp as fear rolled through Shin as strong as she’d ever felt it from him. Suddenly, he wasn’t in offensive mode anymore and Kealey made a strangled little noise in her throat as guns rose from the head of the machine. Shin made a barrier, but Kealey could see, even from her vantage, that it was going to be too small. The blond dashed forward as Shin back pedaled, just in time to see the little flags pop from the barrels of what had appeared to be very large weapons.

Knees shaking with mild relief and head cloudy with the confusion that everyone felt from that action, Kealey started back towards her original position, ears burning slightly from the vocabulary the detective was using. Shin was already all over it and a nervous giggle escaped the blond as the fight raged on.

Somewhere in there she’d done a horrible job of keeping the heroes calm, she realized, as panic surged through the green boy with the roots. It seemed that his roots were working counter-intuitively at the moment and Shin had gotten so scared. That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all.

As the final member of the rag-tag team called out for instructions, Kealey narrowed her eyes and focused on the scene right in front of her. 4 people felt the calm intensity of the moment wash over them as their fear disappeared and their concentration, and drive increased as much as Kealey felt was safe. Like sliders on a sound mixer…. she thought, eyes locked on the scene, rotating from person to person and making sure they were all where they needed to be. She had this…she had this way under control…except for the 5th person.

Wait. 5th?

Kealey’s eyes darted back and forth, counting all the fighters twice before settling on the machine as they sparred with its huge arms and legs. There a cockpit.

”There’s a pilot!” she yelled. ”If we can get into the cockpit we might be able to take it down! Maybe through the top? The guns aren’t real!”

Shin’s sword might not have worked on the strong metal of the legs…but maybe there was a kink in the armor on top. Kealey hoped so, it was their best chance at the moment.

OOC : I know Mirror probably has the most likely shot at getting into the cockpit, because he can just mirror walk in there from the outside reflective surface…but I don’t think Kealey has met him in Gawain form. If she has…well…we can just say she’s too busy watching Shin run around in that police uniform to remember about Mirror’s powers.

This operation was going downhill, fast, but one thing was clear to him. Ashton had seen the flags. That was the kind of cartoon tripe kids dreamed up. Which meant... this might not have been such a marvel of modern technology after all.

Someone else reached that same conclusion just as he did. "Pilot, huh." His eyes narrowed on the machine's head. "This thing's probably a psychic manifestation of some kid's wildest dreams," Ashton announced. A hand went to his chin, and ran through stubble there. Yeah. That sounded about right. People would be surprised how often insane mental leaps like that were perfectly logical once you'd spent a few months working for MRC. This sort of thing wasn't common, per se, but psychics were psychics. They all had their own little card to play. And not all the cards were drawn from the same deck.

"Shinbo, can you fly up there? Pull yourself together."

He was fine. There was no need to pull anything.

Shin looked to Kealey. What she'd said, and Detective Drake had supported, was one idea that might work. Kai was on the scene, though, and Gawain, who traveled through reflective surfaces. Shin cupped his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice. He had a plan.

"See if you can't get to the cockpit through the reflections, Gawain! It should be in the chest! I'll try up top."

Pausing for a few moments, Shin focused, summoning up a strong platform of linked triangular shards. He stepped on it, and rose towards the machine's chest on his own.

Legs kicked. The machine attempted to tear itself free of its tangle. Its head was turned downwards. It didn't see him coming... for the moment.

"Let's keep it that way...." Shin muttered quietly to himself.

A pilot, eh? Kai considered carefully now that he was calm. Suspiciously calm after the giant surge in fright and panic. If there wasn't an emotion manipulator around Kai would eat his hat. Figuratively, of course. And apparently someone could get into the cockpit somehow. The more power to them, I'll just keep us all from getting squished.

It was time to switch strategies, slightly. He was still going for incapacitating the giant robot. But since there was a person, potentially innocent and without malicious intents. And another person would be trying to break into that cockpit. So safety for those elevated in the metal box was now a major concern.

"Does anyone know if roots can grow leaves?" For once there was a plant related piece of trivia that Kai didn't know. Mostly because he had never encountered a situation when the knowledge was pertinent. Actually, no one had ever needed to know that before. Because no one had the power to force it.

Double trunks! The answer presented itself. "Okay." He doubled his concentration, trying to force a second tree to grow as quickly as possible from the roots. And then as many leaves as possible on that second tree. A nice cushy tree-leaf bed to catch anyone who might fall out of the metal beastie if.. no... when they managed to wake up the dreamer and the thing just magically disappeared.

The roots restraining the Gundam loosened around the limbs they held. His concentration could only be spread so thin.

>>”There’s a pilot! If we can get into the cockpit we might be able to take it down! Maybe through the top? The guns aren’t real!”

Kealey yelled at him, and Gawain nodded, acknowledging the information about the pilot, and calmly looking for a way to get to him. (Her.) Having an empath around certainly had its advantages. A fight scene without the freaking out was much more manageable.

>>"See if you can't get to the cockpit through the reflections, Gawain! It should be in the chest! I'll try up top."

"Aye aye Capt'n" he yelled back, before making his was towards the shiny chest panel of the Gundam. Once he was there, he started walking around, looking for a way to go inside the machine and find the cockpit.
After a few tries, he did.

Gawain was in a shiny, reflective panel inside the Gundam, looking at a young Japanese boy. Who was asleep. Peacefully and deeply.

"You gotta be kidding me." he frowned, before merging out of his reflection, and shaking the boy's shoulder.

"Hey! Wake up! You dream's another man's nightmare, kid."

He really hoped the smart people out there had a plan B. In case the kid did wake up...

Things were definitely starting to look up for the X’s, random helpers, and the MRC as they battled the…whatever Shin had called it…in the middle of Central Park. The guns had been a close moment, a terrifying moment, but they’d gotten past that and now they were working together almost seamlessly. Apparently the young person in front of the machine was capable of doing something with reflections…

Cool.

After Shin built on her comment about a pilot and the plant control person continued to do their best to immobilize the machine, Kealey kept all the emotions down and calm and did her best to watch everything that was going on, the police officer near her completely forgotten. Kealey had a job to do, and she was going to do it well. Keeping everyone calm and safe was top priority…cops who weren’t really doing much were much lower.

She looked up, the reflection-thingy person was gone. A moment of alarm flashed through Kealey, had they been crushed?! She concentrated, no their emotions were right there with the others. Puzzlement joined the calm and Kealey grinned.

”I think we found the pilot.” she said, waiting to see what would happen next.

And there he went... flying.

It was kinda cool. Kind of.

But whatever.

Ashton looked elsewhere, to the people Shinbo was shouting at. ... Who were these people? Tree-grower, someone who could go into places through reflections, lady Shinbo had almost fawned over. Were these people really with the X-men, though...?

He turned his attention back to the giant metal machine, just in time to see it take a sweeping swing at Shinbo.

In the robot, Setsuna stirred, mumbling something in his sleep. "Go away... monsters..." He smacked his lips sleepily, and rolled over, letting his arms flop out on either side of him.

Whiff. The arm missed. Barely. Shin rose quickly over it, up and up, doing his best to maintain balance.

The Gundam staggered, then smacked at whatever was growing around it. Setsuna's arms rose, swatting at imagined restraints. Evil arms. Bad things. The sleepy smile stayed helplessly on his face.

With a clank, Shin landed atop the robot's head.

Now, Technically, Gundam pilots do not reside in the head of the machine. Heads are for optics more often than they are for pilots, hence why giant robots can survive decapitations, but their pilots cannot survive gaping holes in their machines' chests. So, why he had landed on the robot's head, Shin did not know. Regardless, there he was.

Shin vanished every shard he had for the moment. He needed to focus on this.

... What was he even doing anymore? Uh.

Shin looked down at Kealey on the grass below, looking for help. "Anything?!" He shouted down.