Nikolai spits out some blood.
"That all you got?"
UnTsar the truck. Get down. Find a mirror and check my condition. All my limbs working?
Cut some strips of cloth from my coat and bandage my head.
Check my surroundings. Anything potentially useful? How's my truck doing, how's my crossbow doing?
"Thanks for the warning. Maybe a bit sooner next time?
Nikolai spits out some blood and something solid. He hopes whatever it was wasn't a part of him.
"Tha'allyougoth?" he slurs, trying not to feel the pain. Especially on his head. What a headache...
He lowers (or rather lifts, since he's upside down) his hands and fumbles with the seatbelt's release, an endeavour made all the more difficult by his fingers being slippery from fresh blood. His own fresh blood. He finally finds the key and presses it. The seatbelt opens, allowing Nikolai to fall on the roof of the vehicle. From there, he crawls outside the overturned truck through an open window. He places his hand on the door and pulls. With some effort, he manages to get up and look around, taking stock of his surroundings through the blurry vision his only working eye offers him.
The truck really did a number on this place. Display cases and shelves made of wood, plastic and glass lie broken and scattered throughout it, along with their contents, small glass vials of various colours, the biggest of them no larger than his hand. Those too, are broken, their liquid contents spilt on the ground.
There are some of either group that haven't been broken, but those are in the minority.
There are also various pieces of metal debris around that probably came from the truck.
His view of the outside is blocked by the truck. He decides not to risk taking a peek outside, for now.
Behind the overturned truck, he can see pulses of bright white light and hear sounds one would expect to hear in a factory. Electric sparks and metal grinding upon metal.
And from the same direction the sounds are coming from... he thinks he can see a light shining through the truck? No, how can light be coming through the truck? Maybe it's just a concussion?
The truck itself is totally totalled. Its body features various bumps, all of them going very deep, wires coming out from some of them A chunk of the top of the cargo compartment seems to be missing, probably where the BETA hit it. Lucky thing too, as it probably lessened the energy of the impact. And it seems to be leaking some sort of semi-opaque colourless liquid from its bottom, from where the front axle would be in a normal non-hover truck.
There's no sings of the crossbow around here, except for some scraps that look like they could have come from it. Maybe if he had untsared them while looking at them, he could had seen them shrink, if he was really interested in identifying the debris that used to be his crossbow.
There's also a door behind a mostly intact display case that seems to lead further into the building.
Nikolai lowers himself to the ground and picks up a piece of glass, intent on finding out just how hurt he is and smart enough not to use his hands to discover that.
<You might not want to do that.>He looks inside the improvised mirror regardless, taking in the damage done to his face.
His gas mask is gone, probably from whatever hit his face.
The left side of his face looks completely red from the blood coming out of it and there seem to be chunks of flesh missing from it, like some sort of horrid beast maimed him with its claws.
The right side seems a bit better, although it too is covered with blood and a few tiny shards of glass.
The blood drips on his torso, painting his green coat red.
The rest of the front side of his torso along with his arms seem to be pockmarked with small shards of glass, thankfully none of them going too deep or drawing much blood.
Still the bleeding on his face looks dangerous. It's not immediately dangerous but if he doesn't treat it...
<Told ya. Sorry.> his entity says, sounding a bit too cheery given the circumstances.
At least his limbs seem to be working mostly OK for now, he managed to get away with only a few minor fractures. It's his reflexes that seem to be suffering. Unsurprising, given that he was just punched by an
iron giant the size of a building. He should be fine in a few minutes, provided he can stop himself from bleeding out. The damage to his face however seems permanent, unless he can find someone to perform surgery on him.
"Thankfor thewarning. Maybe abithooner nex'ime? he asks his entity as he bends down to pick up a piece of cloth that used to decorate a display case.
<Hey, I dinna know you were just gonna stand there.>He cuts the piece of cloth in half, using one piece to clean the wound. Good thing too, for there seem to be a few pieces of glass in there. Would have been painful if he had left it in.
<What's a girl spposed to do?>After that's done, he uses the second piece of cloth to form an improvised bandage and try to use it to stop his head from bleeding. It's not very good, but it should help. Should stop him from bleeding out for a good while, at least. Assuming he refrains from from further injury.
<I'm just glad you're not... worse.>
Coolrune flung himself into the air on his wings, in the direction he THOUGHT he remembered the plane going. Was it north or south? He suddenly had an idea. He went back to the exact place the spaceplane took off from, and attempted to obtain a scent trail of any kind- be it the smell of plasma, oil, gas, smoke, or anything else a plane's exhaust trail would smell like.
Keep me growing, please! 
You look around with your reptile eyes, trying to spot the space-plane. You're about to give up when you see it rising above the city and heading south, following a smaller thing. Looks like a man with a thing on his back? You can see a bright light coming from their destination, its source obscured behind buildings.
Well, that was helpful. Could had spent a lot of time looking for it otherwise.
You begin flying towards it, slowly flapping your scaly wings, trying to follow the wind currents and fly efficiently. It's a bit hard when you have to rely on your newly created brain's instincts for it. You'll probably get used to it in time.
Seems like you'll be flying for a while anyway.
John steeled himself, then fired up the jetpack.
<<Cover me. I'm going to drop on its back.>>
Get behind it and try to jet over onto its back, in an attempt to technomance it. Summon up a satchel charge on the way.
Jordan stared at John's rapidly vanishing jetpacked silhouette, going towards where the robot presumably was. He looked at Angel, then looked back. On one hand, he would have really liked to be credited with saving a six year old. On the other hand, she was bled out and probably wasn't able to detect that he was going to ignore her. Better to be thought of as a team player. He shrugged, then got into the cockpit and flicked on the switches.
<"I'm going to try distracting it. That sound good to you guys?">
Fly towards the BETA.
J&J hatch a hasty plan of action. John will approach it from behind while Jordan distracts it. Well, better than no plan at all.
John blasts off with his jetpack, flying as fast as he can using a thing that wasn't designed to be used in atmosphere. He tries to summon some sort of explosive along the way, getting a ball of what looks like plastic explosives, about thrice the size of his fists and made of a multitude of small cubes connected with wires. He also gets a remote detonator for his contraption.
Jordan, meanwhile, gets back in his spaceplane and pushes the throttle to full power. As the spaceplane rises towards the sky, he can hear the creaks coming from the its broken landing gear and he thinks he can hear pieces of metal falling on the roof. Hopefully, it wasn't something important. He follows John for a while, so that they can move in at the same time.
As they approach the buildings the BETA is behind, they notice that there is a large amount of light coming from its location. And stranger still, there seems to be light coming
through the buildings. Both Jordan and John fly low, intent on staying undetected for as long as possible. Jordan overtakes John, flying first, hoping to distract the BETA, while John flies some seconds behind him.
And then the BETA comes into view. It's sitting on the street, lying on a building for support. But that's not the most interesting thing. The most interesting thing is that its armour has been pushed outward in places, forming cracks that reveal its insides. Through those cracks come fast moving things that grab materials from their surroundings and pull them inside the BETA, picking apart the nearby building, the various debris that litter the street and even the street itself, reaching for the wires inside it and gobbling them up like colourful spaghetti.
The light they were seeing seems to be coming from
inside the BETA, most of it coming through the cracks on its armour. But some of it seems to be coming
through the armour, from the thing made of light that moves inside it.
With his vision enhancing helmet, John can see through the plates of armour, the cracks giving a way in to the various active sensors of the device. He can see the various robotic arms moving on rails in its torso and on the inner surface of the armour, some of them smaller than a human arm, others being quite larger. Most of them are holding the various pieces of armour, moving them out of the way, while the rest extend, reaching through the gaps in the armour to grab pieces of metal and other debris from around it.
What's more interesting though, is the fact that there seem to be two spheres buried near the centre of its torso among various other things. They seem to be armoured and connected with lots of things inside the BETA.
He can also spot various fuel pods spread around its body, but none of them are very large, except for one near its left arm, the one with the dome. It probably has another large one near its back, but its armour remains closed there.
((You (John/Toaster) have also seen other parts of its body, I'm not listing them all here for time's sake. I just listed what I would consider the most obvious targets. If you want to learn more about part of it or if there's something you want to look for, just ask.))
The BETA reacts to their presence. It doesn't move its limbs much but it begins retracting the various arms back into its armour.
One of those sphere-drones with the lenses flies out of the building the BETA is leaning on and starts flying towards John, despite Jordan's spaceplane presenting a larger target.
OOC
Done with university work and various family distractions. I should hopefully be able to increase the frequency of updates now.
I'd talk about my personality, but every time I try to do that I end up contradicting myself which proves I really know nothing about myself so I'll let you make your own judgement on the matter.
Really? That proves you know about yourself, however it is...well, not awry in a sense, but that you're on course--just a bit wobbly 
So yeah.
Why?
Because that's me and my thinking too.
Yes, I think I understand. Thanks. I mean it.
I'm going to update the mission you're in Monday. Got until then to post an action if you want to (or just tell me that you don't want to influence your host in any way if that's what you want).
I'm sorry. I tried to give you more time because I didn't want to make a choice for you when it could lead to things happening. But I've got to think of the other players.
((Maybe bringing the guy who's personality is 'fuck compromise I want a soda' on this mission wasn't the best plan ))
((No, it is always a good idea to have a wildcard like Alan on these types of missions.
Always.))
((Of course, how could I fuck up the plot otherwise?))
Well, you, to my surprise, manage to have the approximately the same impact on the plot as the one I had planned for you to have, you just did it in a very roundabout way that I didn't predict. And you didn't complete any of your secondary objectives which means that you can only gain points if your team wins. Good thing I don't award negative points for screwing up your host. Now that I think about it, maybe I should give you an extra point anyway, for doing things in a way I couldn't predict. Call it a creativity award. We'll see.
Anyway, thought of another game mode. It's like a mix of Assault, Survival and Conflict. It's a more strategic thing for those who like to plan stuff.
It's like this: One player gets chosen to be the Attacker and the rest are Defenders.
The Defenders design a location. That location must have an objective that is reachable by the Defenders from the outside (for example, it can be in an impregnable concrete bunker as long a the bunker has a door but it can't be a castle with no gate (unless all the defenders can fly)).
The attacker gets advantages proportional to the defender's powerlevel and the strength/complexity of the location's defences. (for example, for an underwater base, the attacker would probably choose scuba gear or something similar that allows them to enter it. If the defenders decided to be smartasses and put a million mooks between the objective and the attacker, the attacker would gain a way to bypass them.)
The attacker wins if he reaches the objective (and optionally if he manages to get out/carry it out, depending on the nature of the objective). The attacker gains a great reward if he wins, because the odds are against him.
The defenders win if they manage to stop the attacker or the time limit expires.
Everybody looses if the objective/location becomes unreachable/destroyed/unclaimable (to prevent the attackers collapsing the cave the objective is in for example).
If you don't like fighting against another player, you could choose an entity for the Attacker role instead.
Anyway, still thinking about it, I'm unsure about some parts.
...Now that I've written it all down, it sounds a lot more complex then it did in my head.
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