Juke was flying low enough to be within leaping distance of one of the incoming robots (in his case, the cyan one). As much as he steeled himself for the moment, clenching his fists, gritting his teeth, and generally looking crazy, he actually wasn't used to fighting, and wasn't sure what to do with himself. When the moment came to act, all he could think to do was shout unintelligibly and swerve.

The attack brushed one of his wings and sent him spiraling, but in a surprising testament to his actual flying capabilities, he pulled out and actually regained control without running into anything! He seemed happy enough with this until he realized his mechanized attacker had turned around, was pursuing him, and was faster than him.

... And was sprouting a pair of bat wings.

"Fffff...!" He shot panicked glances backward and flapped harder.

Juke didn't have to worry for long, though. A scorched mess of metal streaked in like a meteor straight into the face of his pursuer from just outside his field of vision. What happened there?

Rock.

The navy-blue-clad primate had been attacked just like everybody else. The results were predictably ugly and savage. His arm was longer than the Gizoid's, and he made good use of it. Rock's fist clenched in preparation and the air around it distorted and glowed, energized; then, in a snap, his hand opened and he rammed his whole arm forward from the shoulder with a big twist of his body, like a piston, streaking with color and motion, literally plowing into the incoming red-painted robot, his arm slamming straight and fully extended in a flat, open palm directly into its forehead without even slowing his full-speed sprint. Rock's arm shuddered and whole body jolted with the somehow-visible shockwave of the impact; the robot's forehead sank inward and limbs all whipped, flailed and snapped in directions they didn't mean to go as it suffered a nearly-200MPH change in velocity over the course of a few milliseconds (going from its full speed in one direction to Rock's full speed in the opposite).

He squeezed its head with such a grip that his black-gloved fingers visibly dug into the metal. Without slowing, he leaned down and slammed its face into the blurring pavement, grinding up a shower of sparks and smoke. He nailed it into the ground like this a couple times as he sprinted, clearly taking advantage of the gizoid's light weight (less than a third of his own) to manhandle it like a doll. Then, finally, a few seconds later, when he was done completely erasing its facial features with the street, he twisted and hurled it like a missile at Juke's pursuer. That was what had happened—and a trail of black streaks on the road would be there to remember it all for a long time to come.

It really was a shame that Wild Badge would be missing the Prism Gizoid Rangers in action, because he probably WOULD show an appreciation for their coordinated assault-- as ineffective as it may or may not have been.

But he had a higher calling than appreciating the enemy today. When he spotted the tank with legs getting ready to give his team mates a hard time, he took action, swooping down once again like a hawk to it's prey.

The tank spotted the aircraft, and acted accordingly; shifting it's target priority to the major threat to it's well being. With it's weapons now traced on the swooping predator, it fired off a tank shell to deter it's assailant.

And Wild Badge did what any skilled pilot would do in that situation... A barrel roll! Well, not really. He did swerve, however. Yanking the yoke back and to the side to manuever out of the path of the shell. He then straightened out and pulled up, performing a loop to come back down on the tank, unleashing a missile on it's hide.

He had to pull up on his way through, just barely avoiding the blast radius himself.

"Eegh... That was close." He muttered, looking back at what was left of the tank.

OOC: Big combo post. Tau post for Darren, Rock post, NPC, etc., all in one.

Tau had hit the ground running. Light use of thrust propelled him in long, low stretches of flight, making his strides like long leaps, tagging the ground every hundred feet or so. This enabled him to keep up quite well with the rest of the group without needing to exhaust his fuel or unnecessarily run his leg servos at absolute full power (and thus full strain).

When his own personal gizoid attacker came sprinting at him, he dispatched it in a way that was predictably efficient: he deployed the plasma cannon he had long ago scrapped off of Seven's BIU-D drone, sighted up the target, and fired a steady one-two-three-four flurry of scorching-hot, glowing, sparking, explosive gaseous blasts at it.

It was probably lying in sparking pieces before he even got close to it. For good measure, while he had the weapon heated up an active, he also turned it on the pair of entangled gizoids Rock had crashed behind Juke, and let them have a few blasts as he rocketed past.

"Badge—good air support," Rock meanwhile commended their eye-in-the-sky party member as he sprinted past the smoldering hulk that used to be a gizoid tank. His voice was a little ragged; the race was getting to him, but they were almost there.

The remainder of the run was a rough one. It was a huge, mostly barren battlefield. Sure, there were some covered stone walkways lined with columns, along with monuments, mighty statues, and even some well-groomed trees in stone planters, but it was mostly a huge run through the open. "Lesser" gizoid foes seemed to try to arrange in the group's path; most were bulldozed, but some had adapted weaponry to return fire. Some of their shots bounced uselessly off of Jam's shield, while the ones that managed to find Rock didn't do much to make him any prettier; energy blasts burst and zinged off his body and helmet, but he just kept running and breaking things anyway. Juke, above, did his best to not get hit, and even found time to dive-bomb some foes with some big-booted stomps; as one can predict, this made him feel especially useful, and he relished in it more than was justifiable, laughing wildly. And, of course, there was Tau. By this point, he was just a mobile gun turret, swiveling, shooting, launching grenades, firing out strings of CE blasts, blurts of plasma projectiles...

They eventually somehow made it through the swaths with this combined firepower. Finally, the tower itself was right in front of them, up a tall, broad flight of white stairs. The closer view revealed the ornate nature of the round-shaped structure's steep-slanted walls, decorated with sculpted images much like those in the courtyard—warriors, leaders, depictions of battle, you name it. The place was a strange marriage of the ancient world and advanced technology.

Security didn't seem to be in the order, though. The front door was literally nothing but a well-decorated, gaping opening in the face of the tower, at the top of the stairs. The inside was shaded and dim by comparison to the morning daylight outside, but there was an ominous blue glow coming from somewhere within.

Over time, Geoff and Omnis both merged with the main group, adding on to the already great amount of firepower present amongst them. Bullets flew and crystal was thrown or swung from them, joining the ascent up the stairs to the tower. In everyone's wake lay the corpses of the downed enemy, some of the remains of the so called "elites" now still smoking behind them.

Geoff was one of the first to leap up the stairs, taking them nearly four at a time, his legs striding high and wide. His pace didn't even slow as he sprinted right through the grand arch that was the entrance to the tower. Briefly questioning the lack of actual defensive measures not being in sight from preventing him from entering, this thought was interrupted around the time he was surrounded by an ocean of blue light glowing from the tower's interior.

As he skidded to a stop about of a third of the way into the tower, he finally threw a glance up, finding the interior quite vast. Yet he found a moment where he was almost gawking at what surrounded him.

The tower's floor consisted of a pattern of hexagonal panels, either made of a smooth stone or metal. It was completely barren save for a single pedestal at its center, and from that distance, it appeared to hold some sort of accessible electronic pad. What was truly catching the hedgehog's attention, though, was not what lay on ground level, but what was above.

Encircling the room was a massive series of (just like the floor) hexagon-shaped prison cells, almost having the appearance of a giant bee hive. They rose higher and higher up before being cut off by what appeared to be a ceiling, but most likely was just another floor without any obvious access. Each cell was occupied by one or two people, cut off from the rest of the tower by an energized, light blue shield (which explained the interior lighting). The shields themselves didn't seem dangerous, seeing how a few prisoners were peering down, palms flat on their surfaces. They were only proving to be transparent walls.

There were a few shocked expressions upon the faces of the former ARK inhabitants. Some tried to yell, but the barriers between them and the rest of the tower blocked off any noise. It wasn't like their attempting-rescuers wouldn't notice their dire circumstances in the first place.

Meanwhile, Geoff let out a deep breath, hands coming to rest on his hips as his head revolved around. The sounds of the battlefield were muted in there, providing a small moment of the closest he could call peace.

"Well, looks like we found our guys..."

Juke stared in awe at the chamber, mouth agape. His sunglasses slid down as if on cue. It was gargantuan; he easily felt like he could have flown top speed for thirty seconds straight and still not reach the farthest wall.

Meanwhile, it was hard to tell what Rock's reaction was with his face completely hidden. Frankly, he seemed unconcerned with the prisoners. Instead, looking back toward where they had just come from, still poised to fight, he may well have been one of the only members of the party who remained acutely aware of the fact that they were being pursued by an entire robot army— until a large, stone-and-steel door slammed shut, blocking off all passage.

Rock stepped back from the new barricade and froze, stance still low and tense, bad hand pulled tight against the chest of his synthetic jacket, good hand clenched into a tight fist. His it's-a-trap senses had been thoroughly tripped.

"Stay outside! What need do I even— even have for such...'"

The voice came suddenly, seemingly from nowhere. It was... strange. It echoed as if coming from all of the walls at once. It was masculine, and bore a strange, slightly stiff tone, with an unfamiliar accent, and an almost electronic edge. It faded just as quickly as it began. Five seconds later, though, it resumed.

"Oh, no. No, not you. I wasn't talking to you... all. Those tools. I spoke to them. All of you, you are here."

There was a sound like a breath—not a clear noise like an actual inhalation, but almost more like some distorted sound.

"Do you like them? I can't stand them. You have one? You should throw it away," it declared matter-of-factly. "Throw it right away, they're so useless. They always have been, they always will be, always. Seven of you, and they, in all their perfection, their worthless usefulness, they can't— can't even hurt you. Gizoids can only imitate life. Be damned not to live it. Never will they live."

Pause. He finally seemed to take a breath, whoever or whatever he was. The way he rambled so hurriedly, it was like he didn't often stop to think about what he was saying, and like he hadn't had occasion to say anything at all in a very long time.

"I'm not one of those, though!" he suddenly blared. "I bet you thought I was! Ahah, oh, no, did you think I was one of those?" He began to laugh in a manner that could best be described as "disturbed." It didn't even really sound like he was amused at all—more pained. "I bet it seemed that way. No, I have thought and, and— I have thoughts, and direction, and desires. I know what I want. Did you think they made all of this? I made it. No! I. made. it. I made it all. I've been here so long, I made it all— perfect. It must be some... four thousand years? — yes-yes, four thousand years that have passed on the mother planet since I became this world."

There was a shift in tone. It fell quiet, and asked a gentle, genuinely inquisitive question.

"You, children. Do you know my people? Are we remembered?"

"Our legacy does live on, then," replied their mystery-echidna wistfully. "Even with the lowest of commoners, even you outsiders. So many, many years after all of our people— all of them, just, stolen away, Argus damned, and yet— even now, still the earth recognizes our people. Yet, all that remains of us is me..."

He trailed off, but surged again with renewed excitement. It was almost like some sort of nervous, anxious haste that propelled his words.

"You must understand, now, I have to— I must, must leave. I have to leave this place now! This isn't about me. I thought it was, getting out of this, this place, this construct, but it isn't at all. It is my duty, to begin again for all of us."

It paused.

"I can give you people this whole world. None of the others here, they didn't want to understand; they didn't know. Didn't want to be part of our legacy. But you could be like gods."

Things were happening in too much of a rapid succession before Geoff could truly react. Yes, there was a muttered "$%@&" as they were abruptly cut off from the outside world, but the blaring voice of the God of Gizoids caught him a bit off guard. He simply allowed himself to register what was occurring, piecing together the mess that was the sentences issuing from the voice. An echidna.... That explained the statues, but how?

His eyes were fixated upwards towards the distant ceiling as he listened to Jam speak, the mention of a guardian vaguely ringing a bell.

"Don't think it'd matter much..." he whispered as silently as possible, actually making use of the headset he donned for the first time since their sprint.

A split second later, he was addressing the voice, letting his curiosity guide him.

"Not sure I'm too interested in this "becoming a god" thing, but I have to ask... How can you be here? An echidna?" He paused, reconsidering his approach with the question. "I mean, I doubt there was a bunch of ships flyin' around four thousand years ago."

Although the situation really didn't call for a game of twenty-questions, the hedgehog realized this may just buy them some time. Keep the overlord ranting on, and that distracted it from setting off whatever traps or weapons it had in mind when they entered. Besides, their gizoid partner had not done much to explain why such a city even existed.

The said gizoid, on the other hand, had not given his two cents upon his creator's arrival. It was almost as if he wasn't even surprised about their entrapment either. Instead, he was quietly striding forward to the pedestal at the tower's center, seeming to have a goal in mind.