Melee and Mieli's Romp Through Netopia

"I guess I will then," MeleeMan responded, swaggering on forward towards the cabin. Well, he was calling it a cabin, but when he got closer, he realized it didn't have any openings. That made it seem pretty unlikely that the place was an actual residence. "Looked around the whole place, Rania. No doors or windows anywhere," MeleeMan told his operator, crossing his arms across his chest irritably.

"Maybe that means you have to enter from the underground? I've seen bunkers and things of the type before that feed in occupants by some ladder leading into an underground tunnel," Rania suggested with a shrug.

"Or maybe we just need to make ourselves a door," MeleeMan grinned, cracking his knuckles. Slinging back his arm in a sudden motion, the navi furiously hammered the wall with punches, trying to smash a hole in large enough for him to get himself through.
Rather than doing the sensible thing and looking for an underground entrance or anything similar, Meleeman punched the wall. It shattered with a single blow, but the brawler hammered empty air and pulled back for a third punch before stopping himself.

"Whoa," Mieli remarked, peering into the opening.

Instead of an empty interior, or even any normal cabin interior at all, they found themselves staring into a cylindrical hallway with spiraling walls. The end wasn't visible from where they stood, but both navis could hear a faint ticking sound from within.

Meanwhile, behind them, the rain stopped, giving way to clear skies. The scattered trees were now covered, as though through an instant transition, with thick canopies of rich green. The temperature had shot up tremendously, but not to the point of being completely unbearable. Mieli was noticeably sweating, however.
"This is good," MeleeMan commented quietly, noticing the rain stopping. "It would have to be right as I'm going inside, of course," he thought to himself with a frown. Noticing the sweat on Mieli's skin, he allowed himself a smirk. "Then again, this humidity really is a good thing."

"I take it the heat's not bothering you?" Rania grumbled, crossing her arms in front of herself and leaning her head down upon them, glaring over the top at MeleeMan angrily.

"Not at all," he answered seriously with a laugh, walking on in. "I'll lead the way."
Mieli didn't appear to take notice as she followed Meleeman into the tunnel.

After a few seconds of walking, the exit seemed to close behind them, disappearing into the same endless tunnel that stretched ahead of them. Meanwhile, the path ahead opened up...

...into a hallway filled with the sounds of mechanical clicking. The walls were lined with digital clocks, each set to different times. The path ahead didn't appear to be much different. And on the floor directly below where they had come out of the spiraling tunnel, the image of a clock face centered itself below Melee's feet, ticking away endlessly.
"Bah! Clocks everywhere," MeleeMan grunted to Rania, as if the area was too dark for her to see herself. "Real men don't need any clocks, let alone a hundred in the same room, to tell the time. It's part of our natural instincts!" he grunted, beating one fist against his chest. "Furthermore, we get things done so quickly that time is of no concern to us. I get things done that it would take most men hours to do in a matter of seconds."

Rania just nodded mechanically in agreement, not feeling like challenging any of his senseless boasts at that moment. She instead concentrated on his surroundings, trying to figure out what he was walking in to...

And walk on in to he did, strutting forward with his usual confident swagger.

((...... I'm Aim, btw))
As Meleeman walked in, the clock on the floor followed his movements, remaining centered on him as it ticked away. A second clock appeared under Mieli, who followed him.

They rounded one corner to find an identical hallway. The clock under Meleeman, however, started to tick slower. His movements, in turn, began to slow...
MeleeMan lowered his head downward, watching the clock on the floor. "Damn. Lack of action must be making me sleepy. Feel like I'm moving underwater," MeleeMan grumbled, irritated at the difficulty he was having keeping up the usual, impressive speed of his deliberate walk. "What's going on here, anyway, Rania? Mieli?" he asked, looking back and forth.

Rania started to attention, realizing MeleeMan's new predicament. It was evident that some property of the room was slowing their movements, but it didn't match the description of any chip or virus she'd ever heard of. "Don't waste any motions, MeleeMan. Proceed forward as quickly as you can," she urged him, tensing her eyebrows.

MeleeMan shrugged, keeping forward as fast as he could. "Doesn't really matter, right? So long as I don't stop completely, I'll get there eventually," he laughed, keeping on moving.

"But who says you won't?" Rania asked again. Grunting, he tried to pick up his pace while looking around the room to figure out the source or owner of the strange clock mechanisms that seemed to be slowing them.
((Bump))
((Sorry 'bout that.))

Meleeman didn't stop, though the clock under him and his movement had slowed to half his normal speed. Looking back, he could see that Mieli was being affected as well.

"Just...just keep moving..." she sighed.

From Rania's perspective, all she could see were the two navis, the clock faces on the floor, and a whole bunch of clocks on the walls. Were she to look close, she would notice that instead of the randomly displayed time, they now were each offset from each other by very slight increments, usually only a second.
"Shoot, nothing in here but clocks, clocks, and more clocks," MeleeMan growled, struggling to move as fast as he could. "Hate to be around when the alarm on all of em went off."

"I can't see any doors, viruses, or anything. The only thing even slightly notable is that not all of these clocks are set quite correctly, but who knows what that could be accounting for?" Rania responded, placing one fist to her chin. Racking her brain, she tried to think of what could be accounting for the slowness. She remembered something like Mieli herself summoning an hour glass to allow MeleeMan to move faster. Rania almost found herself asking MeleeMan to demand an explanation of the relationship between Mieli's powers and the room, but then stopped herself, remember that Mieli was already getting testy from all of the questioning.

"Whatever the hell I'm supposed to be doing here, I'm not getting it. Can't you use that hourglass thing or whatever to make us go faster, Mieli?" MeleeMan asked, keeping his head turned back as far as he could to look at her. "Cause I can't stand this, it feels like my legs are going numb."
"Okay," Mieli said, sighing and bowing her head. She activated a chip that flashed over her body for a second, being momentarily readable as "FastGauge." Data spread from her body to the walls around both of them. The clock face under each of them began to tick much faster, and the ones on the walls reset to much farther apart, almost a minute each as one moved further down the hallway.

Then, perhaps unnecessarily, Mieli pointed her arm at Meleeman and fired a blast of air from it, sending him down the hall at double what would be a normal speed.

"Oops."

When Meleeman skidded to a halt, he found himself in the middle of a circular room, itself easily much larger than either of the buildings they had 'entered' so far. He had only barely missed a large slanted needle sticking out from the ground. The clock face centered under him had disappeared, but upon further inspection, the floor of the room appeared to be a giant sundial, albeit one with no sun to shine on it.

Mieli came running in seconds later, not bothering to apologize. Instead, she was staring at the room with something of a mix of awe and confusion.

The hallway they had come in vanished behind them, leaving the sundial room ironically in near complete darkness.

Then, the face of the dial began to glow red...
"Yeah, baby, that's what I'm talkin' about-!" MeleeMan grinned, before being shot forward, flying recklessly like a bullet into the unknown contents of the next room. The large navi readied his arms forward in front of himself, preparing to brace himself hard against the wall to stop his impact if it came to that. As it turned out, it almost came to something worse; he only narrowly avoided colliding with a big, pointy, nasty looking piece of scenery. He hadn't had time to look at it, but he could only assume that it was clock-related. Panting, he looked around himself, then gave an echoing laugh, noticing that the clock underneath him was gone. "Look, Rania! No clocks! The floor ain't got a single clock left on it!" MeleeMan laughed, bracing his hands upon his knees to catch his breath.

"It's a sundial now," she sighed, seeing the image clearly upon her PET's monitor.

"Damn," he grunted, feeling like more of his energy had been punched out of him. "And it's glowing red, too. That probably isn't a good thing," he muttered, turning his head to Mieli as she entered the room. Propping himself back fully upright, he tilted his head to look around the room. "I don't see where we go from here. Is this the last stop in our little odyssey?"

Rania tensed her eyebrows, preparing for the worst...
"Okay, first off, I don't know if you picked up on it the first time through, but I hadn't actually been in here before sending in an ally request," Mieli shot back, sounding obviously exasperated by now. "I have no idea if this is the last room or an antechamber or just a random garbage chute. I don't even know what's actually in here. I...is the room spinning?"

At first it seemed like it, though upon closer inspection, only the light that had been outlining the face of the sundial was turning, at the rate one might expect a clock's second hand to turn. Mieli looked down at the outline again, and then at the needle. On top of it, where nothing had been before, another humanoid navi stood, his body partially illuminated by the red light. From what they could see, he wore a suit one might have associated with a Victorian era gentleman and a smaller sundial strapped to his wrist as though it were a watch. The rest of his upper body, however, was still too veiled to make out details. "I say," he said, donning an obviously fake British accent. "It has certainly been awhile since I had visitors. What brings you here, to the Hall of Time?"

"You tell me," Mieli responded. "Something in this place wanted to be found. What is it?"

"I have no idea what you mean," the veiled navi said, giving a shrug. "This is simply a building where I collect clocks."

"Clocks that alter the flow of time around them?"

"Certainly." The navi gave a small hop, as though excited by this fact. "These clocks do have that ability. Would you like to see more of what they can do?" He spread his arms, and the sundial face on the floor glowed brighter. Meleeman could see Mieli raise a hand as though to fight the navi. It seemed by showing them more, he meant to demonstrate on them.

________
Summary
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

---Allies---
Meleeman: 300 HP (Next to needle)
Mieli: 160 HP (On edge of room, 3 moves away)

---Enemy?---
Dial: 1500 HP (On top of needle) (Facing you)

--Objects--
Needle: 500 HP (IronBody) (In center of room) (Takes up three panels)

---Terrain---
Normal: 100%

---Other---
Time: Normal
Darkness: Accuracy reduced one rank. All navis and objects in room are at least partially visible.

---Battlefield Dimensions (For reference)---
Cylindrical, 7 panel diameter, 4 rockcubes height


HP and battlechips fully restored.

FIGHT!
"No. As a matter of fact, buddy," MeleeMan grunted, walking forward with arms crossed as the new navi took center stage upon his elevated stand, "I fricking hate your clocks. And once I'm done sweeping this sundial up with your body I'm going to punch out the face of each and every one of them. You ought to trade out these damn clocks for a pair of balls, perching yourself up on a needle like that. Why don't you just have a seat, eh, since you probably like it up your-"

"Less talk, more action, MeleeMan," Rania coughed, opening up her folder and preparing to slot in new chips to aid her navi. "I'm pretty certain this guy means business and I doubt he's going to be a pushover if he's got control over such powerful devices." She barely listened to her navi as she rummaged through the folder for the right weapons.

MeleeMan snarled in protest, raising one eyebrow beneath his thick, gray visor. "What, seriously? You think a guy that dresses like this poses a threat to me? I'm going to stuff that giant needle down his throat once I get him off of it." He had begun to realize, however, that the whole room was not only spinning, but was also extremely dark. He was so disoriented that he highly doubted he'd be able to land a clear hit on the guy, and all of this was still disregarding the extreme distance between himself and the navi. "Only one way through this, Rania. Give me the tankcannon2. It's time for me to go to work redecorating this guy's chateau."

"You're going to attack the clocks?" Rania asked, thinking that the decision did not seem terribly wise. "I don't think you'll be able to shoot him before he moves."

"No, dummy, I'm going to get him off of that damn spike," he smirked, hoisting the enormous cannon up and braced himself on one knee. He attempted to take aim with the scope for just a moment before realizing that his target was a giant spike; fairly hard to miss. Carelessly, he fired away, sliding back from the impact and faltering on one hand momentarily. Not wasting any time with the results, he ran in for another attack. "Golemhit me!" he roared as the thuds of his heavy metal boots echoed throughout the hall.

"Hit you? Oh!" she gasped, swiping the golem hit quickly.

Gritting his teeth, MeleeMan felt his arm growing stiff with stone. The rock closed around his fist, reinforcing it, but the new weight didn't stop him from raising the appendage above his head like a powerful mace. "Hey buddy! Come on down!" he laughed, swinging the fist downward with a huge thud. He couldn't see too well, but he was really hoping the resulting impact had come from his arm connecting with the needle rather than the floor. Remembering Mieli at the last second, he cupped his other hand around his mouth as he dematerialized the rock arm. "Timber!" he shouted, his voice reverberating throughout the hall.

"MeleeMan, if that thing falls, it'll definitely crush you! Move!" Rania shouted into her PET. "I'm serious!"

"Yeah, yeah," MeleeMan snickered, starting a full sprint to the right as soon as his arm regained its lighter form. "You were actually worried there? Come on, I'm not so stupid I'd let some massive steel pin fall on my head."

Rania shook her head irritably. "Well, you're a pinhead alright," she sniffed, watching to see the outcome.

MeleeMan, despite his feign of confidence, knew that the guy had to be bad news. He'd snuck in without anyone noticing him and did indeed have quite the arsenal of powerful weaponry; he'd already felt the effects first-hand. All he could hope for now was that perhaps some little aspect of this little freak's show was all style and no substance.

1) Golemhit1 to Needle [140 x 2 for breaking vs. object = 280]
2) TankCannon2 to Needle with Breaking Attribute [120 x 2 for breaking vs. object=240]
3) Dodge
4) Dodge
5) DODGE
((Argle bump.))
"Such a shame, good sir," Dial said, looking down at Meleeman. "I do apologize for any dislike I may have gained from-" Before he could finish, Meleeman slammed a stone fist into the sundial needle, causing it to shake violently, but not collapse on him.

Dial, however, was not so lucky. The moment the needle shuddered under him, he lost his balance and found himself impaled on the tip. A fitting and quick end to the fight, until Meleeman followed up, blasting the structure with a tank round, shattering it and sending Dial to the ground.

As the dust cleared, Dial stood up, and dusted himself off. "Well now, that was rather rude, wasn't it?" he said. He raised a black gloved hand and swept it through the air behind him, causing the spinning of the light clock face to slow. With it, Melee felt a familiar sluggishness, as though submerged in water. Dial took a step back. "Come now, I meant no harm, merely asked if you wanted a demonstration."

"Though if it's a fight you prefer, that would suit me as well."

A ray of light erupted from the center of the clock face, then spun around the circle several times before landing on the number 8. The beam split into several smaller rays, which arced through the air and converged on Meleeman. His movements slowed, he found himself unable to dodge in time. He did, however, manage to avoid the path of two more attacks, which took the form of pale clock faces sweeping across the ground.

As Dial prepared another attack, however, a blade came flying from the edge of the room, thrown by Mieli. "And here I thought you'd be a bit more reasonable," Dial said after the weapon struck.

"Funny, I thought so as well," Mieli responded. "Guess not this time. I think I've been listening to Headstrong over there for too long."

"Suit yourself," the time navi said, shrugging as he summoned a pillar of energy to engulf her.

________
Summary
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

---Allies---
Meleeman: 220 HP (Next to needle)
Mieli: 90 HP (On edge of room, 3 moves away)

---Enemy?---
Dial: 1160 HP (2 Moves away)

--Objects--
Needle: Destroyed

---Terrain---
Normal: 100%

---Other---
Time: Slow
Darkness: Accuracy reduced one rank. All navis and objects in room are at least partially visible.

---Battlefield Dimensions (For reference)---
Cylindrical, 7 panel diameter, 4 rockcubes height
MeleeMan was quite satisfied with his work on the needle, but not so satisfied with the ensuing attack of the regally dressed navi. Instead of going after MeleeMan, the navi had bypassed him entirely and headed for his ally. "Dammit! What's the idea, dumbass, going after a woman when the only fight you need is right here?! Turn around and fight me!" MeleeMan roared, starting into a sprint towards the navi. Images were already rushing through his head from the netpolice encounter. He'd convinced himself he wouldn't let himself carry the burden of others on his shoulders again, but realized that it was a hollow promise. "With strength comes responsibility," he thought, "and that includes teaching punk asses like his to pick on somebody their own... or twice their own size."

"Hold on, MeleeMan! Don't run in without a weapon!" Rania shouted into her PET, watching the enemy navi carefully while fumbling for a chip to assist her navi with.

"Without a weapon, Rania? Do you know who I am!? The only weapons I need are the ones I always have with me!" he roared, bringing his hands up into two angry, vengeful clenches, tensed like claws for grappling. He remembered back to Shine and Kunie, other navis caught up in the twisted mechanisms of the Netmafia's fight. "Girls don't have any place on the battlefield... And you don't have any place here either! The difference is that you don't have an excuse!" the great navi bellowed, spewing smoke from every hole in his armor and picking up speed as hard as he could, despite the slowing effect that was draining all of the energy from his body.

"Wait, MeleeMan! I'll-" Rania reiterated, but MeleeMan's voice barked up again, silencing her.

MeleeMan growled, spreading his arms out wide around him. "Dammit Rania!" he interrupted her, heaving and menacing at the enemy navi as he ran forward in his headlong sprint. "I know what I'm doing. Not like this guy... No, this guy has no idea what a real battlefield feels like." Grinning widely, MeleeMan ran his tongue over his upper lip, tasting the sweat building on his skin. He knew he was scared. Not of his chances, but for Mieli. Scared that this punk, this nobody, would be just like those NetMafia navis who get off by attacking women. He was fearing that this man would be the type to put pissing him off above even his own safety.

"You wanna piss me off... You do it at your own risk," he sneered, clapping his hands down as hard as he could, attempting to tackle the navi down in his run.

1) Close distance by sprinting
2) Close distance by sprinting
3) Mighty Clutch to Dial [hold and ironbody self]

--TURN SPLICE LOL--
((ARGLE

Aim again, btw))
((I probably need a mod swap, I really want more progress on this thing before I leave back home for the holidays.))
MODLOCK:I am as of now taking over this thread. Post to be posted later today.