Star City- Heroes of Tomorrow IC

Leon looks towards Mari. "Yea. That would be me."

As he was saying this the Tridoron came speeding to a halt right next to them, The woman strapped safely to the back seats.

"We must hurry. Where were you heading?"

Leon motions to the car and starts to get in.

Drift. (Vixen/Artemis/Tigress)

Zet_Cross said:

Leon looks towards Mari. "Yea. That would be me."

Click to expand...

"Ohayu, then," Vixen nodded, as though she'd been fluent in Japanese her whole life, "good to meet you."

Zet_Cross said:

As he was saying this the Tridoron came speeding to a halt right next to them, The woman strapped safely to the back seats.

Click to expand...

Artemis lunged for the back door and threw a hug around her mother.

"Jesus, Mom," Artemis pressed her forehead to Paula's as Paula laughed and touched her cheek.

"I know," Paula nodded, "I know. This car drives itself, and it reconfigured its own seats so I wouldn't be blocking the steering wheel-- in a world of wonders, why is that so amazing?"

Artemis grinned softly. "Remind me to get you and Cisco talking about Transformers sometime."

Zet_Cross said:

"We must hurry. Where were you heading?"

Leon motions to the car and starts to get in.

Click to expand...

Paula hauled herself across to the other side with her arms, Artemis slid in beside her, putting away her bow and arrow as she did so. "Huh. I always forget Japan has British-side drive. We were going to this, uh, safehouse--"

Vixen jumped clean over the hood with primal agility, climbed in to the passenger side front.

"--which is now compromised, unfortunately," Vixen interrupted.

We can't go back to Batman's place, Mari's mind spoke into Artemis'. I know you trust your mother, that she's proven she's on the redemptive path, but if Nyssa's tailing us we can't risk leading her back there. Not to mention this guy's a complete stranger, cop or not, it's not everybody who gets an invite to The Batcave.

Artemis squinted. Not a fan of telepathy. Not even at all. But. Yeah, I get it. Your psychic powers taste like bananas in my brain, but I get it.

Vixen smirked faintly. Grodd hate banana.

Glancing down at herself, Artemis remembered the device Batgirl had given her. Would that work now that comms were back up a little bit? Give them a lead to another fallback position?

But before Artemis could sound out this option in her head, Paula spoke up, hesitantly, reluctantly, with the air of a woman calling in a marker she'd thought left in the past.

"I know a place."

Vixen's eyes widened.

Cat's Cradle. (Artemis/Tigress/Vixen)

When the Tridoron arrived at the address that Paula described, Vixen wasn't the only one with wide eyes.

It was a warehouse by the waterfront.

Decades ago, it had belonged to Don Carmine Falcone, a safehouse in times of trouble-- a place to store supplies, to park a reserve fleet of vehicles.

In turn, it had become a fallback point for Fish Mooney, and had been a turning point in the four-way battle between Falcone, Sal Maroni, Mooney and Oswald Cobblepot-- The Penguin. That battle had ended with Penguin as The King of Gotham, but the history of the city's underworld hadn't ended there. After all, someone else was there that night, drafted into Fish's organization and then grandfathered into Penguin's.

A young girl named Selina Kyle. Called "Cat."

As the powerful red vehicle pulled up to the warehouse, it seemed dark and foreboding, but the glitter of dozens of pairs of feline eyes caught the light of Tridoron's headlights through the warehouse window.

Cat had grown up to become the infamous Catwoman, female counterpart to The Batman and one of the great loves of his life-- they were yin and yang in a very different way than he and The Joker ever were. But the onetime street urchin was always learning, always growing-- she had nine lives, after all.

If Cat wasn't considered a leader of one of Gotham's official Crime Families, well, one still had to factor her organization into the power structure of the city. Not precisely an illegitimate business as proven by a court of law, but certainly one that worked outside the law when it felt like it.

Once upon a time Cat had been a lost little girl on the streets.

And there were just as many like her now in the alleys of Gotham, if not moreso-- the haves still had more than the have-nots ever would. And so she swept across the landscape of the displaced daughters of Gotham City-- she became the fairy feline godmother to these homeless girls. She called them her "Strays."

These were her army.

These, of course, and her cats.

As the warehouse doors slid open, a number of these cats spilled out into the warehouse district, some of them wandering off into the night to chase after the innumerable rats that populated the Gotham Bay area.

And with these quadrupedal cats, there stood two bipedal ones. If the Strays were Cat's army, these were her lieutenants.

Eiko Hasigawa, estranged daughter of a Yakuza boss, who had inherited the title of Catwoman.

And Holly Robinson, called Catgirl.

"Catwoman, Mom," Artemis groaned worriedly, gazing out through one of The Tridoron's back windows. "Really."

"Cat-themed villainesses, Tigress, Catwoman," Paula laughed faintly. "What can I say?"

"No wonder I have a complex," Artemis grumbled.

Eiko approached the vehicle, as Holly hung back to guard the door.

Behind Holly, dozens of girls with flashlights navigated a small farm of mobile homes and temporary structures set up inside the warehouse, living quarters and one-room schoolhouses. Interspersed with these buildings were some of Falcone's old vehicles, and an old ambulance. Behind and above all this, on a second level overlooking the warehouse floor, there was Ms. Kyle's office.

And everywhere there were cats.

Artemis cringed a bit.

Vixen wound down the window on her side as Eiko approached.

"Speak your business," she growled.

"The Tigress requests an audience," Mari replied, "and sanctuary for her traveling companions."

Eiko harrumphed. "Does that include you, 'supermodel?' Certainly you are aware that foxes and cats do not have the best of histories."

"I'm the exception that proves the rule," Vixen promised, touching her totem and switching from GORILLA GRODD to a HOUSECAT template. "Trust me, I'll be as welcome as catnip and cream."

"Eiko--!" Holly called nervously from the door--

--but then Selina herself loomed beside Holly, arms crossed behind her, still a picture of liquid, living grace with her piercing blue eyes.

And she wasn't alone.

With her, arm cradled in a sling but bo staff still held ready in one hand, Canary Cry choker still primed around her throat, was Laurel Lance-- The Black Canary. She looked battle-weary, but no less bad-ass than ever.

The Cat and The Canary. Strange bedfellows indeed.

"Let them in, Catwoman," Selina ordered briskly. "Catgirl, have one of The Strays bring a wheelchair for Tigress."

"Cat-sama," Eiko straightened. "My father's enterprises in Japan were often rebuffed by a superhero who drove a vehicle such as this. Inviting them in might prove a tactical error."

"Then we shall have to hope," Selina arched an eyebrow at this uncharacteristic impertinence, "that he is enough of a gentleman that he respects our offer of hospitality."

Eiko narrowed her eyes, but nodded sharply, and then ducked her head to look in Vixen's window across to The Driver. "Drive on in. You can park next to the ambulance. Heaven help you if you run over any cats."

Darkest Before Dawn. (Nyssa)

As Tomari Leon's mighty Tridoron roared off into Gotham's troubled night, its taillights leaving red streaks in the darkness, ten minutes finished elapsing.

And over the course of ten long, infuriating seconds, Nyssa al Ghul, her horseman, and her touring band returned to human size.

With a scream of fury, Nyssa snapped an axe kick high up into the air and brought it crashing down, bisecting the coffee table in a billow of splinters.

She stood there for a moment between the two halves of the table, breathing furiously, nostrils flaring, and then managed to regain her calm.

"Very well, Al Sah-him," she declared. "So you have taken Sportsmaster's bride from me. I have other resources."

She glanced, eyes narrowed, at her horseman. "Though perhaps, if I did not know better, I would think that the one before me was perhaps not made of sternest stock. Perhaps I should return you to Al Qabil's esteemed... tutelage, until your promise is realized?"

Bint al Qabil hesitated, bowed her head.

Nyssa's lip curled, and then her communicator chirped. "My Lady! I am gratified to see your signal return to the grid. There have been developments-- one of the two communications towers has been restored. In your absence, I ordered Al Ankabut al-Aswad to attack, please forgive any impertinence--"

Nyssa glowered. "Your groveling is aggravating and unnecessary. You have done well. I will be falling back in order to make certain that Al Sah-him's forces do not attempt to encroach any more of our territory-- especially if he is trying to distract us from the machinations of Al Xu'ffasch."

Gesturing sharply, Nyssa made for the window with her people-- and Bint al Qabil-- falling into line behind her.

"If any of these fools wish to continue to trifle with The True Heir of The Demon, then I will be there to show them the proof of their folly reflected in their pooling, cooling blood."

Venom

They landed on the roof, a quick survey proved that there was no new pajama people around. They yawned, scratched a non-existent itch on their back and drew the control panels from that inter dimensional space located inside the symbiote. Opening the box, they went about removing the broken panels and then they started seating the fresh ones. Connections was easily done since they saw the working connections. Flipping the switches, they were rewarded with green lights.

'Well that does bring the good guys two up.'

Affirm...something is wrong.

"Well what a stupid move to return here. Oil Slick was it?"

The voice came from behind them. Nothing sneaked up on them. Not even Artemis or Arrow. They turned their head and caught sticky stuff to the face, blinding them instantly.

"Whu?"

They realized that the attack was to disable the tower again, they managed to slam the door close, twisting in close and breaking the handle off before a double foot dropkick hit them solidly in the back of the head, sending them staggering away from the console.

RRRRAAAAAARGH!!!

They ripped the web-like stuff from their face and tossed it aside, crouching, ready to lay some pain on the purple costumed guy with a black spider between his two yellow eyes, "Give me a name to put on your tombstone."

Wall-to-Wall Wallcrawlers. (Black Spider)

That two-soled boot to the head had not only sent Venom reeling, but his assailant had springboarded off of him to land in a crouch on the low wall running around the edge of the rooftop.

"Not that I don't appreciate the offer, Slick," he wisecracked, "but it's a little early in our working relationship for you to ask me out for pizza."

With a shrug, he hopped down from his perch, stood with his hands on his hips. "Still, to answer your question. The people who cut my paychecks have this serious Arabic fetish and somehow I got slapped with a codename that has both 'butt' and 'ass wad' in it? It's kinda hilarious. But you can call me The Black Spider."

He tilted his head, and seemed to regard Venom thoughtfully. "Come to think of it, you're looking a little black and spidery yourself, Slick. We might have to have words about ripping off another man's proprietary indicia."

Venom

Talking? Why was this little creep talking so much? Was he stalling? Waiting for back-up to arrive? They knew that they should rankle at this, but it was like something or somebody they knew. Did Arrow not teach them to be calm? That an angry opponent is the weakest opponent?

They grinned, revealing sharp fangs and an impossibly large mouth, "Yes I am actually black and not purple. You have some frustration you want to talk about "Black" Spider?"

They cracked their neck and Alex gave Venom the go-ahead, immediately the suit bulked out slightly, their tongue lolled out and the fangs grew even sharper, "Enough talking Frustrated Spider, let's dance."

They sub-vocalized, "Have encountered a masked persona. Named Black Spider. Any info on this guy?"

Weaving a Tangled Web. (Black Spider/Felicity)

TertiusHuman said:

They grinned, revealing sharp fangs and an impossibly large mouth, "Yes I am actually black and not purple. You have some frustration you want to talk about "Black" Spider?"

Click to expand...

"Bro," Black Spider scowled audibly behind his mask, pointing to the symbol on his forehead. "The spider is black. And I ain't hardly as frustrated as your orthodontist must be."

TertiusHuman said:

They cracked their neck and Alex gave Venom the go-ahead, immediately the suit bulked out slightly, their tongue lolled out and the fangs grew even sharper, "Enough talking Frustrated Spider, let's dance."

Click to expand...

LaMonica whistled long and low at Venom's transformation. "Oh, now, that, I have got to get me a special effect like that! Slick, that slick is slick!"

He waved a hand dismissively. "You're right, you're right. I got the skillz that killz to pay the billz, should probably get on with that. But you know? I can walk and talk."

That dismissively waving hand suddenly curled into a fist and orange, goopy webbing launched in a stream from his wrist-gauntlet, latching onto the slammed-shut steel door-- and with a grunt of exertion, LaMonica ripped that door right out of its socket and whipped it at Venom.


Having confabbed with Bruce Wayne and now sitting at her laptop in a room just off of The House Chamber, Felicity fought to capitalize on the fragile, restored signal from Gotham City. She had no idea how long it would last, or how very fragile it was-- but not for nothing was she the fastest WPM in The Pacific Northwest. (Well, she was in The Beltway now, but still.)

Things had improved significantly now that both towers were up, but she still couldn't get a direct line into Gotham. She had to zig-zag and piggyback off of half the functional towers on The East Coast even to get some semblance of a back door-- and even then it was more like a catflap.

Even retasking satellites was sluggish as Hell, but she managed to zing a signal through the gap.

Just in time:

TertiusHuman said:

They sub-vocalized, "Have encountered a masked persona. Named Black Spider. Any info on this guy?"

Click to expand...

Felicity typed like wildfire, providing Venom with her reply on that same subvocal channel:

@SmoakonTheWater: That's affirm, John, good to hear from you, I've been worried so sick I couldn't finish my coffee.

@SmoakonTheWater: Black Spider, Johnny LaMonica, he's a meta-powered member of The League of Assassins. Apparently got the powers of a spider from a spider-bite he got the night of December 11, 2013.

@SmoakonTheWater: Can jump like thirty, forty feet, run 70 mph, can lift forty times his own weight, has near-speedster reflexes, and has some kind of extrasensory early-warning system, makes him a real hard target. Uses chemically-engineered webbing to snag his prey.

@SmoakonTheWater: Arrow and Artemis took him down one time, I think they used a retuned EMP arrow to momentarily scramble his spider-sense and then hit him with a net arrow? Maybe a glue-bomb arrow? Something poetic.

Venom

They did not expect a door, then Felicity's info came scrolling in like a HUD and they managed to grab hold of the door. Claws ripping through the steel and sending it spinning away. So this guy gave Artemis some grief...hmmm...

"Skillz? Psh. I saw better skillz from a 5 year old skateboarder."

They now knew what the sticky stuff was, the only problem was that they could not really use a sonic broadcast as it would damage their bond as well. Only way around that was to lay into the guy and see where that got them.

"You should stop talking brah. Get a start on that screaming part."

He closed on LaMonica, claws ready to rip apart the smaller man.

Spider-Man? I 'ardly know 'er, man. (Black Spider)

TertiusHuman said:

They did not expect a door, then Felicity's info came scrolling in like a HUD and they managed to grab hold of the door. Claws ripping through the steel and sending it spinning away. So this guy gave Artemis some grief...hmmm...

"Skillz? Psh. I saw better skillz from a 5 year old skateboarder."

Click to expand...

Oh-kaaaay, maybe this guy was kiiiiinda impressive. Not many people could tear steel to shreds with their bare fingernails.

But Johnny LaMonica didn't back down from Eddie Scissorhands, not by a long webline.

"I assume you mean that at some point Shaun White and Tony Hawk had a kid together, and they just turned five? Because that's the level of skillz we're talkin' about here."

TertiusHuman said:

"You should stop talking brah. Get a start on that screaming part."

He closed on LaMonica, claws ready to rip apart the smaller man.

Click to expand...

See, one could forgive Johnny LaMonica for being confident.

The superhero community generally divided along two lines.

The normal human beings who trained themselves up to the level where they could play with the big guns, and the metahumans who were big guns already so they didn't feel like they need training. There were exceptions, of course, heroes with both assets (and neither) but for the very most part, that was how it shook out.

Johnny LaMonica was a metahuman and a trained killer, so he could rely on his powers to help him against the baseline fighters, and he could use his murderous schooling to murderously school the powered people. Not to mention, his particular powerset was broad and mighty enough that he could triumph where a lot of lesser fighters would fail anyway.

But the Black Spider didn't often face foes that were a) both metahumans and trained killers also, and b) more powerful metahumans than himself. And, going all out, Venom had all his powers and way more then some.

And thus, while he retorted, Zoolander, "I'm not your bra," right then his spider-sense went off like alarm bells in his skull and his eyes widened behind the mask. Venom was coming at him and his ESP had never been this shitless.

(If the Venom Suit had been symbiotically adapted to Black Spider at the time of its manufacture, his spider-sense wouldn't have worked at all on the guy, but thankfully Venom's Secret Origin was entirely independent of this particular spider-hyphen-man so at least he had that going for him.)

And perhaps his surprise at being so scared fueled his desperation, fueled his determination to prove his spider-sense wrong--

--and so he didn't hold back, not even slightly, not even at all, with his first punch.

Just a straight haymaker right to the fanged, prehensile-tongued face, adrenaline-fueled, fast like a freak, powerful enough to crumple an engine block and focused into a fist.

"Hhnnnah!"

Venom

Really? He was going to duke it out? How much fun. They took the punch to the face, only because it was close enough to their mouth. Of course for Alex it felt weird, but the symbiote absorbed all the kinetic energy and they chomped down on that hand inside their mouth, fangs piercing suit, skin and bone. It wasn't brains nor chocolate, but it was fun to smell the shock.

They opened their mouth, spat out the intruding hand and grinned at the smaller man, "Wanna go blow for blow? Yes? Good." Those whip-like tendrils flashed out towards Black Spider, aiming to snag him and hold him tight so that Venom could use those claws and their knowledge of the human anatomy to finish this fight.

Jaime Reyes watched the Manhunter fire up into the sky as he knelt in the shattered airport terminal and held the unconscious Kara Zor-El, tears leaking from his eyes. He held her close and whispered to her softly;

"We will get him back. When this is over and the Earth is safe, I will go find him myself and bring him home. I promise."

He shook her gently then and looked down into her face. "But right now you have to get up. You have to heal and be strong and you have to come with me to Gotham, where our friends are fighting for the lives of every person in that city and perhaps the world. They need our help. And You are Supergirl. The light of hope."

"Please wake up."

Biting the Hand that Feeds. (Black Spider)

TertiusHuman said:

They took the punch to the face, only because it was close enough to their mouth. Of course for Alex it felt weird, but the symbiote absorbed all the kinetic energy and they chomped down on that hand inside their mouth, fangs piercing suit, skin and bone. It wasn't brains nor chocolate, but it was fun to smell the shock.

Click to expand...

Shock there was in spades. Black Spider howled in surprise, agony, indignation. His adrenaline dulled a measure of the pain, but anyone who's damn near had their hand bitten off will tell you (John Henry Irons, for one) that adrenaline only goes so far.

"Nyaarrgghhh!"

TertiusHuman said:

They opened their mouth, spat out the intruding hand and grinned at the smaller man, "Wanna go blow for blow? Yes? Good." Those whip-like tendrils flashed out towards Black Spider, aiming to snag him and hold him tight so that Venom could use those claws and their knowledge of the human anatomy to finish this fight.

Click to expand...

The inky pseudopods wriggled for Johnny LaMonica, but he bounded backwards back up onto the lip of the rooftop, and immediately-- skipping off of that perch like a stone --back out into the space between buildings, and as he launched backwards across the street, he sprayed webbing in wide spreads from both wrist-gauntlets, attempting to tangle up as many of those tentacles as he could.

He hit the wall of the building opposite, landing in a perpendicular crouch, sticking with his feet and incredulously cradling his gnawed hand with the intact one.

"Son of a fucking bitch! What the Hell kind of superhero are you supposed to be, you goddamn Todd McFarlane H.P. Lovecraft nightmare?"

"Are the Super Friends hiring goddamn motherfucking cannibals now, is that it? Jesus Christ, that is messed up even for Gotham and I've worked with Killer Crock!"

"Moon as My Witness," by Angels and Airwaves. (Supergirl)

Nevyn_Black said:

Jaime Reyes watched the Manhunter fire up into the sky as he knelt in the shattered airport terminal and held the unconscious Kara Zor-El, tears leaking from his eyes. He held her close and whispered to her softly;

"We will get him back. When this is over and the Earth is safe, I will go find him myself and bring him home. I promise."

He shook her gently then and looked down into her face. "But right now you have to get up. You have to heal and be strong and you have to come with me to Gotham, where our friends are fighting for the lives of every person in that city and perhaps the world. They need our help. And You are Supergirl. The light of hope."

"Please wake up."

Click to expand...

Kara stared to nowhere a moment more, her eyes sightless, catatonic. Two moments. Three.

Then her eyes blinked as though in the slowest of slow motions.

And when they opened again, she was awake-- struggling towards coherence-- but awake.

"Oh. Oh God."

"He gave up his soul for me. I was stupid and I was-- I was in such a hurry to sacrifice myself--"

"--why would he do that? Why would he?"

She burst into a coughing fit, wiped her mouth on what was left of her uniform sleeve.

And managed. Somehow. To latch onto Jaime's words echoing in her ears.

To struggle out of angst and anguish and find traction on the slipperiest of slopes-- to climb back towards that aforementioned light.

She reached up and clutched Jaime's shoulder, his Reach carapace protecting him from a grip that would have bruised a normal human right down to the bone. "Jaime. Blue. We-- we can't go to Gotham. They-- they passed a law. Gotham's a No Man's Land."

"If we go to Gotham we'll be branded traitors, defectors, enemies of the state, and all the rules we bend to be heroes will come back to bite us."

"And ARGUS-- ARGUS, and The DEO, you're on their radar too with your alien tech-- Hank Henshaw told me they won't just go after us, they'll go after our friends, our families."

"I can't lose my family again. Not after what I just went through."

Venom

OK so the guy was fast. They had moved after him as he skipped away from them and got tangled in that sticky stuff. It took them a few moments to rip free, but by then pursuit was pointless. They grinned at the man crouched across the street, "Who said anything about being a hero?"

They moved slowly backwards, towards the shadow casted against the wall behind them, "We are no hero, we are no villain either. We are just a soldier."

They reached the shadow and seemed to slowly melt away as the symbiote's chameleon power kicked in, "We follow orders and we know that you tangled with a person we admire. That means that you made the top of our shit-list today."

By now only the white eyes and leering mouth was visible, "Better watch your back..." A wide grin, brah"

With a soft chuckle the face melted away into the shadows, just like the name-sake of Artemis' sister, the Chessire cat.

Arachnophobia. (Black Spider)

Webbing his hand and wrist to patch the blood-loss, Black Spider managed not to panic.

So far.

Sure, that Romulan cloaking device quick-fade and the smile left behind put chills down every vertebrae in his spine-- how many powers did this freak have? --but super powered soldier or not, Black Spider had a job to do, and his bosses were still scarier than "Slick" here.

"Dunno who this person was you admire so much-- when did I beat up Hannibal Lecter? ...or was it that goddamn Flamebird chica I about put in a body cast earlier? --but there's one thing you gotta remember about bras."

Gathering his legs under him, he launched out into the air over the city street, fired a webline, swung low, hit the wall of the target building five floors down from the roof and sprinted straight up the wall at top speed-- an impressive feat even if he wasn't injured. When he ran out of wall, he jumped hard, jumped high, forty feet straight up--

--as he flew upwards, he fired out two weblines, one from each hand, and grabbed hold--

--this was agony for him, and his accelerated nervous system wasn't especially fond of being jammed up with that much pain, but anything to wipe that creepy ass smile off of Slick's creepy-ass face--

--the weblines went taut like elastic--

"We always snap back."

--and launched him back down hard for the communications control console, launched him hard feet-first, ready to deliver a kick that would crumple the whole thing in a shower of arcs and sparks and put the comms back down for good.

Venom

They waited, sure it was an impressive to watch this guy, but he was jabbering along, making him easy to track. Then the attack on the tower. They knew that comms was the name of the game and that was why they had faded into the shadows. To give them a chance to cover the tower and see if an attack came at the tower itself.

They had noticed how this spider deemed to have an early warning system in place, so they waited. They waited for that last millisecond, before impact, when there was no way he could dodge.

Black tendrils swept up from the ground, sticking to LaMancha's back and shoving him forward to overshoot his target and slam into the roof. The result would have been spectacular if the sudden move didn't break the perfect in motion momentum.

Venom slipped from the framework of the tower like oil poured into human shape, using those appendages stuck to Black Spider to whip the smaller man towards him, claws flexing for the...kill

Into the Parlor. (Black Spider)

TertiusHuman said:

They had noticed how this spider deemed to have an early warning system in place, so they waited. They waited for that last millisecond, before impact, when there was no way he could dodge.

Black tendrils swept up from the ground, sticking to LaMancha's back and shoving him forward to overshoot his target and slam into the roof. The result would have been spectacular if the sudden move didn't break the perfect in motion momentum.

Click to expand...

Black Spider was fast.

His nerve-conduction velocities were so quick they bordered on the precognitive-- and he had a little bit of precognition too, in for the bargain. He could dodge whole clips full of machine-gun ammo sprayed by whole contingents of troopers, pinballing between the raindrops.

But as fast as he was, Venom was faster.

He twisted in mid-air, tried to juke, and a good number of those pseudopods lashed empty space-- but enough of them latched onto Black Spider that Denvers could pull off his Venomous aikido.

He crashed to the rooftop, tried to instinctively slap the ground like a martial artist to diffuse some of the impact but wound up using his wounded hand so it only caused him more agony, he was reacting too blindly to hear that warning in his spider-sense in amongst all the other alarm klaxons-- "NRRAAHHH!"

TertiusHuman said:

Venom slipped from the framework of the tower like oil poured into human shape, using those appendages stuck to Black Spider to whip the smaller man towards him, claws flexing for the...kill

Click to expand...

Here was a kind of irony.

LaMonica had absolutely been caught in Denvers' web-- snared just like the proverbial fly.

But like a fly, LaMonica wasn't gonna go out without stinging back hard.

He twisted again in Venom's tentacular entanglements as he hurtled towards the spider-soldier, got his boots up, landed feetfirst on Venom's chest and unloaded a spray of webbing into Venom's face--

--right into that fanged mouth, right down that Exxon Valdez throat.

"Floss! With! That!"

Venom

They had not expected LaMonica to be able to recover that fast, the feet to the chest wasn't much, in fact they could just shrug it off. But the webbing to the face, it blinded them, the tentacles releasing LaMonica in the shock of sudden blindness and then that webbing shot into the back of their throat. The fact that some sticky substance entered their mouth didn't do much, but due to the high velocity and the basic point-blank impact sent shock waves through their system.

John reeled back, realizing only in that split second that he was not in control, he was not even in contact with the symbiote. They both hacked and coughed, staggering about, clawing at the restricting webbing, trying to clear their eyes and throat. John found that he was cut off, that the symbiote was in full control of the suit...there was anger radiating from the symbiote...anger and an extreme hunger...

ChasNicollette said:

Kara stared to nowhere a moment more, her eyes sightless, catatonic. Two moments. Three.

Then her eyes blinked as though in the slowest of slow motions.

And when they opened again, she was awake-- struggling towards coherence-- but awake.

"Oh. Oh God."

"He gave up his soul for me. I was stupid and I was-- I was in such a hurry to sacrifice myself--"

"--why would he do that? Why would he?"

She burst into a coughing fit, wiped her mouth on what was left of her uniform sleeve.

And managed. Somehow. To latch onto Jaime's words echoing in her ears.

To struggle out of angst and anguish and find traction on the slipperiest of slopes-- to climb back towards that aforementioned light.

She reached up and clutched Jaime's shoulder, his Reach carapace protecting him from a grip that would have bruised a normal human right down to the bone. "Jaime. Blue. We-- we can't go to Gotham. They-- they passed a law. Gotham's a No Man's Land."

"If we go to Gotham we'll be branded traitors, defectors, enemies of the state, and all the rules we bend to be heroes will come back to bite us."

"And ARGUS-- ARGUS, and The DEO, you're on their radar too with your alien tech-- Hank Henshaw told me they won't just go after us, they'll go after our friends, our families."

"I can't lose my family again. Not after what I just went through."

Click to expand...

Jaime looked at her in shock and dismay.

"Then what do we do? Because after all of this I am not going to just sit here and let my friends die. And let us not forget the asshole who just tried to blow up our planet. You think he's going to stop just because we foiled his plans once?"

Jaime looked around, as if searching for some answer in the wreckage around them. "Maybe we could appeal to the public directly? I mean...this is insane. Gotham still has so many people within it's city limits."

"You're Supergirl. People have to listen to you, if you ask them to. Right?"

ChasNicollette said:

"Cat-sama," Eiko straightened. "My father's enterprises in Japan were often rebuffed by a superhero who drove a vehicle such as this. Inviting them in might prove a tactical error."

"Then we shall have to hope," Selina arched an eyebrow at this uncharacteristic impertinence, "that he is enough of a gentleman that he respects our offer of hospitality."

Eiko narrowed her eyes, but nodded sharply, and then ducked her head to look in Vixen's window across to The Driver. "Drive on in. You can park next to the ambulance. Heaven help you if you run over any cats."

Click to expand...

Leon nodded and pulled the car forward.

"You have nothing to worry about, yet. You are not your father."

Crawling in My Skin. (Black Spider/Felicity)

TertiusHuman said:

They had not expected LaMonica to be able to recover that fast, the feet to the chest wasn't much, in fact they could just shrug it off. But the webbing to the face, it blinded them, the tentacles releasing LaMonica in the shock of sudden blindness and then that webbing shot into the back of their throat. The fact that some sticky substance entered their mouth didn't do much, but due to the high velocity and the basic point-blank impact sent shock waves through their system.

John reeled back, realizing only in that split second that he was not in control, he was not even in contact with the symbiote. They both hacked and coughed, staggering about, clawing at the restricting webbing, trying to clear their eyes and throat. John found that he was cut off, that the symbiote was in full control of the suit...there was anger radiating from the symbiote...anger and an extreme hunger...

Click to expand...

John reeled back, and The Black Spider back-flipped off of him, landed in a crouch, straightened, threw his shoulders back.

The oil slick that guy was wearing looked like it was boiling over like a tar pit, and LaMonica's spider-sense was screaming in his brain, like he could hear the suit hissing in his sixth sense's ear-- like static, like EVP--

--but he was jazzed, he was sick and furious and murderous and he beckoned to that liquid obtenebration like he was egging it on.

"Come on."

"Come on, you fucking monstrosity."

"You toxic sludge."

"C'mere so I can goddamn cram you down your own throat and make you eat yourself, you drooling bloodlines parasite, come on!"


Felicity was not having her best day ever.

She remembered, when Ray Palmer had vanished into that microverse and disappeared for like a year in 2016, right before he came back there were all these technological glitches and messages for her embedded in old Palmer Technologies code, the sort of thing you might see in his old smartwatches or phones.

This was kind of like that, except-- except it wouldn't have a happy ending like Ray coming back in late 2017--

--someone was fighting her.

She'd already lost the link she'd gotten to Venom's HUD. She hadn't been able to ping Ollie or any of the others to make sure they were alive.

Someone was in the system, cold and calculating, parrying her at every turn. She tried desperately to get through even to Lonnie or Harper, but servers kept going down, data-streams kept getting rerouted, she was barely hanging onto the connection with her neatly-manicured fingernails. Firewalls kept sprouting like wildfire.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'maaaaaaaahhhn," she gritted her teeth.

She managed to get her claws into a WayneTech satellite just above the No Man's Land, managed to hold tight--

--who knew how long this would last, but she got it--

--got a realtime streaming video feed of what was happening on the rooftop with Venom and The Black Spider--

--her mouth went dry and her face went pale because oh God something wasn't right.

"John, no!" she shouted to her screen in an empty room hundreds of miles from Gotham with no way for Venom to hear her. "JOHN!"

Venom

John was not in control and even if he could hear Felicity, there was nothing he could do.

'Wait, don't listen to him'

The symbiote's only response was to go what John would believe to be its own version of fully apeshit. They charged at the smaller man, as he got within range hundreds of pseudo pods lashed out

'No! Stop! He's baiting you!'

But John knew then, that he had no control and that the symbiote was going to have the brains that it wanted

"I WILL EAT YOUR FUCKING BRAINS!!!"

Yeah that kinda settled it, there was only one way to get control, there was just one way to bring the symbiote under control again. He went silent inside, clearing everything away, he needed that candle flame, not the light, the flame. He had to shock the symbiote, bring that intense fear of fire into its conscious mind and try to stop it in time...he wasn't sure that LaMonica had that much time left to him, no, don't think just... Concentrate.

C o n c e n t r a t e

"All That We Are," by Angels & Airwaves. (Supergirl)

Nevyn_Black said:

Jaime looked at her in shock and dismay.

"Then what do we do? Because after all of this I am not going to just sit here and let my friends die. And let us not forget the asshole who just tried to blow up our planet. You think he's going to stop just because we foiled his plans once?"

Click to expand...

"I don't know," Kara shook her head, lurching to her feet, trying to get her head back together.

That moment of weakness, giving over to the Hellspore, that would haunt her forever. But she had a job to do. It wasn't the first time she had fallen, made a mistake-- for all of her Kryptonian heritage and powers, she was still, figuratively speaking, only human. But damn if it wasn't the last time she was going to get up and keep fighting.

"I don't know. I just know that all of this happened to go down on a spot that happened to intercept your direct course to Gotham City. They're fighting to keep us out, legally and tactically, drawing lines in the sand-- so they must be scared of us making a difference in there."

"But just this-- just this one skirmish, this one battlefield-- we lost The Marvels and-- and I lost J'onn-- three massive, impossible powerhouses, incredible assets to our side, three beautiful souls, and they're just yanked away, they're off the board like they were nothing. What else will this Master do if we try again? I don't know if I can take out another of those Hellspores, let alone seven more, or seventy times seven. Do we even dare take another run at Gotham if it puts the whole planet at risk? The legal boundary is just dark, dark icing, playing against people's fears and weaknesses like the worst talking heads television."

Nevyn_Black said:

Jaime looked around, as if searching for some answer in the wreckage around them. "Maybe we could appeal to the public directly? I mean...this is insane. Gotham still has so many people within it's city limits."

"You're Supergirl. People have to listen to you, if you ask them to. Right?"

Click to expand...

Supergirl shook her head and laughed brokenly. "If only that were true, I would have lost way less fights over the bathroom with my sister growing up."

She put her hands in her hair, shoved her soot-stained blonde locks out of her face. "Sorry, TMI. I just-- I don't do a lot of pushing for policy. I just like to lead by example when I can. Sometimes it works. People rally behind someone who inspires hope and can seem to actually make a difference. But the moment I push too hard, try to intervene in the workings of Earth governments, the fearmongers will use that against me-- an alien immigrant trying to put herself above the people of Earth, never mind the fact that J'onn helped me become an American citizen when I was little--"

"--I'm not supposed to interfere in the natural course of human history. I'm just supposed to catch them when they fall."

Her brow crinkled, and she immediately self-corrected. "They're falling now."

She took a breath, squared her slender but powerful shoulders. "It's worth a try."

Licking Wounds. (Vixen/Tigress/Artemis)

Zet_Cross said:

Leon nodded and pulled the car forward.

"You have nothing to worry about, yet. You are not your father."

Click to expand...

As Eiko stepped back and the car rolled forward, the cats parted for him like the Biblical Red Sea as though on some unheard signal--

--Vixen heard it, though, with her HOUSECAT template, and she glanced at Selina with her hands in her pockets, some kind of-- feline empathy? Was there more to Selina's bond with cats than mere affection?

Eiko squinted at The Tridoron as it trundled up next to the old ambulance, where a number of Strays-- trained in triage nursing at Lee Thompkins' own clinic in The Narrows --had set up an infirmary and were tending both injured civilians and a couple of costumes. (Flamebird lay here, unconscious and swaddled in bandages, having been badly injured in a fight with Black Spider earlier, and the woman named Pagan winced and struggled to remain still as a couple of Strays were helping her remove an Assassin's arrow from her back, close to her spine. Pagan's partner, Joe Public, was nowhere to be seen.)

This was true, what Tomari had said, Eiko was not her father, but Selina's little clowder had ambitions that stretched the narrow boundaries of the law. Eiko hadn't shrugged off the shackles of her Yakuza ancestry to be foiled by some misguided superhuman cyber samurai following a half-baked sense of giri.

The newer Catwoman fell into step beside Selina and The Black Canary as they followed the car inside and the warehouse doors slid shut behind them.

Holly and a Stray approached with a wheelchair, and Artemis-- hesitating only slightly at the still-present feline horde --hurried around the other side to help them help her mom into the chair.

"Thank you, ladies," she murmured, and reached up to squeeze Artemis' hand as Artemis took up sentinel position behind the chair, hands on the handles.

Selina approached Artemis and Paula with a faint smile, Holly the Catgirl and Eiko the Catwoman dutifully moving to flank her on either side. "Tigress. It's been too long. How's it treating you, the ol' straight and narrow? It always was a little too narrow for me, and I've never exactly been straight."

"No such thing as an easy life," Paula replied, firmly. "I tried the path of shadows and it cost me dearly in return, as nothing is without price. Now I sacrifice for my daughter, but that is reward all its own."

Artemis shot her mother a surprised and loving look, and reached down to squeeze her mother's shoulder. "And people say Tigresses can't change their stripes."

Selina smirked faintly. "Ah, yes. You must be Paula's younger kitten. Pleased to meet you. Love the hair. But it seems your cupboards are a bit bare--" she gestured to Artemis' thinly-populated quiver. "We've taken down a number of Assassins tonight, feel free to replenish from their arsenal. None of those fancy trick arrows, I imagine, but I'm sure you can use their own pointed arguments against them."

Artemis was more than a little hesitant to not look a gift cat in the mouth, so to speak, but her mother seemed to trust this woman. So. "Yeah. Thanks."

As these conversations took place, Black Canary approached Leon and Vixen, retracting and putting away her staff before holding out her uninjured hand to shake Leon's. "Leon Tomari, right? Or do you prefer it the other way around? My connections with The GCPD said they were expecting your transfer sometime this week, I'm so sorry it had to be now. We should talk strategy when you have a moment, see if we can make contact with Gordon's people."

She glanced at Vixen, then, smiled wearily at her. "Good to see you too, Mari. Have you had a chance to see Nightwing while you're here? Flamebird was asking about him before she passed out last time."

Vixen returned the weary smile. "Been too long, Canary. Yeah, he was our coyote, got us past the border patrols. Amazes me how pretty that boy stays with all the fights he gets in. One of these days I'll convince him to leave this life behind and come grace magazine covers with me."