Justice League: The New Wave (IC)

[UnseenMaiden]

Someone can step in if they like.

“Come on, folks! Watch the pretty lady. She goes ‘round and ‘round always dancing past her suitors. Test your luck to see if you can catch her hand. Only a buck!”

Her hands knew the movements without her needing to think about it, she’d played this con for so long. Not that she cheated people out of their hard earned cash anymore, no cards hidden up her sleeves, but that winning wasn’t really her aim here. The cards moved along the table as she studied the people that trickled into the alley, letting the illustrations catch the light as she pulled one of the cards up, catching their eyes first so that they paused and didn’t walk through the door that was just to the right of her. Billie had been in this town for almost a two weeks, trying real hard to talk a sentient building down from murdering a good chunk of the populace. It called itself Danny, it was trying to help in its’ own angry way, and everyone deserved the grace of a second chance.

Music thrummed loud and hard behind her, making her head pound in a way that made her wish she could curl up somewhere nice and quiet and dark instead of standing in this hot alleyway. It was angry at her, she could practically feel the glare, and she bet if she turned around the posters that covered the dirty brick walls would be covered with all sorts of expletives. Today had been a good day. There was very little foot traffic and what few people that had shown up were a couple of punks that she had been able to talk around to leaving and going back to school for the day.

“You can pitch a fit all you like, but these people aren’t evil. I’ve seen evil. They’re just misguided. They need understanding and a helping hand, not to be kept in some dungeon.”

She looked over her shoulder at the poster nearest the door. It was an interesting piece, lots of neon letters with vertical stripes and a singer clearly singing her heart out in the background. If she could ever get Danny to calm down enough to have a normal conversation, it looked like it would be a lot of fun to figure out what made its’ sentience tick. It took a few moments, but the letters on the poster shifted and changed to display a message ‘They’re happier here.’ Another handful of posters sprung into being: ‘I keep them fed.’ ‘They like to dance.’ ‘They can’t hurt anyone anymore.’ ‘You can’t keep me here forever.’ ‘You need sleep and food.’ ‘GO AWAY!’ As if to punctuate those last words, the bass rose up enough to let her feel it through her feet. Rubbing her head, she sighed and kicked at an imaginary line separating the two entities from one another. The ward that she had set there glowed faintly in response. Danny was right, but she wasn’t going to let on to that fact. She wasn’t the strongest of magic users in this form and if it wasn’t for her being able to draw on the stamina of Atlas, she would have passed out days ago.

“People are frail, Danny. They can’t take what you’re doing to them, even with food and water and the pheromones to keep them in check. They’ll die and, even if you keep their bodies alive, they’ll die on the inside.”

Moss burst into bloom along the bricks. Apparently posters weren’t enough this time. The lush greenery was stark against the backdrop of red and dust and letters were larger than her head.

THEY DESERVE TO DIE​

She wished she knew what had made this building so bitter. It would make things easier to talk out, but all she had to go on was that she knew every ounce of rage and hate that were contained in those words. It was a war she constantly fought in herself as far as she could remember. It had taken a wizard and a lot of time to make her see that there was something beyond the gaping wounds of the world, to learn to forgive others for their faults. Her voice was soft as she awkwardly reached out a hand to pat the mossy wall.

“Like I said, people are frail. All of those horrible things that they’ve done, all of those horrible things that they let happen. Once upon a time, they were small and young and naive and all of those terrible things that they deserve to die for, those terrible things that you took upon yourself to lock them up for, those things happened to them. They were hurt and they never got the chance to heal and they took it out on others. There’s a better way to do what you’re doing. You could talk to them. You could help them heal and then they could help others not turn into what they’ve become. You could help, but if you kill them then that’s all you’ll ever do. You’ll just keep killing until there are no people left, because perfectly good people don’t exist. They’re too easily bruised by what this world has become.”

She was surprised to be greeted by silence. The club music had stopped and there were no sounds from the humans inside. There were no words scrawled out before her. A wild hope that perhaps now she had finally broken through had the hint of a smile teasing at the corner of her lips. Hopefully Danny was thinking over her words in its’ slow, ponderous way. She stayed as still as she could, waiting, hoping to see the straggling forms of the lotus eaters finally waking from their long dreams.

“Ms. Batson?”

The voice surprised her, both because she never heard the woman walk up and because, even after all of these years, it was still very familiar to her. A few moments passed before Billie turned around. The diplomatic thing would be to smile and make small talk, but that wasn’t her style so instead she settled for crossing her arms and looking the woman over. It didn’t seem like Lex Luthor’s bodyguard had come here to chit-chat anyways, despite the bag of fast food she had brought with her, presumably as a peace offering of sorts. Ignoring the hunger that gnawed in her stomach, along with the busy sounds of paper unfurling behind her, and the obvious questions of how Lex Luthor had known to find her here or that she was anyone worth finding for that matter, Billie pulled the Queen of Hearts off of the little folding table in front of her and held it up.

“Come to test your luck?”

Hope Taya gave what was not quite a smile, but surely some well-trained quirk of the lips meant exude polite amusement, before placing the fast food on the table where the Queen’s car had just been a moment prior. It smelled like fried potatoes, freshly toasted bread, and warm meat. Whoever ran that hamburger joint knew what they were doing and had placed a little slice of heaven in that white paper bag.

“Mr. Luthor has requested a meeting with you.”

She had never shared Superman’s ire towards the genius billionaire. For all of his past schemes, he seemed to be doing a lot of good in the world especially of late if the news was to be believed. However, that didn’t mean that she trusted him or his motives. Time had taught her to forgive, but it had also taught her caution where her younger self had once wanted so fiercely to believe in the absolute good of others. So was it worth possibly dipping her toes into the lake of fire for a few bites of heaven? Her stomach cramped painfully in a way the reminded her that she was quite mortal at the present moment, magic powers be damned. Giving in to her baser needs, she grabbed the offered bag and took the biggest bite of hamburger she could muster as she pondered over what to say to that. The music from Danny had started again, a primal beat with lots of drums, and a smell kind of like cinnamon was drifting in the air. She swallowed, that bite of food falling like lead into her stomach, as she watched Hope’s head swivel towards the open door.

“I don’t really do that kind of thing anymore.“

“Whether you mean meetings or heroics by ‘that kind of thing’, I highly doubt either. Alexander Luthor is sure to have researched your present station in life very well, Captain Marvel.”

The music rose and the smell grew stronger until she felt like she had stepped into a large cinnamon roll and, even though the tall black woman was responding to her, she had gained a this glazed look to her eyes that Billie had become far too acquainted with in the past fortnight. Abandoning her food, she rushed around the table in order to better place her body between the entrance and the woman that Lex was sure to come after if she went missing.

“Look, if you want Captain Marvel, that isn’t me anymore. Some kid took up the mantle years ago. I’m just a drifter with a colorful past. So tell Luthor I’m sorry but he’ll have to go somewhere else for his superhero needs.”

Her last sentence was punctuated with some gentle pushing, and then harder pushing, towards the lively streets beyond the little corner of the world that Danny had tucked itself in. It was no use though. Billie was just too tapped out and Hope was a very strong woman. She breezed past her as if she was just an annoying kid and walked straight through the entry way. The blue-haired woman turned around to follow her and was greeted by the sight of the brick wall absolutely thick with inches worth of posters plastered one on top of the other. Each one detailed a different scene of death, destruction, and screaming faces. Each one presumably from the life of one Ms. Hope Taya, who had apparently lived much much longer than Billie had ever presumed.

“Shit.”

There was no time to think, no time to speak soothing words of comfort and peace, no time to hope that Danny was going to let go of someone that had made themselves such a prime target for something that saw only in black and whites. So she grabbed the bag of food off of the table, hurriedly cramming what was left of the burger into her mouth and ran inside after Lex’s bodyguard. She was going to need the calories to do whatever she needed to do in order to have everyone and everything be in one piece when all was said and done. It was a thought that was punctuated by the door slamming shut behind her as she was greeted with a crowd of people staring straight at her with no Hope in sight.

“Shit!”

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

With a kick and a twist of her wrist it roared like an angry dragon woken from a long slumber. “This is us Riding our bikes. And remember Lust is a Sin, Chastity a Virtue.”

Connor grinned as he walked up to his bike and straddled it. He looked at her and remembered the face he had seen briefly in the setting sun and his smile widened. "Lust may be a sin, but admiration for beauty is still allowed as far as I know." He had a line about Chastity as well but he was not getting into that here.

He donned his helmet and then started up his bike. Next to her throaty roar, his sounded like the purr of a kitten. Still by the sounds of things, there was not much that would give her bike a run for it's money.

He made his way out of the parking lot making sure she was beside him then headed out onto the road and headed for the hills. He was not sure how this ride would go. He had a feeling that she would be able to ride at a pace that could far outstrip him, but the truth was he would be up for the chase. There was just something about this woman and it wasn't the fact she could take small arms fire like it was nothing or toss a full grown man around either.

Smiling behind his helmet he gunned his engine and rode off into the night in search of a place to eat a picnic with a mysterious woman on a definite Non Date.

 

[ChasNicollette]

The Catalyst.

Keystone City, Kansas, and Central City, Missouri.
Now.
********​

Keystone and Central were two of a kind.

They were known as The Gem Cities, though whether this was because they were like the jewels at the heart of America, or because it was short for "gemini"-- they were as much twin cities as Minneapolis and St. Paul --was a subject of much scholarly debate.

Keystone was known as The Blue Collar Capital of America. While the flagging American auto industry had caused the local economy to sputter, Keystone had taken radical steps to update itself. They had invited a certain pioneer in electric car-making to come to their town and rebuild the shuttered plants to produce hybrid and pure-electric vehicles. While this had still not quite caught on to the same extent as good ol' internal combustion automobiles, it had kept Keystone on the map.

At the same time, the decline in America's farmlands had caused neighboring Central City across The Missouri River to struggle and nearly buckle. But it too sought to reinvent itself, using the vast acreages of open spaces around the city proper to create farms and farms of windmills. They installed hydroelectric turbines beneath the surface of the river. Indeed, Central City became a locus of a vast variety of renewable and sustainable energy sources. Instead of harvesting grain, they would harvest power.

This synergized nicely with the electric vehicle plants across the way... electric cars and the electricity to power them, one-stop shopping.

The lightning-bolt symbol that The Flash had famously made synonymous with The Gem Cities had taken on a beautifully-marketable double meaning, and they had begun to flourish again.

But now The Flash was gone, with the rest of The Justice League, and a pall was cast over the two cities. Kid Flash, The Flash's successor, had been doing his best to make up for his mentor's absence, but you could tell he had suffered a grievous emotional wound-- his heart just wasn't in the run anymore. Perhaps as a gesture of goodwill, respect for a worthy opponent, The Rogues had sworn a sort of temporary, unofficial truce until the cities could mourn their true hero.

But it wasn't the same as a lasting peace.

It wouldn't last.

The Department of Extranormal Operations had in its employ a number of Agents that were themselves extranormal-- metahuman.

One of these was Nick Kovac, codenamed "Argus" for his ability to see spectra that eluded the eyes of baseline humans-- X-ray, infrared, ultraviolet, the entire electromagnetic spectrum spread out before his eyes. He could also blend in with shadows, heal injuries rapidly, and had enhanced physical attributes almost on the order of Deathstroke the Terminator himself.

Initially assigned to Keystone-Central by The DEO to investigate possible metahuman involvement in local organized crime, lately Argus was looking into a case almost as old as the turn of the century--

--for the last fifteen years, electrical engineers from throughout The Gem Cities had been reporting occasional anomalies in the cities' power grid. Glitches and hiccups and math that didn't add up. Vast numbers of kilowatt/hours that didn't seem to be reaching the homes and businesses of The Other Twin Cities.

It was Kovac's current theory that an electrically-themed metahuman, perhaps Blackout or Deathbolt, had been tapping the power grid on the sly to charge up their powers over the last decade and a half.

And thus, he skulked-- deep in the shadows of a service tunnel interconnected with the infrastructure of both cities.

And ahead of him, he heard talking.

A voice that seemed to hisssss occasionally.

Though his infrared and X-ray vision were impeded by some of the heavier metals used in piping and cabling down here that hadn't yet been retrofitted, when he got close enough Argus could make out the heat signatures of about five bodies, gathered around a central figure.

Edging around a corner, Nick strained to listen, to get intel.

"Our long game is at long last reaching its final gambits. For two decades we have toiled behind the scenes to bring about the prophesied cataclysm. Soon we will conquer the heart of this continent and then the world."

"The broadcast power cell is finally at peak capacity."

"Kid Flash and key members of his Titans team have been sighted on the island of Santa Prisca, investigating a red herring regarding a chemical plant there."

"The local supervillain populace is quiet and will not see our coup coming until they are powerless to prevent it."

"I go now to tell our Lord. He will give the final word."

"And the word will be CHAOS."

Kovac's extranormal eyes widened in horror.

He knew who these men were. Whom they served.

And if he let them pull off whatever it was that they were talking about--

--hundreds could die. Thousands.

9/11 might pale in comparison.

If he could stop this crucial information from getting where it needed to go...

No time to go for back-up. He drew his service H&K USP LEM in one hand, and his titanium alloy nunchaku in the other. Steeled himself. And then.

"D.E.O.!" he roared, bounding around the corner and confronting the six figures in hooded robes. "Get your hands where I can see them and get down on your knees, or I'll give you all the 'chaos' you can handle!"

The central figure hissed again.

"Dispatch him."

And three of the five figures stormed towards Argus, drawing katana-like swords as they went.

Argus grimaced, popping one in the chest even as he ran up--

--whirling to meet the other two--

--they were formidably trained, on the order of The Lin Kuei or The League of Assassins, but Argus was basically a super-soldier and he waded through them with his nunchucks whirling and they fell at his feet with broken bones faster than it took you to read this sentence.

Argus' nostrils flared, his gun hand came up, and he gritted his teeth. "Let me reiterate. Stand goddamn down. I am an Agent of The United States Federal Government and you are under arrest for conspiring to commit terrori--"

The central figure waved dismissively, interrupting Argus.

"Bestowed," he commanded simply.

And the leftmost of the two figures that had stayed at the central figure's side raised its palm from within the folds of its hood, fingers outstretched. With a rasping cry, it proclaimed some word that sounded like an ancient, strangled, psychotic dialect of Hindi and a massive flash of light ripped through the semi-darkness of the service tunnel.

Argus' superhuman visual cortex found itself bombarded with photons on an impossible scale, spread across every spectrum, and even his ability to sort and focus through the noise of light pollution was immediately overwhelmed.

He screamed in bloodcurdling agony and he fell to his armored knees there in the service tunnel, smoke sizzling up from his eye sockets.

He would heal. He could heal. He just needed to buy himself time...

...through the pain, he fumbled on his belt for a sonic grenade...

"Ajagar," the central figure hissed, and Argus didn't know what it meant--

--but he heard another hiss, this one artificial, and felt something huge moving in the darkness, something growing that hadn't been there before--

--and a hand the size of a manhole cover came down on one of his shoulders, another came down one the top of his head--

--gripped, then twisted--

--and Argus' head came off like a bottlecap.

His headless corpse lay spilling blood on the floor of the service tunnel, and the central figure stood over him, sneering down.

And that figure hissed: "Hail... Kobra."

********​

The February skies above The Gem Cities had been clear and blue.

But now, now, as the word was given, a great photonic geodesic dome of force billowed up into those skies to encompass both cities, entrapping them. Covering them with an impenetrable shell that could not be escaped and could not be intruded upon, the forcefield turned The Gem Cities into a fishbowl of Chaos indeed as Kobra's forces ran rampant.

Subduing local resistance was just a formality at this point.

Because with the power of teleportation, they could use this unassailable jumping-off point to attack all the major cities of North America.

For a start.

This was the dawn of Kali Yuga.

The Age of Chaos.

 

[ChasNicollette]

New York. (tags for Kiz, Captain Thunder, Moonwing, et al)

Kiz had hoped that vow, which he was obligated to see through, would have been enough to convince Constantine that further action would be fruitless. As much as he had found a handful of attributes to admire in Constantine, Kiz still had work to do.

Now Kiz would flow like water around Constantine, instead of raining down an avalanche of punches. Kiz glanced at the spot to the right of Constantine. As he stepped through the Void, he reappeared in that spot orientated towards Constantine. Kiz stepped forward towards the man's right hand, grabbing it at the wrist, pulling forward, and sweeping out in one continuous motion. Kiz shot his left hand forward, catching the muscle between Constantine's shoulder and lateral muscles with the nub of his thumb. Like a dagger strike, that pressure point would cause the right arm to jerk and the muscle's nerves to think they were burning. Kiz teleported within the space of his next breath behind Constantine, running the back of his left elbow into the back of the man's head. Then Kiz was back in front of Constantine and struck straight with a spear hand at the man's solar plexus.

That was it.

That was the line, right there, and Kiz had driven Constantine over it.

John sagged uselessly to his knees, his arm twitching and shuddering at his side. Breathless, blood running down over his lips, agonized.

He couldn't take another swing even if he wanted to.

Even if he'd thought for an instant it would connect with this teleporting--

John couldn't think of a name rude enough, and that was rare. He respected him, this master of his craft, but goddamn did he want to let some air out of him.

And so he knelt in a heap, and he laughed up at Kiz with the wry, bitter chuckle of the damned.

"All right. We'll call it a draw, then."

CLI-CLICK!

"Kiz the Void Binder."

Agent Cameron Chase stood there, a gleaming silver handgun leveled at Kiz' head-- a blue blinking light on the left side.

And just behind her, Sky-High Helligan, her own weapon drawn, low and away, a more mundane firearm-- a Smith and Wesson 3913NL-- but still lethal in its own way.

In the very near distance, sirens were screaming, closer and closer. Even nearer, up in the sky, one might hear the approach of news and police choppers.

"Stand away from The Hellblazer," she instructed him. "There's no need for this to get any worse than it already is. You have entered this dimension, and this nation, and you must abide by the local laws and customs. Stand away."

People had been shell-shocked. Tensions had already been running high after the riots and the clashes over the lottery results. Neighbors were still apologizing to neighbors. Some friendships would never be mended.

With the fire and ice that had raged and stormed all up and down this busy New York street... shadow-serpents and death knights and napalm-spewing chimerae...

...the New Yorkers here were angry. But it was a cold, exhausted kind of angry. "Really? Now this? This too, on top of everything?"

But then.

But then yellow-green flames began to burst out of nowhere.

Here.

There.

All over the city, flares of yellow-green firelight sprung up--

--and when each flare faded, there would appear a man.

Dressed in green.

And armed with a blade.

While they appeared all over the city, a number of them materialized on the street on which Kiz and Constantine had fought their pitched battle.

Helligan flashed her weapon up and ready, her eyes flaring wide but her expression determined.

Without even blinking, Chase drew another gun of her own, a Colt M1911, and aimed this at a newly-arrived scaly-armored ninja without wavering her sci-fi-looking weapon from Kiz.

"More friends of yours?" Chase remarked.

"These weren't in the Faerie Queen's briefing," Helligan pointed out.

And then the ninjas started killing people.

And New York started screaming.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Presidential. Not so Sweet.

Metropolis.
********​

Lex stood in his penthouse offices at the top of LuthorCorp Tower, arms crossed behind himself as he gazed out the windows.

"...I can say with all sincerity, Senator, I have more respect for your integrity than for almost any other natural-born human being. But there comes a time when idealism bleeds over into naivete, and there must be a balance between striving to improve the world and pragmatism about the embedded systems required by the status quo. These things take time, Bernard. Rome, as they say, was not built in a day."

"Allow me to return that respect and that sincerity, Mr. Luthor," the voice on the speakerphone replied. "Anyone who could stop that orange buffoon's campaign juggernaut... But the American people have waited long enough for leaders that can affect real, lasting, positive change."

Lex smirked faintly.

"Very well. Rather than battering at an impasse for now, I shall look forward to debating this further in future. For now, I have to hit the road. Campaign trails don't blaze themselves."

"Lex," the senator replied.

"Bernie," Lex inclined his head, then touched a key on his phone's screen, hanging up the speakerphone.

Glancing at Mercy Graves, who stood beside him with a tablet, Lex smirked faintly. "These populist patriotic values. If I didn't know better, I'd say The Blue Boy Scout had been raised in Vermont."

"It's those Green Mountains," Mercy quipped.

Lex chuckled at that. "Is the limo prepped? I'd like to be in New Hampshire before the afternoon. In the air, I'd like to speak to my IT people in Iowa, it's imperative that I can be holographically telepresent onstage to give my victory speech after their caucuses today but simultaneously maintain my momentum in The Granite State."

But before Mercy could reply--

--"TELEPORT INTERDICTION ACTIVATED."

Mercy and Lex both glanced ceilingward in a single, instinctive instant.

Someone or something had tried to teleport through the security perimeter and had been blocked by the Heisenberg firewall. Of all the brazen--

"Sir," Mercy insisted. "Your panic room."

Lex rankled at this momentarily-- he was no coward--

--but of course he saw the reason in her statement. Downtime was not an option-- and neither was death.

With Hope out on assignment, his security detail was missing some extremely crucial physical amplitude, and he wasn't about to let his enemies or rivals catch him with his silk drawers low.

"Yes," he harrumphed, touching a keyed sequence on his watch to initiate timed emergency protocols, and grabbing a briefcase from under his desk. "Needs must."

But before he could make it more than a few steps...

"HRRRRAAAAAHHHHHH!"

A mammoth-sized cretin exploded down through the ceiling of the penthouse, having punched right through the super-reinforced rooftop above...

...even the monster's bio-enhanced physiology had been badly damaged by the impact, he must have been dropped from an airplane...

...but it lumbered to its feet, and flared its nostrils with a snort, flexing its hands.

"INTERDICTION BARRIER COMPROMISED," the computer voice intoned, voice garbling out of shattered speakers somewhere in the debris.

"You don't say," Lex replied.

Flaring yellow-green teleport signals lit up around the room, and they were surrounded by ninjas armed with swords and dripping with malice aforethought.

Mercy scowled.

And all of a sudden there was two of her.

And four.

And eight.

This was one of Lex' most securely-guarded secrets.

His personal assistant had a metagene. She was a multiplier. And she was no slouch in the combat department.

"Sir. GO!" Mercy's voices resounded in unison as each of her engaged a ninja.

"My Mercies are manifold," Lex couldn't resist wisecracking, even as he sprinted for the panic room at the other end of the office...

The mammoth barrelled in front of him like a stampeding bull, and Lex hesitated, gritting his teeth.

"If it's not one blundering Neanderthal, it's another," Lex snarled, then bellowed: "Bishop!"

Searing azure light tore across the room and slammed into the side of the mammoth's face, knocking it off its feet and sending it skidding sideways across the floor.

"Impeccable as ever," Lex nodded gratefully to Kelley Bishop as she emerged from the elevator, looking nervous but determined, her arm configured into plasma-cannon mode.

"Thank you, sir," she nodded back, delighted by that validation.

"Mutual admiration later!" Mercy scowled as one of herselves crumpled headless beside her, and she split again, and again-- swarming new ninjas even as they teleported in--

Kelley darted across the intervening space with bionic speed, laying down covering fire with one arm as her other hand shoved Lex the rest of the way into his panic room.

The door sealed shut, multiple redundant locking systems engaging.

Lex tasted recycled air, smelled the distinctive tang of depleted promethium, and sat grimly on Corinthian leather seats. He reflected absently that if he had accepted a Secret Service detail as a presumptive nominee, those men would surely all be dead right now.

He cued up the panic room's onboard surveillance and communications systems.

Alerts were coming in from all over Metropolis-- it wasn't just his building.

And it wasn't just Metropolis.

Holding his watch nearer to his face, he steeled himself-- and said five words he never would have thought he would ever have to utter: "Get me The Justice League."

 

[Varshanka]

Following as he slid out onto the road and set the pace Danni watched, taking the measure of the man. Both his soul and his riding skill. He had confidence, both on his bike and with the bow in his hand. But could he face the True Darkness? The Darkness that lurked in the Hearts of all Mankind. Adam bit of the Fruit, violating Gods first Law. And he gave birth to Gods Anger, his Punisher. Cain killed his brother Abel, violating another Law – and faced the Wrath of Divine Judgement.

All mankind had evil in their Hearts, but a very few overcame that Evil and did only Good deeds. A few even lived a pure life and were Redeemed upon their deaths.

Very very few.

Robin Hood wasn’t one of them. But maybe he was close enough to tip the scales. Maybe.

Easing up beside him she looked over, the mirror finish of her helmet reflecting the half circle of the moon overhead. Letting go with one hand she gave him a short nod, then accelerated, flames liking the exhaust pipe as she shot ahead of him. Somehow it seemed like her leathers were even tighter and more form fitting than the last time they’d met.

Resting her free hand on the gas tank she lifted her feet clear of the bike, shifting into a solo hand stand. Not even touching the throttle as the bike roared in a line straighter than a laser.

 

[ChasNicollette]

The Reaction. (tags to current members of The Justice League)

In-Game Event - The Age of Chaos / Strength in Numbers​

http://static2.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_super/6/64770/2194694-kobra_team.jpg

http://65.media.tumblr.com/a1c2f9a96e5ff978ede2982e9821f117/tumblr_inline_nww069TW0r1s19qa0_1280.jpg

The game has progressed approximately one week to the date of February 1, 2016.​

And so it happened all across North America.

Every major metropolitan area in The United States, Canada, and Mexico suddenly found itself under a siege of ninja-esque warriors clad in green, scaly uniforms and wielding gleaming blades.

http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l325/chasnicollette/kobra%20ninja_zps4hxdrlza.png​

They would appear in flashes of yellow-green flame and all those nearby would be subject to the most lethal of violence.

http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l325/chasnicollette/kobra%20ninja%20teleport_zpspozp9g46.png​

Driving further fear into the hearts of their victims, they seemingly vanished at will, only to appear a heartbeat later at another spot, dealing out death wherever they went.

As though this were not bad enough, some of the soldiers who materialized would inject themselves with a chemical cocktail that instantly transformed them into hulking abominations of massive destructive power...

http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l325/chasnicollette/Mammoth_beast_zpsfxpzhua6.png​

...craggy beasts of leathery skin and exposed, inhuman sinew, crushing everything in their path.

...and still others, clad in dark brown hooded robes with their features hidden in shadow, used terrifying blood magic to deadly effect on enemies and bystanders alike.

http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l325/chasnicollette/00008_zpss9lckyol.jpg​

"Hail Kobra!" they would howl.

"No God but God!"

"FAITH TO KALI YUGA!"

Chaos rained.

Chaos reigned.

********​

As heroes and law enforcement frantically mobilized against the threat-- and even villains stepped up to defend their turf--

--the call went out to The New Justice League on their LexIcon watches.

"JUSTICE LEAGUE ALERT! JUSTICE LEAGUE ALERT!"

If any Leaguers hadn't deigned to grab a watch after all, one would only hope they would be alerted to the disaster by other means.

"JUSTICE LEAGUE ALERT! REPORT TO HEADQUARTERS IMMEDIATELY FOR BRIEFING AND DISPATCH!"

"PRIORITY ALPHA!"

 

[ChasNicollette]

Come as You Are. (Teen Lantern ...and friends)

Seattle, Washington.
********​

Jessica Cruz apparently had the ability to overcome fear.

Apparently.

Not that it made it much easier for her to leave her apartment.

If only there was a support group somewhere for superheroes with agoraphobia...

As it was, her friends in The Titans had informed her that there was no one specific way to overcome the fear of leaving the house. They recommended therapy, and the therapist-- who sometimes consulted for The DEO and had experience with metahuman psychology --had suggested slow adjustment, small doses, rather than jumping in at the deep end.

"It's apparent that you're able to overcome your phobia when you're faced with an emergency, yes?" Dr. Simon LaGrieve had wondered. "But you should try and teach your mind and your body that you don't necessarily need to associate the world with a fight-or-flight response. Take some quiet walks. Sit out in the sun. Visit your local library. That sort of thing."

And so she had, bit by bit, begun to try this.

With her hands in the pockets of her jacket, she sat on a bench by the waterfront and watched the gulls.

It was actually kind of nice this time. Not especially triggering. Of course, mountainous woods were more of a problem for her, but still.

Nearby, a pair of coworkers were buying hot dogs from a cart, a tall slender gent of South Asian descent with a British accent and a petite, arguably adorable lady with what seemed like a touch of albinism-- pale skin and even paler hair.

"Hey," the vendor griped, wagging a thick, stubby finger as his salt-and-pepper eyebrows bristled, "you use up all my sriracha, I'm chargin' extra."

The pretty pale girl frowned at him, and gave an extra blurt of the hot sauce onto her dog. "Well, if you hadn't skimped on the jalapenos, we wouldn't be in this mess."

The vendor rolled his eyes.

Beside her, the tall fella gently placed a hand on her shoulder and tried to guide her away from the vendor. "Let's pick your battles, Liv, shall we?"

Liv nodded grumpily, put the bottle down, narrowed her eyes at the vendor, and then walked off with her coworker. "Fine. But-- Ravi-- you know I'm only on edge because it's been awhile since I've eaten." She glanced down at the hotdog forlornly. "Really eaten."

"Not to worry," Ravi replied as he and Liv wandered past Jessica's bench, "I'm sure that the good people of The Emerald City will remain true to form--"

--if Jessica wondered how that sentence was going to end, she would never find out, because a gout of yellow-green flame erupted from the sidewalk ahead of them, depositing a slight, grim figure uniformed in green--

--who immediately injected himself with a jet-injector, hiss--

--and just as immediately swelled up into a ferocious, musclebound monster with a gleam of malice in its eye.

"KOBRA SMASH!" it roared in nigh-incoherent fury.

The vendor screamed and sprinted away as fast as his stocky body would carry him.

Ravi froze stock-still next to Liv, then blurted: "Pick this battle, pick this battle!"

Whatever she was thinking, the tiny pale Liv shoved in front of Ravi, fists bunched--

--but then a searing fist holographically sculpted out of verdant light stabbed seemingly out of nowhere, belting the behemoth across the malformed jaw and punched it howling to skip across the surface of the ocean like a stone.

Both Liv and Ravi whipped their heads around, and Jessica was standing there, Ring hand extended in a fist of her own, Teen Lantern uniform still shimmering into place around her.

"Get to cover!" Teen Lantern demanded in a voice that she... hoped... sounded peremptory. "I'll handle this!"

And she blasted off after the monster in a storming contrail of green.

Unfortunately, that bruiser wasn't the only threat: ninjas began teleporting in all over...

...and one of them, dual-wielding katanas, sprinted right at Liv and Ravi with teeth gritted: "FAITH TO KALI YUGA!"

Again, Liv surged forward--

--and the ninja rammed the sword right through her gut with a sadistic chortle.

Except Liv just shuddered.

And glared at him...

...and changed. Blackened veins slithered through the pale skin of her face, her eyes flushed red, and she growlhissed like something out of a George Romero flick.

In an instant she reached up with powerful hands curled like talons, grabbed the ninja by both sides of his skull and twisted, snapping his neck like glass. He crumpled into a heap at her feet.

"And that's what you get," Ravi decided, still half-hidden behind Liv, and looking more than a little shaken, "for appropriating others' cultures."

Shuddering, Liv pulled the katana out of herself and-- gathering her will, she-- pulled herself out of the animalistic state, reverting to the pale beauty of before.

"Ugh," Liv winced, glancing down at the dark red patch slowly seeping out of her midsection. "I'm glad that'll heal by swimsuit season."

Then she stabbed the bloody blade into the grass nearby, leaving it there-- rather than risking her contaminated blood getting into anyone else.

Ravi scooped up the ninja's fallen other blade, swept it up over his head, steeled himself with a cringe, and then swung down hard... lopping off the very top of the ninja's skull. "No dinnertime like the present!"

Liv's eyes widened, and she nodded. Glancing down and finding her hot dog where she'd dropped it before-- the 5-second rule didn't matter nearly so much when you were undead-- she dug into the ninja's exposed brains with her fingers and hurriedly crumbled the grey matter onto the sriracha-laden hot dog. She wolfed it like a starving woman...

...and almost immediately, a quiet aura of bad-assery descended over her. She snagged the sword from Ravi and swept into a flawless defensive stance, ready to meet any other ninjas that came at them.

"Can't catch me," declared Dr. Olivia Moore, no relation to Alan, "I'm the ninja-brain-girl."

 

[ChasNicollette]

San Francisco. (tags to Green Arrow, Ghost Rider, Raven, et al)

Berkeley, California.
********​

Hiro stood staring at the TV screen, his heart pounding like machine-gun fire in his throat.

The news footage coming in from across the bay was... horrific.

The Transamerica Building was on fire.

The Golden Gate Bridge was still standing, but only barely.

There was a crater where half of Alcatraz used to be.

All in a matter of moments, San Francisco had been plunged into disaster, hysteria.

He could hear his watch screaming at him from the distance.

"JUSTICE LEAGUE ALERT! JUSTICE LEAGUE ALERT!"

...and he looked down at that watch with agony twisting in his gut.

He had so looked forward to his ticket to the big time. To getting on The A-List.

That's what all superheroes dreamed of, wasn't it?

But he couldn't run off and team up with The League now-- not now!

He reached down and silenced the alert on his watch. "Sorry, guys. I have to go make sure my parents are okay. I hope you'll understand."

Then he extended his hands out to his sides, clenched his fists. And ignited his gleaming silver-and-white costume from the silver lightning he conducted from the mysterious Speed Force.

But just before the mask could shimmer across his face...

Nathaniel "Nathan" Fawcett burst through the door looking determined.

Hiro had never seen him looking like such a self-starter, he'd always seemed like such a lazy ass--

Nathan hesitated, and closed the door behind him, looking bewildered. "...Hiro? What are you wearing?"

OH SHIT! Hiro realized with a start, looking down at himself. This was almost more embarrassing than the time he'd run into The Flash... stark naked. "This isn't what it looks like, I can explain!"

Nathan narrowed his eyes, shaking his head. "It looks like you're... that superfast hero guy I've seen on the news when they talk about The New Justice League that Lex Luthor announced. Silver Bullet."

Hiro sighed dismally, shoulders slumping. "Okay, yeah, it is what it looks like."

Another spark of silver electricity raced across his face, zapping the mask around his eyes. "But I have to swear you to absolute double-secret probation secrecy, okay? On your honor as a-- what do they call people from Fawcett City? --never mind, I don't have time for this, I have to go help in San Francisco, my folks--"

"I can help you," Nathan promised.

Hiro shook his head so fast it left a little sonic boom in its wake, rattled the light fixtures, made the TV flicker. "No, man, you can't be my sidekick, I've already had this conversation in my head, you'd never keep up--"

Nathan smiled a slow burn smile.

And said one word.

"SHAZAM!"

And blue-white lighting came from nowhere and wrapped around him...

...the thunderclap made Hiro's sonic microboom sound like a firecracker...

...because of his powers, Hiro could watch this in wide-eyed slow-motion.

The young man grew older by a few years, grew much bigger, taller, shoulders like a Superman...

...and when the afterimages faded, Nathan stood there dressed in gold and red and a white hooded cape with the hood over his head and half his face.

Hiro sputtered. "You're... you're... you're That Marvel Guy!"

Captain Marvel grinned. "Close enough."

Hiro took another second or two to process this, the sheer odds of two superheroes sharing a dorm suite, then pointed at his roommate. "You are totally my sidekick. Not the other way around."

Cap snorted. "Tell you what. Race you for it."

And in an instant, both young men were blurring streaks carving their way west across San Francisco Bay, hurrying towards the destruction and carnage...

...two neophyte heroes hell-bent on saving the day however they could.

San Francisco, California.
********​

The Fort Point Historic Site was not a thing of economic or strategic significance, at least not in the grand scheme of things.

But it had historical value, as its name implied, and therefore it represented a foundation of sentimentality upon which the sham of modern American culture had been built. Even if it hadn't been of such importance, it was in close enough proximity to Golden Gate Bridge that it could easily get caught in The Bridge's collateral damage.

And it had.

Rampaging mammoth-sized monsters, teleporting ninja swordsmen, and seething robed blood-mages swarmed over California Historical Landmark #82...

...and all throughout the nearby seaboard San Francisco neighborhood of Jump City...

...tearing down the bedrock of the world so that it would all fall down to disarray.

"FAITH TO KALI YUGA!"

 

[ChasNicollette]

Dakota City. (tags to Static and Rocket, et al)

Dakota City, Michigan.
********​

While most of the contiguous United States of America were experiencing an unseasonably warm winter, it was still cold in Dakota City.

Nearby Detroit had, in 2013, filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy by debt in U.S. history, and had become a relative ghost town with a population of less than 800,000. All of this overshadowed the fact that Dakota had been more or less teetering in and out of bankruptcy for the last 3 decades or so.

Some people on porches with rocking chairs, or pontificating in barbershops, would wistfully remember the "good old days" before the Paris Island accordion-door factory closed, but even those good old days hadn't been all that good. And they hadn't gotten better.

A stiff, cold, Michigan breeze whipped down the streets of Sadler, and a sense of relative peace and normalcy, however uneasy, rolled along with that breeze. Even the Bloods and Double-Ls were less at each others' throats than normal.

The American Flag flapped and shuddered over Ernest Hemingway High.

Neptune Park had a thin layer of frost on it that hadn't yet thawed under the light of a half-hearted Sun. Proprietors of what stores were still open in Avalon Mall were rolling up the security gates on their storefronts and welcoming the first trickle of customers.

In Royce Village, in the shadow of old-country immigrant housing, new-country drug dealers were conducting business of their own.

There was just barely enough traffic on the Paris Island Bridge that there was a traffic jam. But of course there was.

Just enough traffic that when half a dozen massive, mammoth-sized figures dropped out of nowhere, the screaming drivers and passengers had no place to run. Even when laughing with thunderbag lungs and hurling Buicks off of the side of the bridge, the monsters didn't clear enough room for mere humans to escape the carnage.

On either end of the bridge, ninjas descended out of flares of yellow-green light... baring blades and weaving in amongst the near-barren cityscape to wreak maximum havoc, teleporting here, teleporting there, leaving splashes of red and gristle in their wake.

Even a handful of the terrifying enrobed blood mages would materialize here and there, one of them commanding a horde of hissing, spitting snakes to attack an AA meeting at Emmanuel Greater Hope Baptist Church, another boiling the blood of a rabbi at Temple Beth Adonai... "NO GOD BUT GOD!"

There hadn't been this much chaos and horror inside these city limits since The Big Bang itself.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Boston/Cambridge. (tags to Velocity, et al)

Boston, Massachusetts.
********​

Not for nothing was Boston called The Hub of The Solar System by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

The most populous city in New England and the cradle and crucible of the fires of The American Revolution, Boston might not be as big and mighty as its Eastern Seaboard neighbors not far to the south--

--Metropolis, New York, Gotham, The Three Sisters (or The Two Sisters and The Ugly Stepsister if you were feeling snarky)--

--but Boston had a charm all its own, and was a junction point for many a traveler entering The United States for the first time. (This writer, for instance.)

So perhaps it was no surprise that Kobra's forces hit Boston with almost extravagant ferocity.

Quincy Market was on fire, The Old North Church had a T car thrown through it, Fenway Park's legendary Green Monster was torn asunder...

...the runways of Logan Airport were more crater than tarmac...

...the harbor boiled almost so hot you could make tea out of it.

And perhaps it was no surprise that with the ferocity of this attack, it easily spilled north across The Charles River into nearby

Cambridge.
********​

This was a scholarly town, home to many a seat of learning and teaching and thought. Harvard University sat atop the heap as part of The Ivy League, but no less an icon was The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

M.I.T. was a bastion of futurism. Many a bright mind had come through here that had gone on to genius accomplishments.

And yet for all their forward-thinking, they hadn't seen this coming.

Simmons Hall was teetering in moments.

The Infinite Corridor, the spine of the main campus, found itself snapped in several places.

The iconic Great Dome of Building 10 found itself half-caved-in, shattering the intricate oculus skylight that had only been reopened 3 years prior after being shut for 70 years...

...MIT Police frantically scrambled to secure the on-campus Nuclear Research Reactor...

MIT's motto was Mens at Manus, "Mind and Hand."

But now the greatest minds of a generation were faced with fists that held gleaming swords... or fists the size of boulders that could shatter mountains...

...and their minds alone were not nearly enough to overcome these hands.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Northeast Kansas. (tags to G.R.I.D., et al)

Smallville, Kansas
********​

Though it wasn't named after its size but after a family named "Small," this tiny Kansas town embodied the small-town America spirit. Formerly known as the creamed-corn capital of the world, and more recently as the home of more terrestrial meteorite impacts than anywhere else in The United States, it had seen its fair share of hardship.

But nevertheless it somehow perfectly balanced Bible-Belt conservative dedication to morality with the welcoming, neighborly attitude of tolerance, and as such was a breeding ground for greatness. Generations of war-heroes had grown up in Smallville.

And one hero that had never seen military service but had nevertheless saved the world a hundred times over-- though of course most of Smallville wouldn't even know that.

It had a few landmarks of his own, that any resident giving the nickel tour would be quick to point out. Fordman's General Store, for one, The Talon movie theater-cum-coffee shop, the water tower standing tall and strong, the nearby Central Kansas A&M University-- CKU.

Of particular note were the acres of farmland spreading out from Smallville's iconic Main Street in every direction. One such patch of farmland was Chandler's Field, and in Chandler's Field there stood a tall windmill tower from which, it was said, you could see nearby Topeka on a clear day.

Today was not a clear day, and you did not need to stand atop the windmill on Chandler's Field to see the smoke billowing up from Topeka's skyline-- the ash had already started blowing across Smallville's wild-yonder skies.

Topeka was in ribbons. In ruins.

But perhaps more importantly, The Gem Cities of Keystone, Kansas and Central, Missouri were themselves only a few more hundred miles away...

...the great impenetrable force-dome encompassing and cordoning off both cities glowed ruddy light, painting the ashen skies a dull blood red.

Faith to Kali Yuga.

 

[Varshanka]

San Francisco. (tags to Green Arrow, Ghost Rider, Raven, et al)

Berkeley, California.
********​

Leaning back, her leg the only thing holding her up as she slid lower and lower on the pole Raven twisted slowly, one hand draped out as she rolled into a slow hand stand – on the side of the chrome pole. With her legs dangling in the air she flexed.

Muscles rippled as she moved, undulating with a gymnasts grace.

*****

Closing the door behind her Raven nodded goodnight to the security guard when he offered to escort her to a car or the bus stop. She didn’t need any escort. Even with the way she was dressed, with a cloak concealing her barely there costume.

Moving between the cars she wandered as far as she could before she headed for the alley, and her way home. She hated the job, but it paid the few bills she had, and allowed her to study humanity without mental exertion. Leaving her time for the study of spells, incantations, banishment magicks and potions.

At least she hadn’t had any creapers tonight she sighed as her fingers twitched and the portal ripped apart reality in front of her. Stepping out of the alley she walked in one side and out the mirror in her bedroom.

Flopping on the bed as the portal closed she debated .. meditation.. or a shower. The shower won out and minutes later she was standing under the hot spray as it worked at her neck and spine.

The pressure wave hit her senses even as she was reaching for the glass door and a towel. Stepping out naked she grabbed her towel and dried off, listening for who – or what – had caused the pressure release. Her spells didn’t have that side effect, but she’d encountered it before. A Teleporter. A lot of them. Technological or power driven was unknown.

A twitch of her fingers and her garments slid from the towards her.

The door exploded inward and she exploded into dark magic. She hated it when they attacked in the bathroom. Couldn’t a girl have any privacy anymore?

Dark circles shot from her hands, sending her attackers to other places was easy enough. But they just kept coming back, over and over. She even recognized a few from the torn uniforms.

A telepathic scan of the area revealed that they were mortal and mostly human. To bad, mechanicals would have been easier.

Shifting her attack profile she sent beams of black energy ripping outwards, shearing away clothing, belts, and separating blades from hands. Black bubbles enveloped the attacking and "FAITH TO KALI YUGA!" yelling maniacs.

Sending her now naked attackers to Azarath she wondered if they could teleport back from there. Probably not.

Time to find.. the Other. See if this was just a local event or much wider in scope. Stepping into her now empty living room she collected her clothing with was finally catching up and fitting to her like a second skin.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Moonwing. (Please forgive me an indulgence as I tie up a loose end.) (setup for Kiz)

It was like all of the media she had consumed, screaming inside her head. She remembered the movies that she had watched and tried to embody the protagonists. Every morning she wakes up and open-palm slams a VHS into the slot. It's Chronicles of Riddick and right then and there she starts doing all the moves alongside the main character. It takes her two hours, every morning. Now she's ready to fight crime.

...okay, so, she hadn't quite been ready.

She had discovered very quickly that being able to perfectly replicate the moves used in choreographed, heavily-edited stunt fighting wasn't as much of a help in a real fight as she'd thought. She'd almost gotten killed her first time out when her dead-on impression of a Jet Li wushu punch whizzed to a stop just shy of a mugger's face.

So she'd changed gears.

She'd sold some of her old retro tech, managed to sneak in to see underground fighting tournaments, watched MMA on pay-per-view, boxing matches. Wherever she could, she watched YouTube videos of actual superhero fights, though often the quality wasn't so good and the real good hits were too fast for most mass-market cameras to pick up.

But she was better than she'd used to be.

Even some of her own YouTube videos of her practicing while wearing a mask had gotten some hits; she'd taken down a couple pickpockets in Central Park, this dicksack who tried to assault a trans lady outside of a gay club. She'd actually managed to bust up a bar fight, that was cool!

She had been hoping to get the attention of The Titans. Maybe get into their mentorship program? Work her way up the superhero ladder. Photographic reflexes, muscle memory, whatever you wanted to call it, martial mimetics, she could only get better the more skills she was exposed to. And the better she was at being a superhero, the more likely she could be a celebrity spokeshero like Booster Gold!

So far, though, she had only caught the eye of a guy called The Craftsman.

But that had been good! He was a fella with mechanical and technological aptitudes that was hoping, in his own way, to set himself up as the heroic equivalent of The Crime Tailor or The Technician. But he hadn't hit the big time yet, either, he was still D-List, possibly because of his own tendency to blatantly court corporate sponsorship.

In return for some quid pro quo suggestions of-- "If I help you make a name for yourself, you help get my name out there too!" --The Craftsman had outfitted her with a uniform and a pair of sai blades that fit the identity she'd been mulling around in her head, a handful of other gear.

She called herself Moonwing, now.

As a tribute to the urban legend named Nightwing who had been helping to clean up Hell's Kitchen, a neighborhood not so far from her own.

Even that uniform had been patterned after his-- pale like the moon where his was night-sky blue.

But she still hadn't been able to score an audition from The Titans.

Maybe now was her time?

The grapnel that The Craftsman had given her worked like a charm, and she swung up to a nearby rooftop even as she made her way towards the place where Twitter hashtags said a super-fight was going down.

Oh, man, she could smell some kind of chemical burning smell from here. Was it Firefly? Had Firefly crossed The Hudson from Gotham and tried to mix it up in The Big Apple?

She could handle Firefly. (Or was it Firebug?)

She had seen some newscopter footage of Catwoman in action and Catwoman could totally handle Firefly.

But then, even as she made to leap across to the next rooftop, hoping to get a glimpse of the clash between two super-people, gouts of yellow-green flame exploded up around her.

Ninjas emerged from the teleport effects, blades bared and ready.

Moonwing hesitated.

But only for an instant.

And her sai blades spun into her hands.

"All right then. Fight scene it is."

 

[LuckyVic]

All over the city, flares of yellow-green firelight sprung up--

--and when each flare faded, there would appear a man.

Dressed in green.

And armed with a blade.

And then the ninjas started killing people.

And New York started screaming.

Damian didn't know what upset him more the fact that these... men were armed with swords as they went about killing people or how badly they used them. He jumped down out of nowwhere and stopped one of them just before the green suited individual had struck down another victim. The Nightwing had blocked the awakard attempted strike with a sword of his own.

Dick wouldn't have liked that Damian was still carrying it. It wasn't how the original Nightwing did things... but it was how this Nightwing did things. Within moments of defecting the scaley green soldiers hack, the new Nightwing began to give him a lesson on the use of a sword he'd never forget.

Within moments the so called man dressed in green was on the ground, zip tied, his uniform now possessing several very visible cuts from whever Nightwing's sword had touched it. Dick would be impressed that Damian had at least shown the restrait to keep the guy... yes guy since in his mind this guy was no man. Dick would have liked that Damian kept him alive. Though he had to admit to himself that he so wanted to put that fool out of his misery.

--the call went out to The New Justice League on their LexIcon watches.

"JUSTICE LEAGUE ALERT! JUSTICE LEAGUE ALERT!"

If any Leaguers hadn't deigned to grab a watch after all, one would only hope they would be alerted to the disaster by other means.

"JUSTICE LEAGUE ALERT! REPORT TO HEADQUARTERS IMMEDIATELY FOR BRIEFING AND DISPATCH!"

"PRIORITY ALPHA!"

Nightwight acknlowedged the alert and made his way to the headquarters.

 

[kizkiz]

New York - Kiz+Shanker, Constantine, Chase, Helligan

New York
********​

"All right. We'll call it a draw, then."

CLI-CLICK!

"Kiz the Void Binder."

Agent Cameron Chase stood there, a gleaming silver handgun leveled at Kiz' head-- a blue blinking light on the left side.

"No draws." Kiz responded despite the gleaming handgun aimed at his head from half a block away. "Yield or I will pound your face into pulp and tatters." His knees almost buckled from the surge of hatred and hunger from Shanker. She'd caught a small cat in the alley and was in the process of swallowing it whole, when the DEO agent decided to interrupt. Shanker was very protective of her master. Kiz tracked the agent with his peripheral vision, but he didn't let another pigeon distract him from his target.

>>It threatens, oh Great One. Kills it, we will!<<
>>Not yet, my love. Above upon the roof top is the Moon Blade, let not these pigeons trouble you. Feast upon memory. Go now, my love.<<

Kiz felt the progress of Shanker as she swallowed the cat in one quick gulp. Her venom was terrible, but her capacity to devour was what made her a real monster. She slithered through the shadows from the alley to the rooftop above. There amongst the still raging blizzard laid the Moon Blade. By the time her body slid from the doorway roof's shadow, the bulge of the cat's body was already gone. Shanker reared up over the hilt of the Moon Blade and snapped forward, swallowing the sword whole.

Down below, Constantine's eyes drooped. His face leaked blood from his broken nose. He made a horrible rasping sound like a comma patient on a ventilator from his broken ribs. His right arm spasmed. His knees buckled. Only one of Kiz's mammoth hands kept the man upright.

"Stand away from The Hellblazer," Agent Chase said.

Kiz's eyes watched Constantine's body give up on itself. Yet Kiz had made a vow, and he hadn't yet turned Constantine's face to pulp and tatters. It wouldn't take much more. It was a mortal face, all too vulnerable to Kiz's fists.

"There's no need for this to get any worse than it already is. You have entered this dimension, and this nation, and you must abide by the local laws and customs. Stand away."

Kiz was no oath breaker. His word was his bond. What paused Kiz was not the gun Agent Chase had aimed at him. He doubted she was prepared to fight a Void Binder, otherwise she would not have sent Constantine. No in the end what saved Agent Chase from Shanker and Constantine's face was Anderson Cooper. High above the CNN helicopter pivoted. Kiz had a sense for when things were pointed at him. Esquire Rathaway's instructions had been detailed. Killing a law enforcement officer would complicate his presence in this city.

"What of the Rotinonsionni? The Anishinaabe? Others of the First Nation?" Kiz's eyes remained fixed on Constantine. "You are hypocrites."

Nine gouts of yellow-green fire spurted through reality, interrupting Chase and Kiz' conversation. The globs of flame swelled and then popped like a pimpled pressed too hard. From the spurting innards of the flame, ninjas came. With a puff, the flame was gone but the ninja's remained. Kiz counted twenty-seven.

Agent Chase ignored his questions and like a child fixated on the newest threat. "More friends of yours?" Chase remarked.

"These weren't in the Faerie Queen's briefing," Helligan pointed out.

And then the ninjas started killing people. The pedestrians huddling around the corners, afraid but unwilling to flee the scene. People who had kept their cellphones around to take videos of metahumans duking it out. They even sliced an old lady paralyzed a block down, who clutched her beloved poodle to her chest. Two young street urchin were decapitated while still huddling in in each other's arms as unable to take their eyes off the fight between Kiz and Constantine. A bike messenger, whose bike had been destroyed, who should have ran but couldn't, got a katana pushed through his chest. The ninja's cut through the lingering onlookers like a reaper harvesting autumn's wheat.

"No." Kiz said, his voice flat. He ignored the deaths around him. He refused to be distraction. To lose focus in a fight was death and failure. So he responded to Agent Chase, even though her questions were demeaning.

One of the ninjas ran towards Kiz, katana held high. "Kali Yuga!" Four more ninja's dashed towards Kiz, while six each went towards the DEO agents. The rest of the ninja's maimed the nearest pedestrians.

Kiz didn't move, he looked down at Constantine. "Yield!"

The closest ninja picked up speed, reaching into his green tunic and came out with a trio of ninja stars. The ninja brought his hand back and across his body. With a sudden burst of speed, his forearm flicked forwards. Before the stars could be released, Shanker emerged from his shadow. Her fangs sunk through the man's meager armor and into flesh. She bit and then disappeared back into the shadows. The ninja's right leg gave out before he could finish taking a breath. His momentum carried his body forward. His face slid along the pavement for a foot. His fallen body impaled upon the unreleased ninja stars.

"For Kobra!" Three of them yelled in unison, picking up speed towards Kiz.

Shanker's body swam through shadows. Her head peaked out of the shadow cast by one of the running ninjas. Her head snapped forward. She bit. Another ninja plummeted to the ground. Then another. Shanker dove through the shadows killing anything that came within ten feet of Kiz. The third ninja twisted, sensing something. It's katana sliced through his own shadow, three seconds too late. His body dropped. The last ninja coming at Kiz roared, "Kali!" He died before he could finish his statement.

"Do." Kiz's cold eyes never left Constantine's face. "You." His arm lifted Constantine higher into the air. "Yield?"

 

[WiredIn]

A fight on a bridge...how cliche...

Dakota City, Michigan.
********​

While most of the contiguous United States of America were experiencing an unseasonably warm winter, it was still cold in Dakota City.

Nearby Detroit had, in 2013, filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy by debt in U.S. history, and had become a relative ghost town with a population of less than 800,000. All of this overshadowed the fact that Dakota had been more or less teetering in and out of bankruptcy for the last 3 decades or so.

Some people on porches with rocking chairs, or pontificating in barbershops, would wistfully remember the "good old days" before the Paris Island accordion-door factory closed, but even those good old days hadn't been all that good. And they hadn't gotten better.

A stiff, cold, Michigan breeze whipped down the streets of Sadler, and a sense of relative peace and normalcy, however uneasy, rolled along with that breeze. Even the Bloods and Double-Ls were less at each others' throats than normal.

The American Flag flapped and shuddered over Ernest Hemingway High.

Neptune Park had a thin layer of frost on it that hadn't yet thawed under the light of a half-hearted Sun. Proprietors of what stores were still open in Avalon Mall were rolling up the security gates on their storefronts and welcoming the first trickle of customers.

In Royce Village, in the shadow of old-country immigrant housing, new-country drug dealers were conducting business of their own.

There was just barely enough traffic on the Paris Island Bridge that there was a traffic jam. But of course there was.

Just enough traffic that when half a dozen massive, mammoth-sized figures dropped out of nowhere, the screaming drivers and passengers had no place to run. Even when laughing with thunderbag lungs and hurling Buicks off of the side of the bridge, the monsters didn't clear enough room for mere humans to escape the carnage.

On either end of the bridge, ninjas descended out of flares of yellow-green light... baring blades and weaving in amongst the near-barren cityscape to wreak maximum havoc, teleporting here, teleporting there, leaving splashes of red and gristle in their wake.

Even a handful of the terrifying enrobed blood mages would materialize here and there, one of them commanding a horde of hissing, spitting snakes to attack an AA meeting at Emmanuel Greater Hope Baptist Church, another boiling the blood of a rabbi at Temple Beth Adonai... "NO GOD BUT GOD!"

There hadn't been this much chaos and horror inside these city limits since The Big Bang itself.

---Virgil's Lab---​

Virgil was leaning over a microscope as he often was at this time of day when the piercing headache hit. It was like his head had been shoved in a blender to make a little Virgil smoothie. Immediately he knew something was horribly wrong which was only reinforced by the dozens of alarms going off in his lab and more importantly Hardware's immediately emergency communication.

"We've got dozens of strange signatures all across the city. I've got reports of men rampaging through the city, killing anyone and everyone. I've called everyone who can help. Get out there." Even before he had finished his sentence Virgil was already dressed and running for the door. Virgil rocketed off the roof of the building and his stomach boiled with rage. His city was burning. His city. These idiots were in for a rude awakening. Dakota wouldn't go easily.

---Paris Island Bridge---​

Virgil shot over the roofs of the smoking wrecks of cars piling up on the bridge. Screaming people streamed down the bridge away from the fight that was happening at its center. Several figures were taking on the hulking masses of inhuman monsters and droves of smaller emerald clad sword wielders, as for who was fighting, Virgil was actually a bit surprised. The massive form of Holocaust was clearly taking the brunt of the monstrosities attentions while who Virgil could only assume was Coil took on the sword wielders. Holocaust appeared to be holding himself well enough but coil was clearly struggling with the shear number and speed of her adversaries.

Virgil flew in close and leaped off his flying disc and in one smooth motion he used it to smash the back of one of the sword wielder's heads. "Thought you could use some help." Virgil twirled his Bo-Staff and struck out at another emerald clad foe, missing hi by miles.

"Oh look everyone's favorite bug zapper chose to join us." Her words came breathlessly and it was clear she was starting to tire as she continued to lash out at anyone who strayed too close with the many lengths of chain that coiled in the air around her.

"I do prefer Static you know." Virgil lashed out with his Bo-Staff and pushed an assailant away before dashing forward and pressing his hand to the assailants chest. He dashed away as fast as he had gone in, smiling as the assailant stuck to the floor as if glued in place. "You know im sure i've seen this all in a movie once. Bridge fights really are cliche."

"I'm so sorry our choice of battle ground disappoints you Bug Zapper. She lashed out again, viciously pulling one of their attackers towards her by the neck before launching him over the side of the bridge.

Virgil scowled, "Where did they all come from?" Before Coil got to answer Holocausts massive frame was thrown unceremoniously down the bridge.

When he skidded to a halt and flipped to his feat he was clearly angry, furious really, as little fires began to sprout up all around him. "I'll rip out your fucking spine for that." He roared and barreled through a squad of green clad men and slammed into the offending monstrosity. The pair collided with one of the bridge supports and the entire structure shuddered and swayed and with another roar of anger he smashed the monsters face repeatedly into the concrete support until its face looked like a slab of hamburger meat. With a groan Holocaust heaved it over the railing and seemed quite pleased with the audible splash it made.

Virgil frowned slightly, Holocaust was a brute and an uncontrollable one at that. Virgil wasn't sure if he was comfortable allowing him free-reign in this fight, Holocaust was too unpredictable. Virgil shook his head and set his jaw, what needed to be done to save the city. Ends justify the means. He stowed his Bo-Staff and the familiar and menacing crackle of energy filled the air around him and arcs of electricity sparked off of him. He shot a wave of electricity towards a group of sword wielders and watched as the ones who simply were not fast enough topple over in convulsions as their nervous systems went haywire. He kept up his assault sending bolts of electricity and waves of energy at groups while Coil kept them off of him. Holocaust, enraged as he was, was making quick work of the monstrosities now. Each one was either being thrown into the water below or simply beaten until the stopped getting up which Holocaust was clearly enjoying too much.

The fight seemed to be going well but the night was still young and the fight was far from over...

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

Boston, Massachusetts.
********​

M.I.T. was a bastion of futurism. Many a bright mind had come through here that had gone on to genius accomplishments.

And yet for all their forward-thinking, they hadn't seen this coming.

Simmons Hall was teetering in moments.

The Infinite Corridor, the spine of the main campus, found itself snapped in several places.

The iconic Great Dome of Building 10 found itself half-caved-in, shattering the intricate oculus skylight that had only been reopened 3 years prior after being shut for 70 years...

...MIT Police frantically scrambled to secure the on-campus Nuclear Research Reactor...

MIT's motto was Mens at Manus, "Mind and Hand."

But now the greatest minds of a generation were faced with fists that held gleaming swords... or fists the size of boulders that could shatter mountains...

...and their minds alone were not nearly enough to overcome these hands.

Carin's day had started out beautifully. It had been another pleasant morning. Well sure it had been freezing but the sun was at least shining at it had not been snowing. The whole college had been covered in a light covering of course, about a foot deep, but all the walks had been kept clear and salted so there was no danger of slipping and truth to tell she actually loved it.

She didn't have any early classes so she had stayed rugged up in bed, enjoying the warmth and had only got up to have a shower and grab breakfast. She was still lazing around in her pajamas when she started to hear the screams.

At first she thought it was just some people having fun in the showers, but then more and more people started screaming and the pitch was not right. This was not screams of fun but of terror. Looking out her window she saw people running, then people wearing yellow and green and waving sword's descended on them, cutting them down.

She was paralyzed for a whole second before she ran into her room and changed into a costume she had kept hidden for far too long. Looking down she grimaced. It was also green and yellow and she just hoped that people were not going to mistake her as being with these people.

Dashing outside in the blink of an eye she saw one of the sword wielding men about to attack a young man. Running across the courtyard at super speed, she grabbed the young man, moved him out of harms way, came back to the attacker, hit him in the jaw, gut, groin and jaw again and then stopped.

Time resumed it's normal flow and the young man's scream cut off as he realized he was safe for now, and the attacker crumpled in a heap knocked out by Carin's punches.

Looking at the man she grinned. "Run to safety, I will take care of these jerks," she told him as she scanned the area noticing several more of the men.

Picking up the sword she tested it's weight and smiled. She debated for about half a second about using the sharp side and then took off reversing the blade. Everywhere the green blur went, another warrior crumpled to the ground thanks to a well placed blow to the head. At the speed she was traveling it didn't take much to knock them out, in fact it took more concentration to actually not cave their skulls in.

Soon she had cleared the area, but looking further afield she noticed that the rest of the campus was under serious threat. She was about to zoom off when she heard a crackle behind her. Turning she could actually see a man start to materialize in the square, then another, and another.

Cursing she began to take them out before they could get their bearings, but she knew it was only a stop gap measure. If someone didn't take out wherever they were teleporting from then this could be a never ending fight.

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

Flashback

Connor smiled as she showed off by pulling a hand stand and riding off. Okay so she wanted to play a bit, well two could play at that game.

Gunning his engine he caught up with her and nodded at her, actually smiling behind his visor and gave her a small salute with three fingers. Then he checked that he still had space and hooked his legs under his handle bars and laid right back along his bike after drawing his bow and one arrow.

Gauging the wind he shot it down the road and casually waited, then raised his hand and caught it easily. Looking over at her he sat back up and hooked his bow back into the carrier on his handle bars and indicated by gesturing down the road that it was her turn again.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Bedfellows Never Stranger.

New York.
********​

"No draws." Kiz responded despite the gleaming handgun aimed at his head from half a block away. "Yield or I will pound your face into pulp and tatters."

"Right," Constantine chuckled morbidly with a wheeze, and then winced at the agony both sounds caused him. "Fhought you might say that."

>>It threatens, oh Great One. Kills it, we will!<<
>>Not yet, my love. Above upon the roof top is the Moon Blade, let not these pigeons trouble you. Feast upon memory. Go now, my love.<<

Shanker reared up over the hilt of the Moon Blade and snapped forward, swallowing the sword whole.

Shanker would find in The Moonblade a great feast of memory indeed. The only present occupant of the blade was a being called The Eremite-- an alternate-future version of Mister E who had traveled to the end of this timeline in an unsuccessful attempt to commit a grievous preemptive sin and had been forced to walk back to the present "the long way." He was old beyond reckoning and while his blackened, stained, shriveled neuropsychic aura was useless now for magic, he retained billions of years of experiences ripe for Shanker's, well, shanking.

He would have proven a torturous cellmate indeed for Kiz, so ultimately it was for everyone's good that Constantine's desperate bid to trap Kiz in the blade had proven similarly unsuccessful.

"What of the Rotinonsionni? The Anishinaabe? Others of the First Nation?" Kiz's eyes remained fixed on Constantine. "You are hypocrites."

Chase blinked in surprise, not grokking Kiz' meaning, at first.

But, hesitantly, Helligan spoke up. "He's got a point, historically. Back in The Obsidian Age--"

Chase scowled. "Hel."

"Right," Helligan nodded, not the right time to empathize with the suspect's immortal perspective on the sins of colonialism. "Sorry."

Nine gouts of yellow-green fire spurted through reality, interrupting Chase and Kiz' conversation. The globs of flame swelled and then popped like a pimpled pressed too hard. From the spurting innards of the flame, ninjas came. With a puff, the flame was gone but the ninja's remained. Kiz counted twenty-seven.

One of the ninjas ran towards Kiz, katana held high. "Kali Yuga!" Four more ninja's dashed towards Kiz, while six each went towards the DEO agents. The rest of the ninja's maimed the nearest pedestrians.

"Son of a bitch," Chase snarled, as the massacre began. "WEAPONS FREE!"

She and Helligan immediately reprioritized targets, choosing to defend themselves and the populace as best as they could.

Helligan had time to fire four times before the ninjas reached her, taking out four of them with quickness and efficiency, and she tried to backpedal in an attempt to get distance on the other two--

--but Chase was the daughter of The Acro-Bat, for better or for worse, she fired quicker faster better stronger, all six of her attackers went down as she wielded her two guns like a character in a John Woo film. The silver, sleek handgun would fire a stream of crystalline blue-white energies that would reduce its target to a frozen mass... and then the light on the side would change from blue to red, and her next shot would unleash a blast of fiery plasma. The weapon sucked the heat out of its victim and used that to charge a pyrotechnic shot... having expended that charge, it would go blue with the next shot after that, storing up heat for the next fireblast, and so on.

The squints at The DEO would call this "The Robert Frost."

Her Colt, meanwhile, shot run-of-the-mill bullets.

She used both of these weapons with ridiculous, near-mythic skill, Roland Deschain himself would express that Chase, for all her daddy issues, had not forgotten the face of her father.

So swiftly did she defeat her encroaching six tangos that with that same ruthless swiftness, not missing a beat nor batting an eye, she swept her Colt left and fired twice and took out the two ninjas who had closed in on her partner, saving her life.

Kiz didn't move, he looked down at Constantine. "Yield!"

Even as she and Sky-High switched to frantically defending near-helpless civilians, Chase's highly-trained battlefield awareness saw that even though Kiz was locked in on his mystical opponent any man who threw themselves against The Void-Binder would die a gurgling, rattling death before they reached him.

She couldn't deny the pragmatic value of having a force that potent on their side rather than against them given the current unwinnable scenario.

"Do." Kiz's cold eyes never left Constantine's face. "You." His arm lifted Constantine higher into the air. "Yield?"

"John!" Helligan bellowed, who saw the big picture, as ever, way before Chase had. "Favor's done! Mischief managed!"

John's head lolled in Helligan's direction.

And he laughed another wincing laugh.

"Yeah. I yield."

"Well-played, yeh bald-arse bellend."

"I fucking yield."

He coughed up more blood, and slumped like a puppet with his strings cut.

"Fffff..." he wheezed.

Then finished: "...Pharamond."

And with that invocation of the god of travel, John vanished yet again, like he was a mote in the eye of The Universe and it had just blinked him away.

"Kiz the Void Binder!" Agent Chase called his name, yet again, guns akimbo as she mowed down ninjas on either side of her before they could reach soft targets. "Having evaluated your case and the testimony of your associates and our consultant, I am prepared to offer you a field deputization and immunity in the case of The New York Powerball in exchange for your assistance defending this realm from this clear and present danger. Interested?"

 

[Varshanka]

Flashback

Lowering back down, she straddled the gleaming gas tank. Shifting so slowly it was almost impossible she slowly stood, never giving a shake or missed motion. Until she was standing on the gas tank, her arms spread – cross-like- Then she took a step back, her feet resting on the tail of her seat, and she nodded to him as the front tire of the bike left the ground.

Giving him a mocking bow she somehow altered the course of the bike, and drove straight up the curve of a bridge, riding the railing up and over the bridge.

Speeding down the other side she was back in the seat, much like a normal biker. But her jacket was gone and she wore instead a black leather vest and not a damned thing under it. No shirt, no bikini top. Nothing separated her skin from that tight leather.

Giving him a soft nod, she indicated it was his turn.

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

Flashback

Connor's mouth fell open under his helmet and not just at her new choice of wardrobe, (although it was bloody nice).

How the hell was he supposed to compete with that? That was just not humanly possible. He shook his head and shrugged knowing he had to do something. He definitely wasn't going to admit defeat although he knew whatever he did just wasn't going to be up to that standard.

Thinking he looked ahead and smiled. Quickly he pulled three arrows from his quiver and then did a handstand on his handlebars. Then he jumped up and did a 180 degree spin and grabbed his bars again so he was looking down the road.

He nocked the arrows all at once and then just at the right time he let them loose. They shot away and three signs, two on the left and one on the right of the road were pierced by them.

Then flipping back over the bars he landed back in his seat and resumed riding. He did wobble a little but was able to gather it back up and then turned to her. He shrugged and gestured to her. He was about at his limit and knew it. If she pulled something else spectacular off he was going to just going to bow down to her.

 

[kizkiz]

New York: Kiz+Shanker, Constantine, Chase, Helligan

New York
**********​

"I fucking yield." Constantine coughed up more blood, and slumped like a puppet with his strings cut.

Kiz nodded, releasing his hold on Constantine's shirt, letting the man drop to the ground in a puddle of flesh. Kiz was aware of what was happening. The ninjas moved through folds in space, warping reality with the power of the Naga. His sense for such things extended out enough that he knew this was not a directed attack at him.

"Fffff..." Constantine wheezed. Then finished by saying, "...Pharamond." And with that invocation of the god of travel, John vanished yet again, like he was a mote in the eye of The Universe and it had just blinked him away.

"Pharamond," Kiz said, frowning. He hadn't been aware any of the old gods remained unmolested with their names still holding power. He shrugged, looking to the other side of the street where something had been left by Constantine. Something terrible that the Time Lords would want.

"Kiz the Void Binder!" Agent Chase called his name, yet again, guns akimbo as she mowed down ninjas on either side of her before they could reach soft targets. "Having evaluated your case and the testimony of your associates and our consultant, I am prepared to offer you a field deputization and immunity in the case of The New York Powerball in exchange for your assistance defending this realm from this clear and present danger. Interested?"

Kiz squatted down, lifting up the Ace of Winchester. He hefted it in his hands, feeling the weight of the sacrifices, the strange harmony of celestial and demonic essences. He wasn't keen on trekking back to his Sanctuary to deposit this nor spend the time to reattach his Sanctuary nearby.

"I have already assisted in slaying five assailants." Kiz made an off hand gesture at a ninja two blocks down hacking a father's arm off while the rest of the father's body curled around his daughter's tiny, crying body. "That one too my love." A great black snake reared up out of Kiz's shadow, titled it's head. A long purple tongue hissed into the air, then she dove back into the shadows. Five seconds later the ninja fell to the ground, leaving the father alive if in danger of bleeding to death in the next ten minutes. "Now six."

He looked up at Chase, his cold eyes never leaving hers. "I will kill or incapacitate any being that is threatening to kill, maim, or dismember another within the vicinity of this city. I may, at my sole discretion take the fight outside the bounds of the city if in doing so I deem it necessary. I will continue the fight against those who threaten in such a manner until the next full moon at which point I will continue on at my sole discretion but without any obligation or duty either implied or explicit to you or the government you represent. Further, you will grant immunity to all involved including me, my Herald, Mary who you still have in detention, Dr. James Patrick "Chicago" Lee, and Dr. Lee's personal assistant Linda. You will release Mary from bondage and prosecution. You will keep their identities and relationship to me secret."

Kiz gripped the stock of the Ace of Winchester in his left hand, pointing the barrel at the ground. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with it until he could put it into his Sanctuary. His right hand came out for a handshake.

Three blocks down the other way, a man in billowing black robes materialized. Besides him two ninjas injected themselves with something. Their bodies exploded and reformed into colossal monstrosities. A kin to flesh golems, Kiz suspected. The pair of juggernauts started loping down the street, picking up speed, heading straight for Kiz, Chase, and Helligan.

Kiz gaze remained fixed on Chase. "Let us swear if the terms and provisions meet your approval."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Tea for Two. (Rose/M'gann) (tags for Karan, apologies to Morrison)

New York.
Earlier.
********​

Alix was packing.

"I can't express how grateful I am that you've let me stay with you," she explained as she folded her bright red and white uniform into a gym bag. "The way things are, I couldn't pay the bills, otherwise. With that in mind, I'll be back from Zenith City when I get through with this insane bodyguard job I accepted."

Rose grinned at her softly, hugging her clutch to herself. "You. At a superhero convention. May wonders never cease."

Alix chuckled wryly. "It's probably more for the fanboys than for the heroes. Maybe a few D-Listers? Me and a guy named Big Thunder are going to be watching out for a mermaid actress named Suli Stellamaris."

"Ooh," Rose quickly pointed out, "don't let her hear you call her a 'mermaid.' Say she's Atlantean. I read somewhere terms like 'mermaid' and 'merman' are like racial slurs in their culture. Worse than fish jokes."

Alix' eyebrows climbed her silversteel forehead. "Oh! Whoa. Good catch!"

And then she paused. "You're wearing your going-out top. Wait, are you-- what time is it-- do you have a date?"

Rose hesitated, and turned a little pink. "Well."

And then a knock came at the door, and Rose turned and moved to the door faster than Alix had ever seen her move-- faster than she had seen most anyone move, come to think of it.

When Rose wasn't The Martian Manhuntress, she wasn't tall and well-endowed with skin like the moon. She was just Rose Walker. Red hair with a forelock bleached blonde, presently dressed in a black top and a black skirt, her new smartwatch prominently on one wrist.

But she still had those powers. If she wanted them.

And thus with preternatural speed and grace she reached the door before Alix could blink, and swung it open.

And standing in the hallway was the most beautiful, athletic-looking blonde woman that Alix had ever seen. Her all-silver eyes widened.

"Uh, hi," Rose grinned sheepishly-- Alix blinked-- was Rose full-on blushing now?

...huh.

"This is... this is me. I'm... I'm her. I'm me."

...that was a Hell of a weird way to answer the door.

Wait, was this an Internet relationship? Alix winced a bit, considering the dalliance-cum-obsession that had been Lance's... undoing. But no, no, of course, not every long-distance romance was like that, she tried to douse the bad taste in her mouth.

"This is Alix, she's my roommate, she's my friend. Alix, this is Karan, my, um."

Rose gave Alix a quick, adorable, thoroughly-abashed wave.

"Have a safe trip, okay? Get me a souvenir from Zenith. Booster Gold is always at those things, get me his autograph!"

Alix stared in wonder as the door swung closed, then called after the two women: "I want her home by a reasonable hour, you hear me?"

...huh.

Not Much Later.
********​

It helped that Karan was already familiar with Sundollar Coffee. And Sundollar Coffee was everywhere.

And they sat there with the cool sunlight of midday February New York streaming in through the storefront window, their teas wafting steam up into the air between them.

"I..." Rose hesitated, not sure where she was going with this. With any of this, much less that sentence. She had never been in a hurry to define her sexuality. But was she... gay? No, she had been with men, she had been attracted to men-- was she gay enough? For this, whatever this was? It was all so complicated.

"...I hope you're not disappointed. By how I look. When I'm not her."

"You made... you made such a big deal about how I was Aphrodite this and Helia this and-- well, that's not always what I look like. So. I'm sorry for that. I didn't mean to... false-advertise."

 

[ChasNicollette]

I am inclined to acquiesce to your request.

New York.
********​

Kiz squatted down, lifting up the Ace of Winchester. He hefted it in his hands, feeling the weight of the sacrifices, the strange harmony of celestial and demonic essences. He wasn't keen on trekking back to his Sanctuary to deposit this nor spend the time to reattach his Sanctuary nearby.

"I have already assisted in slaying five assailants." Kiz made an off hand gesture at a ninja two blocks down hacking a father's arm off while the rest of the father's body curled around his daughter's tiny, crying body. "That one too my love." A great black snake reared up out of Kiz's shadow, titled it's head. A long purple tongue hissed into the air, then she dove back into the shadows. Five seconds later the ninja fell to the ground, leaving the father alive if in danger of bleeding to death in the next ten minutes. "Now six."

"Are we keeping score?" Chase retorted, though they both knew Kiz was damned impressive. "Because I'd say you're falling behind."

Her gesture was less off-hand. A squint of one eye. A steady hand.

A quick squeeze of a trigger. An impossible shot.

And ice encrusted the man's wounded arm, a cryokinetic tourniquet. Getting him out of danger, at least for now, at least of bleeding to death.

He looked up at Chase, his cold eyes never leaving hers. "I will kill or incapacitate any being that is threatening to kill, maim, or dismember another within the vicinity of this city. I may, at my sole discretion take the fight outside the bounds of the city if in doing so I deem it necessary. I will continue the fight against those who threaten in such a manner until the next full moon at which point I will continue on at my sole discretion but without any obligation or duty either implied or explicit to you or the government you represent. Further, you will grant immunity to all involved including me, my Herald, Mary who you still have in detention, Dr. James Patrick "Chicago" Lee, and Dr. Lee's personal assistant Linda. You will release Mary from bondage and prosecution. You will keep their identities and relationship to me secret."

...The Void Binder drove a hard bargain.

But they were backed into the tightest of corners.

And he wasn't asking anything that Chase wouldn't've pitched for in his place.

Kiz gripped the stock of the Ace of Winchester in his left hand, pointing the barrel at the ground. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with it until he could put it into his Sanctuary. His right hand came out for a handshake.

Chase's Colt clicked empty. She was out of 9mm clips. Already? Damn.

She dropped the gun and slung The Robert Frost from her right hand to her now-empty left.

Three blocks down the other way, a man in billowing black robes materialized. Besides him two ninjas injected themselves with something. Their bodies exploded and reformed into colossal monstrosities. A kin to flesh golems, Kiz suspected. The pair of juggernauts started loping down the street, picking up speed, heading straight for Kiz, Chase, and Helligan.

"Cameron!" Helligan shouted a warning, slapping her own last clip into her S&W.

It distantly occurred to Chase how rare it was that someone should use her first name.

Kiz gaze remained fixed on Chase. "Let us swear if the terms and provisions meet your approval."

Chase flexed the fingers of her empty right hand, and swung it up to clap her palm into Kiz'... his massive hand dwarfing her own.

"By the power invested me as an Agent of The Department, we have an accord."

The Robert Frost swung up to level at the oncoming mammoth-men and the bloodmage, though her right hand was still clasped with Kiz' and her eyes had not wavered from his.

"Don't make me regret this."