Justice League: The New Wave (IC)

[ChasNicollette]

Calling all Cars. (Hotline)

New York.
Now.
********​

As much as it pained Ruby Reed to admit it, she was not... actually... as young as she used to be.

Not that she needed the pain of admission on top of the hangover she was nursing.

"Jesus God," she mumbled to herself, slouching her way through Titans Tower dressed in a baggy plaid flannel shirt and board shorts. "Did somebody get the plate of that ute?"

She never used to get hangovers.

Taking a slug from a bottle of water, trying to rehydrate, she stuck her head into the monitor room.

There was a post-it note on the monitor bank, apparently she was on monitor duty today.

"Man, no wonder Cyborg left The Titans when he got invited to join the classic League," Ruby grunted. "This being on two teams shit is for the birds. Or maybe speedsters."

And a pang gripped her heart. Cyborg. Oh, Vic.

Slumping down into the seat at the desk, Ruby finished chugging her water and tossed it for the recycling bin. While she had trained quite hard over the last twenty years to be physically capable, sometimes those old nerd muscles just kicked in... the bottle struck the lip of the bin and fell away.

"Fuck."

Scowling and wishing her stomach would stop churning so she could eat something, take some Motrin, she checked the duty roster for the day.

Raven was out in California, on call but not strictly on duty.

Tim, Wally, Kon, and Kori had taken Tim's jet, The Redwing, to investigate some rumors of a Santa Priscan Venom plant being repurposed to produce a different, more dangerous serum.

Kaldur was--

--she didn't get to finish reading.

Alarms started blaring, and Ruby grabbed her skull with both hands as the noise and lights wreaked havoc on her hangover.

But when she recovered, her hands dropped from her head. "Oh. Sweet fucking Christ."

Emergency bands were full of it, TV and radio and social media aggregate search engines--

--and to top it all off--

"JUSTICE LEAGUE ALERT! JUSTICE LEAGUE ALERT!"

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

"PRIORITY ALPHA!"

Her watch started yelling at her. (She hadn't wanted to take a watch. The last thing she needed was Lex Luthor being able to GPS her whenever he wanted. But to be available for The Justice League, it was the best option.)

Yeah, this two-team shit was definitely for the birds.

She grabbed her H-Dial out of her pocket, thumbed the slide open.

Hesitated. She could Dial.

But what were the chances that she could get something useful out of The Dial? Like... something with speed, flight, 'porting, anything that could get her to Metropolis remotely in time? And if she didn't get anything like that? What if she got stuck like that for awhile, unable to reverse-Dial out of that form?

...no, she needed another way to get there.

Before she even realized she was moving, she was pounding down the stairwell towards the garage level at the bottom of The Tower.

When she got there, she found it... under a tarp.

Barely touched in years.

Not since Cyborg had left The Titans to join The League.

The T-Car.

Vic always built things to last, but it still surprised her when it rumbled reluctantly to life.

"C'mon, you beautiful old piece of obsolescence," Ruby grimaced, flexing her hands on the steering wheel. "Just you, me, and The Apricot."

The hover-jets weren't working, but the amphibi-conversion was, and after some initial chugging, The T-Car powered her out across the surface of The East River, carving a trough through the water.

When she reached the bank, the car automatically converted to land travel and roared her through the city streets--

--city streets fraught with dangers--

--ninjas and mammoth-men and spellcasters--

--she ran over more than a few ninjas with a grim determination, feeling them thud into the bumper and under the wheels, she tried not to think about it, these were killers, she had to stop them--

"GTA V got banned in Australia," she growled to herself as she hauled up onto the sidewalk to weave out of gridlocked, panicked traffic.

"But you snakey-ninja chaos-hard-onned bitches, we ain't in Australia."

 

[kizkiz]

New York: Kiz, Chase, Helligan

New York.
********​

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."

"Beneath the Void, we make this oath. May the oath breaker be thrice cursed." Kiz intoned, his words heavy and cold like the weight of a glacier bearing down upon them both. The air around them was gouged out by the Void. Like the space between the stars and the moment between breaths, sigils were spelled upon the flesh of creation in their absence of anything where they were. Their oath was registered within the Eld House of the Void, a right accorded to the Left Hand of the Void. The weight held long after the wounds upon creation's flesh scarred and healed, fading back to normalcy. "We are so bound."

Kiz turned his head, he tracked the details of Chase, Helligan, and the oncoming horrors from the peripheral of his vision. His lips tightened, and he shook his head. "Cameron, pin down the blood mage," he said, nodding to Chase. He brought the barrel of the Winchester, forged to kill demons by desperate men, up to his shoulder and tapped it there twice. It was too soon to trust the virtues of this pair over their greed for power, a power that an artifact like this could bring.

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

A faint smile graced Kiz's lips, "It's okay to let go, Agent Cameron." The right side of his face twisted higher in a full half-smile. Still he wasn't one to look away first. He enjoyed looking into her face. Her tiny hand in his wasn't unwelcome, but he doubted the agent's motivates for lingering so long.

The two goliath's tore through a city block in the time it took Kiz and Chase to utter a handful of sentences. The streets shook with the weight of their foot falls. A car that got too close to one was shouldered up through a lamp post, across the sidewalk, and through the side of the building.

"Don't make me regret this."

Kiz's smile trailed away. Those words burned. Betrayal was more common than dirt, but despite Constantine's faults, he found the man's grit endearing. Chase was as tenacious as a mad dog, and that was a trait he enjoyed. He mustered up that glimmer of a smile and said, "Queen Alexandrina Victoria said the same thing to me when we first met." Kiz paused and winked at Chase, "We got along quite well."

Without turning away from Chase, he tossed Helligan the Ace of Winchester. "Agent Hel, please watch this until I finish here."

 

[Varshanka]

Tea for Two. (Karan) (tags for Rose)

New York.
********​

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

"...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."

“Oh.. you thought I meant your face and body? You are a daughter of Aphrodite and Helia, in body and SOUL. By the grace of the Gemini you have two faces for the world of Man. Gaia’s strength, Athena’s courage, Speed of Hermia, Helia’s anger” and she added with a soft whisper, “and her hair.”

“But mostly I think you have Aphrodite’s soul. Her heart, her uncertainty with the world. But you will overcome. If you allow it.” Reaching out she touched Rose’s hand, she wanted her to ‘see’ the truth of her words. “I care not what face you have, it’s your soul I find most beautiful. You, not the skin upon the muscles or the bones. I care for that which makes up you. All of you.”

 

[Varshanka]

Flashback - (The Arrow)

Raising an eyebrow inside he helmet she gave him a small nod, then leaned back, molding her body to her bike. One leather booted foot caressing the accelerator as the other hooked around the gas tank – stabilizing her.

Laying back she lay a length of chain out on the ground, sparks snapped and writhed like living things, and with a twitch of her foot she accelerated. A blast of superheated fuel firing from the exhaust. And lighting.

A trail of fire followed the bike, and she popped a reverse wheelie, the tail of the bike rising up, the tire smoldering and catching fire as she rose higher and higher. And she was still laying on the bike, the chain multiplying until a fan of them, like soot covered metal wings spread out behind her.

As she rose up she kept rolling forward.. at eighty miles an hour.. a stream of fire following her.

And then she sat forward, her ass pressing back, changing the fulcrum point and slamming the back tire to the Earth. Looking over she gave him another nod. His turn.

 

[Varshanka]

The Rider - West Coast

Quiet.

Peaceful.

Serene.

Yeah it was bar with all the usual bar sounds. The clink of a glass on a wooden table, the jukebox in the corner pumping out crap from the eighties, a dart board, the roll and smack of billiard balls.

But there wasn’t any violence. This was a white collar bar. Embezzlement and cheating husbands/wives was the rule of the day here. Not her problem. Not her concern. Tipping back the glass with three fingers of Captain Morgan she moaned as it burned it’s way to her stomach. Not that she could get drunk. Not on this shit anyways. Maybe if it was amnesec laced with strychnine. Worm wood and arsenic. That might do it, at least until the other came forth and purged everything.

She’d had enough morphine pumped into her once to kill the Dodgers stadium on opening day. Hadn’t even slowed her down. But that was then and this was now.

Relaxing. Enjoying the quiet. Robin hood had been interesting. She still wasn’t sure about him. But maybe he’d make a viable.. ally. At least he had a nice body. Very athletic as well. Archery and hand to hand were fair to good. Melee weapons he sucked at.

Watching as the suit in the mirror approached her she just flipped him off, not even bothering to waste her time or effort on turning him down. Why did everyone thing she was a hooker here to get laid and paid?

Looking at her own reflection she saw the tight front tied leather vest of black cowhide, the short black leather side tied short shorts, and the thigh high black boots, no heel. Made chasing disgusting bastards hard. She’d been playing with her wardrobe again, when the Other wasn’t aware, or caring. Not that it’s presence wasn’t always visible. All she had to do was tilt her head just so, and she could see it’s eyes looking back at her over the rim of the sunglasses.

Two thousand sixteen years. Talk about life in prison. And the wait still wasn’t over.

The glass behind her exploded as screams filled the air. The Other, The Rider, didn’t even pause. Rolling off the bar stool she ran for the front, her skimpy hooker wear flashing into molten plate and chain. Exploding through the front door she was in action before the others could recognize she was there.

A Soul Chain forged in the pits of Doom sheared through human made steel swords. Her chains snapped and writhed as they pierced attackers, ashing them in seconds.

Corpses of innocent victims, life blood still pumping from hack and slash wounds, littered the ground like it was 1352 all over again.

VENGEANCE!!!!

Roaring the Rider Laid waste to the murdering bastards around it, chains and sword wrecking havoc on the screaming hordes of green garbed maniacs.

Clearing a space The Rider looked on as several of the murderers injected themselves with something and attacked.

******

Brickwork turned to dust as the Rider exploded through the wall, and not of it’s own power.

Climbing to her feet Danni rolled her neck, resetting shattered vertebrae as the Riders rage grew.

 

[ChasNicollette]

"When They Come for Me," by Linkin Park. (setup for Justice Leaguers)

Metropolis.
Bessolo and Sullivan.
Soon.
********​

As Justice Leaguers arrived at NJLHQ in Metropolis, they would find their headquarters under siege.

Happily, it was not undefended.

A squad of SCU Officers armed with metaSWAT gear joined an array of the multidroids from inside the HQ, fending off the encroaching ninjas with a mix of conventional and plasma weaponry.

At the front of their front line was Captain James "Guardian" Harper, helmet and shield gleaming gold as he tirelessly fought to take out solo nearly as many enemies as his entire back-up was taking out collectively.

...that front line hesitated as a mammoth-man, one of the Ajagar, dropped like a wrecking ball into the middle of Sullivan and began rampaging along it, charging towards the HQ with destruction aforethought.

The Guardian did not hesitate.

He ran forward to meet it.

The Ajagar's fist powered down to turn The Guardian into pulp and tatters, but that police-badge shield swung up, he braced it with both arms--

--the collision rang like a church-bell shot by a cannon and the shockwave shattered nearby windows but the shield did not break and neither did Captain Harper.

Grim, roaring, the mammoth-man raised his other fist and brought it crashing down...

...but The Guardian jumped back, let the fist crash crater-deep into the road surface...

...and bounded up the mammoth's hulking frame, swinging up to land on the Ajagar's collarbone...

--in a lightning instant, before the beast-man could react, Harper took his indestructible shield in both hands and drove the pointed end deep into the exposed, scarlet musculature right at the neck with all his respectable might.

He did not injure it overmuch. But he caused it pain.

The Ajagar RRRRROOOOOOARED, craggy jaw open wide in fury and unexpected agony, clenching its fists at its sides.

"TURPIN!" Harper snapped.

And Sergeant Dan Turpin was waiting and ready, a sonic grenade dialed to maximum in his hand, and without missing a beat he hurled it in a high arc...

...Harper caught it in the air, crammed it in the Ajagar's open mouth, and slammed his shield up against that orafice.

The sonic grenade went off inside the Ajagar's mouth, resonating its thick skull, rattling its teeth, nearly shattering its eardrums...

...the shockwave blew Guardian back to land in a crouch in front of the front line, his shield still humming and his arm almost numb, his ears ringing...

...the mammoth-man teetered, clutching its head with both hands, but stayed standing...

...it wobbled...

Guardian reached up and gestured sharply forward with a pointed pair of fingers.

"ESCUDERO!"

And Detective Lupé Teresa Leocadio-Escudero stepped forward, dropped to one knee beside Harper, shouldering a massive plasma cannon courtesy of LuthorCorp, and unleashed an azure blast that split the air...

...she hit the Ajagar square in the face and knocked him half a block and he didn't get up again.

Staggering to his feet to smack away another Blackadder ninja with his shield, Guardian would signal to the approaching Justice Leaguers that they should get inside. "Go, go, go! We'll hold the line! Get to the hangar deck, get in the air, they'll brief you in transit!"

If they entered by the front doors, there would be waiting another reserve line of multidroids, and Natasha Irons. Natasha looked nervous as hell, and wearing goggles and an exo-waldo set of gauntlets, boots, and bracing servos that let her heft a massive steel hammer with both hands.

Serling was nearby, too, but she was fearfully manning an emergency lockdown console in case both lines of defense failed.

"It's okay," Natasha would nod to them, though she seemed perhaps-forgivably unconvinced. "We got this. You got the big fish to fry. Go!"

Waiting upstairs would be, of course, the Javelin that Nightwing had procured, engines already whining to life.

Places to go, people to beat.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Across this New Divide.

New York.
********​

"Beneath the Void, we make this oath. May the oath breaker be thrice cursed." Kiz intoned, his words heavy and cold like the weight of a glacier bearing down upon them both. The air around them was gouged out by the Void. Like the space between the stars and the moment between breaths, sigils were spelled upon the flesh of creation in their absence of anything where they were. Their oath was registered within the Eld House of the Void, a right accorded to the Left Hand of the Void. The weight held long after the wounds upon creation's flesh scarred and healed, fading back to normalcy. "We are so bound."

Chase was tough. And she'd seen some shit, the job and upbringing she'd had. But that... sensation. The sense of spacetime being rewritten and written upon... the sense of gravity itself rippling around them as Fundamental Forces bent and flexed and genuflected to the import of their speech.

And suddenly it dawned on Chase just how inked in blood a promise was to a man who could take damned souls and trap them in his own to make them do good for a change.

And suddenly it dawned on Chase that she'd shaken that hand and oh fuck what had she gotten herself into oh well too late now.

Kiz turned his head, he tracked the details of Chase, Helligan, and the oncoming horrors from the peripheral of his vision. His lips tightened, and he shook his head. "Cameron, pin down the blood mage," he said, nodding to Chase.

Concurrent development. Check.

A faint smile graced Kiz's lips, "It's okay to let go, Agent Cameron." The right side of his face twisted higher in a full half-smile. Still he wasn't one to look away first. He enjoyed looking into her face. Her tiny hand in his wasn't unwelcome, but he doubted the agent's motivates for lingering so long.

Yeah, she wasn't trying to get a date, here. Besides, wasn't he with that Mary lady Marx had been grilling earlier? Chase really was basically married to her work.

But she wasn't uncute. And neither was Kiz, if we were being perfectly glandularly honest.

She just wasn't letting even a handshake as big and worldbending as Musashi's Fifth Ring distract her from the fact that they were surrounded by tangos that could tear them and this city to shreds.

The two goliath's tore through a city block in the time it took Kiz and Chase to utter a handful of sentences. The streets shook with the weight of their foot falls. A car that got too close to one was shouldered up through a lamp post, across the sidewalk, and through the side of the building.

"Don't make me regret this."

Kiz's smile trailed away. Those words burned. Betrayal was more common than dirt, but despite Constantine's faults, he found the man's grit endearing. Chase was as tenacious as a mad dog, and that was a trait he enjoyed. He mustered up that glimmer of a smile and said, "Queen Alexandrina Victoria said the same thing to me when we first met." Kiz paused and winked at Chase, "We got along quite well."

"Uh-huh," Chase squinted one eye at Kiz. "Well, I heard she was not amused. And it's 'Chase.' I'm not a damned Continuum character."

Without turning away from Chase, he tossed Helligan the Ace of Winchester. "Agent Hel, please watch this until I finish here."

Several things happened in rapid succession, here.

Startled but game, Helligan managed to reach out and snag The Ace of Winchesters in mid-air with one hand. She stared in awe at the beauty and the power of the gun-- even she could feel it. "Woh, J.C. Concealed carry, much?"

Squinting that eye and tilting her head, Chase fired The Robert Frost, unleashing the small fireburst of heat that it had picked up from freezing that man's injury.

The Bestowed bloodmage hissed, and with a wave of a tattooed hand warped space sufficiently that the fireburst instead exploded harmlessly against the forearm of one Ajagar mammoth-man.

As the Robert Frost's indicator clicked back over from red to blue, Chase almost smirked.

And unleashed a magic of her own.

For tiny fractional hiccups she could exert her own metagenetic gift and briefly disrupt the superhuman powers of the enemies she faced.

And thus.

It was nothing on the order of the strange runic barometrics Kiz invoked with the shake of his hand. But it was a humming field that slithered through the crawlspaces beneath the floorboards of reality, momentarily seeping up and around that Bestowed.

Like a jamming signal, a microburst metapower EMP.

For that instant, the Bestowed found himself severed from the mystical forces that enabled him to wreak such havoc on behalf of his Lord and Savior.

His eyes widened.

Chase pulled her trigger again and the blue-white stream poured into the bloodmage. Thermodynamically sucking the heat out of him and the air around him.

Turning him into a humanoid popsicle right there in the middle of the napalm-baked street.

"Pinned," Chase confirmed.

The Robert Frost blinked back to red.

 

[ChasNicollette]

I just want someone to say to me "I'll always be there when you wake." (Rose/M'gann)

New York.
A Few Heartbeats from The Present.
********​

“Oh.. you thought I meant your face and body? You are a daughter of Aphrodite and Helia, in body and SOUL. By the grace of the Gemini you have two faces for the world of Man. Gaia’s strength, Athena’s courage, Speed of Hermia, Helia’s anger”

Staring down into her teacup, Rose shifted awkwardly at this praise, these comparisons. She was mostly over her agoraphobia these days, she'd come a long way, but certain social interactions, particularly effusive compliments, she never knew how to handle that. Never could believe them.

and she added with a soft whisper, “and her hair.”

But she smiled softly at that, and glanced back up at Karan, searching her face for assurance of sincerity. She liked that.

Hair like the sun. There was a webcomic she liked where one of the characters called the redhead protagonist "Fire-Hair Girl," she'd always liked that name.

“But mostly I think you have Aphrodite’s soul. Her heart, her uncertainty with the world. But you will overcome. If you allow it.”

That was a strange way of thinking, if Rose had ever heard one.

She'd read various interpretations of Aphrodite since she'd been little but one thing had always stuck out-- how everyone desired her. All her life, Rose had been hit on, crushed on, asked out, by even the strangest of people.

Zelda had asked Rose, apropos of nothing, for one last pity screw even as Zelda crumbled to pieces under AIDS' terrible death sentence. Rose had wincingly declined.

Aphrodite's soul...

...it was too uncannily real, and the idea gave her a shiver.

Reaching out she touched Rose’s hand, she wanted her to ‘see’ the truth of her words. “I care not what face you have, it’s your soul I find most beautiful. You, not the skin upon the muscles or the bones. I care for that which makes up you. All of you.”

There it was. The tactile link made the psychic stuff easier, interpersonal psychometry. And in that synaptic contact she felt the sincerity that she'd been searching for in Karan's sapphic sapphire eyes.

"We've known each other like five minutes," Rose murmured, slipping her fingers in between Karan's, interlacing the digits. "How can you possibly know my soul? I don't even know my soul. Some mornings I wake up and I feel like I've been reincarnated from another planet. Like in Babylon 5. Can that even happen? Can reincarnations jump planets?"

She shook her head, all this nonsense rhetorical philosophy messing with her somewhat-dented sanity. She leaned forward and touched her forehead to Karan's, breathing in the scent of her.

"I don't know about souls but I know you're beautiful. And I know I don't want to screw this up."

She took a breath.

Steadied herself.

And just... tried to go on impulse for once, never mind the times that impulse living had betrayed her before... broken her heart...

...tried to tilt her head to kiss Karan.

An Ajagar dropped from the sky outside and crashlanded on a car parked on the street before the storefront, the shock of the impact and the fiery detonation of the gas tank blasting in through that panoramic plate-glass window and turning the Sundollar Coffee into a little piece of Hell.

The fire wreathed the air around the two women and Rose felt her skin boil and hair ignite as she screamed.

 

[kizkiz]

New York: Kiz+Shanker, Chase, and Killigan

New York
**********​

Chase pulled her trigger again and the blue-white stream poured into the bloodmage. Thermodynamically sucking the heat out of him and the air around him. Turning him into a humanoid popsicle right there in the middle of the napalm-baked street. "Pinned," Chase confirmed. The Robert Frost blinked back to red.

Kiz gave a dry chuckle. He wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of exposing his back to his new allies. “Well done, Agent Chase.”

The mammoths continued without pause. They were picking up speed. The street shook. Kiz turned so that he stood abreast with Chase, pivoting so that Agent Helligan wasn’t behind him either. Both agents wielded a powerful artifact that could cause him considerable damage, he wanted to be prepared for all eventualities. He’d been betrayed by his oldest friends and long time acquaintances that he didn’t give much stock into these two.

As Kiz waited, watching the mammoths approach, he took careful catalog of their movements. He assessed how they responded to streets not designed to withstand the impact of their passage. Cracks formed in the pavement. Abandoned cars got in their way. Lamp posts fell. Windows shattered. Through it all, the mammoths remained fixed upon Kiz. Like two charging rhinoceros, once set in motion they just picked up momentum and ran in a straight line to their target. They were midway through the second block.

“Agent Hel, if you please?”

And since he had allies who could use and enemies that wouldn’t respond to additional information, Kiz telegraphed his plans. “Shanker my love?”

The midnight black and bruised purple snake rose out of his shadow. Her black eyes impossible to read. Her body caressed up Kiz’s right thigh, along his broad back, and a portion of her body came to a rest upon his shoulders. “Yesss?” She hissed. “Great One?” Her mouth was inches from his ear. Her fangs were moist with killing poison. Her tongue came within a hair of tickling Kiz’s left ear.

Kiz reached up and massaged the back of her head with his sausage sized thumb. He showed no fear, and after two thousand years he felt no fear towards Shanker. If anything, he felt depressed that something as magnificent and terrifying as a god killing serpent an inch from his face was mundane. “Double strikes on both of those monstrosities.” Kiz raised his right fore finger and gestured at the oncoming mammoths.

“Asss the Great One comandsss.” Her voice was a whispered hiss. Her head dived down over Kiz’s shoulder, along his chest, between his legs, and disappeared into the shadow cast behind Kiz.

He moved his forefinger, liked he’d dipped it in the blackest of black paints. As he sketched five glyphs in the air, they formed an artistic, circular pattern. They hung there before his face like cookie cutter cut outs upon the skin of creation.

Shanker emerged from the shadows of the left mammoth. It had cast off a gender when its body was torn apart, swelling and reconstituting like invasive cancer. It’s shadow was large enough that Shanker didn’t need to move. She struck as fast as a man could blink. Once. Twice. She hit the popliteal artery located in the back of each knee just inside the thigh. The purpose of the popliteal artery was to distribute oxygenated blood to all the regions around the knee. It’s a nasty pressure point if shin kicked in the Muay Thai fashion. She hit with the force of a hundred mile an hour baseball, but the mammoths were too large to be deterred by the impact alone. Her fangs, however, could pierce most anything. The venom she deposited in both the left and right popliteal artery was enough to kill a normal man, but the mammoths were stronger than two men.

The first mammoth bellowed in pain as the poison killed at the cellular level, spurned on by the spurting pressure of the popliteal artery. That artery worked with all its might to push blood into tissue. Its job was to oxygenate all the living machinery in the knee and calf. In the mammoth it worked even better than in a normal man, pushing blood faster. Now it also pushed the poison of the Jörmungandr, venom that in her full form could kill a god in nine steps, or so the myths claimed. The first mammoth had taken but five steps before his knees gave out. His momentum was so great, his body continued another twenty feet to the intersection.

Shanker performed the same benediction to the second mammoth. That one was only two steps behind the first in stumbling. It rolled, then heaved itself up for a moment, settling on top of a car. Its weight crushed the car, molding it with its mass until it looked like a king upon its throne. Both mammoths roared in defiance. Their arms were powerful enough to drag their bodies forward as fast as a man could jog. As they did so, pulling themselves along the pavement towards the trio of heroes, a bit of life returned to their legs. The damage was considerable but not enough to prevent them from crawling.

Kiz drew back his right hand, even as creation recovered from the wounds he’d inflicted. The sigils faded. The space no longer warped and stretched with the Void. “They bear no arcane dweomer upon their flesh.” He frowned, puzzling out the implications.

In the palm of his right hand the air grew cold as the heart of an Ice Age. “Elivágar, I call you forth.” It wasn’t necessary to say the invocation. He could do it with his mind, but he found the theatrical flare sometimes impressed and could mislead his enemies. The haft was as long as Kiz was tall, tipped in the wicked, dread heart of the first and oldest glacier of Nilfheim. Kiz raised his left hand, sighting off of it. He tracked the progress of the Ace of Winchester and the Robert Frost. He’d rather conserve his abilities. Information was power in war. So he waited to see what the Agents of the DEO could do. They’d have to fend for themselves once he left to take the fight to the enemy. They moved too slow for him to remain with them much longer. They were but Sabaki in this game. He’d re-attach his Sanctuary and outfit them in additional gear if required, but it would be idle if he wouldn’t have to go the trouble. At that point, they might be more hinderance than help. He doubted it would be necessary.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Ashes to Ashes. Moondust to Moondust.

New York.
********​

Kiz gave a dry chuckle. “Well done, Agent Chase.”

"Damn right," Chase nodded affirmingly, with gritted teeth and just a hint of professional gratitude.

The mammoths continued without pause. They were picking up speed. The street shook. Kiz turned so that he stood abreast with Chase, pivoting so that Agent Helligan wasn’t behind him either.

As Kiz waited, watching the mammoths approach, he took careful catalog of their movements. He assessed how they responded to streets not designed to withstand the impact of their passage. Cracks formed in the pavement. Abandoned cars got in their way. Lamp posts fell. Windows shattered. Through it all, the mammoths remained fixed upon Kiz. Like two charging rhinoceros, once set in motion they just picked up momentum and ran in a straight line to their target. They were midway through the second block.

A Blackadder ninja darted at Chase, blade low and ready, but Chase met him with a kick to the skull, rebounded her foot to knock the blade from his hand, caught the hilt of the blade before it hit the ground, and slashed the ninja in half at the waist like a samurai, half-kneeling as the Blackadder fell bisected.

But what was Kiz doing, just standing there? What the Hell was he waiting for?

“Agent Hel, if you please?”

The big picture spun behind Sky-High's eyes, and she nodded, holstering her sidearm and, glancing down at The Ace of Winchesters-- she pulled the lever action to eject its spent cartridge and chamber the next round, which Constantine hadn't had the chance to do. Longarm weapons weren't her specialty by any means-- she was field certified with handguns-- but she and her brother had once bonded after past disagreements over a session in a local firing range.

"Yippie-ki-yay," she murmured.

And since he had allies who could use and enemies that wouldn’t respond to additional information, Kiz telegraphed his plans. “Shanker my love?”

The midnight black and bruised purple snake rose out of his shadow. Her black eyes impossible to read. Her body caressed up Kiz’s right thigh, along his broad back, and a portion of her body came to a rest upon his shoulders. “Yesss?” She hissed. “Great One?” Her mouth was inches from his ear. Her fangs were moist with killing poison. Her tongue came within a hair of tickling Kiz’s left ear.

Chase arched an eyebrow.

Oh, so that was what had taken out the ninjas before they'd reached Kiz while he was beating Constantine to within an inch of his last living daylight. Creepy looking thing.

Chase wasn't a huge fan of magic.

Kiz reached up and massaged the back of her head with his sausage sized thumb. He showed no fear, and after two thousand years he felt no fear towards Shanker. If anything, he felt depressed that something as magnificent and terrifying as a god killing serpent an inch from his face was mundane. “Double strikes on both of those monstrosities.” Kiz raised his right fore finger and gestured at the oncoming mammoths.

“Asss the Great One comandsss.” Her voice was a whispered hiss. Her head dived down over Kiz’s shoulder, along his chest, between his legs, and disappeared into the shadow cast behind Kiz.

Her stolen sword held low, The Robert Frost held ready, Chase made ready to back Kiz' play. Whatever it was.

Helligan used her sleeve to wipe sweat off of her forehead before it could get in her eye.

He moved his forefinger, liked he’d dipped it in the blackest of black paints. As he sketched five glyphs in the air, they formed an artistic, circular pattern. They hung there before his face like cookie cutter cut outs upon the skin of creation.

Helligan mentally searched her vast internal database of the files from Langley, but she didn't immediately recognize those symbols.

She struck as fast as a man could blink. Once. Twice. She hit the popliteal artery located in the back of each knee just inside the thigh. The purpose of the popliteal artery was to distribute oxygenated blood to all the regions around the knee. It’s a nasty pressure point if shin kicked in the Muay Thai fashion. She hit with the force of a hundred mile an hour baseball, but the mammoths were too large to be deterred by the impact alone. Her fangs, however, could pierce most anything. The venom she deposited in both the left and right popliteal artery was enough to kill a normal man, but the mammoths were stronger than two men.

The first mammoth bellowed in pain as the poison killed at the cellular level, spurned on by the spurting pressure of the popliteal artery. That artery worked with all its might to push blood into tissue. Its job was to oxygenate all the living machinery in the knee and calf. In the mammoth it worked even better than in a normal man, pushing blood faster. Now it also pushed the poison of the Jörmungandr, venom that in her full form could kill a god in nine steps, or so the myths claimed. The first mammoth had taken but five steps before his knees gave out. His momentum was so great, his body continued another twenty feet to the intersection.

Shanker performed the same benediction to the second mammoth. That one was only two steps behind the first in stumbling. It rolled, then heaved itself up for a moment, settling on top of a car. Its weight crushed the car, molding it with its mass until it looked like a king upon its throne. Both mammoths roared in defiance. Their arms were powerful enough to drag their bodies forward as fast as a man could jog. As they did so, pulling themselves along the pavement towards the trio of heroes, a bit of life returned to their legs. The damage was considerable but not enough to prevent them from crawling.

The fact that Kiz' pet Night Fury could even trip these things seemed impressive.

But they needed more.

Kiz drew back his right hand, even as creation recovered from the wounds he’d inflicted. The sigils faded. The space no longer warped and stretched with the Void. “They bear no arcane dweomer upon their flesh.” He frowned, puzzling out the implications.

"These are soldiers of the ancient, fanatical terror cult known as 'Kobra,'" Helligan provided, a font of exposition. "They have always used any means necessary to further their ends, bringing about a supposedly-prophesied Age of Chaos, The Kali Yuga. Deadly magic and whatever science they could get as this advanced. Including metagenetic mutation and splicing. The, ah, strongmen are new, but it fits their pattern."

In the palm of his right hand the air grew cold as the heart of an Ice Age. “Elivágar, I call you forth.” It wasn’t necessary to say the invocation. He could do it with his mind, but he found the theatrical flare sometimes impressed and could mislead his enemies. The haft was as long as Kiz was tall, tipped in the wicked, dread heart of the first and oldest glacier of Nilfheim. Kiz raised his left hand, sighting off of it. He tracked the progress of the Ace of Winchester and the Robert Frost. He’d rather conserve his abilities. Information was power in war. So he waited to see what the Agents of the DEO could do. They’d have to fend for themselves once he left to take the fight to the enemy. They moved too slow for him to remain with them much longer. They were but Sabaki in this game. He’d re-attach his Sanctuary and outfit them in additional gear if required, but it would be idle if he wouldn’t have to go the trouble. At that point, they might be more hinderance than help. He doubted it would be necessary.

The implication was clear.

Kiz had made his move and was now waiting to back the Agents' play.

Chase nodded. She could work with this.

"Helligan!" she called.

Helligan took a breath. "Go!"

Chase swept The Robert Frost right. Unleashed a fireblast at the Ajagar dragging a car along with him as he crawled.

It roared in fury, but weathered the thermal storm...

...though the gas tank of the car exploded beneath him, blowing him upward to stand on near-buckling, still agonized legs...

...he staggered forward...

Helligan grimaced. Fired.

And the Ace of Winchesters blasted an enchanted .30-30 round into the open mouth of the Ajagar, up through his brain, and out through the rear dead-center of his skull's parietal bone.

Helligan bit her lip, and levered the rifle, readied to fire again.

It staggered forward two more steps, looking surprised, confused.

It took its body a thundering stride or two more to realize that its brain was dead.

And it fell forward on its face.

Chase hadn't waited.

She swept left with The Robert Frost even as it clicked to blue, and she hit the other crawling mammoth-man center mass with the heat-sapping coruscating ice-blue stream...

...even in the face of this sub-zero onslaught, the Ajagar kept crawling forwards, gritting its teeth, icicles forming around its face but breaking even as it flexed its facial muscles. The Ajagar's mass simply contained too much heat for The Robert Frost's capacitor, and could not freeze it solid the way it might the mass of a normal humanoid.

But heat it sapped... the Ajagar slowed and strained as its skin cracked and its muscles atrophied, albeit only surface deep.

And that gave Helligan plenty of time to stop. And breathe. And let The Ace of Winchester's uncanny aim do its murderous work.

Hel's next round went in through the Ajagar's frosted-o'er left eye, shattering it and ricocheting around inside the skull before exiting through the right-side temporal bone.

Blood and brains came out through the Ajagar's malformed nostrils and these too froze solid before it crumpled forward on its crawling arms, with jagged frozen splintering reverberating all through the Ajagar's dermis.

"I'm your huckleberry," Helligan grinned, congratulating herself.

But then the air around her flared with yellow-green light, just above ground level, and a cluster of Blackadder ninjas descended upon her, blades at the ready, lips curled back from their teeth...

...Helligan cried out in alarm...

...one of the blades smacked The Ace from her hands...

Chase hurled the katana she still carried, spearing that Blackadder through the back, and brought up The Robert Frost with both hands--

--but the fire was too wild, even her skill couldn't get a clear shot with the ninjas so close--

"HEADS UP, PEOPLE!" and a dark-haired female in white and black dropped from the nearby rooftops on a grapple line, landing sai-stab first on a Blackadder's skull, killing him twitching.

Without hesitating, moving like lighting, she whirled around Helligan.

Her heel broke a ninja's jaw, in a perfect recreation of a jeet kune do move from a rare old Bruce Lee training video someone had put on Dailymotion.

Her elbow shattered a ninja's nose in a perfect recreation of a strike from the UFC 2 gameplay trailer, itself a digital recreation of fighters' actual moves.

Her muay thai shin-kick badly fucked up a ninja's popliteal artery, hey, synchronicity, she'd seen that one at a fight club.

Almost as quick as it takes to tell, the ninjas fell down around her and Helligan, and the girl's sai blades spun to a stop in her hands.

Helligan managed a disbelieving grin. "Uh. Woh. Thanks?"

The girl grinned giddily at her. "Moonwing. Tell your friends."

And then--

--yellow-green fire--

--a Blackadder flared to appear behind Moonwing, roaring: "FOR KOBRA!"

And his two ninja-to shunked in through Moonwing's back on either side of her lumbar spine, crossing in an "X" to emerge, bladed and dripping, from her torso.

"Ghk," Moonwing gurgled.

Chase swore deep and lurid and now she could fire--

--too late--

--the flameblast vaporized the Blackadder where he stood.

Moonwing sank to her knees, staring to nowhere in surprise, the swords still crossboning her midsection.

Helligan covered her mouth in horror.

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

Flashback

Raising an eyebrow inside he helmet she gave him a small nod, then leaned back, molding her body to her bike. One leather booted foot caressing the accelerator as the other hooked around the gas tank – stabilizing her.

Laying back she lay a length of chain out on the ground, sparks snapped and writhed like living things, and with a twitch of her foot she accelerated. A blast of superheated fuel firing from the exhaust. And lighting.

A trail of fire followed the bike, and she popped a reverse wheelie, the tail of the bike rising up, the tire smoldering and catching fire as she rose higher and higher. And she was still laying on the bike, the chain multiplying until a fan of them, like soot covered metal wings spread out behind her.

As she rose up she kept rolling forward.. at eighty miles an hour.. a stream of fire following her.

And then she sat forward, her ass pressing back, changing the fulcrum point and slamming the back tire to the Earth. Looking over she gave him another nod. His turn.

Connor looked at her and shook his head. Nope that was it, he was done. he was only mortal and after that display he was damn sure she wasn't. There was absolutely no way he was going to compete with that. Still...

Revving his bike up, he pulled up right beside her and then taking his feet off the pegs he stood up on the seat and then turned to her and bowed. Then stretching his arm forward he took her hand and brought it to his lips, (well his helmet where his lips would have been) and then sat back down again.

He then gave a small bowing motion with his hands out front to show that she had indeed won and continued on beside her. He would continue to follow her until they found a suitable place to stop and eat.

Perhaps then he could challenge her to a game of shooting skill. At least then he might have the upper hand.

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

Green Arrow

As Connor lay dozing on his futon, he was dreaming about his Non-Date with the Rider. It had been strange but pleasant at the same time. She had not said much, but what she had said had been worth listening to.

She had definitely been the better rider, and while a hell of a lot stronger than him he had still held his own while sparring with her. She had been good with her chains when using them as projectiles but could not match his skill, but melee weapons she kicked his ass. He had a feeling she had even been going easy on him.

It had been one of the most interesting experiences of his life, but one he was hoping to do again. There was just something so intriguing about her. He was sure he had not even scratched the surface about what he needed to know about her.

His dreams and thoughts were interrupted by yelling inside the temple. Instantly awake, he rushed out in his sleeping robes to be confronted by the sight of green clad men waving swords, attacking the monks.

If they had thought this was a soft target they were soon taught the error of their ways. Connor was the only novice within these walls and although several monks did die, cut down from behind by teleporting foes, most of the green clad men soon learned you shouldn't attack a temple full of martial artists.

Soon the corridors and courtyard was littered with the bodies of the intruders, but screams could be heard from outside the walls. Connor rushed back to his room and quickly grabbed his gear and headed for his bike. His temple was well protected but the city would need the Green Arrow.

As he gunned the engine and took off he saw more and more of the men on the streets cutting down civilians. His arrows took care of the ones he saw and he did not shoot to injure. As he turned a corner he almost ran into a hulking brute casually tossing a small car after a fleeing group of people.

Stopping his bike, he launched two arrows and tangled his ankles in steel cabling. He watched as the brute tried to take a step forward and crashed to the ground and knocked another arrow.

A it turned to see what was going on he launched and put it through the beasts eye and into it's brain. He was just gunning his engine again as the thing stood up and he gaped at it. How the hell was that possible? His arrow was through the things skull, he could see it sticking out the back.

It took a step towards him, breaking the cabling, then another and another before suddenly crashing to it's knees and then falling face first to the ground.

Connor sighed and again continued towards the town center taking out targets as they presented themselves. At this rate he might run out of arrows before he made it.

 

[Varshanka]

A missed kiss.. (Karan)

New York.
A Few Heartbeats from The Present.
********​

...tried to tilt her head to kiss Karan.

{Heartbeat}

Karan knew she wasn’t normal, not even for a Themysciran. She floated when she was happy. The beams she could force from her eyes. The depths to which she could swim. How long she could hold her breath.

She saw the shape hit the car, The metal ripping and sparking, from the corner of her eye. She twisted, moving between Rose and the car. Shielding the daughter of Aphrodite from Helia’s wrath.

She felt the blast flare against her back, and blow across her hair as Rose screamed. Goddess above she could scream. Flames ripped around them, folding them in it’s red/gold embrace. Turning her head she exhaled all she could. Then inhaled. She’d thought about trying this after the warehouse incident.

Glass glittered in the air, reflecting everything around them. The soft tones of Rose’s hair, the glistening edges of her lips. The curve of her neck. The way her cute ears rose between the locks of hair.

Sweeping her foot she snapped the table base from the floor, one hand grabbing the table and using it as a shield to protect Rose from the shit that was about to happen.

Charging the wall the twisted, blasting her way through the cinderblocks, using the table as a shield from falling debris. Once outside she exhaled back into the building, it was already a smoking level of hell. A little more fire wouldn’t hurt.

{Heartbeat}

“Breathe baby, just breathe. Relax. Your safe. But I have to stop them. I have to try.” And she felt the breeze on her back.

And other parts.

Pausing she looked down, realizing that between the firestorm from hell, and the speed she’d moved at, well cloths were no longer a hindrance. If this was Themyscira that wouldn’t be an issue. But this wasn’t the Island. This was the World of Man, and they had.. issues with that.

“Maybe if I move fast enough..?” she pondered aloud.

{Heartbeat}

She set Rose on the ground and ran. Five hits to the huge hulking brute’s massive head as it stepped from the burning car. Crashing through a plate glass window and grabbing some clothing. She was sorry about breaking the glass. The damage she was causing. But she’d do what she could to pay them back.

Later.

Punching Ten more sword weird crazy people in green jammies. Snapping a dozen or more blades.

{Heartbeat}

Dressing quickly Karan knelt beside Rose, now that she’d given her a full on eyeful of everything she had to offer.

http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff260/Varshanka/Supergirl/392537_1267930147450_full.jpg

"It's ok. The fire is out. You are ok.."

 

[TertiusHuman]

Enter the ninja

OK so if the DNA structure of the Rhinoceros gets smidgened just a small bit that could mean that...

A green clad ninja interrupted his thoughts. And not only interrupted them to ask him the way to the library or to if he had found Jesus, oh no. This person actually interrupted him by swinging a sword at his head.

With reflexes which seemed quite out of place for a normal human, he ducked his head, the blade cutting a few strands of hair. Before the ninja could recover from his follow through a hard fist hit him in the throat. A hand gripped his sword arm and with an almost effortless lift he crashed into the tree growing just behind the bench on which the person was seated.

Satisfied that the impact was enough to knock the intruder out, he got to his feet and almost instantly had to dodge another attack. This stab at his middle missed due to him twisting aside, but it did snag the phone on his belt. Only that the phone was no normal phone. As the device sparked, the person shimmered and gone was the slightly tanned skin, the dark brown hair slicked backwards, only to be replaced by green skin and green hair, still slicked backwards.

"What the?? Damnit! Do you know how much that cost me?"

The ninja pressed the attack, rock hard fingers aimed at the throat and blade turned to sweep backwards. Only to meet resistant hide and resilient flesh. Before the ninja could actually appreciate what was happening before his very eyes, a green hippopotamus crushed him to a pulp. With a snort the hippo stomped on the body and suddenly shrank back to a 5' 150lbs Garfield Logan who without the help of his image inducer, now appeared exactly how he would normally look.

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/marvelcrossroads/images/e/e1/Beast-Boy.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20141012003251

He pulled the ruined phone from his belt and inspected it, yup speared to heck by the stupid ninja. He looked around and noticed carnage. Well if the ninja wasn't enough of a problem, there was some sort of Mr Hyde guys running around, or more like shambling about and killing people with a simple swipe of their hands. Ninjas slicing people up... yeah not a good time to be at M.I.T.

A green hawk leaped to the sky and swooped up high enough, then turned and swept down at attacking speed, a few feet above one of the mamoths, the green hawk changed into a green skinned 82 feet Blue whale. The impact was enormous. A huge dust cloud spurted upwards, the ground shook violently and even some windows shattered. This caused the attackers to pause and re-evaluate their surroundings and of course it made them focus on the source of the impact only to find Garfield standing on top of what they would have called an Ajar.

"Oh hey guys. Did you see my Blue Whale? It landed here somewhere."

 

[Varshanka]

"PRIORITY ALPHA!" - Renegade

The dojo was silent even as he moved through the forms of the Dragon style positions. The opponents each used their own style, or weapon, of choice. This was practice, not playtime. The last individual left standing got a bonus. A very nice bonus.

Twenty opponents. Easy day today.

Motion. And the battle began. Blades flicked where he had been, but not where he was. A leg sweep and knife hand ended one opponent, and created an obstacle on the field of battle.

A second sent razor edge stars flying followed by blowdarts. The darts hurt, and the toxin slowed him down. But not for nearly long enough. A straight punch cracked his opponents breast bone, knocking the wind from her lungs and sending her out of the battle. He watched as she crawled away, just in case she chose to try and return. If she did, she’d be punished.

Stepping to the side she grabbed a reaching arm, and with her attacker off balance, three him forward to the floor. A foot to the T-4/T-5 region resulted in instant loss of consciousness, as well as labored breathing as all the air was driven from the targets lungs.

Spinning Renegade shifted, slimmer and more agile she pivoted out of number fours strike zone, and then shifting back into her other form he kicked the attacker hard in the face. Grace became strength. Over and over she moved, fast and graceful followed by durability and strength.

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

Seriously?! He called now?

Taking out the last of the group she bowed to the last attacker. And peeling off drenched clothing Renegade headed for the showers. Whatever the emergency was, it would last, since he/she still had to drive to HQ.

 

[kizkiz]

In New York Kiz, Chase, and Helligan get CORPSE EXPLODED!

Kiz knelt down over the young girl, Moonwing. The blades made wet, sucking sounds from her body as he pulled them out. "They kill the infirm and young." He shook his head. He closed the girl's dead eyes and crossed her arms over her chest in the Egyptian style. He stood, shaking his head again. Exposing himself like this was a foolish, stupid thing to do in combat, but Shanker kept watch over him. It wasn't like he hadn't seen entire civilizations end in fire and blood, but he refused to let himself go numb.

He lowered the tip of Elivágar until it just kissed Moonwing's forehead. The skin of her face grew pale, white, and waxy. He'd always liked the preservation techniques of the Egyptians. Although he couldn't build a pyramid or monument, he could at least give her a field funeral. Elivágar continued to leech the living warmth from the corpse, replacing it with a frozen eternity.

He looked to Chase and Helligan. "They do not use bombs. Their killing is intimate and personal. We need to force them to retreat." He walked over to the ninjas that Shanker had killed. Their bodies were the best preserved. He turned one over with the toe of his boot. "Is there technology that allows these to..." Kiz searched for the right word, "Appear?"

Two more ninjas got too close and dropped to Shanker. A few more had appeared on either side of them down the street, but they didn't approach. They just stood and watched, then another blood mage materialized three blocks down, near where the first one fell. The mage did something, and the frozen corpse exploded like a dropped ice cube. Bits of frozen body flew in all directions. The red robed magi tilted his hooded head up towards them, then he vanished in the same spurt of green-yellow flame.

Kiz frowned, looking around at the ninja's watching them. He circled holding Elivágar in his right hand, the back of the haft against his back and the tip pointed out to his right. "Oh..." Kiz said, just as the blood mage reappeared in a gout of flame in the ledge three stories above them across the street.

The blood mage stood in the center of the ledge. A few quick hand signs and hissed words made his body jump around in constant displacement. The fingers and words were hard to make out. The displacement made his body blur and jump.

"COVER!" Kiz roared just as all the dead ninjas in the street exploded in a shower of bone and blood. Blood that had been super heated to boiling. Bone that erupted in all directions like a hand grenade's shrapnel. All the corpses exploded within a three block radius in a rolling wave of collateral damage and more death.

 

[ChasNicollette]

In Soviet Russia, CORPSE EXPLODES YOU!

New York.
********​

Kiz knelt down over the young girl, Moonwing.

She had less than seconds to live, as she crumpled there in a heap, but she managed to focus on his face.

And when she saw him, she lit up in a smile of such awe and beneficence one might have expected it of a faithful worshiper laying eyes on a Christ, or a Buddha, or a Mary.

"Riddick?" she rasped, touching his chest where he knelt beside her with the bloodied fingertips of her gloved hand, and that rasp, too, conveyed that she beheld a second coming.

This was a young woman whose metagene made her capable of absorbing every piece of pop-culture she was exposed to.

And here was a man who looked identical to her favorite.

And she quoted her Scripture: "You keep... you keep what you kill."

And then the light went out of her eyes.

She was gone.

The blades made wet, sucking sounds from her body as he pulled them out. "They kill the infirm and young." He shook his head.

Having laid down a blast of covering fire to keep the ninjas at bay, Chase nodded solemnly. Hesitating like this was tactically unwise, but even she could recognize a necessary sentiment. This was a pivotal moment.

"They are without honor."

He closed the girl's dead eyes and crossed her arms over her chest in the Egyptian style. He stood, shaking his head again. Exposing himself like this was a foolish, stupid thing to do in combat, but Shanker kept watch over him. It wasn't like he hadn't seen entire civilizations end in fire and blood, but he refused to let himself go numb.

He lowered the tip of Elivágar until it just kissed Moonwing's forehead. The skin of her face grew pale, white, and waxy. He'd always liked the preservation techniques of the Egyptians. Although he couldn't build a pyramid or monument, he could at least give her a field funeral. Elivágar continued to leech the living warmth from the corpse, replacing it with a frozen eternity.

Helligan smiled faintly at that, even as she retrieved The Ace of Winchesters from where a now-dead ninja had knocked it to the ground.

She recognized both the expediency and the heartfeltness of the gesture. "She saved my life. Thank you."

He looked to Chase and Helligan. "They do not use bombs. Their killing is intimate and personal. We need to force them to retreat." He walked over to the ninjas that Shanker had killed. Their bodies were the best preserved. He turned one over with the toe of his boot. "Is there technology that allows these to..." Kiz searched for the right word, "Appear?"

"It's not the first teleport technology in history," Helligan remarked, "but zeta-beam tech requires fixed points on either end, transceiver tubes-- technology of this level is unprecedented. But it could be magic, or derived from some unregistered metahuman-- or it could be a combination--"

Two more ninjas got too close and dropped to Shanker. A few more had appeared on either side of them down the street, but they didn't approach. They just stood and watched, then another blood mage materialized three blocks down, near where the first one fell. The mage did something, and the frozen corpse exploded like a dropped ice cube. Bits of frozen body flew in all directions. The red robed magi tilted his hooded head up towards them, then he vanished in the same spurt of green-yellow flame.

Kiz frowned, looking around at the ninja's watching them. He circled holding Elivágar in his right hand, the back of the haft against his back and the tip pointed out to his right. "Oh..." Kiz said, just as the blood mage reappeared in a gout of flame in the ledge three stories above them across the street.

The blood mage stood in the center of the ledge. A few quick hand signs and hissed words made his body jump around in constant displacement. The fingers and words were hard to make out. The displacement made his body blur and jump.

"Hel," Chase prompted, gritting her teeth, holding The Robert Frost ready-- he was out of range of Chase's knack and they'd already established that shooting The Robert Frost at these guys was a candle in the wind. But Helligan had that rifle.

Helligan snapped The Ace of Winchesters to her eye, gritted her teeth, tried to let the rifle aim itself like before, but it hesitated, confused, the ghost in its bones trying to get traction on the target-- it wouldn't be the first time today that its intended victim had entered otherspace to defy its power to never miss. "I... I can't. I've only got one round left and... it's not... he won't stay still!"

"COVER!" Kiz roared just as all the dead ninjas in the street exploded in a shower of bone and blood. Blood that had been super heated to boiling. Bone that erupted in all directions like a hand grenade's shrapnel. All the corpses exploded within a three block radius in a rolling wave of collateral damage and more death.

As the literal bloodbath tsunami'd towards them, they had only instants to react.

Helligan was amazing at top-down big-picture Sherlockian leaps.

But Chase was a warrior.

Chase instantly processed the fact that Kiz could look at a place and be there in the blink of an eye. So she didn't need to worry about him.

Her partner, while a trained law enforcement professional, didn't have the deeply-embedded background in being a Badass Normal in a world of gods--

--you had to think so fast that your brain knows every shortcut.

Chase tackled Helligan, no time to be gentle, and Helen cried out with a noise of surprise and dismay--

--Chase threw Helligan down beside the fallen, frozen Moonwing, propped her up like a shield even as she felt her hand go numb at the touch of Elivágar's handiwork, and hunkered down behind the heroine's corpsicle like she was a bunker...

...The Robert Frost came up over that bunker and she pulled the trigger and blue light stormed out, managing to turn a patch of the onslaught to slush and helping to minimize the backsplash...

...they hid behind the frozen dead and hoped the heat of bloody hell would not boil them.

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

Velocity M.I.T.

Velocity was holding her own but just barely. Oh the Ninja's were a piece of cake. They were far to slow to be a threat to her and she had no trouble taking them out.

Even the half dead looking ones in the hooded robes with their freaky powers weren't too bad. Sure they jumped around a lot, but they still needed to stand still for a second to say those freaky words, and a second was all she needed.

Her main problem was the large hulking monsters. She had not encountered many, and most of them had been from other areas. She had seen how they were created when one of the Ninjas had teleported in then injected himself with something and started to change.

She had quickly put a stop to that, chopping his head off before it had reached that far. She might refrain from killing humans, but if you were going to do that to yourself, all bet's were off.

Since then, whenever she had seen anyone porting in and go to inject themselves she had taken them out quickly, but still she had taken on a few of the beasts and they had proven formidable.

Super dense skin, incredible strength, better than average speed, all made for a very tough opponent. Fortunately she had tricks of her own to deal with opponents like these. She gathered rocks from the littered debris and threw them at super speed and vibration. It took awhile to find the right frequency and speed but soon she was able to pierce the beasts skin enough to slow them down. After that it was a case of vibrating a sword at the same frequency and chopping off limbs.

It was just a pity she had not learned to control her body enough to vibrate through objects yet. She had once seen footage of the Flash stop someones heart by vibrating his hand inside their chest.

She had just finished clearing out another courtyard and sending a group of survivors towards a hopefully secure building when what felt like a small earthquake hit. Looking towards another part of the campus she noticed a large cloud rising up and shook her head. Now what?

Zooming over there she found a group of Ninjas looking at a large crater in which stood a green boy on top of one of the beasts that looked like it had been crushed.

"Oh hey guys. Did you see my Blue Whale? It landed here somewhere."

Blue whale??? What was the guy talking about? Still he was obviously on her side. Taking a deep breath she sped into the fray while they were all concentrated on him, hitting them from behind and once again borrowing a sword to take them on with.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Trigger Warning.

Before.
********​

For the last six months, Rose Walker had been plagued by dreams of fire and darkness.

But there had been darkness before the fire, too.

Her friend Donna had died in a diner in some kind of twisted mass-murder-suicide pact. Made headlines.

Her brother Jed had been missing since he was five years old, taken by her father when he'd left her mother. Somewhere in Florida.

And when her mother discovered that she had a heretofore unknown biological mother of her own in England, a wealthy, frail, elderly woman who had been raped while in a coma and given birth without ever waking up, it had fallen to Rose to track Jed down so that long-lost gran Unity Kincaid could meet him, too, before she died.

It was a mission fraught with peril, she was almost mugged and assaulted by skinheads but a new friend had saved her.

She had lived in a strange house full of strangers and strangeness, a rental place near Cape Canaveral-- she'd met Zelda there, and Barbie, and a man named Gilbert (this was the new friend who had driven off her attackers), and everyone had had their own secret bleak horrors crawling around beneath the surface of their lives. And while hanging out in this house of secrets, this house of mysteries, she had tracked down her brother.

Her father had died, not that the world wasn't a better place without him. And Jed had stayed with her father's father, a kindly lighthouse-keeper. Until he too had died, in turn, and Jed had fallen through the cracks.

It turned out Jed had been taken in by an abusive uncle and aunt, locked in a basement and used for the monthly stipend he brought in from the state. Neglected, starved, barely alive. But then something happened... some kind of explosion... the aunt and uncle had died and Jed went missing all over again...

Gilbert and Rose had found him, of all places, as a kidnap victim at a serial killer's convention, locked in the trunk of a car-- their equivalent of a takeout box. But not before one of those serial killers tried to... tear her clothes off... hurt her...

...all her life people had wanted to be on her and near her but this was the closest that anyone had ever...

...she could still feel Fun Land's hands on her, feel his breath on her skin, see his beady eyes in his fat face, those pointy ears he wore on his head for his Big Bad Wolf motif...

...a pale stranger had saved her, this time, not Gilbert. A pale man all in black.

And as Jed lay in hospital fighting for his life against the ravages of deprivation and malnourishment.

Rose had dreamed.

She couldn't remember the dream now. Maybe she'd chosen not to remember.

Whatever it was, it had been dark as the trackless gulfs between galaxies, with cosmic forces that made her and everyone in her life seem like... dolls in a doll's house... toys subject to the whims of manipulators too great even too imagine...

But the next morning she'd woken and the world felt all wrong and different and Gilbert was missing and her heart sat... strangely in her chest.

Like she'd had her heart removed and a new one put in.

Her mom and brother had moved to Seattle with the inheritance money from Grandma Unity. But Rose had needed to escape, and got an apartment in New York and just... stayed there for awhile.

Trying to heal.

But her heart just wasn't the same heart and every night she dreamed of fire.

And remembered darkness.

 

[kizkiz]

Goodbye New York. Kiz is alone.

Kiz appeared on the ledge above the blood mage. He let the spear evaporate into mist, returning back to his soul. This high up, the air ripped and roared along the updrafts. It was a great place to hide. Most people thought in the world they'd lived, which was a flat place where threats came behind, maybe below, but not above. Humans didn't think in three dimensions.

He called forth the Lasher, a demon of insanity and torture. It had devolved beyond conscious thought, just overwhelming lust for pain. Not just any pain but a desire to give a suffocating hug for the joy of squeezing until something popped and became pulp. There was no conversation to be had, just dominate or be dominated; Kiz gave no quarter. Instead of manifesting the entirety of the Lasher, he constrained it, pushing it through a small seeming.

The Lasher Staff was a wicked length of living, puckered flesh over demonic bone that ended in three long tentacles. The tentacles were crimson leather with curved hooks.

Kiz watched the blood mage's body jump around. The movements weren't random, just complicated in their pattern of displacement around a three foot radial that took into consideration the terrain. He waited until the blood mage started another incantation. Kiz stepped off the ledge and fell down, whipping the Lasher out. The tentacles slithered through the air. The mage's body skipped into existence for a moment, pushing to the furthest point to the edge of the ledge that the displacement took him. One of the tentacles snatched the mage's wrist and curled up the forearm. Another snaked around the mage's torso, and the third twisted around the neck. They squeezed. Hard.

The mage's body displaced, but the mage staggered. He worked his fingers. His mouth hissed a syllable before a tentacle entangled his throat again. Another wound around his left arm. All the bones along his left arm broke under the strain of that tentacle. The third around his torso, twisting into a bear hug, squeezing breath, making expansion impossible.

The mage's body displaced again, but he stumbled and fell. The displacement carried him over a smaller distance, unable to cope with the change in orientation. A tentacle caught his left wrist and pulled. A second broke his left foot. The third caught his crotch and started ripping things off.

When the mage regained consciousness, he was being suspended over the roof of the Empire State Building, 102 stories above the streets of Manhattan. Below was chaos as desired, but this high up it was the work of ants running about. A tentacle was wrapped around his throat and others along both arms. It allowed his legs to dangle in the open air.

After several minutes the mage broke the silence. "Kali Yuga dawns! You can not stop the tide."

"I am ill able, O Nagandharva, to suppress my anger. While you are possessed of Ravana's Artha-Shastra, I will deprive you of that, and you shall no more sport with the kin of the Arishadvargas."

"Kali shall prevail!" The mage hissed, although there was less fervor in them. "Your world will crumble, your peoples scatter-" His voice cut off as the tentacle around his throat constricted enough to restrict air flow.

"Kali still fears the bite of venom," Kiz continued like he hadn't been interrupted. "It is how you control Ravana and induce the Artha-Shastra. Naga Karkotaka's venom hints at pain and the death of gods. Sheshanaga's venom," Kiz said, as Shanker uncoiled herself from Kiz's shadow and slid up his body. "Now, her venom kills gods in nine steps."

Shanker crested Kiz shoulder and wound around the forearm holding the Lasher. "That venom irrevocably drives the Rakshasa from the Ātman. It taints the Rakshasa," Kiz paused, allowing Shanker to slither along the handle of the Lasher. Her black pit eyes drawing in the blood mage's own. Her whip-like tongue shot out to taste the man's cheek.

The blood mage's eyes went wild. He thrashed his body, but the best he could do is kick at the handle of the Lasher. However the nature of the Lasher was such that it and Kiz could not be moved. Kiz was rooted to the earth, to all of creation, fixed and immobile so long as he wanted to be.

Shanker's mouth opened in a large yawn. Her dagger length fangs glistened with killer venom.

Kiz ignored both the man's antics and Shanker nuzzling the man's face with her fangs. Instead, he raised the forefinger of his offhand and cut creation's fabric, letting the Void leak through. He wrote in rapid, precise movements, etching sigils that made a double helix pattern between himself and the blood mage. The symbols twisted in the space between the pair. It was a lesser Void Binding, a form of quantum entanglement, but effective for what he needed.

"You have nine seconds to take me to your demense," Kiz said.

The blood mage snorted, opening his mouth to make some retort that he never got out, because just then Kiz released his immobility. Together, they fell towards the ground. The blood mage was held with his back to the ground by Kiz and the Lasher.

"One," Kill called out as 12 stories flittered past them.

"You die-"

"Two."

"We both-" The blood mage tried to twist around, but Kiz surfed the wind with the mage's body.

"Three."

The blood mage's left hand was ruined, but the fingers on his right hand started to flicker. He hissed words in the Naga tongue, calling upon dark Rakshasa-Shastra to twist and fold space, pleading for a puncture in creation.

"Four." Kiz called out as the ground rushed up to meet them. "Five." Windows blurred past. The exploded remains of hundreds littered the ground in bloody graffiti came into focus. "Six." Nothing was alive in the streets below except a few mammoths charging past in random zig-zagging motions. Many of the windows they passed were stained with the splattered remains of human body parts and fluid.

The blood mage's eyes went wide as his words picked up intensity. Kiz heard cracking and popping from the fingers of the right hand like a machine pushed too far.

"Seven."

Flames enveloped the pair as if they were a mint green meteorite plummeting from the heavens to wreck havoc upon earth. Space rippled around them. The landscape blurred and sputtered.

"Eight."

The flames became the world. They burned a puckered hole through folded space, cutting through and pulling the pair along a trajectory perpendicular to the mundane world of everyday reality. Then everything snapped back into place.

 

[ChasNicollette]

They stand in the way of love. And we will smoke them all. (Rose/M'gann) (tags Karan)

{Heartbeat}

Heartbeat 1: Death.

She went away from herself, then. Everything was blackness and oblivion.

And this, too, was somehow familiar.

But in the distance, a silver symbol gleamed as though struck by moonlight.

The gleam at the end of the tunnel.

"Oh, no. I'm just in the neighborhood. All these people... but no, I'm not here for you. Either of you."

"You should breathe now."

What?

Listen.

{Heartbeat}

“Breathe baby, just breathe. Relax. Your safe. But I have to stop them. I have to try.”

Heartbeat 2: Delirium.

She sucked in a clamoring breath, her fingernails scrabbling for whatever purchase they might find beneath, and instantly instead of oblivion, there was madness, panic, agony along every last nerve, her skin had been flayed away by the fire even as Karan had shielded her from the worst of the shockwave.

Her mind was spinning, reeling from the unexpected phobic response, unfigured disfiguring triggers...

...two minds as one screamed in horror.

{Heartbeat}

Heartbeat 3: Despair.

Shuddering, coming more into the moment, Rose could feel the minds of people around her dying, not just the ones in the coffee shop, but all through this building-- and, as her psychic awareness returned with the extinguished flame-- all through this block, all through this borough-- she could feel minds winking out.

Someone had talked about those people. All those people going away.

Who was that? Rose couldn't remember now. Kind of a lot had happened since then.

Her own clothing was shredded, it was a part of her, it had boiled with her skin-- she felt the wind of Karan's movements kiss her flesh--

--felt Karan bundle her close--

--but instead of alluring, like that should have been, like it would have been if they could have just seen this through--

--if they could have had nice things--

--instead it felt like Fun Land's breath, she was exposed and her agency had been stolen, plunged back into that hotel room with no way to save herself--

--just a name of a pale man she could barely remember--

--it was all so worthless.

{Heartbeat}

Heartbeat 4: Desire.

Rose blinked ash and scorched, flaking cornea out of her eyes as her body fought to repair itself. Her disfigured skin began rippling, smoothing out, Caucasian again instead of blister-blackened red.

The tattoo of a rose she'd gotten on the back of her right shoulder as part of her healing process coalesced as though it had never been seared away, visible through a patch in her post-apocalyptic attire. The not-inelegant lines of her slender, petite body were rapidly restoring themselves.

Her hair grew back in a rush, all red with a lock of gold.

And bleary-gazed, she glanced up.

And saw Karan naked.

She wondered if she was still delirious. Her impossible heart cartwheeled in her chest.

If her mouth hadn't already been dry from being firebombed, it would have gone dry then, the moisture having rushed... elsewhere.

Those flat abs, perky breasts, narrow hips that would fit perfectly into Rose's small hands, the long shanks of her legs-- hair all Rapunzel gold and eyes the color of a sky mankind could only see on the rarest of days-- and yet containing such power and such glory.

She's so beautiful. She's legendary.

Her heart affirmed this, as though she had known this all along but was waiting for her to catch up: Yes, yes, she is.

I guess this probably means I'm gay enough. Probably.

Her heart laughed like bells, and teased her: You know, I suspected you might be.

...shut up.

“Maybe if I move fast enough..?” she pondered aloud.

And Karan was gone again, that superspeed that Rose still couldn't (yet) follow, and Rose felt all her heartstrings pulled taut with her as she darted away.

{Heartbeat}

Heartbeat 5: Dream.

And though Desire, it has been said, is always cruel, that flash of feeling made Rose dare to hope.

That maybe it wouldn't be worthless after all.

They could make something of this life.

Of this world.

If only they could survive it.

Karan cried havoc and let slip the dogs of war, even as she plunged headlong into battle.

Rose was an omnivorous reader (though over the last six months she had watched a lot of television for some reason). There had been a passage somewhere in The Dark Tower, was it The Drawing of The Three, about charging naked into a fight? Eddie Dean, TCB, something-- only a certain kind of warrior could face that kind of threat while starkers, while vulnerable--

--Karan had that kind of madness about her, that kind of courage.

Rose pushed up from the ground where Karan had put her, aching muscles springing back to life with pins and needles as her autotelekinetic shapeshifting automatically rebuilt herself on the molecular level, then the cellular-- her clothes rebuilding around her, her going-out top--

--if Karan could summon that kind of fury, summon that kind of righteous indignation, taking out villains, shattering them left and right with all the raw glorious legendary power at her disposal--

{Heartbeat}

Heartbeat 6: Destruction.

--then god dammit--

--gods dammit--

--H'ronmeer and Morpheus and Helia damn it, whoever they all were--

--THEN SO COULD ROSE.

"HRRAH!" she punched the ground beneath her with a tiny fist and left a cracking crater many times her hand's size.

Karan was beside her again. Dressed in--

--what was she wearing?

She looked good.

Apparently New York's fashion industry had been working around the clock since Wonder Girl had been first sighted fighting that amnesiac Kryptonian in Metropolis, producing looks based on these new heroes in case they became en vogue--

Karan was wearing Neil Richards' latest creation and she looked--

--breathtaking.

"It's ok. The fire is out. You are ok.."

"Yeah," Rose murmured. "I'm okay."

{Heartbeat}

Heartbeat 7: Destiny.

And she rose to her feet, and as she rose she changed... taller, more powerful, muscles that could crack a mountain like a dinner plate...

...eyes and hair so red like Martian sand in the noonday sun...

...skin as pale as a moongleam on an ankh...

...she flexed her hands into fists and the knuckles popped like repeating gunshots.

"Let's make sure these bastards aren't."

New York.
Now.
********​

 

[Varshanka]

Sing me a Song of A Lass that has Gone... (Karan) (Tag Rose/M'Gann)

New York.
Now.
********​

"Yeah," Rose murmured. "I'm okay."
And she rose to her feet, and as she rose she changed... taller, more powerful, muscles that could crack a mountain like a dinner plate...

...eyes and hair so red like Martian sand in the noonday sun...

...skin as pale as a moongleam on an ankh...

...she flexed her hands into fists and the knuckles popped like repeating gunshots.

"Let's make sure these bastards aren't."

She wanted to reach out and caress that face and hair. To finish the kiss that almost happened. And then something hit the back of he head and she turned, tearing her gaze from the face of Aphrodite. From Love to.. a huge monstrosity that was holding the front of a semi.

“You like hitting defenseless girls?” she asked. “Do you like when they hit back?”

Launching herself from a kneeling position she drove up and into it’s chest, one hand knocking the semi from his hands, like a parent taking a toy from their child. The other slammed into the solar plexus and grabbed the rib cage.

Screaming in rage she squeezed. “You HURT HER you BITCH!”

Howling in rage/pain the monstrosity pounded it’s fists against Karan’s head, ringing her ears with each and every slam. “You made her burn!!!!”

Unleashing the fury of at her helplessness Karan began hitting the hulking monstrosity. Each punch cracking bones in the creatures shoulders and arms, seconds later the creature fell backwards. Twisting she darted, moving from target to target, making fast, short, and easy work of the screaming maniac ninja’s.

The bigger hulks took minutes, and hurt like Artemis when they landed punches. They hurt her. They hurt Rose and she’d make them pay. Make them all pay for hurting the light in the darkness.

 

[ChasNicollette]

"Nag, come up and dance with death!" (setup for Kiz)

The flames became the world. They burned a puckered hole through folded space, cutting through and pulling the pair along a trajectory perpendicular to the mundane world of everyday reality. Then everything snapped back into place.

Central City, Missouri.
Now.
********

http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l325/chasnicollette/d828bafb-e986-49d2-9084-55c75061675f_zpsab4k7imf.jpg

http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l325/chasnicollette/dcuoflashupdate4-1321583195_zpswalkamep.jpg​

This vibrational plane of The Multiverse quivered back into place around them.

And everything was on fire, and without power, though the whole city was cast in a ruddy red glow from the forcefield dome far above. The smoke from the fires were enough to make the city seem like it was overcast, though it had been a clear blue day above.

And there was a great crackling to the west, reaching up above the skyline. Yellow green lightning and pyrotechnics.

The icon of municipal pride that was The Flash Museum was crackling and dark.

The gigantic bronzed statue of The Flash himself, Bartholomew Henry Allen, was knocked sideways on its massive, cracked stone pedestal-- as though he, too, was running perpendicular to spacetime.

Central's citizens were nowhere in sight. A ghost town?

But there were Blackadders roving the streets.

And there were Ajagar.

And every so often... there were Bestowed.

Bestowed who, even blocks away, whipped around to stare at at the spot where Kiz had materialized with their enrobed brother in his grasp. As though they were linked by a hive mind-- or as though they tasted the blood of one of their own, like snakes sniffing the air.

Kiz had entered The Kobra's Nest.

 

[ChasNicollette]

We are the jack-o-lanterns in July setting fire to the sky. (Rose/M'gann)(tags Karan)

New York.
********​

She wanted to reach out and caress that face and hair. To finish the kiss that almost happened. And then something hit the back of he head and she turned, tearing her gaze from the face of Aphrodite. From Love to.. a huge monstrosity that was holding the front of a semi.

There was something quietly impressive about how Wonder Girl had just gotten hit in the back of the head by a truck cab and all it made her do was turn around and look. Like a teacher getting paper-airplaned and instantly zeroing in on the one who threw it.

Martian Manhuntress grinned softly. "Ohhhhh, you are gonna get it."

Wonder Girl went so apeshit Manhuntress would have sworn-- wait, when did she start thinking of herself as Martian Manhuntress? --that she was from Gorilla City, not Paradise Island.

With a roar that could shatter granite, another Ajagar came bounding from a nearby rooftop, fists brandished overhead, ready to come crashing down on the Kryptonian Amazon.

"KOBRA SMASH!"

Without even blinking, Rose lifted her hand and-- exerted the power of her thoughts. The Ajagar stopped, suspended in mid-air, unable to attain leverage or traction to save itself, thrashing helplessly.

And Rose held him there until Karan finished what she was doing, and could turn around and bash the mammoth-man with impunity.

But as she stood there holding the Ajagar in place like she was steadying a punching-bag for Karan at the gym, she... heard something?

Glancing at the rubble of the coffee shop, she reached out her other hand...

...and from somewhere under the dust and grime and debris, her LexIcon smartwatch floated to her waiting palm. The wristband had been vaporized in the explosion, the screen cracked, but these things were built to last.

Its speaker was tinny and barely audible, but it still worked.

How she had heard it, she had no idea--

--but heard it she had.

"JUSTICE LEAGUE ALERT! JUSTICE LEAGUE ALERT!"

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

"PRIORITY ALPHA!"

"Wonder Girl!" she called, glancing up from the watch to see whether Karan had speedbagged the mammoth-man yet.

"I think we need to get to Metropolis!"

 

[kizkiz]

Central City: Kiz alone in the Kobra's nest

Central City
Now
********
​

>>Just enough to drive the Rakshasa from the Ātman, my love. Let them know fear.<<

Shanker shot out, hitting the blood mage below his right eye. The mage's body convulsed. Kiz released him from the Lasher and started running towards the Flash Museum. Before him was the cracked bronze statue of the Flash. Three blackadders crouched upon the three story high stone pedestal.

He pounded up the granite stairs towards the three ninjas. They drew back their arms in blinding speed, sending a wave of shuriken at him. Kiz dove off the stairs, putting one hand down on a stair, kicking up into the air, and over the side. Metal clinked on the stairs behind him like rain on a metal roof. He rolled to his feet and ran along a small ledge two stories below the top of the pedestal.

"Death to the infidel!" One of them shouted, jumping high into the air and landing in front of Kiz. Another dropped down behind, while the third remained above, hurling a pair of shuriken at his head.

Kiz caught the ninja before him with the Lasher and spun, catching the two shuriken in the man's chest. Moving the ninja with the Lasher was like swinging a pillow. Then he brought the ninja down hard upon the one behind him, cracking both bodies against each other. Kiz released the ninja and used the Lasher to pull up along the wall. The ninja above swung at Kiz's head as he sling shot through the air. Kiz caught the blade on the haft of the flail. The blade bounced off. One of the tentacles latched onto the ninja's forearm and tugged. Kiz shoulder caught and rebounded the ninja back. The ninja rolled with the reversal, back flipping through the air, which would have worked, except one of the tentacles snatched the man's foot. Kiz whipped the ninja back over the side. The body sailed thirty feet through the air.

Kiz kept on running. He jumped over the seven foot tall bronze foot of the Flash.

>>Do we kill them, Great One?<<

>>No, my love, we want them to doubt what we are.<<

>>But we are bored, Great One.<<

>>We must abide, my sweet.<<

As he ran he kept his eyes roving. A mammoth had turned and was running down the five lane street before the museum. Another two mammoths were running down from the other side, but they were a block further away near a small sky scrapper with shattered windows all along its side.

One of the blood mage's popped into existence upon the steps leading into the museum. The mage's hands were crossed before its waist with its hands tucked into the opposing sleeves. It's head was tilted up just enough that Kiz could see its snake slitted eyes.

Kiz jumped off the pedestal, landing on the street without breaking stride. He didn't stop sprinting towards the stairs and the mage. The mammoth hurled down the street, gouging pot holes in the asphalt. To Kiz's left down two blocks, he could just track the other two mammoths, moving like two charging rhinoceros, heads lowered, arms pumping, feet kicking up pavement.

The blood mage made an incantation with its hands and mouth. Kiz could feel his body becoming feverish. His mouth went dry, and his head ached. Kiz flicked the Lasher at the mage's face. The mage cringed. Its body blurred, popped, and reappeared three feet to the right. Kiz was on it before it's body finished materializing. His great fists hit the mage with sledge hammer blows to the face. His right, left, right, left, and right fists flashed in blinding succession. The mage crumpled to the ground.

The nearest mammoth roared, sinking its right fists through the asphalt and into the rebar beneath. The ground shook with the impact. Its body slid around like a car executing a quarter donut, realigning its momentum towards Kiz. Asphalt flew in a great cloud around its body. Then it hit the steps and bounded up after Kiz.

Kiz ran straight at the doors like they weren't even there. The doors were a shattered mess. Broken glass littered the ground. Kiz dropped into a slid, just as the mammoth came leaping to tackle where he'd just been standing. Instead, the mammoth hurdled past Kiz's body and into what remained of the entryway. Its body rolled into the grand foyer where the ticket booths and merchandise were sold. Kiz rolled back to his feet and kept on running. He threw the Lasher at the mammoth. The tentacles reclined back so the flail looked more like a javelin or grappling hook. The mammoth burst back up to its feet, catching the Lasher in mid-air. The tentacles wrapped around both hands.

Kiz dropped back down to a slide, gliding along the marble floor between the mammoth's feet, recalling the Lasher back to his right hand before it could be broken by the mammoth. Kiz popped back up to his feet and kept running deeper into the museum with the mammoth hot on his heels.