Justice League: The New Wave (IC)

[Aussie_Wolf]

M.I.T.: Follow the Tachyon trail

It felt funny as the gecko settled in across her back but once he settled in Velocity moved to the outskirts of the University and started to put her senses to work.

For the next ten seconds she observed the pulses as more and more beings teleported in. He eyes gathered Data that only a handful of people on earth would have been able to and she strained them to their utmost to gather more.

Finally she had a general idea of where to look and she aligned herself as well as she could and waited poised like a sprinter at the start of a race.

She was going to have to go faster than she had ever run before. She had always been afraid to run at her top speed, afraid of what it may do to her and the world around her.

She had seen the effects of sonic booms from planes, and once she had run at mach 3 in an emergency and had seen just what that had done, but she knew she was capable of so much more.

Yet this was an emergency of catastrophic proportions. If she failed how many more people would die? Steeling herself she looked to the heavens and waited.

Finally she saw what she had been waiting for, the beginnings of a teleport beam approaching the campus. She was so wired that it appeared to be moving in almost slow motion.

She took off, tracing the residual tachyon particles left in the air. She looked ahead now that she had a direction to head in, dodging obstacles and blurring through towns and cities always following the faint traces, that were slowly dissipating all the time.

She made sure only to accelerate outside of any built up areas, keeping damage to a minimum from the sonic booms she was creating, but after awhile she knew just where she was headed.

What speedster wouldn't. It was His birthplace and home. Everyone who could run fast knew his story and his legacy.

They were headed for Central city, home of the Flash.

With a destination in mind she was able to concentrate more on where she was going and less on the trail.

Still moving at the same speed she was just a blur on the landscape, everything seemed like it was frozen in time to her, still and not moving.

She had never traveled at this speed before and she was amazed at how peaceful it was. Not a sound reached her except her own even breathing. Even the sound of the wind moving past seemed to be muted.

The city was suddenly upon her but something was wrong. A dome of energy pulsated around it, sparking with a deep blue energy. She stopped before she hit it, pulling up a bare meter before it and as she did it changed to a red and blue energy field.

"Well it looks like this is as far as we go for now," She called out. "We are going to need some help getting through this thing. Even I'm not fast enough to pass through something like this."

 

[TertiusHuman]

Bb

Whoah...now that was speed...

It really took all he had to really cling on and stay out of the wind stream by flattening himself as close as he could to her. For a moment he wondered if perhaps he should have tried Anaconda instead and just draped around her waist, whispering bad things in her ear about anacondas...the lips on his mouth perked up slightly. Fun thoughts.

He was practically relieved when she suddenly drew to a halt, almost squishing him with the g-force of their sudden halt. Using his tongue to clean his eyes, he jumped from her back, performing a neat back-flip and landed in his human form and wheezing for breath for a few moments.

"Any idea what that thing is? And let's hope none of them actually saw us coming. The ninjas are fine, but those hulking dudes? I don't like them at all. Tougher than a mammoth..."

He paused to think, "You know I do think that the Megalania might actually be a good way to have a go at them, but they are just not strong enough. Now if only I could see something useful, like a dinosaur."

Again he paused and looked at Velocity, "Say, you don't perhaps carry a book with pictures on you?"

 

[Varshanka]

Renegade - the sneaky creep

Slipping back into reality the devout servant of the Serpent God swung his blade at the unsuspecting policeman, a hole appearing through his skull, saving the life of the police officer, but ending his own.

As another round slid into place Renegade fired again and again. Each shot ending another life, and saving even more. ‘I’m not getting paid enough,’ Renegade though with each whisper bullet that slid through the separating space, and taking out another murderous maniac.

When the hulking brute appeared she switched out ammo, armor piercing explosive rounds were up. At least Luther was paying for these. And considering their cost at least it was saving her money, not that he’d like paying for it. Hell nobody liked paying for them.

She watched as the round punched into the back of it’s skull and blow out a chunk of it’s frontal lobe. Renegade liked these, especially in female form. Nasty as shit and fast. And made for very long range. Close up would be bad, especially with the iridium isotope. Made to punch through Kevlar vests and reinforced limousine doors thy worked wonders on skin and bone. Even heavy worlder skin and bones.

Breathing slowly, calm and measured, the assassin fired. Each shot targeted and true. Shifting from the front of the building she watched as Lancelot and Merlin landed on the rooftop. The conversation with the Man from Atlantis didn’t seem to be going well.

Scoping in she zoomed in on Lady Lancelot’s brown eyes. So easy. So simple. A soft squeeze and she could fuck Luther’s world and ruin Merlin’s life. The two girls were so obvious in their infatuation with each other it was nauseating. Give them a few hundred years and see how much they liked each other then.

Or she could drop the alabaster skinned red head just as easily. Wouldn’t be the first time she killed a wizard. Wouldn’t be the last. Maybe the water breather? How well could he breathe water with a hole through his lung? Maybe just blow out his kneecap? It would heal.. eventually.

Smirking to herself she couldn’t believe these people she’d been saddled with. In another place and another time they would have been Gods. But here and now, they were all just freaks. Like that whichdidn’t truly have a gender. Not since the first long cold. They called them Ice Ages now. But then they were Long Cold. Blizzards and snowstorms that lasted months.
Humanity was a waste. If they had a storm that lasted for a few days they panicked and screamed about the end of the world. If they only knew just how long a true storm could last. If they understood just how cold a year long blizzard could get. Or how hot walking through a desert really was.

*****

Sighing as he walked past the guards, in their own gear nonetheless, Renegade walked onto the vessel without so much as a challenge. Even a known ally should have been challenged at least once. But he hadn’t been challenged at all. Here he was sitting on a billion dollar piece of hardware, face and body armored up quite nicely.

Muscles and tendons shifted and reshaped, shrinking and growing. She considered taking off he helmet but with The Black Knights protégé sitting there she thought of calling him Galahad, maybe Gawaine,. Either way with him sitting there it was to early to play her hand and show her face. Though she did have a smile behind that helmet. One of those smiles that wasn’t a happy one. More of a .. fine I’ll play your way, and kill you slowly when you bore me.

Hair shortened as she replaced the helmet and sat back, waiting for the others to climb aboard.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rogue Nation. (tags to Kiz)

Kiz shook his head when the Fish spoke. "No..." Kiz searched for a term that would make sense to these simple minded people. "I'm going to rip the demon festering this one's soul..." His head whipped around, as he tracked a few blackadder getting close. "...Leaving a gaping hole where it's taken root." He said it without boast, more like someone talking about going out to get a few weeds out of the garden before afternoon tea.

That gave Lisa Snart pause.

For more reasons than one.

"It's been what two hours? Three?"

"I don't think that long," Cold shook his head. "But it feels like longer."

He swung around, squinting up at the flaming Ajagar leaping like fleas to smack Serrah from the sky, "There's no sign of anyone else within 10 miles of here. If your Rogues live, they do so on the fringe. I'll send my birds out to scout further. Or you can swim around in the belly of your sister for all I care."

"Put it that way, Harvey Birdman," Snart snarked, "you make it sound all incestuous and creepy, but you're leaving out the fact that she's dead."

"Only sort of," Glider protested. "Also, ew."

Cold continued as though uninterrupted: "Those magic guys rounded up everyone out on the streets in a hurry. What for or where, we haven't been able to find yet. Everyone else is under curfew, locked down. And we need more manpower if we're gonna stage a prison break."

Kiz gestured like he was giving the Nadeau hand commands instead of mental ones. The raven-like nightmares took their time alighting into the air, but they did set out skirting around the perimeter in both directions. The Nadeau on the rail cart turned its head and cawed at Kiz. Kiz shook his head, "No killing yet, that comes later." It raised its beak, brought it down in a shake, and then set off into a lazy circle overhead.

"Why do I feel like that bird and I would get along?" Heatwave rumbled, watching it slowly as it yawed, rolled, and pitched... with not quite the autohypnotic fervor with which he would watch a matchflame, but not unlike it.

Kiz squinted back along the railway, scowled, and started jogging towards the Granite Hills. "You want to get out when this is over?" He slapped the blood mage again. "It'll take an hour, but I plan to pry this one's Rakshasa from her Ātman and bind it. If you got a better plan, spill it, otherwise keep up."

Heatwave and Captain Cold looked at each other. Heatwave squinted his crazy eyes at Cold, but Cold could only shrug. He had no idea what any of that mumbo-jumbo had meant. The only magician he'd ever spent any time with was Abra Kadabra, and that guy was more of a technomage illusionist-- and not especially compelling company.

But Lisa Snart. The Glider.

Had been a perfectly normal human being until some idiot mad scientist had set off an explosion with her in the room. And killed her. And in the very moment of her death, her metagene had activated, giving her a half-life and a ghostly superhumanity. She was quick, elusive, selectively intangible, and she could share that intangibility with others.

But more to the point, she hovered a tightrope between the living and the dead and when Kiz said these things about Rakshasas and Ātmans, Ātmen? A chill ran through what passed for her spine, these days.

One of her tendrils touched Cold on the shoulder, and he glanced up at her.

"We have to help him," she told him.

Leonard sneered. "By what numbers? You heard him, Leese, he's got his own agenda here, I'm not sticking around to--"

Lisa narrowed her eyes, bristling with otherworldly presence. "Len."

Cold's jaw clenched. "...fine."

With that Kiz set off at a sprint down the tracks, when his foot hit the third wooden cross plank, his body rippled and he reappeared near another overturned rail cart 30 feet down the track. He darted around the cart and tossed the blood mage on the ground.

The blackadder were getting closer, fanning out in groups of threes. Several of the groups were jogging along the railroad.

Unaware of Kiz' communique with the chimera.

Aware that they could keep up with Kiz, but only if they "swam" in Glider's "belly," and that would render them intangible and therefore unable to assist in covering his departure.

They fanned out in their own group of three, this terrible trio of Rogues.

"In Central City," Captain Cold growled as his ice gun hosed down a pack of Blackadders before they could teleport away, slamming them with a glacial wave and freezing them to the track, "snow crashes you."

Roaring with delight, Heatwave charged another pack of Blackadders, scorching them with rampant fiery fuel, the coruscating flames reflecting joyously in his goggles. "Pop quiz, hot shots! This is how you disappear in a cloud of smoke!"

And Glider, the only one of the three with legitimate superpowers, swooped in amongst their assailants, snatching shuriken out of the air with her tendrils and phasing them into the hearts of the ninja warriors... and watching with no small satisfaction as they stumbled, coughed up blood, and fell.

Lisa would glance longingly over her shoulder at Kiz as he departed, flickering in and out of reality as he went. But she focused on the task at hand.

He would do what he needed to do.

And they would make sure his trail was... cold.

 

[UnseenMaiden]

Billie in New York

If Billie had ever bother to pause and think about her actions in moments like this, she would have probably ended up dead in a ditch long ago. Where talking failed, unfettered crazy was a saving grace that the wizard Shazam had had nothing to do with. Likewise, her time as Captain Marvel had helped her hone her battle skills, given her knowledge beyond what her young self knew to be possible, but it wasn’t what had prompted her to learn how to fight in the first place. That had been accomplished, little by little, by adults betraying her trust and some trying to make her a victim of crimes that she wasn’t sure even she could have bounced back from. So it was that while Captain Marvel had fought with the skill and finesse of a well-trained warrior of lifetimes full of multiple disciplines, Billie fought, when she absolutely had to fight, rough and dirty with no thought but to make whoever was fighting her stop.

The ninja had paused for just the breath a moment as she ran towards him, screaming wordlessly and bloody brick held high. Then his training and he braced for her attack, scimitar ready to run her through as he had the one before her, but as Billie reached the boundary of what she guess his range to be, she dropped down. The momentum of her mad dash carried her, like a baseball player sliding for home, over the cracked asphalt and between his legs where she slammed the brick that was Danny where she was sincerely hoping his crotch would be. A gratifying grunt met her ears as her slide carried her behind the ninja and, by some miracle, didn’t dump her on her face as she pulled herself up and twirled around on one foot in a pirouette that was almost graceful. With all of the remaining strength that her mortal form had left, the blue-haired woman hefted Danny over her head with both hands and brought It crashing down onto the green clad ninja before he had time to cut her with his wicked looking blade.

For a moment, she didn’t think her attack had done a damn bit of good, but then the ninja crumpled at her feet. Her victory arrived not a second too soon. The seal she had bled into Danny chose the next moment to close, sapping the strength that raw fury had given her scant minutes before and making her drop the red brick to the ground. Her body had been ignored for far too long and waves of nausea left her shaking where she stood. She knew, dimly in the back of her mind, that she should be moving and finding out if the murderous ninja had been alone or in a group, but her thoughts refused to organize into any semblance of a plan. So she stared at where Danny had landed, trying with all of her might not to fall down. As she stared, words raised onto Its’ ruddy surface.

‘You used me as a weapon, after telling me not to BE a weapon.’

The words were small as to fit on the reduced surface area, but the word ‘be’ had been written in very bold Edwardian script. Even without an audible voice, her mind decided that this sentence sounded accusatory and just a smidge petulant. Wavering there, being whined at by a brick, Billie suddenly experienced a mad fit of giggles. Somehow, the sentient bit of masonry was now the funniest comedian she was ever likely to hear. It had a point. She had spent all of this energy trying to calm It down only to turn around and bean the first asshole she came across. Some example of patience and generosity she was setting. It took a few minutes for her to calm down and by that time tears were streaming freely down her face and nothing about this day was funny anymore. Shaking her head, she tried to will some strength into her muscles as she wiped at her wet face with one hand and bent down to pick up the fallen brick with the other.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean…”

Her voice faltered as a green flash caught her eye, making her turn around. The green-clad ninja that stepped out of the light gave her an eerie sense of déjà vu. Then he jabbed a needle into his neck while staring straight at her, a look that spoke clear volumes of murder and hate in his eyes. What happened next was kind of seriously gross to watch, if she hadn’t have already been sick to her stomach, now would definitely have been the time to start. It was like his insides were too big for his skin. It was like a bad werewolf movie. It was like this one Japanese flick she had seen when camping out in a rundown theater during monsoon season years back. It was freaky as hell and when it ended there was a giant tank of creature where a man had once been. Then he was barreling towards her and she didn’t have it in her to react anymore. Muscle memory had her hands twitch, her legs tense, but it was useless. The behemoth yelled as he backhanded her into a nearby wall.

“Faith to Kali Yuga!”

Her world went black for a moment after her head connected with brick and mortar. Then she could see once more with an awful ringing as background. She wasn’t sure if it was a good thing for her that this building had been so conveniently close by. She was pretty sure he could have just as easily sent her careening into the building across the street, but did that mean she would have this sticky wet warmth on the back of her neck or the sharp pain in her side that probably signified that something important was broken. Heavy footsteps shook the ground around her and Billie closed her eyes bracing for the impact. She probably wouldn’t survive another hit like that. Hell, she wasn’t entirely sure she would be surviving the first one. Her breathing sounded labored and gurgling to her own ears and she couldn’t get her mouth to work so she could speak and save her own skin. The reality of her impending demise really didn’t bother her like it should have. After everything she had faced down in almost three decades of life, it felt like this might be a little overdue. However, it would have been nice to say goodbye to some of the people that had been good to her, cared about her even. They weren’t many; a few people she had helped, members of the Justice League, and the rare friend that had been Ruby. Though, if she had to be honest with herself, they probably thought she was already long gone. She had always sucked at goodbyes and that whole keeping in touch thing.

Instead of the fist to the face that she was expecting, Billie instead suddenly got a face and mouthful of something warm, salty, wet, and chunky. It smelled. It oozed. Her eyes flew open in shock and she couldn’t wipe enough of it off of her. The mammoth that was meant to be her death knell stood headless before her, teetering on massive legs before finally giving out and crashing to the ground at her feet. Right behind the corpse was Hope, cleaning a very shiny looking gun, similar to a flintlock in build. The tall woman looked bored with a tinge of annoyance in her features, probably because her suit and hair were covered in brain matter and viscera. Billie openly gaped at her for a couple of beats before pulling herself onto her side and finally losing her lunch. The taste of the creature in her mouth was even fouler that partially digested hamburger and her stomach rebelled again at the thought of it. She was just beginning to wonder how to wipe her mouth without getting more guts in her mouth when Hope handed her a clean handkerchief. She tried to ignore the blood that came away so bright after she wiped her face down and instead used her hands to edge her screaming body up into something resembling a standing position and nodded at the cyberpunkish weapon in Hope’s hands.

“What the hell did you do to the juggernaut?”

“Alexander Luthor believes in preparation for all events. It is a sentiment I happen to agree with.”

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

Looking over at him the Riders leather on leather ensemble shifted and changed, hardening as chainmail oozed over her skin, hard plates of glowing hard soul steel shimmering into place over that. A length of chain shortened and stiffened become a sword once more. As more chains formed a shield with a demons face.

As it’s gaze settled on his face the glaring demon faced helm covered her visage. “Robin Hood.. lose your merry men?” It asked with a voice that echoed from the deepest part of The Great Pit.

Connor watched her transformation with fascination. Okay so not just a great bike rider then but a kick ass medieval knight with a fascination for the macabre. he was learning more and more about her every time he saw her, and truth to tell she was fascinating the hell out of him.

Those thoughts turned very prophetic as she spoke to him and the sound of her voice conjured up visions of hell. Connor did not believe in the Christian version of heaven and hell, but right then he had no doubt that what stood before him had a definite link to some form of pit of punishment.

He shuddered a little but it did not deter him. He had seen her at her best and well this must be her worst. If so he guessed he could handle it. It might take some getting used to, well truthfully a lot of getting used to, but he was sure he could.

"Yeah they seem to not be so Merry today. Still looks like I have found Maid Marion and look she has a lady in waiting with her,"he quipped.

There went his mouth again. He had always been told he tended to resort to humor in stressful situations and right now he was really stressed.

Looking over at him the other girl simply lifted an eyebrow and gave a sort of sideways nod in his direction. “You two have met before I take it?” she asked. “My name is Raven.. and no it’s not one of the Riders.. pseudonyms for me.”

“As for what’s.. going on.. psychometric anomalies on a truly vast scale indicate that these.. individuals are working in conjunction with a very large group of allies and are killing people in the tens of thousands. Perhaps even in the hundreds of thousands.. Why is unknown, how is by science.. not magic. Perverts.”

“I need a moment to.. converge the energies and see if there is an epicenter to this.” The scantily dressed raven haired beauty informed them as she began chanting in a language that made the Rider snarl and glare at her.

Connor could make Heads nor Tails of the language she was chanting, but it was making his head hurt, and he was used to the monks chanting Sutras for hours on end. Whatever this was he was pretty sure it was not supposed to come out of a humans mouth.

Still studying the girl, Ahh Raven, he had to admit he was having a hell of a lot of luck in meeting fellow hero's. She was gorgeous as well. Dark hair that glistened black in the light. Alabaster skin. A truly magnificent body and a very cute face.

He didn't know what he had done to deserve the way the universe was treating him, but he was going to keep doing it.

Of course the fact that they were still surrounded by Ninja's, Hulking beast's and piles of dead civilians in a ruined city, kind of put a dampener on things. As did the fact that he was totally out of arrows and now that he was together with these two he probably would not have time to go and look for more.

Not that he minded. It would be better to stick with them than go out on his own. Safety in numbers and all that. Besides he had seen what the Rider could do in leather mode, who knew what she could do in kick ass Armor mode.

Ökay so I guess we just hold off all the bad guys until Raven does her thing then,"he said grimacing a little as the words bored into his brain. "No problem. You take the left side of the city and I will take the right. Whoever finishes first gets a cookie," he said grinning at the rider.

 

[Zet_Cross]

"Well it looks like this is as far as we go for now," She called out. "We are going to need some help getting through this thing. Even I'm not fast enough to pass through something like this."

As he was going GRID noticed something ping on his visor, something was approaching the dome at mach speeds. For a moment his heart lifted as he thought it was the Flash. As he got closer however he was brought back down when he didn't recognize the people standing there.

As he got closer he did a more comprehensive scan of her. From these readings she is just a speedster, what is interesting is what is next to her. At that Milton takes a look at the visor's readings.

"Excuse me miss but are you aware you have a transmorphic organism next to you?"

 

[ChasNicollette]

Turbines to Speed. (Rose/M'gann/Hotline)

NJLHQ.
Metropolis.
********​

"Enough banter. Time is of the essence. What do we know of the situation?"

"Not much," Rose confessed. "We're under invasion by some kind of superterrorist army? I'm still only good for surface thoughts-- but Captain Metropolis down there really wants us to get on the jet and get going."

The hangar deck was immediately below the roof. Flying vehicles that were VTOL-capable could park on helipads on the roof and be carried by elevator down to the deck below-- ready to be raised back up to the surface at a moment's notice.

"Oh my God, a Javelin," Ruby breathed and let out an incredulous laugh. "I haven't seen one of those since The Titans borrowed one to save that world-- the one with The Dominators and hypertaxis-- Kaldur--"

"Yes," Kaldur murmured, bounding for the gangplank with all due speed. "I remember."

Nodding firmly and companionably to Nightwing and to the helmeted guard, Kaldur vaulted into the Tactical Console chair and sussed out the weapons systems as Ruby took the Science Console. "Nightwing, thank you for running the preflight. Renegade-- you have a very interesting psychoelectric display signature --thank you for dressing practically. Do we have a twenty on The Ghost Rider, and Silver Bullet?"

Rose had her smartwatch's face in the palm of her hand, and it was already dialing-- she remembered the number from when she'd called him before. "Hello? Silver Bullet?"

When the phone connected, there was-- shouting--

"--no, no, YOUR OTHER LEFT!"

"Hello?" Rose blinked.

"Uh, hey, is this Martian Manhuntress?" Hiro yelled as an explosion resounded-- "YOU CALL THAT WISDOM OF SOLOMON, YOU CAN'T TELL YOUR LEFT FROM YOUR RIGHT?" --"Look, kind of busy-- I heard the alert, but there are people dying right here in front of me and I am not going to abandon them-- I'll catch up with you guys when my new friend and I are done saving San Francisco, okay? I'm good at catching up."

And then he hung up, and he was gone.

Rose stared at her smartwatch for a moment, and winced. "Okay, Silver's not coming. What about Ghost Rider? She didn't take a watch-- I don't think. How can we call her? Do we-- do we just go without her? Let her catch up too?"

 

[kizkiz]

Granite Hiills, Central City: Kiz, The Fish, Len, Mick (tag Chas)

Kiz couldn't out run sound, but he could cover great distances very fast. He specialized in crossing vast open spaces without being noticed. The eye can follow a car or even make sense of the path of a speeding bullet. Those things were fast, but they followed physics and were predictable in the paths they took. Instead, Kiz jumped through folds in space, fixing and aligning another point in four dimensional space with his own, entangling those spaces around yet another axis of existence and being in that new place. Each blink of his eye, he went from one turned over rail cart to the next. Something terrible, perhaps an mammoth had derailed trains along both rail lines. The carnage stretched out beyond the city limits, where the ground swelled around granite hills and old pine forests. It took the better part of twenty minutes to cross the distance. It was disorientating to move that fast in the way he moved.

It took another ten minutes to flit around the granite hills until he found one seventy foot tall bluff. He spun and hurled his fur coat into the air. The jacket undulated and unfolded from the inside out, expanding like a sponge thrown in water. Ulark grunted, stretching a body twice as long as Kiz' own. Ulark was massive.

Kiz's hand looked like a child's in proportion when he laid it upon Ulark's muzzle and scratched. "Well old friend, once more I ask you watch my back while I work."

Ulark grunted and sighed, his eyes twitching as Kiz continued to scratch up along the bear's snout. There was a place where snout intersected with exaggerated eye ridges that could bring Ulark to his knees.

Kiz pet the giant cave bear with one hand, while he ran his other along a crack about two inches wide. There was enough space for his forefinger to feel into the slit and explore its depths. The cavity was deeper than his finger at least. It would do. He preferred a golden ratio along multiple dimensions, but at least they were within the parameters.

"Keep a paw on the lady." Kiz stopped scratching and turned his full attention to the task at hand.

One of Ulark's paws stretched most of the blood mage's chest. He pinned her to the ground, although she had yet to stir. He sniffed her with his nose then raised his muzzle to the sky. He inhaled in a series of pants. Then he swiveled his head from side to side.

Kiz extracted his hand from the crevice. He dropped down to knees, bare chested in leather pants. The toes of his boots curled under, biting small baths in the barren earth. He worked his finger through the fabric of creation, tearing holes into the Void. He wrote with that impossible nothingness, etching a swirling, fractal pattern of curving lines and spiral shapes. He only sought to manipulate 1.61 inches of the crack's width, but he needed to account for the dead space in equal measure on either side of used space. He aligned the sigils to carve out and attune to the appropriate depth and height. The space looked small on the outside. The area he'd drawn upon was less than a thumb high, but it was an appropriate ratio amount of space high and centered to align with the dead space of the cracks width and depth. Fixing the dimensions was the hardest part of the ritual.

He rose to his feet and took a step back, admiring his work. He took whole minutes reworking the equations in his head and verifying the appropriate manifestation of those numbers in the sigils. Then he took a step back, cutting more holes in creation's fabric in proportion to the Golden Mean, expanding the size in the air outside of where he'd marked up the crack. Again and again until he was halfway across the valley formed by the two large hills. By that point the canvas of space required him to stand upon Ulark's shoulders to finish the final proportions. Viewed from head on it formed a pyramid of concentric, connected flowing patterns that were curves, spirals, and dots like some sloppy student's cursive hand writing.

The blood mage was conscious. She watched him in silence, her snake pupils widening as Kiz finished his work. She'd only tried to talk once, but Ulark's weight upon her chest had silenced her better than a gag could have.

Kiz paid her no mind. If she was freaked out by the binding upon her stomach or the presence of an extinct cave bear, he could give two shits. His attention was consumed in his work. It was dangerous to do in a battle setting, but he needed privacy for what he was going to do to her. He needed to dwell outside the regular order of things. He needed a place he could fall back to if things went tits up later on. So he was willing to divert all of his attention to this task for sixteen precious minutes.

Done, Kiz stood in the center of the base of the pyramid. A pyramid of script leaking the Void, on its side so the base was parallel with the crack in the wall. He raised both of his palms up and lowered his head. A deep resonance hummed in the air just on the edge of perceptual range, because it wasn't a physical sound but a spiritual one. The tip of the pyramid slid into the crack, then another segment, and another, and another, and another until what was a thumb sized hole within the crevice became in fact a hollow big upon for a whole family of twelve foot cave bears to live in. In that space, the laws of creation had been rewritten, twisted, and warped. Kiz owned that space until a little over a day and a half from now. On the outside, there was no visible change. Advanced technology might be able to sense the disturbance. High magics like those the Time Lords wielded could as well. It took way too much time and commitment to obscure such a cubby hole from the likes of those. For 99.9999% of creation, it was perfect.

"You can leave your sister's belly now," Kiz said without looking back. "I carved you a new one."

If someone knew where to look and had enough faith to jump, leap, and twist at the last moment, entering the cubby hole in space-time wasn't hard. However, if that same person got it wrong, and it was really easy to get it wrong, they'd smash into granite. Building the nice vomiting lotus blossom effect that the Fish used took more time and didn't add value in this situation.

Ulark waited outside while Kiz brought the blood mage inside. Ulark grumbled but let pass the man that smelled of ice and cold, another that reeked of fire and ash, and the third that didn't really exist at all. Anyone else and there'd be hell to pay. Once everyone was inside, Ulark joined them and curled up besides the entrance. He laid his head down between his front paws and stared out through a cave mouth as large as the last cave he ever lived in and as tiny as a peep hole at the same time.

 

[Varshanka]

“Okay so I guess we just hold off all the bad guys until Raven does her thing then," he said grimacing a little as the words bored into his brain. "No problem. You take the left side of the city and I will take the right. Whoever finishes first gets a cookie," he said grinning at the rider.

“Devil’s Food,” She replied, her voice virtually dripping flames as chains and Blade flashed. Stepping closer, she vaulted over him metal boots impacting a massive face. Rolling with the impact she swung around the massive creature, chains wrapping around it’s neck as she pulled. Infernal muscles burned bright as the Mammoth roared, trying to reach arms back to grab her. But arms that were really good at throwing trucks through buildings sucked at wiping ass, and getting people off their backs.

A sick wet crack echoed through the areas as the Mammoth slumped, it’s head turned at a rather odd angle.

“Are you done yet?” Raven asked, dourly as black lightning ripped from her hands, and a dozen teleporting ninja’s vaporized. Looking over at the only male in the group she gave a sound like the cross between a grunt and a sigh.

“Only if you found their base of Operations.. witch..” Xarathos replied, the hellgun exploding over and over. Each blast blow a hole through another ninja, or took it’s head off. “Find ammo.. mortal.. or a stick.”

“I’ve isolated their teleportation signature, Deamon, and can get us there. If that’s what you want. Or I can create a dampening effect, black them from attacking this area. Maybe a few square miles.”

“Take us there…” Xarathos replied, hefting it’s sword and shield.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rogue Squadron. (tags to Kiz)

"You can leave your sister's belly now," Kiz said without looking back. "I carved you a new one."

They had fought hard.

They had fought with perhaps surprising courage, given that criminals were thought to be a superstitious and cowardly lot.

But when The Glider unfolded again to release Cold and Heatwave, she revealed that their retreat, too, had been hard-fought.

Heatwave's side was slick with blood and while he seemed disinclined to express pain, he let out a grunt as he touched solid ground that was not unlike a sound Ulark might make.

Cold had a cluster of shuriken in his shoulder, and he, too, was striving to ignore it as though numb. "'Carved us a new one.' Pretty sure that's what those damn ninjas just did."

He nodded to the bear, though.

He didn't get why this guy had the Dr. Dolittle entourage, but he wasn't going to look a gift Cave Bear in the snout.

Ulark waited outside while Kiz brought the blood mage inside. Ulark grumbled but let pass the man that smelled of ice and cold, another that reeked of fire and ash, and the third that didn't really exist at all. Anyone else and there'd be hell to pay. Once everyone was inside, Ulark joined them and curled up besides the entrance. He laid his head down between his front paws and stared out through a cave mouth as large as the last cave he ever lived in and as tiny as a peep hole at the same time.

Heatwave slumped against the wall of the hidey-hole, grimaced. "This better be worth it. Running and hiding. You hear me, baldy? This better goddamn be worth it."

Cold laughed, bitterly, darkly to himself as crumpled against the opposite wall.

Glider glanced at him from where she'd taken up position next to the bear, watching the "door." She wasn't sure how this pocket-space worked, but it quivered in resonance with the ectoplasm-esque substance of her body. It felt... strange. "What's so hilarious?"

"I'm not much of one for feelings. They get in the way of doing the math. Accomplishing objectives. But this is how it feels, isn't it? This is how it feels for the normies when some disaster looms and they're holding their breath and praying to God or Whomever for The Flash to show up. This is what that feels like."

He grunted. "Only God's not coming. And neither is The Flash."

 

[LuckyVic]

Upon getting into the building Nightwing made his way to the elevator that would take him to the roof where no doubt they had the Javelin waiting and ready to go. Even though they had it ready to go he still took the time to perform his walk around making sure that there was nothing on the ship’s structure that would could be a detriment to the mission. Once done with the outside he entered the craft and continued the pre-flight checks.

*****

Sighing as he walked past the guards, in their own gear nonetheless, Renegade walked onto the vessel without so much as a challenge. Even a known ally should have been challenged at least once. But he hadn’t been challenged at all. Here he was sitting on a billion dollar piece of hardware, face and body armored up quite nicely.

Muscles and tendons shifted and reshaped, shrinking and growing. She considered taking off he helmet but with The Black Knights protégé sitting there she thought of calling him Galahad, maybe Gawaine,. Either way with him sitting there it was to early to play her hand and show her face. Though she did have a smile behind that helmet. One of those smiles that wasn’t a happy one. More of a .. fine I’ll play your way, and kill you slowly when you bore me.

Hair shortened as she replaced the helmet and sat back, waiting for the others to climb aboard.

He heard someone enter the craft and turned and looked to see it was the one known as Renegade. “We’re ready to do, we just need to wait on any others that have signaled they were coming and were incapable of independent flight.” he said in a gravely voice very similar to that of his father.

 

[kizkiz]

Granite Hills, Central City: Kiz, Len, Mick, Glider (tag Chas)

The entrance to the cubbyhole was both large and small. Ambient light from the valley floor seeped in a purplish gold twilight. Kiz whistled while he worked. "I don't know any Gods still alive." His lips twitched. "But I've got a Godkiller if it comes to it." He reached into his right butt pocket and retrieved a folded piece of paper. "And this." He held it between his forefinger and middle like a poker card.

He carried a decent tune as he unfolded the paper and held it on his palm. The paper was twice as long now, but had a fold down the middle. He unfolded this so it was once more a square just twice as big. He unfolded it twice more; it was so big that he knelt and put it on the floor. Then he unfolded it twice more to make an even bigger square. Then again, their was folds lengthwise, and he unfolded them. There was another set of folds, again lengthwise, and he unfolded those. Now the paper was big enough for a man to lie upon. Then there was folds in the center that formed sides in both corners. More unfolding formed higher walls shin high. Then he reached into the center and pulled from the middle to lift up the top of the box. Except the box wasn't paper anymore it was a sturdy, black walnut. Kiz wrapped his knuckle on the top of the box three times. Then he opened the lid of the box.

"Tada, yes?" Kiz looked around at the weeping wound on Mick's side and the shuriken sprouting from Len's shoulder. "No?"

He took a medium sized box from the chest and slid it across the floor. "You know how to field dress your wounds?" Inside the box was an assortment of emergency medical equipment he'd collected over the past several hundred years across a handful of worlds. There was everything from needles and a bone saw to ever blooming moss and a carafe of smoldering ash. "It's not something I give much attention."

Kiz turned and pointed towards the back of the cave with two fingers. "And don't mind the Chimera." A moment later there was a pop as the air in the back of the cave was displaced by Serrah. Her lion head emitted a low growl before slumping to the ground in a heap. The lion forepaw was a mangled mess of bone and skin. Her goat leg had been pulled from her body; the cavity where it had been was just a cauterized pit. Her goat head lifted once, sniffing the air, then fell to the ground twitching. The snake tail head dribbled napalm like a drunken man might drool.

"Perfect," Kiz said, taking out a handful of black candles. He walked over to Serrah and used the napalm to light the wicks. His eyes darted around the room. He nodded to himself at several points before laying out the candles in a radial, fractal pattern. It took many trips to the chest. All told it was 333 candles. "That's the right number, yes?" Kiz asked, looking at the blood mage.

Her body shivered, but her body showed no injury. Her blood red robes were wrapped around her body. She knelt upon the far corner not far from where Serrah had appeared. She pulled in her feet, hugging her body closer. "It's gone."

"That's not the question I asked," Kiz said. He appeared before her, bending down and picking her up in his arms. He turned, and they both appeared in the center of the array of candles. She didn't struggle. He set her down upon the he ground and stepped back. He nodded and took a knee. His fingers worked fast etching an array of interconnected cuts in the fabric of creation. The Void didn't ooze out, instead the nothingness drew something from her body.

Kiz walked over to Serrah, working his hands over her body. Handfuls of fur and skin were missing. Blood trickled from charred, cauterized wounds. Her goat head refused to lift or open its eyes. The snake head remained erect, mouth open, drooling napalm in a small puddle.

His voice was low intended for himself more so than anyone else. His eyes were unfocused, pupils too large. "Sleepest thou, prince of the house of Aiolos? Come, take this for thy steed as thou art the Tamer. Thy father thou makest sacrifice of him." Kiz shook his head, looking back towards the front of the cave.

Behind him, the sigils crawled in the air over the blood mage. She started to shake, then thrash, screaming. Her hands balled into fists, knuckles popping, blood trickling from her palms. Her legs kicked. Her feet wiggled in a blur, back and forth like insane pendulums. She screamed for minutes without taking a breath. One long eternal cry of pain and horror like a mother watching her children tumbled off the side of a building.

"Noooaaaaahhhhhhhnnnnnooooooaaaaaahhhhhhhnnnnoooooo...." The blood mage first had her eyes plastered open, eyeballs ready to pop out. Then her wailing reached its crescendo and her eyes squeezed shut around tears of blood. Her belly heaved and rolled.

Silence. Calm. Surrender. She sighed, and her head fell to the side. All the tension fled from her body.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Interlude: The Tunnel at The End of The Light. (with apologies to Morrison & Millar)

Earth-14.
30 Relative Years Ago: 1986.
Central Cityplex.
********​

Bartholomew Henry Allen had always been a remarkably intelligent and idealistic fellow. Even now, at ten years old.

He believed avidly in his heroes.

Yes, the superheroes were a huge part of that-- his walls in his little suburban bedroom were plastered with posters and pictures of members of The Judex Sodalitas Authority: The High. Maximum Marvel. The Green Sentinel. Jenny Sparks, Spirit of The Twentieth Century. Ted "Wild" Grant and his Covert Action Team Seven. Aztek. Tomorrow Woman. Doctor Jeroen Thornedike. Majestros the Manhunter. And most of all, the hometown hero, Jay Garrick-- The Flash-- The Fastest Man Alive.

Yes, imagery and indicia of The Scarlet Speedster dominated young Barry's shrine to his heroes. But Barry didn't just love The Flash for how fast he could run. Jay was a scientist.

And this was the remainder of Barry's iconography-- scientists of the fantastic. Nikola Tesla. Waldo Glenmorgan. Henry Bendix. Pat "The Engineer" Dugan. Leo Quintum, with his moonbased DNA P.R.O.J.E.C.T. And of course, Jay was there too.

Barry aspired to heroism. To make this world a better place. But even if he were never touched by the alchemical fires of a metagenetic event, Barry was a genius.

It was in the service of science that he sat in his bedroom wearing his much-loved Flash t-shirt, tinkering with an old radio set, seeing if he could unlock the mysteries of the electromagnetic spectrum, all frequency and amplitude. In particular, Barry sought the hypothetical Frequency X...

...and there, as he adjusted the knob, fiddled with the wiring, as the radio's whine filled his room...

"Hello? Are you there?"

Something happened.

UUIIIIZZZZ, the radio squawked. ZZVVUIIEE

"This is Barry. Barry Allen. Is that you?"

"This is Barry Allen."

VWEEOOZZZ

ZZSSUEEEBBARRREEE

BAR-REE.

KZZHHHZZHHHKRAKKL

Barry's heart leaped up into his throat from behind the lightning bolt symbol that adorned his shirt. His hands trembled on the knob of the radio as blue-white energy crackled in the radio's EM field. "Is somebody trying to get through?"

KRAKKL

Elsewhere.
Elseworld.
Out of Time, Out of Mind.
*********​

Omnitropolis was burning, and Barry Allen was running.

The planetary cityscape of Wonderworld screamed past him, all these skyscrapers scraping an impossible sky.

The Museum District rushed up to meet him. All these scorched-earth artifacts of vast adventures long lost to the previous lifetime of this multiverse: The tattered remains of the brain of A-Mind, an immortal cyborg tyrant-- a shattered six-dimensional bottle that had once trapped a five-dimensional imp-- The Nightmare Vehicle used by cosmic heroes Nightmare and Nemo to enter the subconscious realms-- the petri dish in which once had grown the infant universe of Qwewq...

...and through this all Barry Allen ran.

He came skidding to a halt, there as the great golden warrior Apollo fell to one knee in a crater formed by his crash from orbit, blasted there by weapons beyond mortal comprehension.

"Apollo," Barry wheezed. "I'm sorry-- they-- they killed the others-- Starman betrayed us and used his Quarvat to destroy Jenny-- and The Bedlam Brigade tore The Midnighter to shreds-- I'm so sorry--!"

Apollo closed his eyes, staggered, but then forced himself to his feet, cracking the very strata of Wonderworld beneath his soles. "My daughter... my husband... I'LL TEAR THESE MONSTERS FROM THE HEAVENS AND FEED STARMAN HIS GRAVITY ROD."

"I don't know if we can win this," Barry shook his head. "We should fall back, and gather the heroes from the various nascent vibratory worlds under the guardianship of Earth-14 into a last-stand cosmic coalition."

Apollo blazed with the boundless solar energy of Earth-14's yellow sun, eyes searing saffron. "I am not so easily beaten, Flash, engineered with bio-implants from The High himself. Ma'aj'esta'ac R'ozz is a Kherubim Warlord with the heart of The Last Green Martian. And Eve One, resurrected with the power of our Earth by Doctor Jamie Hamilton-- she stood alone defending primal Mammord for a billion years against chaos, sole guardian of Hypertime before the coming of The Armies of Man. This... Great Darkness. This... Master... he seeks to break our will, our spirit-- but we will shatter his great stone face beneath our fists!"

Swinging his burning gaze to rest upon The Flash, Apollo grimaced. "You speak of a last stand, Bartholomew. This is mine. But should this fortress planet fall under shadow once more..." he paused. "Run, Barry. RUN."

He blurred up into the sky, then, did Apollo, at speeds even Barry's eyes could scarcely follow.

Barry stood there watching the golden guardian soar nevertheless.

But then he felt the telltale plummet of air pressure, and the hush that seemed to last forever... felt the twist and yawn and iris of pandimensional forces in his hyperaccelerated molecular structure...

"...no."

...he whirled in place and turned and ran.

Ran like the hounds of Hell were at his heels.

They might as well have been.

Because then came the sound of The End of The World.

krekkaBOOOOM!

The concussion of a massive interdimensional displacement blasted Barry off of his feet from behind, outrunning even him, knocking him sprawling facefirst, head over heels, skidding for miles through the streets of Omnitropolis.

Behind him, The Museum District was gone. The last battleground of Apollo and Majestros the Manhunter-- and Eve One of The Theocracy was gone again into the dark. Just... gone. A cavernous maw had devoured a whole district of Omnitropolis from the face of Wonderworld, and the vastness of The Multiverse had grown so much darker from the lights that had just winked out.

Barry staggered to his feet, even his Speed Force Suit singing with the gravimetric forces and frictions he'd endured, every molecule of every muscle in his body aching. It was all for nothing if he couldn't rally the troops. Somehow, somewhere, someEarth.

He had to keep going, he had to--

"Allen. This is all pointless. This is all inevitable."

Starman. Farris Knight. Member of The Judex Luminary Authority. Traitor.

Wielding the ultimate Gravity Rod-- The Quarvat-- an artifact born of ontological paradox giving him incomprehensible control over The Fundamental Force that was Gravity-- like holding in your hand the potential gravimetric power of the supermassive black hole at the heart of The Milky Way.

"I have been hollowed out by The Great Darkness and he rides around inside my heart and shows me the inevitable-- you cannot run from this-- not even you."

Horror and dismay clutched Barry's throat, his pounding superspeeding heart. "Farris! You have to fight this! When Solaris and The Daemonites invaded and murdered The High and imprisoned Maximum Marvel in The Rock of Finality, it was your arrival from deep space that heralded the rise of a new Authority-- you let us believe in heroes again! How can you let him grind you down?"

"There are Seven Fundamental Forces," Farris intoned. "I wield power over but one. I have no command over the Fundamental Force that is Restriction. And you-- as a conduit of The Speed Force Wall that thunders just beyond the boundaries of this very planet, you embody The Fundamental Force that is Freedom. I have no such luxury. And even the last echo of your thundering Freedom will fade to the entropy of The Great Darkness."

Barry grimaced. All the fury of a lifetime worshiping heroes, to see so many die before him, around them, when he was one of them-- to see one of their greatest turn and embrace despair...

"The. HELL. IT. WILL."

And he turned again, and he ran.

And behind him, Farris Knight waved The Quarvat as though it were a wand, unleashing an event horizon that could chase down photons and exhaust and consume them, a snapping predator of c...

...and yet Barry ran.

A dead world died all over again beneath his hammering soles and he could feel it in his soul, but he ran.

He staggered to the great Hyperwheel, forged by The Blacksmiths of Mammord for the long-lost cosmic hyperspeedster known as The Glimmer. Like unto his own Cosmic Treadmill at home on Earth-14 but so many geometric exponents greater, faster, stronger...

...he sprinted into it without even slowing down as the gravity wave ran roughshod over the terrain still cooling from the heat of his passing. And he ran. Even. Harder.

It was old beyond the numerical reckoning of human arithmetic, but it responded to his footfalls as though born to it. As though it had been holding its breath for just this moment. And as the wheel came to life under him, he felt it add its velocity to his own...

...faster-than-light squared.

He didn't know where he was going. Or when. Just that he was going.

His entire molecular structure became instantly converted to hyperlight information and he shot out of that place at hypertemporal velocity.

At, quite literally, God. Speed.

He shot away from Wonderworld, from the destruction wrought by The Great Darkness and all its agents.

Shot away from his dying friends.

His only hope-- his only thought-- his single driving divining lightning rod of focus--

--was to get.

Somewhere.

Anywhere.

Where he could find the help he needed to save this doomed, doomed Multiverse.

And as he ran, he scraped along the rim of The Speed Force Wall as it encircled this tier of this region of spacetime... the ultimate Valhalla for all those who ran with lightning in their stride... he could hear it calling him, singing in his blood, his bones, the spaces between his atoms, in his suit composed of pure Speed Force...

...but no, no, not yet.

He grazed along it like incalculable quintillions of miles of road-rash but he didn't go in.

Exhaustion seized him, and he blacked out.

********​

And when he woke up, The Speed Force humming beneath him more like floor than wall.

He was not alone.

A being of blue light stood before him, on the city limits of a citadel that seemed to rise from The Speed Force Wall--

--he looked like he was made of light, and so was his city--

--like a Sonic the Hedgehog made from the crackling energies of Frequency X.

"You made it! All the really great ones make it here eventually, to The Radioland of KWYZZ. G-Force, Max Mercury, Lumina, Hot Pursuit, The Glimmer-- here to find the beginning of the four-dimensional track that will let them run throughout The Orrery of Worlds--"

"I'm... I'm sorry..." Barry mumbled, shakily struggling to his feet, he could feel the ache in every tendon, but still he stood... "...you're talking like we've met. Do I know you?"

The shimmery entity smiled softly. "It's been a long time since you've tuned in, Bar-Ree."

Barry's eyes widened. "Oh my God. Krakkl?"

 

[ChasNicollette]

Interlude: The Prologue is Past.

Earth-Prime, aka Earth-0.
Star City.
Then.
********​

"I don't care if I have to sacrifice everything, you're fucking dead. Got that? Everyone I ever cared about is dead because of YOU monster!" He snapped at the beast before torpedoing himself in a blind rage.

A battle ensued between the man of steel and Doomsday.

Impacts rang so deep into the foundations of Star City that they seemed to rattle the spine of the world.

With every punch, windows would shatter for blocks.

The very tectonic plates beneath the city would buckle-- not only would geologists consider Star City to be at seismic risk for years later, official topographic surveys would later discover that Star City was now 582 feet above sea level, as such things were reckoned. Before the fight, they had been 586.

This is what happened when The Man of Steel held nothing back.

His right hand was a crumpled mess, slick with blood the red of his cape.

But standing there in the crater that had once been Magnuson Plaza, over the battered, seething Doomsday, Superman saw in one shuddery instant that repeated pounding punches to the center of Doomsday's forehead had shattered both its unbreakably-reinforced endoskeletal skull and the exoskeletal growths of jagged bone that provided additional invulnerability. All of it had been rendered concave-- fragmented and fractured--

Clark's micro-vision could already see the beast healing. Fighting back against any and all forms of damage, adapting-- but Superman wouldn't give him that chance.

His eyes flared with heat that seemed bright as the surface of the sun and stabbed down through the cricks and jags of Doomsday's shattered brow, spearing into the bestial creature's multi-lobed, neutronium-resilient brain.

Eviscerating it.

Lobotomizing it.

Vegetating it.

Doomsday tried to raise its fist one last time, but then slumped, drool spilling out of the corner of its mouth.

Superman stared down at it, and nodded to himself when it did not immediately rise again, when its brain did not immediately prove capable of rejecting the injury and reasserting its structural integrity.

"It's down, Ms. West-Allen. I advise you to keep your distance all the same, though I doubt you'll listen. Something tells me you're as headstrong as a certain reporter I know-- knew --out east in Metropolis."

She staggered, picking her way through the obliterated plaza parking garage.

"Superman, I-- I have a duty to the story, to the network-- but more than that, I had to know. I had to see it in my own eyes that the monster was gone, and that the Earth was safe. After what he-- after he-- took--"

Superman gazed at her quietly with those wild-yonder eyes, ache mirroring hers. His right hand, already healing, gingerly reached out and touched her shoulder. "We've all lost so much today. My cousin. The Justice League. My mind's still in shock, to be honest, still reeling. But none of their sacrifices have been in vain-- the monster is gone. Dead. I only wish I could have gotten here sooner..."

"No-one blames you," Iris promised, though something in her tone said she was reminding herself as much as Superman. "Even Superman can't be everywhere at once."

"Thank you, Iris," he nodded gratefully, and smiled a light-years distant smile. "I'm going to throw this thing's rotting carcass into the sun now, to make sure he'll never threaten this planet again. Go and be with your family. Cry your tears. Honor your..." he paused, knowing how much Barry had meant to Iris but unwilling to say so aloud in case of prying ears "...hometown hero."

Biting back some of those very tears, Iris nodded: "Thank you, Superman."

And with that, The Man of Tomorrow bore Doomsday's corpse aloft, and whooshed up into the ashen Star City sky, accelerating furiously towards orbital escape velocity.

Iris paused, for a moment, unable to decide which way she should turn-- or if she should just collapse into the rubble of Magnuson Plaza and just weep her heart out into the broken concrete and rebar.

And it occurred to her.

Just the tiniest intrusive thought.

You think the strangest things when your world has just come crashing down around you.

Didn't he used to be taller?

 

[Varshanka]

Dilemma on a javelin (Karan) Tag (Javelin crew)

*NJLHQ.
Metropolis.*​

Taking a seat, she had no clue what position it was or how to work the buttons, knobs, and levers anyway, Karan sat and twirled around in the seat a couple times. She wanted to do something, maybe punch Poseidona’s child in the nose.

She couldn’t help it.

She was sulking.

The Daughters of Poseidona had never disliked her before, in fact she’d gotten along well with the water nymph’s before. But then she’d never dealt with a… um.. male version before. She hadn’t known that it was even possible for them to exist, but from all appearances that is exactly what.. that was.

Weird.

Looking over at Rose didn’t help. Not with that alabaster skin, scarlet hair, and blood red eyes. It made her heart beat faster and well.. made it hard for her breathe. Closing her eyes she couldn’t see the Daughter of Aphrodite and Helia, but she could still hear her breathing, her heartbeat, smell her hair.

She smelled like clove and cinnamon with a hint of hot peppers. And lilacs.

Goddess why did she have to smell so good. She wanted to take a deep breath and calm her heart, but that would be bad. A deep breath meant she’d have Rose filling her nose and brain.

Goddess she was so.. fucked. Breathe and have her brain go into hyperRosedrive. Or not breathe and pass out.

Yeah, she wanted to punch Poseidona’s child in the nose.

Twice.

And then there was Renegade, sitting over there. At least she assumed it was Renegade. Everyone else seemed to think it was. And she smelled the same as last time, sort of. Kinda smelled.. well like a man as well for a moment. But that could have been a mixed blend of the other.. males on board. And they smelled.

Not bad.. just not like Rose.

Renegade. Think about Renegade. Heartbeat was exceptionally slow. Breathing was virtually non-existent. It’s like she was a living statue. Barely alive. But she was. Looking over she – refocused – her eyes. It was kinda like looking at one of those three dimensional posters.

Yeah, she had a heat aura. But no one had anything normal. Maybe Nightwing, but he was male so it wasn’t like a girls at all. Kaldur was just.. cold. Like really cold. Rose. Oh Goddess she was looking at Rose again, and she was hot with shimmering colors. Not bland warm like most human females, but like a really high heat with shimmering waves of yellow and oranges, blended with blues and greens.

 

[kizkiz]

Central City: Kiz (tag Chas)

The girl's body emitted a sigh and sat up, folding her feet over each other. She rested her palms on her head and rolled her snake eyes at Kiz. "You really take all the fun out of this, you know?"

Kiz grunted. "With all these candles?" He kicked candles out of his way as he cut a path to the girl. "That's not in fashion anymore? It's not back to calk? Blood?" Kiz kicked a candle into the wall with a scowl on his face. It hit with a wet splat and went out. Black wax sloshed down the wall. "I would not have wasted so much time laying all this crap out, if I had known."

She laughed, clapping her hands. "Oh, don't brood Bellerophon, it's unbecoming of one of your stature."

Kiz waved the comment away. "You prefer Polyeidos?"

She laughed, mimicking Kiz's wave. "Fine. Fine. Whatever."

Kiz leveled a sausage sized finger at the girl's face. "Sheshanaga-"

She cut him off, "Oh please, you play that card too often. I am one of many; it was but a sting."

"No, a reminder. One which your progenitor shudders from. You fear dissonance just like the rest."

"Fine, you've made your point...again" She rolled her eyes, "For the fifteenth time already. But you realize they've bound me with true oaths as much as refracted my projection." She shrugged as if that explained everything.

Kiz opened his mouth to speak.

She started speaking agin. "I can't share the Artha-Shastra with you, their agreement supersedes."

"I don't need a super majority for what I want."

She smirked, opened her mouth to talk, then caught sight of Ulark lurking by the entrance. Closed her mouth and licked her lips. "I won't degrade myself, if that's what you are implying."

He shrugged. "Then I'll go out and take the super majority." Kiz stopped, reaching hand to scratch at his back. He turned so she could see it. The tattoo of ravens swarming over his back moved. The picture changed. The birds eyes were opened. Their mouths cawed. Their claws extended. "Or I'll just shut the whole gorydamn thing down. It's what the Nadeau have been lobbying for since the first materialization happened." Kiz raised his tree trunk arms up over his head, stretching. Muscle churned like storm whipped waves.

She turned her head back towards Kiz. Her eyes narrowed. "You wouldn't."
"I have. I may again. They need to be let out soon anyway."

She chewed on her lip. "If you didn't have your trump card-"

"But I do have them, and they are hungry."

She nodded her head. "Terms?"

"I don't care about the Artha-Shastra. I won't ask you to betray your oaths so long as you disclose them now. Embody Rakshasa-Shastra for a year and a day."

"Fully? You'll need to collect more then this," she patted her belly, "If you need to pierce the Veil they are using."

Kiz laughed, cold and cruel.

"Fine, you don't need it all obviously nor my power, but I am not all that is behind this Veil."

"It's as much technic as magic." Kiz made a twirling gesture with his fingers.

"More so."

"But they need you as anchors, that's obvious to a child."

She finished his words for him, rolling her eyes again. "And you are no child, yes, you used the same lines before."

Kiz frowned. "Greece?"

"No, Egypt."

"Oh." He frowned, "Not India?"

"No, definitely Egypt."

Kiz shrugged. He'd forgotten a lot. These days it seemed like everything he learned required something to be lost.

Her hands rested upon her knees again. She looked bored and petulant like a spoiled child. "Yeah. Zerox Standard all around then?"

"Yes. Just a basic contract is fine. I don't care to haggle a day and a night over this."

"Good, fine then." She tilted her head back and forth, chewing again on her lip. "Form?"

"This." Kiz sliced through the air with his fingers, ripping creation open and etching sigils in the air between them. He wrote for almost ten minutes.

She laughed, looking at the sigils cutting through the space between them. "Did one of your Time Lords put you up to this?" She shook her head. "Very well."

Kiz extended his hands palms out between them. The girl rose to her feet, much shorter than him, but she also put her palms out. The air crackled. The air shrieked like stone grinding against rusty metal. Around them more nothingness ate through creation, setting passages of sigils to crawl in circles around their perimeter.

Kiz stepped forward, and the sigils between them contracted. The dark nothingness congealed and seeped into the girl's belly. The sigils circling them faded away. The room filled with an oppressive heaviness as Kiz poured raw arcane energy into the girl's chakra, into her Ātman. He ripped out the portion of रावण occupying the poor girl. The matrix comprised of the Void, entwined itself around रावण, containing and hiding whatever रावण might otherwise look like. Instead the crawling, black nothingness script of the Void fashioned a seeming for रावण that resembled a rusted, twisted dagger but with chunks missing along the length so it looked more like a mangled saw or the cuts found in the length of a key. Kiz held the Key Dagger. He'd specified a small skeleton key, but of course रावण had found enough room to add it's own flare to the matrix Kiz'd defined. The dagger had no guard except for a small shoulder on the blade side. The hilt was a rusted length ending in a large loop. Kiz put a finger in the loop and swung the Key Dagger around his finger. Goryhell, he hated Key Swords. Now he had the bastard child of one for the next year and a day...and no sheath to put it in.

He walked over to the chest, kicking aside more black candles that got in his way. He rummaged around through several different boxes until he found one that was filled with random climbing equipment. He sifted through the junk until he found a carabiner that he could use to clip the Key Dagger to his pants. It was going to look so stupid flopping from his waist that he'd probably end up releasing रावण within a few days.

He clipped it to his right hip and turned to the three humans. "Does this look as stupid as I think it does?"

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

“Devil’s Food,” She replied, her voice virtually dripping flames as chains and Blade flashed. Stepping closer, she vaulted over him metal boots impacting a massive face. Rolling with the impact she swung around the massive creature, chains wrapping around it’s neck as she pulled. Infernal muscles burned bright as the Mammoth roared, trying to reach arms back to grab her. But arms that were really good at throwing trucks through buildings sucked at wiping ass, and getting people off their backs.

A sick wet crack echoed through the areas as the Mammoth slumped, it’s head turned at a rather odd angle.

“Are you done yet?” Raven asked, dourly as black lightning ripped from her hands, and a dozen teleporting ninja’s vaporized. Looking over at the only male in the group she gave a sound like the cross between a grunt and a sigh.

“Only if you found their base of Operations.. witch..” Xarathos replied, the hellgun exploding over and over. Each blast blow a hole through another ninja, or took it’s head off. “Find ammo.. mortal.. or a stick.”

Connor looked at the two supernatural beings before him and sighed. Yeah it sucked to be practically mortal when you fought besides people that could punch their way through walls or throw lightning around like it was no big deal, but you did what you could do and just soldiered on.

"Yeah yeah, give the mortal a break. I don't have an endless supply of arrows you know and finding a shop that has them in all this mess is like looking for a needle in a haystack," he grumbled as he picked up two of the Katanas the ninja's had dropped.

"Really got to talk to Ray about an idea I have about my arrow problem," he muttered under his breath.

“I’ve isolated their teleportation signature, Deamon, and can get us there. If that’s what you want. Or I can create a dampening effect, black them from attacking this area. Maybe a few square miles.”

“Take us there…” Xarathos replied, hefting it’s sword and shield.

Connor looked over at the two of them and shrugged. Hey it couldn't be much worse than here right? Besides who would think they would be able to take the fight to them. They would have the element of surprise on their side.

Besides he had the feeling his best chance of survival was sticking close to these two at the moment.

"Okay then, let's go poke the bear in it's den and see if we can make a rug out of it," He grinned

 

[Varshanka]

Raven/Rider

Connor looked over at the two of them and shrugged. Hey it couldn't be much worse than here right? Besides who would think they would be able to take the fight to them. They would have the element of surprise on their side.

Besides he had the feeling his best chance of survival was sticking close to these two at the moment.

"Okay then, let's go poke the bear in it's den and see if we can make a rug out of it," He grinned

“Making rugs from a living creature is evil.” Xarathos said in that voice of ages. “Perhaps someone should peel your skin from your body and lay it on a floor. So they can walk on your face whenever they want. Sounds charming.”

Giving the Rider a withering look Raven’s fingers moved as she called upon energy old and arcane. Dark swirls with edges of purple midnight latched onto one of the Ninja’s lifting it’s headless form, more tendrils latching onto The Daemon called Ghost Rider as well as the Human Robin Hood. Emanating from Raven the energy grow from tendrils to an all-enveloping dome of coruscating power.

It only took seconds for the power to begin, for the snapping crackle as they vanished. Leaving one place behind, and arriving somewhere totally different.

Looking around Raven sent energy beams racing towards attackers, frying them where they stood. “Well, we’re here. Wherever that is.” She informed her two travelling companions.

Looking around the Rider shrugged. “Dark. Gloomy. Must be Los Angeles. Or Detroit. Find ranged weapons if you can Robin. Your Melee skills are.. lacking.”

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

“Making rugs from a living creature is evil.” Xarathos said in that voice of ages. “Perhaps someone should peel your skin from your body and lay it on a floor. So they can walk on your face whenever they want. Sounds charming.”

Giving the Rider a withering look Raven’s fingers moved as she called upon energy old and arcane. Dark swirls with edges of purple midnight latched onto one of the Ninja’s lifting it’s headless form, more tendrils latching onto The Daemon called Ghost Rider as well as the Human Robin Hood. Emanating from Raven the energy grow from tendrils to an all-enveloping dome of coruscating power.

It only took seconds for the power to begin, for the snapping crackle as they vanished. Leaving one place behind, and arriving somewhere totally different.

Looking around Raven sent energy beams racing towards attackers, frying them where they stood. “Well, we’re here. Wherever that is.” She informed her two travelling companions.

Looking around the Rider shrugged. “Dark. Gloomy. Must be Los Angeles. Or Detroit. Find ranged weapons if you can Robin. Your Melee skills are.. lacking.”

Connor took a second to reorient himself with the real world again.

That had been one hell of a ride. One second he had been in San Fran, the next some of that black energy Raven loved using was curling around him, and then the universe had turned inside out and he was here.

Well they might be used to traveling like that but he was having trouble holding onto last night's dinner.

Still the effects seemed to be wearing off and he looked around.

Raven had cleared the area of any immediate threat so he put the swords he had purloined underneath his quiver on his back where they fit snugly.

Despite what the Rider thought, his swordplay was getting better the more he fought. He seemed to be learning as he went. The better his opponent the more he learned.

Still she was right. It was better for him to be armed with what he was best at.

His eyes lit up as he spied a small sign on a corner shop. 'Guns and Ammo'

"Raven I could kiss you. How you managed to bring us to the exact spot I needed is a miracle."

Connor ran towards the building after drawing a sword, keeping a careful lookout then pushed open the door.

Inside he found the usual vests, jackets and mannequins plus camping gear, but he hardly paid any attention to that. The counter had an assortment of handguns, knives and rifles, but again he scanned and quickly dismissed them.

He finally found what he was looking for on the back wall. Several bows and quivers of arrows, neatly presented and just waiting for him.

He examined each one and finally selected a brand new hunting bow, then grabbed all the arrows he could find and restocked his quiver.

Happy he made his way out of the store and back towards his two companions.

A flicker of movement and he had nocked, drawn and shot in one swift movement and a ninja fell from a rooftop, an arrow in his chest.

Connor shook his head. "A slight deviation to the right. That should have been a heart shot instead it hit slightly off center. Have to compensate for that in future."

Smiling he looked at the other two. "So what's the plan? Can you sense where the big boss is or where they are teleporting from so we can go knock it out or are we going to have to explore the whole place?"

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rogue Crossover. (tags to kiz)

The entrance to the cubbyhole was both large and small. Ambient light from the valley floor seeped in a purplish gold twilight.

If any of these three Rogues were impressed by the bigger-on-the-inside pocket-universe crap, they gave no sign. They'd walked in and out of enough mirrors with Glider's ex Evan McCulloch that this might prove old hat for them-- though they were bemused that this, too, was in Kiz' bag of many, many tricks.

Kiz whistled while he worked. "I don't know any Gods still alive."

This was more or less accurate.

Pharamond was basically out of the spotlight, though his change in portfolio at the advice of Dream of The Endless had ensured him some measure of job security in perpetuity.

Ishtar was an exotic dancer somewhere, a master of her craft, though she never showed the full extent of her skill-- so long as certain men and women had eyes in their heads and lusts in their loins, she would have job security too.

The Aesir were grimly busying themselves about their current cycle of Ragnarok, though this would seem perhaps to have a greater chill and horror about it than iterations their prior incarnations had faced.

Olympus had basically barricaded itself within its region of The Sphere of The Gods, seldom if ever interacting now with the modern world-- it had been long enough now that The Amazons sequestered on Paradise Island remembered even the male gods as females, their interpretation of the pantheon having evolved somewhat over thousands of years. Of course, the presence of such beings was long felt even when they had left a sphere-- the power of Neptune could still be made manifest by his Trident, for instance, thanks to the ancient incantations at the forge of Arion-- and both Billie Batson and Nathan Fawcett could access the power of certain Olympians through the machinations of SHAZAM.

The gods of Celtic and pagan myth had, for the very most part, retreated into the realms of Faerie and left this Earth behind. Certain aboriginal entities, Australia, Native America, Africa, these still gleefully snuck around the edges of the world, making mischief and war behind the backdrop of reality. The gods of the Hindu pantheon, of course, followed their own rules. They always had.

The Endless, over their long interactions with humanity, had frequently been mistaken for gods, and they never died. At least, they didn't die often, or for very long.

And many many gods had been forgotten, and had walked off into The Dreaming to die, as is the fate of deities when their worship falters and belief is insufficient to sustain them.

And the menagerie of Hell's horrors continued their eternal war against The Presence and Its home in The Silver City of Heaven-- The Presence's power was unquestioned, but Its silence spoke volumes.

Functionally, the time of gods among men was long done.

Humanity had new gods now, a new pantheon: The Justice League. And even they were not eternal.

His lips twitched. "But I've got a Godkiller if it comes to it."

Heatwave chortled softly. "I've changed my mind, Cold. I do like this guy."

He reached into his right butt pocket and retrieved a folded piece of paper. "And this." He held it between his forefinger and middle like a poker card.

The three Rogues shared a puzzled expression, Glider perturbed most of all.

He carried a decent tune as he unfolded the paper and held it on his palm. The paper was twice as long now, but had a fold down the middle. He unfolded this so it was once more a square just twice as big. He unfolded it twice more; it was so big that he knelt and put it on the floor. Then he unfolded it twice more to make an even bigger square. Then again, their was folds lengthwise, and he unfolded them. There was another set of folds, again lengthwise, and he unfolded those. Now the paper was big enough for a man to lie upon. Then there was folds in the center that formed sides in both corners. More unfolding formed higher walls shin high. Then he reached into the center and pulled from the middle to lift up the top of the box. Except the box wasn't paper anymore it was a sturdy, black walnut. Kiz wrapped his knuckle on the top of the box three times. Then he opened the lid of the box.

"Tada, yes?"

"Very nice," Cold growled sardonically, "I saw Giovanni Zatara do that once in Vegas when my dad and I were there for a heist. Good times."

But he'd never been able to figure out the logistics of the trick, and he still couldn't, and that bugged the shit out of him.

Kiz looked around at the weeping wound on Mick's side and the shuriken sprouting from Len's shoulder. "No?"

He took a medium sized box from the chest and slid it across the floor. "You know how to field dress your wounds?" Inside the box was an assortment of emergency medical equipment he'd collected over the past several hundred years across a handful of worlds. There was everything from needles and a bone saw to ever blooming moss and a carafe of smoldering ash. "It's not something I give much attention."

Cold reached out and caught the box as it slid towards him, and he squinted. "Must be nice. Yeah, we can patch up. I make sure everyone on my crew is well-versed in possible logistical eventualities. ...and thanks, I guess."

Kiz turned and pointed towards the back of the cave with two fingers. "And don't mind the Chimera." A moment later there was a pop as the air in the back of the cave was displaced by Serrah. Her lion head emitted a low growl before slumping to the ground in a heap. The lion forepaw was a mangled mess of bone and skin. Her goat leg had been pulled from her body; the cavity where it had been was just a cauterized pit. Her goat head lifted once, sniffing the air, then fell to the ground twitching. The snake tail head dribbled napalm like a drunken man might drool.

"This is why I never share my toys," Heatwave drawled. "Pretty little thing like that, damn shame." And for a sociopathic pyromaniac, he actually sounded like he meant it.

"Perfect," Kiz said, taking out a handful of black candles. He walked over to Serrah and used the napalm to light the wicks. His eyes darted around the room. He nodded to himself at several points before laying out the candles in a radial, fractal pattern. It took many trips to the chest. All told it was 333 candles. "That's the right number, yes?" Kiz asked, looking at the blood mage.

Heatwave hissed inaudibly as Cold cleaned and stitched his side. "Is he trying to exorcise this bitch or get lucky?"

Cold chuckled faintly. "Works better if you scatter rose petals and put on Manilow. Or so I'm told. Me, I'm more of a bar-fights as foreplay type."

Glider squinted at them, and shushed them, a 180 from the horndogging she'd been doing earlier. "Both of you shut up. Nobody wants to hear about your trainwreck love lives."

Mick scowled. "What crawled up her and died?"

Snart harrumphed. "Got me swinging." ...though of course, he suspected that it might actually have been Lisa herself.

Her body shivered, but her body showed no injury. Her blood red robes were wrapped around her body. She knelt upon the far corner not far from where Serrah had appeared. She pulled in her feet, hugging her body closer. "It's gone."

"That's not the question I asked," Kiz said. He appeared before her, bending down and picking her up in his arms. He turned, and they both appeared in the center of the array of candles. She didn't struggle. He set her down upon the he ground and stepped back. He nodded and took a knee. His fingers worked fast etching an array of interconnected cuts in the fabric of creation. The Void didn't ooze out, instead the nothingness drew something from her body.

None of The Rogues, of course, understood any of this. What was gone? What was the question? What the Hell?

Kiz walked over to Serrah, working his hands over her body. Handfuls of fur and skin were missing. Blood trickled from charred, cauterized wounds. Her goat head refused to lift or open its eyes. The snake head remained erect, mouth open, drooling napalm in a small puddle.

Heatwave perked up at this, though. The beautiful creature could breathe fire-- he wondered if the bald bruiser with the magic powers was going to heal her so she would breathe more of it. He frowned, disappointed, when this did not immediately appear to be the case.

His voice was low intended for himself more so than anyone else. His eyes were unfocused, pupils too large. "Sleepest thou, prince of the house of Aiolos? Come, take this for thy steed as thou art the Tamer. Thy father thou makest sacrifice of him." Kiz shook his head, looking back towards the front of the cave.

Behind him, the sigils crawled in the air over the blood mage. She started to shake, then thrash, screaming. Her hands balled into fists, knuckles popping, blood trickling from her palms. Her legs kicked. Her feet wiggled in a blur, back and forth like insane pendulums. She screamed for minutes without taking a breath. One long eternal cry of pain and horror like a mother watching her children tumbled off the side of a building.

"Noooaaaaahhhhhhhnnnnnooooooaaaaaahhhhhhhnnnnoooooo...." The blood mage first had her eyes plastered open, eyeballs ready to pop out. Then her wailing reached its crescendo and her eyes squeezed shut around tears of blood. Her belly heaved and rolled.

Silence. Calm. Surrender. She sighed, and her head fell to the side. All the tension fled from her body.

No more jokes about Kiz' seduction technique.

Glider watched in transfixed agony as her brother and his brother-in-arms watched in mystified bewilderment.

Quickly, she distracted herself from this madness by tending her brother's shuriken injury, using her phasing tendrils to help remove the blades from his flesh and staunch the bleeding.

The girl's body emitted a sigh and sat up, folding her feet over each other. She rested her palms on her head and rolled her snake eyes at Kiz. "You really take all the fun out of this, you know?"

Kiz grunted. "With all these candles?" He kicked candles out of his way as he cut a path to the girl. "That's not in fashion anymore? It's not back to calk? Blood?" Kiz kicked a candle into the wall with a scowl on his face. It hit with a wet splat and went out. Black wax sloshed down the wall. "I would not have wasted so much time laying all this crap out, if I had known."

"Shoulda led with the rose petals," Cold muttered to himself with a faint smirk, wincing with one eye at his sister's ministrations.

Heatwave, meanwhile, limped over to sit next to the injured chimera. Fearless as Daniel in The Lions' Den, he felt kinship with the beast and sat unflinching next to it.

She laughed, clapping her hands. "Oh, don't brood Bellerophon, it's unbecoming of one of your stature."

"'Bellorophon,'" Glider murmured. It was the first name they'd heard for him. She wasn't a student of the classics, as such, but she liked the way that name rolled off of her selectively-tangible tongue.

Cold, however, was given pause. "...so these two know each other? Wait, is she a ringer? A plant? Is this an old-school medicine-show con?"

As eloquent and artful and fascinating as the following exchange was, the negotiations between bloodmage (or inhabiting spirit?) and Void-Binder, The Rogues understood absolutely none of it.

Perhaps the legendary Doctor Fate, gone with The Justice League, could have provided a running translation, but none of them moved in that sort of circle. It fell then to The Rogues not to comprehend, but watch, and wait, and wonder.

Kiz stepped forward, and the sigils between them contracted. The dark nothingness congealed and seeped into the girl's belly. The sigils circling them faded away. The room filled with an oppressive heaviness as Kiz poured raw arcane energy into the girl's chakra, into her Ātman. He ripped out the portion of रावण occupying the poor girl. The matrix comprised of the Void, entwined itself around रावण, containing and hiding whatever रावण might otherwise look like. Instead the crawling, black nothingness script of the Void fashioned a seeming for रावण that resembled a rusted, twisted dagger but with chunks missing along the length so it looked more like a mangled saw or the cuts found in the length of a key. Kiz held the Key Dagger. He'd specified a small skeleton key, but of course रावण had found enough room to add it's own flare to the matrix Kiz'd defined. The dagger had no guard except for a small shoulder on the blade side. The hilt was a rusted length ending in a large loop. Kiz put a finger in the loop and swung the Key Dagger around his finger. Goryhell, he hated Key Swords. Now he had the bastard child of one for the next year and a day...and no sheath to put it in.

"All of that for a rusty knife?" Heatwave grimaced. "Don't get me wrong, rust is a cousin to fire, I can see the appeal, but what-- are we gonna tetanus the snake-face army to death?"

He walked over to the chest, kicking aside more black candles that got in his way. He rummaged around through several different boxes until he found one that was filled with random climbing equipment. He sifted through the junk until he found a carabiner that he could use to clip the Key Dagger to his pants. It was going to look so stupid flopping from his waist that he'd probably end up releasing रावण within a few days.

He clipped it to his right hip and turned to the three humans. "Does this look as stupid as I think it does?"

"You're asking a guy who wears a parka even when it isn't February," Snart replied wryly, and not insincerely. "Cool isn't something you wear. It's something you carry with you. That way, anything you wear becomes cool by default. I'm not saying you have that kind of cool, 'Bello,' but-- I don't completely rule it out."

Glider smirked faintly, gazing Kiz up and down again.

"I say he can rock the look. Hell, he could even bring fanny-packs back into style."

 

[kizkiz]

Central City: Kiz and the Rogues (tag Chas)

Glider smirked faintly, gazing Kiz up and down again. "I say he can rock the look. Hell, he could even bring fanny-packs back into style."

"I like that," Kiz said, a faint smile touching his lips. He unclipped the Key Dagger, spinning it around his forefinger from the ring in the hilt. He watched Glider for a moment longer before grabbing the box of random medical supplies. "It's more key than knife." Kiz snapped his wrist forward and the Key Dagger sunk hilt-deep into the rock. "It's an opener of many things." His lips twitched again, "Holes in rock, bodies, and," he reappeared next to the knife, pulling it from the rock, "The dome." He stuck his finger back in the ring and twirled it around in lazy laps.

His head turned, watching Mick try to bond with the last terrible granddaughter of Gaia. He clipped the Key Dagger back on his hip and walked over to grab the box of medical junk. "Glaucus, the King of Corrinth, gave me that name." He dumped the box into the chest. "It means Slayer of Belleros, who was an annoying daimon-" He paused, frowning, "A small god, uh, spirit you would call it these days." He shrugged, closing the lid. "It is as good a name as any. रावण here," He patted the Key Dagger, "Excels at many things, including giving bad advice. It had inhabited a pig farmer and became the famed Corinthian seer Polyeidos who tried to give me advice about ridding the world of Chimera, Gaia's last grandchild." He waved away the memories like they were annoying mosquitos good for nothing other than sucking his blood and leaving him itchy. "No one cares about what happened thousands of years ago."

He closed the lid and gave the top another three raps with his knuckles. As he folded the box back up into a sheet of paper the size of a playing card, he added, "Or longer." He looked to Ulark who raised his massive head and whined, before laying back down. All this talk was making Kiz feel old. He hated the past.

He put the paper in his right back pocket and shook his head. "Serrah's useless for now." The snake head nuzzled against Mick, dribbling napalm like a dog would drool. The goat head didn't even stir. The lion opened one fist sized golden eye, before closing them and giving a deep sigh. "But if you are a good boy Mick, I'll let you frolic with her after all this is over."

Kiz had a vision of Serrah covering the poor man in napalm; his body melting to a puddle of rendered fat and ash. She'd done it before. He wouldn't be the first man who thought a monster was a friend. But maybe Mick was immune to fire and insanity.

"I would not blame you, if you choose to stay here or leave the dome." He frowned, "But if you remain in my company, I will need your word that you will treat me as an ally. That you will do no harm to me or through inaction allow harm to befall me in so far as the assistance would not be fatal to either party. Otherwise, we will part ways."

He whirled, facing to the southwest, frowning. His eyes narrowed to slits. "Hurry with your decision. More players have entered the field." Kiz raised the Key Dagger, his eyes closed as he attuned himself to it, resonating with its arcane frequency. A terrible weight ballooned out from Kiz like the pressure felt deep beneath the ocean as he poured raw arcane power into the dagger. "Something has casually torn a hole through the dome. Although the dome repairs itself even now. Something very close to us."

Kiz shook his head, twirling the dagger around his finger again. "A problem for later. What say you?"

 

[WiredIn]

This isn't working...

--Paris Island Bridge--​

Holocaust roared as he smashed a ninja into the ground with the wreck of a car, grinning at the crunching sound he made but the pancake was simply replaced by another. The bodies of several mammoths lay mutilated or in the case of one, dangling from the bridge with a suspension cable wrapped around his throat. Virgil stood just a dozen meters away with Coil at his back. He had sustained several slashes to various parts of his body, the fight was clearly taking a toll on him. He smashed his Bo-staff into another ninja and dashed back before a blade could find its mark.

"This isn't working." Virgil shouted towards Coil.

"Just keep fighting Bug Zapper. You're getting sloppy." Coil barked as she swatted away a emerald clad ninja. Her body was surrounded by coils of chain, rope, wire, and just about anything else rope-like. Each one seemed to act independently and lash out at anyone who strayed to close which up until this point had kept Coil untouched.

"I have an idea. You'll need to keep this up yourself." Without a second glance he expanded his flying disc and shakily flew off. Behind him he could hear Holocaust's made laughter as he really let go.

Virgil brought out his communication disc and instinctively called up Hardware, though when he answered he appeared to be quite busy. The video connection was distorted and repeatedly cut out but the audio rang soundly. "Static-DAMNIT! Where have you been-GET OFF ME! Where are you-."

"Doc, meet me at my lab. I need your expertise."

"It isn't that easy Static!"

"Now! I have a plan."

--STAR Labs, Dakota City--​

Virgil flew sloppily down on top of STAR labs, stumbling slightly and moved his way to the door. The area was strangely quiet, the ninjas that seemed to be swarming the rest of the city were oddly absent. He had barely made it to the door before Hardware's Skylark roared over the building, the flying car seemed to have taken some damage as the hull was scratched and burned. It landed haphazardly on the roof and Hardware stepped out.

"Static, this better be good. I left downtown in the hands of Tarmac and Piranha of all people."

Virgil waved him inside and sealed the door behind them, hurrying towards his lab. "This isn't the kind of fight we can brute force our way through. We can't stop them from coming so we have to swipe their legs out from under them."

"I don't follow."

"They keep popping in all over the city. We can't stop that. But we can stop how they're popping in."

"Teleporting?"

"Exactly! The entire cant be protected from it but if i destroy the machine they are using, no more reinforcements."

"How do you-you're going to hijack a ride back!"

Virgil grinned and unlocked his lab, flipping on the lights and with a flick of his hand he caused the metal tables that dotted the floor space to slide to the sides of the room. "Lab 6. It will have all we need. I need to go recharge." Hardware moved to go to Lab 6 while Virgil went towards the basement.

STAR labs always planned for the worst they install blast doors in their facilities, stock food and water for months of living, and build massive power generators under their facilities. That last bit has served Virgil quite well since he started working here. He worked his way downstairs, unlocking the various security doors until he stood in front of the humming machine that powered the building. He placed his hand on the front of the machine and felt the familiar jolt as he started recharging. The slashes he'd received on the bridge began to hurt less and seal up, the aches in his body went away, and his head seemed to clear.

When Virgil reappeared in the lab he looked much better and Metcalf had already moved several machines into the room and was working away. "I can make this work. With a few adjustments but unless you know how exactly they are getting here it wont much help."

Virgil walked over to one of the machines, "I'll handle that. Just get this all working together nicely."

--Several Moments Later--​

Metcalf stepped back and put down his blowtorch, "That should do -" an alarm interrupted the doctor as red flashing lights filled the lab. "What on earth?"

"Someone is trying to break into the facility. Quickly, you need to send me off before they get in." Virgil ran over to a terminal plugged into one of the various whiring machines and concentrated before typing in a series of things. "That's the frequency they are using to teleport people."

"Are you certain. If you're wrong this could go terribly." The sound of wrenching metal filled the hallway as the invaders worked their way closer.

"Doc, trust me. just send me." Virgil ran to stand on the platform in the center of the machines while Metcalf frantically typed away and made some last minute adjustments.

"Well, here goes nothing." Metcalf flipped a breaker switch on one of the machines and a loud humming noise filled the room but at the same time the door to the lab was wrenched off its hinges and flung into the room. The metal door crash into a machine and sparks flew and before Virgil could do anything the world around him seemed to disappear and his body felt like it was squeezed through a meat grinder.

He slammed into the ground somewhere else, his senses were flooded and his body was in pain. All that matters was that it worked although the damage to the machine had thrown him off a bit. He was here and ready to fight, just as soon as he could breath again.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rogue Planet. (tags for kiz)

"I like that," Kiz said, a faint smile touching his lips.

Glider glowed at that reply. She was positively golden.

He unclipped the Key Dagger, spinning it around his forefinger from the ring in the hilt. He watched Glider for a moment longer before grabbing the box of random medical supplies. "It's more key than knife." Kiz snapped his wrist forward and the Key Dagger sunk hilt-deep into the rock. "It's an opener of many things." His lips twitched again, "Holes in rock, bodies, and," he reappeared next to the knife, pulling it from the rock, "The dome." He stuck his finger back in the ring and twirled it around in lazy laps.

Glider and Cold's eyes widened visibly when he dropped that last bit. The implications were massive.

"Not bad," Heatwave chuckled low, like thunder beyond the horizon. "Cold, he might actually have you beat for exit strategies."

His head turned, watching Mick try to bond with the last terrible granddaughter of Gaia. He clipped the Key Dagger back on his hip and walked over to grab the box of medical junk. "Glaucus, the King of Corrinth, gave me that name." He dumped the box into the chest. "It means Slayer of Belleros, who was an annoying daimon-" He paused, frowning, "A small god, uh, spirit you would call it these days." He shrugged, closing the lid. "It is as good a name as any. रावण here," He patted the Key Dagger, "Excels at many things, including giving bad advice. It had inhabited a pig farmer and became the famed Corinthian seer Polyeidos who tried to give me advice about ridding the world of Chimera, Gaia's last grandchild." He waved away the memories like they were annoying mosquitos good for nothing other than sucking his blood and leaving him itchy. "No one cares about what happened thousands of years ago."

"Those who do not learn from the past, yadda, yadda, yadda," Cold gestured airily, dismissively. "Y'know, I never read The Bible, not even Gideons in motels when Daddy Dearest and I were on the road. But I saw Storm of The Century so I know that demons and pig farmers aren't the best mix. But if this thing can do what you say it can do, I say that's an acceptable risk. Y'know, for something thousands of years out of date."

He closed the lid and gave the top another three raps with his knuckles. As he folded the box back up into a sheet of paper the size of a playing card, he added, "Or longer." He looked to Ulark who raised his massive head and whined, before laying back down. All this talk was making Kiz feel old. He hated the past.

He put the paper in his right back pocket and shook his head. "Serrah's useless for now." The snake head nuzzled against Mick, dribbling napalm like a dog would drool. The goat head didn't even stir. The lion opened one fist sized golden eye, before closing them and giving a deep sigh. "But if you are a good boy Mick, I'll let you frolic with her after all this is over."

Mick snorted, scritching the snakehead behind where its ears would have been. "I've never been a good boy. I'd tell you to ask my parents but they burned to death when I was a kid. I didn't start that one, but it sure was pretty."

Kiz had a vision of Serrah covering the poor man in napalm; his body melting to a puddle of rendered fat and ash. She'd done it before. He wouldn't be the first man who thought a monster was a friend. But maybe Mick was immune to fire and insanity.

Mick wasn't precisely sane. And he certainly wasn't fireproof. He had been hospitalized with burns over 50 percent of his body as recently as 2014-- or would have been if he hadn't escaped from the ambulance.

But, Hell, he would probably appreciate going out like that.

"I would not blame you, if you choose to stay here or leave the dome." He frowned, "But if you remain in my company, I will need your word that you will treat me as an ally. That you will do no harm to me or through inaction allow harm to befall me in so far as the assistance would not be fatal to either party. Otherwise, we will part ways."

The three Rogues shared a long, eloquent expression. Heatwave's jaw flexed, but he nodded reluctantly with a roll of his eyes.

He whirled, facing to the southwest, frowning. His eyes narrowed to slits. "Hurry with your decision. More players have entered the field." Kiz raised the Key Dagger, his eyes closed as he attuned himself to it, resonating with its arcane frequency. A terrible weight ballooned out from Kiz like the pressure felt deep beneath the ocean as he poured raw arcane power into the dagger. "Something has casually torn a hole through the dome. Although the dome repairs itself even now. Something very close to us."

"Sure," Cold mused. "Why wouldn't it get even worse before it gets better?"

Kiz shook his head, twirling the dagger around his finger again. "A problem for later. What say you?"

"My sister can turn intangible, Bello," Cold pointed out. "She can turn us intangible. We coulda left any time we wanted. But we are not abandoning our city. We've fought too long and too hard for this scrap of turf."

"I'm Captain Cold. This is Heatwave. This is The Glider. Bellorophon, we don't know you from Adam, but you're part of our crew. And nobody takes down one of my crew without paying the price. We got your back. You get ours."

 

[kizkiz]

Central City: Kiz (tag: Chas, Var, Aussie)

Kiz's lips twitched, but his eyes remaining hard and sad. He could have said so much. It was a sweet sentiment, that Kiz could be part of their crew. It spoke volumes for how little they knew of him and the nightmares he watched over. The least of his wards had ruled an empire of nightmare and horror. The greatest devoured nations. He took a deep breath but resisted sighing at the last moment. Instead he let the breath go nice and slow.

"Prime." It was all he could trust himself to say without spoiling Len's sentiment.

He looked around the cubby hole one last time. It'd been a nice respite against what was going to happen next. One way or another there'd be mounds of dead bodies by the end of the day. "Goodbye Serrah," Kiz said, nodding and relinquishing her hold on creation. Her body melted into dream and shadow, evaporating to nothing. The only thing that marked her presence was the puddle of napalm burning through the cave floor.

He left the candles to light the place and perhaps misdirect any that find their way inside. As he approached the mouth of the cave, he set a hand upon Ulark's massive flank. His hand got lost amongst the fur and blubber. Ulark raised his massive head, yawning. In one move, like a stage magician whisking a table cloth from a dinning room table, Kiz tugged Ulark across his body. Except he wasn't the last living cave bear, but a fur coat. Kiz slid his arms through the sleeves without breaking stride.

Like that magician showing nothing was up either sleeve, as he crossed the threshold and was vomited from the entrance, his left hand shot out and moved to the side of his body. What materialized was a body length shield hammered from tarnished gold. Havel's shield was a work of art. It was curvy and somewhat heart-shaped. A broken sword bisected the middle. On the left half was a regal lady. On the right was a gallant knight on bent knee but lurking behind the knight was the specter of death.

Kiz unhooked the Key Dagger, flicking it around his finger as he walked towards where he'd felt the dome tear and powerful entities pour forth. It was hard to say what they were. He felt the presence of outsiders. Entities beyond the normal boundaries of this world. It was not a science. Instead he felt the pressure of their power ballooning out, much as his own did unless he worked hard to contain it. When an outsider arrived with their power unveiled it was an open invitation. If they were to become allies, subterfuge wouldn't be a good way to kick off the relationship. He wasn't looking for allies, but he didn't see any point to making any more enemies.