Justice League: The New Wave (IC)

[WiredIn]

Static dropped what was left of the bestowed to the floor and flicked the grime off his hand before turning away from the stadium, continuing forward on his surgical warpath. He delivered lethal blows in the quickest way possible, first targeting bestowed who were not actively paying attention to him or were attacking his comrades. He played clean up, removing threats as the presented themselves. His cold expression never faltered as he repeated a single mantra over and over.

“The ends justify the means.”

 

[ChasNicollette]

Death is But a Door. (tags Thea, Gar)

Just before she hit the backs of the Mammoth mage's knees she curled into a ball and managed "Wave! Help" After that she slammed into the beast mage's knees knocking the wind and composure out of herself.

Kitty cat, meet brick wall.

Her claws ripped into the monster's flesh like hot knives through heat.

It roared, more in defiance and incredulity than in pain, but physics were physics and its leg's structure had been compromised-- that leg buckled--

--Heatwave and Captain Cold both heard that cry and whipped their heads around--

--too far too far--

--no clean shot--

--Heatwave roared in annoyance--

--Cold scowled in disappointment--

--but then the golden Glider swooped down out of nowhere, back from dropping off Rose, and wafted over the fallen Thea like a certain mythic fleece.

Wrapped her up. Turned her intangible.

And thus when Gar would plow forward and crush this Ajagar under thundering soles, the mammoth-man would not fall onto Thea and Lisa... but through them.

They were as ghosts in this.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Static dropped what was left of the bestowed to the floor and flicked the grime off his hand before turning away from the stadium, continuing forward on his surgical warpath. He delivered lethal blows in the quickest way possible, first targeting bestowed who were not actively paying attention to him or were attacking his comrades. He played clean up, removing threats as the presented themselves. His cold expression never faltered as he repeated a single mantra over and over.

“The ends justify the means.”

The Bestowed were enough a mess now--

--their portions of Ravana were depleted by nearly half--

--their human cauldron of emotional putrescence had been virtually emptied--

--like G.R.I.D., Static's engaging targets of opportunity was decidedly effective.

Many of these bloodmages didn't know what hit them.

 

[ChasNicollette]

A Prayer for The Damned.

Burning in Rage and Pain, the rider let more aspects of it’s true form come forth. Wings of molten black flame rippling from it’s back, once when it had been an Angel of Justice those had been purest white. But since the fall…

They had burned during the fall, set aflame that would never stop burning. The only time they didn’t burn, and hurt, was when the Mortal that was Host was in control. And that was not often with the evil in the world of Mortal man. Evil deeds called forth the Rider, demanded it respond and pronounce Judgement.

And in this place and time there was a lot of evil.

But that was kind of understating things.

The Rider vanished, wreaking havoc and chaos in it’s wake. Sending a furious blast of energy at Karan’s attackers before they could focus their attacks and actually work together better.

The Ghost Rider was a suitcase nuke of dark, searing vengeance.

And the suitcase was open.

Raging and rampaging across the battlefield, massive swathes of what was left of The Bestowed's scattered disorganized remnants were blown to ashes that fell like snow.

Danni Ketch had not been born until the days of The New Testament, but this was the wrath of an Old Testament God.

Ashes to ashes.

 

[LuckyVic]

Nightwing

Nightwing didn't like what was going on. He was unpowered, and made his way here without killing anyone. He bloodied, knocked out, incapaticated yes. But he never killed any of them. Perhaps it was his father's training finally superceeding that of his grandfather. But he knew there was a better way, that they had to be better than this if they were truely going to be the Justice League. but for now he didn't say anything. But everytime he saw someone fall he grew angrier and angrier. He used that fuel to keep going to push foward... always forward.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Solar Flair. (tags Kiz and Karan)

If Kiz had compressed space, then the Atlantean's fancy new solar vision would have just arrived in Englewood faster then light otherwise could without traveling any faster. Instead, what the Atlantean found was that an hour passed in seconds. The man's speed was no doubt super, but reactions required awareness.

And unless the Atlantean reacted, an hour passed in a second. An hour of firing heat energy powerful enough to incinerate flesh and turn water into steam. That was quite a lot of energy to discharge for the seconds it took to incinerate a man or the minutes it might take to turn a lake into vapor.

Spacial distortions were part of The Bestowed's bestowed powerset. Teleportation, targeting obfuscation, part and parcel.

And this particular Bestowed, with his noble bloodline (he would call it "pure," which might tell you all you needed to know about his character), had more experience with such things than the others. On top of that, he had bastardized the dead of The Kawatche to bring forth the powers of their greatest warrior of their blessed Messiah-- the powers of this world's primary Solar Incarna. And this gave him accelerated awareness.

But what he also had was arrogance. Spades and spades of arrogance.

He had fancied himself a big fish in a little pond, sufficient to snap at the fins of anyone else who dared tried to swim within his reach.

But Kiz swam in depths so dark no mere Atlantean could fathom them. Depths so deep he swam with Leviathans, with cephalopods and echinoderms so incomprehensible in size that they could blot out suns. No matter this Atlantean-descended bloodmage's fancies and fashions as a warrior to face The Void-Binder-- he was in over his head.

And thus when this bloodmage unleashed the force of fire from his eyes, the skin of the sun turned to twin laser-spears--

--it took him a moment, a handful of seconds, to comprehend that he had been baited, and he had been switched.

And that handful of seconds was all it took to run his sun-well dry.

And the fate of all those in Englewood who might be on the end of that epic discharge of solar energy? Well, Kiz never had high hopes for those in the stadium.

Two could play the teleportation game.

Dropping the Kryptonian female between Kiz and his attacker, before either of them could react, stolen energy was returned to it’s rightful place. Golden bracers blocked the brunt of death energy, splashing and diffusing it. Enveloped by the red energy eye beams, stolen and copied, Karan felt the heat surround her. And she sucked it up like a bikini clad babe on a beach sucked up the sun and got a tan. Or like an alcoholic drank deep of a bottle of cheap bourbon.

The bracelets of The Amazons were forged out of fragments of The Aegis, transformed by Hephaesta herself into vambraces worn on the wrists rather than shields worn on the arms. And they were utterly, incomprehensibly, improbably indestructible. They could bounce bullets away as easily as blinking. But not only that.

An Amazon skilled in the use of the mystical vambraces had some measure of control over the direction of the ricochets, could send projectiles back at an angle of her choosing-- bouncing bullets harmlessly into the ground, for instance, or back at her enemies to knock the guns out of their hands.

And it was this measure of control-- this power of the mythic mirrored shield-- that let Karan shatter the storms of light that hit her bracelets into exactly the right shimmering photonic wavelengths that would give her power.

Kryptonians were living batteries of solar energy. But only the light emitted by a yellow sun would give them power mighty to save. A red sun would keep them alive, just barely, but only with the strength of a mortal human. A blue sun would rob everyone of power, Kryptonian or otherwise. But a yellow sun, its golden embrace turned Kryptonians into beings who could wrestle archangels, who could change the course of mighty rivers...

...and in the time-dilated relativism of Kiz' ley-tunnel, Karan just positioned herself to be force-fed an hour's worth of super-concentrated yellow sun.

Even as the Bestowed starved himself of power, Karan fed upon it.

Took that bullet meant for the rescued civilians of Englewood and grew strong.

Strong and fast.

Exploding into action, she ran, twisting and turning around Bestowed like they were standing as still as statues. She blurred even to the Rider supernatural perceptions, she moved like one touched by The Higher Powers and huge swaths of people began vanishing from the stadium.

...a sufficiently supercharged Kryptonian could actually subconsciously extend their invulnerable bio-electric force-aura and incorporate other people and objects into its protection. And just for these few moments, Karan would have that power, such that she didn't splatter the peoples she saved from the stadium with the fury and force of her impossible velocities.

And then... and then Rose was beside Karan, healed and restored, her body having rebuilt itself, her power restored in the absence of fire. And just as Karan used her invulnerability to protect others, Rose used her telekinesis to cushion the soft, squishy humans against inertia and death.

Rose beamed at Karan-- she looked amazing, infused with gold, touched by Midas! God, she loved this woman so much. (Was it too soon to think that? The "L" word? ...probably. But she'd thought it nevertheless.)

Carin had help at last, and what help it was.

And what of the Bestowed?

He had poured out the power within him and he sank to his knees in disbelief and dismay and defiance. So easily he had been tricked and so thoroughly he had been expended.

And yet Kiz was not finished with him yet.

Which was why several of the Nadeau arrayed around the Terminus of the leyline dove into the tunnel and used the same time distorting acceleration to reach the Atlantean in the same second-that-was-an-hour. Their beaks were their own kryptonite. They devoured in a way that surpassed even the god slaying, world eating appetite of Jörmungandr. Jörmungandr had god killing venom and the capacity to swallow most things. The Nadeau were the exact opposite but worse. They were inevitability. Their beaks pierced souls and ripped wriggling bits of a being's permanent essence. Their claws lodged deep. Morsel by morsel, they reduced endless things to nothingness. Kiz hadn't defeated them with force but rather by a promise. Something only those bound to a Void Binder ever learned. A terrible compromise that both parties were unable to reject.

There was a certain irony in using magic to parrot and pirate the power of a Kryptonian-- as Kryptonians were not as invulnerable to magic as they were to most other attacks. They were not super-vulnerable to it, by any means-- but where a conflagration was a warm breeze to them, a conflagration made by way of magic could singe their skin, force them back. Thus, the Bestowed's greatest strength became a weakness in his end.

The beaks carved him up like carrion, tearing into flesh that would have been invulnerable to swords or spears.

What had passed for a threat to Kiz now passed there on the battlefield, his heart stabbed clean through by a dire raven's ravenings.

Leaving Kiz...

...free to finish this.

 

[Varshanka]

Raven (Tag: Velocity)

With Wondergirl off and running, and Kiz doing his thing Raven shifted back into the shadow3s again. She hated the limelight. It was so depressing.

Translocating through intervening space she relocated to a position distant enough to oversee the battlefield and get an overview of the amount of shit that was hitting the fan.

With her back to a wall, and no place for these psychotic little misfits to sneak up on her from behind and even try siphoning or duplicating her powers again she watched, and raised an eyebrow as the speedster Velocity approached her.

 

[kizkiz]

Kiz and the Grand Daiklave - (Tag Ravana)

Kiz emerged from the Terminus for the first time. Above his head the Key Dagger was occluded by a tangled ball of black void script and snared fragments of Ravana. He had acquired enough to break their supermajority, just as the heroes had drained most of the stadium of the Bestowed's offering to Ravana. Each of Ravana's fragments bestowed upon the mediums and petty magicians of this world's dregs had been paid for with 10,000 souls basting in nightmare, precipitating the full dark horror of the human's worst emotional states.

He reached his hand up into the whirling, endless maze of nothingness and pulled forth what had become of the Key Dagger. Kiz had not just ensnared those fleeing fragments of Ravana, but he'd bound them to one of their own. Just like sheep will form a flock around a solitary member when released one by one, so too had the fragments of Ravana formed something dark and hideous. Not the benign looking Key Dagger but a a Grand Daiklave Forged from the tormented, nightmarish soul fragments of Ravana still coated in the souls of the fallen Bestowed, they had been compressed like the carbon remains of dinosaurs by the extreme gravitational forces of the magical equivalent of a black hole. And now Kiz held this horrible thing above his head with both hands.

The length of the blade was three times Kiz's already enormous height. It was as wide as his chest. Along its midnight length the faces of the Bestowed that had traded everything for less than a handful of hours worth of true power cried their torment. It was its own paradimensional version of hell where but one demon ruled, the eight armed Ravana.

[size=+1]"रावण!"[/size] His voice resonated across all frequencies both mundane and arcane. The true name of Ravana hurled out loud was 333 echoing whispers compressed upon each other, one name for each of Ravana's component souls. He had half of Ravana and many of the Bestowed within the Grand Daiklave but not all.

"By right, title, and deed, I now offer you two paths." Like all negotiations, even when you have the upper hand, it was best to give your opponent options. "Depart this plane of your own free will or I shall abjure thee through the Void."

Kiz inhaled, drawing all of his power back into himself. The Nadeau faded. Shanker became shadow and twilight. The skein along the leyline broke into motes of ash.

 

[WiredIn]

Time for a Recharge

As more and more bestowed fell static ceased his attack. He slowly drifted away from the clean up and more towards the river. He seemed in deep concentration, sensing for where the most electricity was passing through the parasitic power system. The design of it was truly a work of art, if it was another time he would have enjoyed studying it.
Static found what he was looking for and with a little more concentration he search for the nearest power pole it connecTed to. He stepped off his flying disc and slumped against the pole, clearly exhausted. He looked down at his shaking hands and wiped away some blood that had dried between his fingers, at least as best he could. He rested his head against the power pole before laying his handseat over the exposed metal and focused intently, following the wires towards the power like bloodhound after a convict. He felt the familiar tingle of power and drew on it, forcing it towards him like drinking liquid through a straw that's too small.
Static's numerous cuts and bruises began to heal as he slowly sapped electricity out of the grid. He sighed slightly as the effects of charging up took hold and after a few minutes he sat back and took a few breaths. What did I do...I shouldn't have....what was I thinking.... he shook his head and stared up at the sky.

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

Carin finally caught sight of Raven. The girl had retreated from the battlefield, probably exhausted and by the looks of things she had hidden herself so no bloodborne could siphon off her considerable powers. She raced up to her and halted beside her in the shadows.

"Raven I need your help. I am able to get a lot of people out of the stadium, but I can only do it one at a time. I had the gliders help for a time and it went quicker but she wasn't able to sustain herself for long. We need someone who can teleport a lot of people quickly. All you have to do is move them from inside to the front of the tunnel and I can do the rest. I will still be moving people and from what I have seen it looks as if Wonder Girl is helping as well."

She had noticed the golden blur moving from the stadium to the portal. Now that she was in real time talking to Raven it looked like a continuous golden streak. However is she concentrated she could see Wonder girl moving at high speed carrying several people at a time.

"Look the choice is yours but I have to get back to it, there are still so many people to move."

In a blur she shot off and soon there were to blurs moving side by side, one golden and the other green.

 

[Wyldfire]

Her claws ripped into the monster's flesh like hot knives through heat.

It roared, more in defiance and incredulity than in pain, but physics were physics and its leg's structure had been compromised-- that leg buckled--

--Heatwave and Captain Cold both heard that cry and whipped their heads around--

--too far too far--

--no clean shot--

--Heatwave roared in annoyance--

--Cold scowled in disappointment--

--but then the golden Glider swooped down out of nowhere, back from dropping off Rose, and wafted over the fallen Thea like a certain mythic fleece.

Wrapped her up. Turned her intangible.

And thus when Gar would plow forward and crush this Ajagar under thundering soles, the mammoth-man would not fall onto Thea and Lisa... but through them.

They were as ghosts in this.

As they phased through Thea looked at Lisa she managed a "Thanks Grandad" as she slipped into a semi conscious state......

 

[Varshanka]

Raven

"Raven I need your help. I am able to get a lot of people out of the stadium, but I can only do it one at a time. I had the gliders help for a time and it went quicker but she wasn't able to sustain herself for long. We need someone who can teleport a lot of people quickly. All you have to do is move them from inside to the front of the tunnel and I can do the rest. I will still be moving people and from what I have seen it looks as if Wonder Girl is helping as well."

"Look the choice is yours but I have to get back to it, there are still so many people to move."

Teleport.

Didn’t anybody understand the complication that teleporting short range inferred upon a caster? That was one of the reasons the Serpent Servants were teleporting in and out of the city before going to a new location, even if the new location was simply a block away.

Short jumps were hard as fuck. Like using a sniper rifle, through a scope, and shooting a guy in the eye four feet away. Can it be done? Yes. Is it easy? No. The Temporal fluxuation caused by ripping a hole in space in extremely close proximity to it’s exit was hazardous at best. Suicidal and psychotic all of the time.

Time and space flowed. Jack it up, twice in the same location. Ask for the fan and pile of cow manure. And then to do it multiple times in the same vicinity.. Radioactive manure and a high speed fan. While juggling thermal detonators.

Fuck me.

Teleporting to the outermost edge of the dome Raven reoriented and teleported again, appearing in the stadium. Time to cut down the energy output.

 

[kizkiz]

The Bestowed pulled back, flying to the stadium's walls like they were a castle's rampart. A 150 Bestowed now lined those walls. Their arms raised in unison, and their heads tipped back. Like they had vomited forth a swarm of locusts, the darkness swirled up into the air, spreading and congealing into something enormous. It was as vast as the stadium, and it hovered over the remaining souls still housed within. Black tentacles descended down to caress the remnants of Ravana's great feast. Each tentacle was tipped with a screaming human's face, but with lips that pulled back to their ears exposing three rows of saw teeth. The screaming faces were shark-like with noses that melted into sunken, empty eye sockets. As easy as plucking flowers from a meadow, the tentacle faces curled and plucked the souls from several hundred of the remaining incarcerated in the stadium.

"I accept your offer to depart this plane of my own free will and find it most generous in its consideration." The heads spoke back along the same multi-channel, vibrational all spectrum frequency that Kiz had intone the true name of Ravana.

Except this was only a portion of Ravana. It was a composite of what remained amongst the Bestowed and what could be found in the souls that had decided to seek solace in the madness of Ravana's echoing harmonics. Kiz had used a loop hole in the Binding between Ravana and the Bestowed to insert himself into their agreement and exercise the rights of the slain Bestowed in much the same way a wall street banker might do a hostile take over of a company. Still he didn't have total control.

"At a time of my choosing, which I believe you should find a most agreeable compromise." The hundreds of tentacles spoke, each word reverberating off of each other in a tangled, discordant mess bordering on the incomprehensible.

Kiz didn't need or want to use Ravana's Rakshasa-Shastra even though he now possessed all of it. The remaining Bestowed couldn't teleport around anymore, but they had used the doubling of Ravana's Artha-Shastra to make an abomination. That's why the Great Old Ones were so annoying, they were so fucking slippery with every deal. Even with all the work that Zerox had done and those of High House Void, not to mention Dream and others.

>>M'gann M'orzz, Ward of High House Dream of Lord L'Zoril called Morpheus Dream of The Endless, post-incarnate Last Pale Daughter of Ma'aleca'andra, The Red and Silent Planet. I humbly request you ask your companions to withdraw.<<

There was no better way to contact everyone and make the meaning clear, but neither was Kiz going to waste much more time than that trying to persuade or shout at people he didn't know very well and who probably wouldn't listen anyway.

Kiz felt Raven's passage through the interstitial tissue of creation. He looked up at the wall, although with the vast support of Ravana's Rakshasa-Shastra he didn't need to. Kiz attuned himself to a place right behind one of the Bestowed, then he lunged through the Void. The Grand Daiklave sliced through the Bestowed, a support column, and five seats. He attuned again, and nother moment later he was besides Raven.

"Warlock," Kiz said from beneath the massive shadow of the embodiment of Ravana's Artha-Shastra. He didn't look up at he planted the Grand Daiklave seven feet into the ground. Kiz released his hold on the sword. "As noble as your sentiment is," he frowned, now inspecting a few remaining people. These mortals had seen too much. They were broken things. Collateral damage in a way that was unfair but not unexpected in Kiz's line of work. "I suggest you leave."

Then he bowed his head over the pommel of the Grand Daiklave, and his Anima Banner unfurled in a nuclear explosion as he poured all of his power into the Grand Daiklave. Cracks that had always existed in the seemingly seamless fabric of creation gushed the null absence of nothingness. All around the stadium little black tendrils slithered out of those cracks, branching and curling around in beautiful, illegible script. For thirteen feet in every direction from Kiz the script whirled around as if caught up in a gale. They moved with maddening speed. They congealed somewhere between where the Artha-Shastra hovered and the ground into a compressed black sun throwing off tendrils of scripts detailing every contract, binding, and agreement Kiz had amassed in his life. It was the mouth of the Well of the Void or the heart of a Black Hole take your pick, and it was the embodiment and calling card of Kiz, The Left Hand of the Void and Dominus of High House Void.

"Hurry up with it, Bello," the voice in the Grand Daiklave whispered. "I'd rather not stay split in two long enough for me to forget what it was like not to be."

Kiz ignored the tentacles that whisked past. None of them penetrated the thirteen foot radius of his anima.

And he set about carving in moments a new set of rules, oaths, and bindings for the stadium area and the monstrosity that hovered above it.

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

Velocity had been racing to get everyone out when she saw something begin to appear above the wall of the stadium. She redoubled her efforts, pushing herself to new limits and she was but a blur, actually meeting the after image of herself as she raced from the stadium to the portal and back.

By the time the dark mass had congealed into it's form and began to extend it's tendrils she had rescued another 10 thousand people. As the tendrils descended she rescued several thousand more, but she knew it was a hopeless task to rescue all of them.

Finally the tendrils struck and the remaining civilians faces began to change. She didn't know what was happening to them, but considering the source it could not be good. She did a thorough sweep of the stadium looking for anyone that was not affected but it was hopeless. However in the midst of it all she found Nightwing.

What he was doing here she didn't know but it was not a good place to be. Scooping him up she ran out and stopped next to Kaldur, deciding it was best to be with the others for now.

 

[Wyldfire]

Thanks Grandad explained....

Thea hadn't been this dazed since she had been in the octagon. She had gotten herself into a gimmick match. It was MMA versus a pro wrestler. Her name was Kong. Six foot six and almost three hundred pounds. A brute of a woman looking to unload. Thea had never fought a woman this big. Grand dad had the bright idea of having her train with men. Big Hurley men. She thought it was Grand's way of making her suffer for saying yes to the match.

She had been wrong. Grand had been training her for a beating. He had scouted Kong and knew she was looking to make a statement. And a statement the big woman made. The bell rang and Kong waded through the assault Thea threw at her. Once she could reach her the big woman grabbed Thea by either side of her head, lifted her and hurled her into the cage. And she did it again and again until the round ended.

Thea lasted two more rounds of the abuse. It had been declared the most brutal women's fight ever. Thea had bled. She had three cracked ribs before the fight ended. At the end of the day Thea found a flaw.. The wrestler had a glass jaw. Or was it an iron. jaw and the Hellcat had had enough. Thea had come off the ground and thrown her entire body weight into a blind haymaker. Kong's jaw popped and both .women went down. The match had been called a draw.

Thea, concussed and incoherent had looked at Grand and told him thanks as she had been carried out of the ring. The old man had lorded that match over her till the day he died. There later had been rumors that Kong had been a meta.

Hell Grand dad's last word had been "Kong"..... As Lisa got her clear, this had been where her head had taken her.......

 

[ChasNicollette]

"Living Inside the Shell," by Yoko Kanno & Steve Conte. (Rose/M'gann)

>>M'gann M'orzz, Ward of High House Dream of Lord L'Zoril called Morpheus Dream of The Endless, post-incarnate Last Pale Daughter of Ma'aleca'andra, The Red and Silent Planet. I humbly request you ask your companions to withdraw.<<

<Kiz, Left Hand of The Void and Dominus of High House Void, your request is both acknowledged and understood. Good luck. I would not see you taken by Lord Dream's Elder Sister this day.>

And then the voice of the dream of the long-dead Martian woman in Rose's heart turned her voice a different sideway-- and spoke to the brain in Rose's head rather than the one in Kiz'.

Hey. Paracortical subconscious, remember me? Just a little bit of parallel processing-- I'm just the ghost in your shell.

The world whirled around Rose, blurred and slithered and slid and slipped-- she caught up civilians in her arms and her mind's arms and propelled them.

Yes. Thank you for your help earlier. It's-- a little hard to concentrate right now, can we talk later?

Sorry, dear. It's go time. Remember earlier when Aquaman asked you to try and mind-link The League and the rest of the band? Well, that's what we're doing. See, I've just read Kiz' mind and he needs us out of here so he can slay the big scary with the power we've helped release for him.

What you're doing-- it's subtler than the thing you were doing with the civilians-- you're not necessarily sharing emotions or sensations or perceptions-- you're just a can with strings, you're stringing the strings between all the minds of The New Justice League and their super friends, allowing them to speak to each other and hear each other through you.

Give it a whirl, I'm here to help.

That sounds... complicated. But okay.

Dropping a handful of people off by the time-dilated ley-tunnel, Rose placed both her hands on her head and reached out with all the power of her mind--

...her allies glowed like nodal points in an ocean of data and intricately and intimately she traced a web between those points, peer to peer to peer.

The temptation rose and grew in her again, to open the floodgates and join those minds together as a seamless gestalt whole, this unremembered thing she did once upon a dream, but no, no, with that voice coaching her from the back of her brain, she was able to keep it sleek, simple, effective.

And thus her call went out to all the members of this coalition, even Thea in her half-dreaming state, even Clockwork in her temporal loop:

<EVERYONE! FALL BACK! WITHDRAW! KIZ NEEDS US CLEAR SO HE CAN FINISH THIS!>

<FALL BACK! WE'VE DONE ENOUGH!>

 

[kizkiz]

The End......of the Bestowed at least. (Tag everyone)

"I can help, you know. Don't be stingy."

Kiz's hands worked in a blur, painting new words with the language primeval. His wasn't the Word. He didn't know of anyone who could produce the prime origin of things, but the echo of those first few uses of the Word. The first that cleaved from the Void from the Light. This was his demesne. And he was a jealous owner.

"True," Kiz said, much of the work he did at this point was rote. "And I do have plans for you..." He trailed off his his fingers carved a particularly complex series of calculated formulae intimating the spatial and temporal resonance on the seven different dimensions that he operated along. The calculations made and writ upon the canvass of creation, drew out even more oozing void script in sympathy with his work from all over the stadium and air above.

The abomination continued to pluck souls from bodies, leaving empty husks like grapes turned raisins. The tentacles skirted the area claimed by his anima, but it never broke Kiz's sovereignty. The air was almost half emptiness. As much creation existed as Void. No people or objects had been ripped or torn by the script, rather the script crawled along paths in places not occupied by anything which was now just much more visible or rather unvisible. Light did not pass through the slithering, undulating cursive of nothingness. Things could not pass through nor around, but they could move even with the proliferation of nothingness now intruding upon the everyday everything.

"It is clever, in its own way," the mad echoing voices of the tentacle faces chorused around him. "Most clever what he does."

"You promised a year and a day, Bellorophon."

Kiz was awhile in responding. He was attuning to the everything of everything within the boundaries touched by the void script. "You'll have it, but you gory damn hell won't like it after what you have done."

"What? I didn't do anything!" The voice from the Grand Daiklave, the same voice as the girl in the cave. It could have been any voice, but Kiz knew Ravana (the more sane majority) was using the cheapest of tricks to illicit pity. "I'm trying to help. C'mon let me help."

"He never planned to let us feed dear sweet girl. He wanted this to happen. Void Binders are ever tricksy in their manipulations. We should know after all considering what we know." The insane voices echoed back from each of the hundreds of tentacles as they paused in their plucking, harvesting of souls before resuming their activities with abandon.

Outside the area occupied by the stadium and several hundred feet above the stadium where the abomination hovered was now both there and not there. In the dual way of logic found in the Dreaming this might or might not make sense. To those on the outside the void script really wasn't there, instead light and energy and creation itself peaked through so that if you looked one way the stadium was there but if you looked another way it wasn't.

Kiz reached a place where he could pause. He needed to assess his bindings and meditate upon the relativity of this place with both where it used to be and where he wanted to take it. While he did that with his greater self, his lesser self was free to respond. "You violated our good faith agreement, so I shall reciprocate in kind."

"See, you silly little girl, it is as I had surmised. He expected bad faith and so he acts in bad faith. It does not matter to him that we follow our bindings to the letter, he would expect more from us that we are bound to, so he will punish us in the way of his people, the Void is without compassion, it does not care that we hunger and have not fed upon the little things of creation, as is our right and duty, it never has and it never will."

"Dominus, please, leave us cleaved if you must but wield me, use me! What you do is fool hearty. We, no I, was a great threat but only in the long game, in the short game to follow there is so much more danger. I will do better, be better for you! We do not wish to go, I do not, please!"

Kiz ignored them. They didn't matter. Ravana didn't matter. He wasn't happy with attaching them to his demesne, but given where things were in this present moment, he did what he had to. So he picked up his hands, as weary as lead weights though they were, and poured ever more of his vast but now dwindling reserves into his grand disjunction.

On the outside after a few more moments time, the stadium and the 333 feet of space above it never existed. The space wasn't ripped out as if someone had done construction and moved that stuff. There was no sign that it existed. The parking lot was just one continuous parking lot. There was no stadium in the middle. You could now walk from one end of the parking lot to the other without ever finding a hint that it had existed. Much like an expert surgeon can cut out a cancer and sew up the body so that only the tiniest scar exists and that scar would heal and fade in time, so had Kiz excised a horrid blight upon creation and moved it elsewhere and creation had already healed. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that most people were just really shitty at seeing all the scars upon creations aging carcass.

Several more moments ticked by. And then in the middle of the parking lot where the stadium now had never been stood Kiz. He staggered a few steps and then dropped to the ground staring up the sky. He lifted his head and his eyes searched for Lisa. A smile found its way onto his lips. Then he dropped is head back to the ground and laughed.

 

[Wyldfire]

Lisa had gotten Thea clear of whatever the he'll had just happened. Thea had felt the mind link and that had cleared her head some. Then what the he'll Spooks did.. She glazedly looked at Lisa and said "Hey kid, drop me off with the boys and go get yer guy."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Normally, Lisa Snart wouldn't have had to worry too much about getting out of Dodge with whomever she was protecting with her embrace. She was intangible, and so was whomever she wrapped up in her tendrils. So when the mammoth-man fell through Thea and The Glider as Thea mumbled something about her gramps, there wasn't much need to do anything else besides side-step.

But when the Martian lady sounded the psychic alarm, and Kiz threw the switch on his Lovecraftian tentacular hentai-horror, Lisa knew in the vibratory resonance of her ectoplasm that this... was not something she wanted to stick around for.

And thus, bundling Thea up with her golden-vermilion-pink tendrils, she soared across the battlefield at superhuman velocity.

...where she caught up with Heatwave and her brother, doing their best version of a quick getaway: Cold was blasting a layer of ice over the parking lot and Heatwave, hanging onto Cold's back, was blasting a rocket-boost of flame out beside him, sending them skimming away at breakneck, rattle-teeth speed.

And it was as they skidded to a stop beside an overturned taco truck that Lisa swooped up next to them...

...and moments after that that Kiz turned the tables on the beastie and dumped it back in whatever netherhell it belonged.

Lisa had gotten Thea clear of whatever the hell had just happened. Thea had felt the mind link and that had cleared her head some. Then what the hell Spooks did.. She glazedly looked at Lisa and said "Hey kid, drop me off with the boys and go get yer guy."

Lisa grinned at her.

Waggled her eyebrows at Mick, who shoved his goggles up onto his forehead and squinted at her.

And then she soared off, swooping down to land next to Kiz with a billow of tendrils...

...wrapping him up like angel-wings, glowing like Roma Downey.

Heatwave sank down next to Thea on one knee, scrutinizing her strewn form.

"You alive, kit-kat? Be a shame to have to cremate you after all that."

Meanwhile, Cold squinted at that empty patch of parking lot where one of the biggest non-Olympic sports complexes in the world had once stood.

"Damn. Bello's lucky the Kombines play hockey over the river."

And he licked his lips and spat.

 

[Wyldfire]

Lisa grinned at her.

Waggled her eyebrows at Mick, who shoved his goggles up onto his forehead and squinted at her.

And then she soared off, swooping down to land next to Kiz with a billow of tendrils...

...wrapping him up like angel-wings, glowing like Roma Downey.

Heatwave sank down next to Thea on one knee, scrutinizing her strewn form.

"You alive, kit-kat? Be a shame to have to cremate you after all that."

Meanwhile, Cold squinted at that empty patch of parking lot where one of the biggest non-Olympic sports complexes in the world had once stood.

"Damn. Bello's lucky the Kombines play hockey over the river."

And he licked his lips and spat.

Thea gave Heatwave a grin and laughed, "I'll live so you can light my fire in a less final way 'Wave."

She laughed again. Go figure Cold would.be a hockey fan. She pulled the headpiece off letting air on her face. "You knowi, you guys know how to show a girl a good time."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Unclogging the Cogs. (Hotline)

Have you ever wondered what it feels like for a video game character when they've been paused?

What about using the slow-mo function on an old NES Advantage joystick? Basically, pausing and unpausing over and over and over again? What would that feel like for Mega Man, or Mario, or Samus Aran?

Time stretching and snapping back into shape. Ad infinitum. A staccato event horizon.

...that's what it felt like for Clockwork, clinging with clumsy bronze fingertips to the very last second before timeout, making sure that she could maintain the anti-distortion debuff.

A vibratory no-place. All that existed was the loop. Time out of joint.

And yet there came a voice in that whirlwind wilderness.

<EVERYONE! FALL BACK! WITHDRAW! KIZ NEEDS US CLEAR SO HE CAN FINISH THIS!>

<FALL BACK! WE'VE DONE ENOUGH!>

"E... nough? Genug?"

Time was like molasses. Like aspic.

But she peeled her way through it.

Forced herself to... open her grip on it.

And time snapped back into shape one last definitive time.

SWOOOSssshhCLICK!

Ruby collapsed to the ground, gasping, drenched with sweat, her mind bent, her body trembling. She had never resisted a timeout like that before, held off a hangup, certainly not for so long...

...and when it finally happened, it had felt like she was timing out in two different ways at the same time, a strange hiccup of a feeling that she had zero reference for.

"Okay, ow. Bloody fuck."

"How long was I... how long was--"

Kneeling, she wiped grime off of her palms, holstered her Dial, looked around--

--stared at the sea of asphalt and the endless perpendicular white lines.

"Huh."

"Gonna need that rehab sooner than I thought, hey?"

 

[ChasNicollette]

Sea Change.

<EVERYONE! FALL BACK! WITHDRAW! KIZ NEEDS US CLEAR SO HE CAN FINISH THIS!>

<FALL BACK! WE'VE DONE ENOUGH!>

With a strangled groan, Kaldur dropped to one knee, gritting his teeth, releasing the tidal forces commanded by The Champion's Trident. He allowed himself all of a second for a shuddery catching of breath.

Then he stabbed the butt of The Trident into the ground, forced himself to his feet, and sprinted back out of the parking lot battlefield the way he'd come in.

"JUSTICE LEAGUE! YOU HEARD HER! WITHDRAW AT ALL SPEED!"

As he ran, he swept The Trident out to his side, calling on the moisture in the atmosphere, the moisture of the river not far away, what little remained of the water in the mains beneath the ground, drawing these droplets and globules of hydration to him. In so doing, even as he sprinted, he refilled the pack for his waterbearers. He had learned all over again how important it was for him to have weapons in reserve above and beyond the mighty weapon that was Atlantis' greatest symbol of authority.

And behind him...

...behind him Kiz unleashed and chained forces beyond comprehension, parted cataclysmic oceanic forces and then let them crash together again, and when Kaldur's bare feet skidded to a stop on Central City pavement, he looked back and beheld a wonder.

Of course it occurred to him to be curious just how many innocents had still been in the complex as it had been ripped from this plane and stitched over again, and with the closing of his eyes he mourned that terrible loss.

He fell to his knees, there not far from Static, and salt water of a different kind flowed on his cheeks.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Carrying a Torch. (Rogues) (tag Thea)

Thea gave Heatwave a grin and laughed, "I'll live so you can light my fire in a less final way 'Wave."

Mick Rory considered this for a moment, and barked a short sharp laugh, and trailed burn-callused fingers over Thea's cheek. "...shiny."

She laughed again. Go figure Cold would.be a hockey fan. She pulled the headpiece off letting air on her face. "You know, you guys know how to show a girl a good time."

Cold snorted. "It ain't over 'till the cat-lady sings. I'll call this time 'good' when we get our turf back from out under Kobra's scaly boot. 'Till then, we're all still on the clock, so don't anybody go thinking it's all good to flick their Bic in anyone's furnace."

Heatwave grunted. "...yet."

Cold half-shrugged. "Yet."

 

[kizkiz]

I dream the dream that will never die... (tag Lisa / Chas)

Kiz let them think what they wanted to think. It was best they didn't know the truth. Some of the choices he'd made at the end wouldn't be well regarded. Lisa's ethereal touch was beyond gentle. It was soothing in a way that scared him. What he saw in her eyes, the twist of her lips, and the cast of her face cooled the pain in his soul. He'd done terrible things and would be required to do them again, but for now he could loose himself in the eyes of someone who thought they might be falling in love.

He didn't smile often, but when he did it held. "You are a sight to behold," He said in a croaked whisper, because speaking any louder would expend more energy than he had to give. He didn't have the strength to raise he hand up to stroke her face, but he could move it several inches to wrap one of tendrils around his finger. He would have liked to have the energy to at least raise the tendrils to his lips, but thought better of it when he started to pass out from expending so much effort.

He was vulnerable. He'd expended more than he had planned, but he'd never shied away from doing whatever it took to get the job done. And he had Lisa, cultivating a relationship with her was paying off. It was different with Void Binders then most others. Respire for him was more a process of emptying out then filling up, but still it would take time.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Exsanguine.

All across the country.

All across the continent.

The moment that Kiz' binding took effect.

The power being transmitted to The Bestowed-- the power being bestowed upon them-- dropped away like a circuit breaker being tripped.

Granted, all of The Bestowed had some magical ability. But to get to the level where they could unleash such powerful spells without incalculable personal cost, they had bargained with Ravana and foisted that cost upon the populace of The Gem Cities. Now that bargain was gone.

And so was that advance of power.

Some of The Bestowed had been levitating-- and they fell, screaming, some of them from lethal heights, almost all of them suffering injury. More than a few of them were stepped on by rampaging, thoughtless Ajagar.

Some of them had been mid-teleport, and thus they were smeared out between dimensions like so much ectoplasm, reduced to leftover dream stuff set to be cleared away by The Grey Man when next he passed this way.

But most of them had been in combat, many of them with superhumans. And without such power at their disposal, they were sitting ducks.

Kobra's forces across the face of North America had been effectively reduced by a full, marked third.

Two thirds to go.