Justice League: The New Wave (IC)

[ChasNicollette]

Triumph & Torment.

“And your still just a thug, wishing it was an Emperor.” Raven replied, opening and portal between here and there and summoning forth swarms of insects from the darkest jungles of the Amazons and the deserts. Swarms that only had a desire to itch and scratch and bite.

"Claims the woman-creature whose world shattered my nation like so much tree-bark," snarled Havok. "Your sheer hypocrisy marks any pretense you might make at logic and dooms it to failure!"

As the hordes of arthropods descended upon Havok, he switched tactics, and cued another frenetic, mechanically-precises flurry of somatic gestures...

"THE AEGIS OF ANGELUS!" ...and gleaming golden glyphic shields lit up all around him, shields as though conjured by The Eagle Host of Heaven itself, fending off the unclean creeping things of Creation.

 

[ChasNicollette]

"The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain."

Landing on the ground, using the classic hero landing, she stood as the dust settled. “That’s kinda hard on the knees and wrist.. did you know that?” she asked Rose as she walked over.

"Oh, yeah, I learned that... my second night trying to be a superhero?" Rose blinked, but grinned faintly at the blonde beauty who'd just single-bounded up to the Moonbase. "But it helps that I can change my density and rearrange my internal skeletal structure. Also you gotta wear a really good sports bra."

“So, who’s next for the Smurfing..”

"I think my next book should be on 80s cartoons," Rose quipped. "And it sounds like you're already the best co-writer a girl could ask for..."

Turning it’s head the Flaming Deamon snarled. “Targets..” As it focused on her. The red haired one that oozed that foul emotion. A mortal emotion that had no place in the realm of Truth.

"Oh, right, back on topic," Rose blinked, holding up her hands placatingly to the raging, storming Rider. "Look, I don't know, just holding pattern for now? Holding... action? I'm not the leader and Batman went into the Something Wicked This Way Comes house with Green Arrow..."

But one by one, The Extremists were falling.

All save Havok.

Their final target was inevitable.

 

[ChasNicollette]

"Earth will grow worse till men redeem it, And wars more evil, ere all wars cease."

Running forwards, he used Braggock as a wall/bouncing board and swiveled as he came down on top of Trancer. One hand sliced and the other punched. “Since you like fire so much.. have a dose. On the house.” He added as he rolled away.

Holding up a hand he twirled the lock/release pin for a grenade on his finger. Yellow and red striped even. Incendiary.

Tracer had no sooner hauled himself up over the lip of Moonbase Ex than he had been beset all over again by the vicious fury of Renegade...

...god, that girl... guy... switcherooer...

...was almost as resilient as Tracer was, what the Hell were they made of? Not Indeliblium, he knew that much...

...but Ren was on him, and away again, and Tracer's hand went to his mouth...

...the grenade was in his mouth...

...it was all a blur, but when Renegade had slashed Tracer, Tracer had roared, and in that instant that his mouth had been open wide as a circus lion...

Tracer's hand shot up to try and reach past his Indeliblium teeth to try and scrabble the grenade out, but all his razor-sharp fingernails could do was carve chunks off of it...

BOOM.

It went off in his mouth and his whole skull filled with fire, sinuses and throat and blood vessels and Eustachian tubes, fire and shrapnel ate his brain and poured out through his eyes and he wheezed and folded, staring to nowhere with burnt-out sockets.

He was still healing.

Even his brain, lobotomized by the grenade, was slowly growing back... but the process was much more intricate than other organs, and it was taking much, much longer...

...long enough for The Sandman to take notice of them.

The Sandman reached out again with his powers, this time his Geo-kinesis. He reached out and ensnared Braggock's very being in a soft grasp. Not hindering him, but feeling out the strange obsidian anatomy.

Trusting the power granted him by his liege, The Sandman calls to the living stone. Much like the sandstorms he had kicked up early he calls to the earthen flesh, beseeching it to bend to his whim and heal the savage gashes. With a gesture, he reverses the flow of he magma, staunching the bleeding, knitting the obsidian flesh closed like a surgeon stitching together flesh.

Braggock rumbled softly with surprise, and shook himself out like a tectonic shift.

"That feels better. Thanks."

"Anytime," nodded The Sandman. "'I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them.'"

And then busied himself again...

...forming that moondust up around the fallen Tracer before he could heal properly, anchoring him again the way that Velocity had done with Arrow's arrows, except completely immobilizing him in the swirl of dirt...

...he closed his fist and hardened that dust to solid rock, pinning Tracer's hands and head so that no matter how he might twist and turn when fully healed, he would not be able to claw or gnaw his way free.

Braggock glanced from Sandman to Renegade and back again.

"So now what do we do?"

 

[TertiusHuman]

Garfield relished the thanks from the two women. Perhaps it was time that he found a girlfriend. He saw the tentacled man going at Thea. Why did they always want to hurt Thea? The green and white Orca disappeared and a green Peregrine flapped up into the air, high enough to gain diving speed.

Since the Gorgon had tentacles, that meant that he needed an animal who had multiple arms as well. The hawk dove, just as Thea suplexed them both from the wall and hurtling downwards. Tightening himself for higher speed, he reached his deployment zone and those wings flared out, braking him sufficiently enough for the giant green octopus to latch two arms on the surface of the wall.

Suction cups with their massive hooks holding him fast, tentacles lashing out and grabbing hold of the flailing tentacles he could reach and tightened the coils of his tentacles as he pulled outwards. Hoping to hold Gorgon immobile and giving Thea time to get clear, inadvertedly if it worked out as he had hoped, G.R.I.D. would get his clear shot.

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

The glassy creature lumbered forward...

...but then Connor's cable ensnared its feet like an Imperial Walker, and it tottered, didn't quite topple...

...but Batman was there, he was ready, palms up like he was ready to raise the Hell out of the roof...

...he repulsors ignited, bursting fire at precisely-- calculated-- stress points--

The glass beast twisted and sheared away from itself as it fully tripped over that tripwire, pushed to the limit...

...it crashed and shattered on the whirling, dizzying floor, and immediately the jagged fragments began to pool and melt and swirl...

Batarangs snapped out into Batman's hands, and he hurled them all with a snap of both wrists...

...cryogenics hissed, freezing the molten glass solidly in place.

"The idea that glass is an amorphous solid is pseudoscience. He's rewriting physics to perpetuate pseudoscience. That offends me."

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!" Carny's echoing laughter split the air in the room.

And he stepped out of... somewhere, hands in his trouser pockets, grinning madly, almost too wide a grin to still be human. "Oh, we wouldn't want to offend anyone. Let's have some good, inoffensive fun, instead!"

Batman whirled to aim a repulsor blast at Carny...

...but Carny took a hand out of a pocket and snapped his fingers and

gravity

inverted

The floor they stood on became the ceiling and all of a sudden they were falling towards the ceiling that had become the floor far far below them--

--too far below them.

Not only had gravity inverted, but the dimensions of the room had shifted again and the mirrored ceiling (floor?) suddenly dropped away and the two men loomed over what seemed a bottomless pit...

...and all the while, Carny stood unaffected upside-down on the floor (ceiling?), laughing fit to pop a vein at their predicament.

"NOW YOU'RE NOT OFFENDED, YOU'RE UP-ENDED!"

Connor chuckled as he started to fall. If Carny thought this was going to put him off his game he didn't know him at all.

Flipping his body over so he was facing 'UP' again was simple and he launched three arrows in quick succession at the man. He was not really expecting any of them to actually hit him, in fact he was not really sure 'He' was actually there, but just in case he had to try.

The first arrow was a simple net arrow. From the abilities he had seen Carny use already he was sure that even if he was hit by it, he would be able to easily escape from it.

The second was a flash bang arrow, designed to give his third a chance to actually get through and do it's work. Even if he knocked it out of the air or shot it down it would still go off.

It was his third arrow that was the most dangerous. His riot foam arrow. A rapidly expanding dense foam that would cover an area 10ft wide and at least 8ft tall. It would rapidly harden but allow anyone inside it to breathe but restrict their movements to nil.

Once those arrows were away he pulled out his grappling arrow and took careful aim and fired at the doorway. It was rather difficult to find something on the 'Ground' to attach his line to , but he figured the door should be able to support his weight.

As he felt the line go taught he just prayed that he was right.

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

Rebel's fist descended on Diehard like a thunderbolt upon The Rock of Eternity.

And as it fell, time seemed to stutter again around him.

He could feel it, his speed wearing off-- the powerful electromagnetokinetic rivers that ran through him itching again to thaw and start flowing--

--if-- he-- could just--

--awaken--

--get his shield up--

--burst his bonds with the electromagnetic force of an Ultimate Neo-Human--

KREK.

But Rebel's fist slammed into his face with resounding, triumphant amplitude-- right in that turning-point moment when his speed had elapsed and before his magnetism again took hold. The Elder of Electromagnetism, this genodivergent god...

...took Rebel's ultra-haymaker like a mere human.

And he was out. And he was down.

"A snarky one-liner and a knockout punch!" Bouncing Ball crowed with delight as he swooped down on the power of his Legion Antigrav Ring. "Shocking Grife! Just like Universe Boy!"

The rotund, spiky-haired lad bobbed in the air before the three ladies, kicking off globules of shimmering energy with every wiggle and shimmy.

"Great job, everyone! Like my girlfriend Multiple Maid says, 'many hands make light work!' But we still have a fight going on up top, and there's a real Speed Demon ripping up the enemy camp-- I must have missed the mission briefing, my memories are a mess-- are they on our side?"

Velocity chuckled for a second at the rotund man's antics, but as she glanced up at the huge moon rock above them, her levity quickly faded.

It was true that the Rider must be going on a rampage, because explosions were going off at regular intervals, however that was not what was concerning her. It was the large billowing clouds of smoke coming from those explosions.

She had already been in some very harrowing experiences in her short life, and she had seen enough chemical factories, fuel dumps, and other such facilities blow up to know exactly how they burnt. She knew that these fires contained elements that would not be good to the environment or anyone living in Seattle.

What was worse was the air currents were taking the smoke and spreading them towards the city.

Looking around she tried to find a way to stop them. She had the old fallback of funneling them into the ocean, but knowing what the chemicals would do to the sea life she really didn't want to do that. Still the beach could provide her with just what she needed.

A quick burst of super speed later she was on the sand and creating. Using her hands she polished the sand and shaped it, creating large sheets of glass and then molding them together to form a crude but air tight glass container as big as her.

Carrying it back to the area by the base she began to create a vortex, sucking down the contaminated air and bottling it. She just hoped the container was big enough to contain it all. She could compress the air inside it, but there was a limit. If she had to make more some contaminates could escape and she would hate to think what they could do if that happened.

Looking up she heard another explosion. Well she hoped the rest of them could stop the Rider before she caused a major environmental catastrophe.

 

[ChasNicollette]

The Fall of The House of Murder.

Connor chuckled as he started to fall. If Carny thought this was going to put him off his game he didn't know him at all.

Flipping his body over so he was facing 'UP' again was simple and he launched three arrows in quick succession at the man. He was not really expecting any of them to actually hit him, in fact he was not really sure 'He' was actually there, but just in case he had to try.

Batman tumbled a few feet, but tucked and rolled in the air, feet down head up and cape-- out--

--he flared his cape wide and activated its glide function, initiating the electrical pulse through the memory fiber that stiffened the fabric. With that braking his descent, he immediately switched to his flight systems and attempted to engage a target lock on Carny-- or Carny's avatar?

But immediately his HUD began glitching and pixelating. Malware! Cyberspacial chaff!

His onboard computers were fighting it off with a vengeance but he couldn't compensate for the frenzied sensory disruption of the mirrorball oubliette without target assist...

"ARROW! TAKE THE SHOT!"

The first arrow was a simple net arrow. From the abilities he had seen Carny use already he was sure that even if he was hit by it, he would be able to easily escape from it.

Carny whooped: "Nice try, Grinch Arrow!"

And with a showman's flourish, he whipped a rubber chicken out of an inside pocket of his suit coat and tossed it into the net, tangling it up and letting it plummet down down down into the impossible forever fathoms of the topsy-turvy Planet Homicide.

The second was a flash bang arrow, designed to give his third a chance to actually get through and do it's work. Even if he knocked it out of the air or shot it down it would still go off.

"Call me when you're ready to get serious," he scoffed, and swung up one palm to unleash the blue electric fires of one of his joybuzzers... aiming to blast the flash-bang mid-flight...

...but as soon as the azure blaze consumed the arrow, the arrowhead warhead still detonated, and the sudden surge of light and sound in unexpected proximity...

...caused Carny to flicker. And vanish.

And appear just to the right of where he'd been standing, irritably, shaking that holoprojector Viewmaster from earlier as smoke curled up from it. "Seriously? Just that little firework was enough to overload your photon regulator? I've half a mind to demand my money back from Doctor Aurichalcum! Of course, that was another dimension and besides, the wench is dead..."

Perhaps Carny wasn't as in control of this Nehiyawoc technology as he'd thought, or at least claimed...

It was his third arrow that was the most dangerous. His riot foam arrow. A rapidly expanding dense foam that would cover an area 10ft wide and at least 8ft tall. It would rapidly harden but allow anyone inside it to breathe but restrict their movements to nil.

The arrow had been aimed at where Carny's holographic duplicate had been standing, but the real man was standing well within the expansion radius of the foam...

...he squeaked in surprise at the billowing stuff and again tried to lash out with his electro-fire joybuzzers...

...but too late, too slow, the foam covered his hands just as he depressed the triggers and the foam clogged the blasters, causing the energies to backwash into the nanotech fleet he used to control the system...

His eyes bulged as the blue flame crawled throughout his suit, his skin, disrupting all the prankish toys he had enhanced so lethally... including the portable warzone, "Oh. Shit! That's not funn--"

But then the riot foam covered his mouth and swarmed over the rest of his head.

And a deep dark breaking noise echoed somewhere in the distance.

Once those arrows were away he pulled out his grappling arrow and took careful aim and fired at the doorway. It was rather difficult to find something on the 'Ground' to attach his line to , but he figured the door should be able to support his weight.

As he felt the line go taught he just prayed that he was right.

Under normal circumstances, Connor would have been perfectly correct. Structural support, architecture, the whole nine yards.

But right now the artificial pocket dimension that was Planet Homicide was breaking down around them at a submolecular level.

The mirrors started shattering, bursting into explosions of multicolored glass...

...including the crossbeam over the door.

Arrow's arrow lost its purchase.

And he began to tumble down into inexorable inverted gravity...

...but then with a blast of jetboots, Batman swooped up from below Arrow, catching him neatly.

"Okay. Fine. Audition passed. If we live."

The mirrorball oubliette began collapsing in on itself, centered on Carny's location, falling down and down and in and in like an omnivorous black hole, all those gleaming shards of mirrored glass falling sideways...

...and threatening to pull the heroes in with an even scarier, hungrier gravity.

Thrusters to maximum, turbines to speed, Batman poured on the power, straining his beta-particle reactor to its limit...

...using his palm repulsors for additional thrust, leaving Hawke to hang onto him for dear life...

...the world closed in, claustrophobia, like a mouth that was closing to digest them forever...

...before the two Leaguers exploded out through that doorway just instants before the funhouse collapsed in on itself and was gone.

No sign of Carny.

Batman cut power, slammed on reverse thrust, braked, skidded to a halt in the moondust.

"Some people just don't deserve the good toys."

 

[Varshanka]

The Rider waits..

"Oh, right, back on topic," Rose blinked, holding up her hands placatingly to the raging, storming Rider. "Look, I don't know, just holding pattern for now? Holding... action? I'm not the leader and Batman went into the Something Wicked This Way Comes house with Green Arrow..."

Snarling growling sounds rippled from The Riders throat as flames and smoke billowed from it’s nostrils. It wasn’t happy, not like it ever was..

But at least for the moment she/it wasn't blowing the moonbase to smithereens or a big molten pile of slag – which is what Raven had requested it do.

 

[Varshanka]

Renegade

Braggock glanced from Sandman to Renegade and back again.

"So now what do we do?"

Lifting the corner of a lip in a sneer, Renegade replied. “Call for weapons drop.” And tapping his LexIcon smartwatch she did just that. “Yeah, someone down there tell Doctor Irons to send up a resupply. Crates One, Five, seven, and the long silver one.. Hopefully they’ll be useful.”

Closing the watch she looked at Braggock, then frowned and opened the watch again with a sigh that could have been heard around the ‘verse. “Please.. and thank you.” Though the end it sounded more like a grunt or a snarl. At least the Assassin was trying to be polite. Even if she/he/it sucked at it.

 

[Varshanka]

Wondergirl

"Oh, yeah, I learned that... my second night trying to be a superhero?" Rose blinked, but grinned faintly at the blonde beauty who'd just single-bounded up to the Moonbase. "But it helps that I can change my density and rearrange my internal skeletal structure. Also you gotta wear a really good sports bra."

Raising an eyebrow Wondergirl looked over and asked, “So.. M&M what other superhero secrets are you not sharing?” But she was grinning, so she was teasing. Rose didn’t keep secrets, just like Wondergirl didn’t keep secrets.

 

[Varshanka]

Raven

"Claims the woman-creature whose world shattered my nation like so much tree-bark," snarled Havok. "Your sheer hypocrisy marks any pretense you might make at logic and dooms it to failure!"

As the hordes of arthropods descended upon Havok, he switched tactics, and cued another frenetic, mechanically-precises flurry of somatic gestures...

"THE AEGIS OF ANGELUS!" ...and gleaming golden glyphic shields lit up all around him, shields as though conjured by The Eagle Host of Heaven itself, fending off the unclean creeping things of Creation.

“You’re deaf and stupid. Have to be. Maybe a Redneck redneck?” Raven mumbled to herself. She was tempted to dimensionally shift the whole place into a black hole. Maybe she could teleport Steven Hawking up here and let the two of them bitch it out?

 

[ChasNicollette]

How do you make an octopus laugh? Ten tickles.

"Scaredie bug's kinda tasty," she said and threw her head forward for a headbutt to Gorgon's nose. Then she popped her hips and threw them both free from the wall using a professional wrestling belly to belly suplex to put herself on top as the two hurtled for the ground. This was going to sting but Thea prayed for back up to be down at the bottom to bat clean up for her.

Since the Gorgon had tentacles, that meant that he needed an animal who had multiple arms as well. The hawk dove, just as Thea suplexed them both from the wall and hurtling downwards. Tightening himself for higher speed, he reached his deployment zone and those wings flared out, braking him sufficiently enough for the giant green octopus to latch two arms on the surface of the wall.

Suction cups with their massive hooks holding him fast, tentacles lashing out and grabbing hold of the flailing tentacles he could reach and tightened the coils of his tentacles as he pulled outwards. Hoping to hold Gorgon immobile and giving Thea time to get clear, inadvertedly if it worked out as he had hoped, G.R.I.D. would get his clear shot.

Gorgon screamed blue murder as Wildcat dragged him down, strong as a mountain lion and even more ferocious, commanding his tentacles to come spearing down and rip the rib cage out of her...

...but with a whiplashed h'urrrk! noise, he felt himself jerked to a stop in mid-air as a gargantuan emerald cephalopod hurtled out of the air and landed on his tentacles, entangling them...

...and in that moment, in that elastic twang between the force of Wildcat's suplex and the anchoring of Beast Boy's clinch...

...in that instant Gorgon hung steady in space--

FIRE!

--with target lock firmly in place and his weapon fully charged, G.R.I.D. murmured: "Lactose intolerate this."

And unleashed a crackling storm of Wave Beam energy that crashed and coruscated into the base of Gorgon's skull...

...scrambling the neural implants he used to filter the individual AIs of his four arms, momentarily flooding him with their full, unbridled impulses...

...while at the same time bombarding his brain stem and through it his entire central nervous system with quasi-electric energies...

"HNNYAAAAARRHHHH!" Gorgon screamed, spasming, frothing...

...and collapsed, limp in a wet-spaghetti heap...

...smoke whisped up from the back of his neck, but all he could do was twitch and sputter.

"So that's what happens when you microwave cheese too long," Milton quipped.

Then glanced around. "What else we got? Lord H-VAC?"

 

[ChasNicollette]

"She caught on fire by a little blue blaze."

Lifting the corner of a lip in a sneer, Renegade replied. “Call for weapons drop.” And tapping his LexIcon smartwatch she did just that. “Yeah, someone down there tell Doctor Irons to send up a resupply. Crates One, Five, seven, and the long silver one.. Hopefully they’ll be useful.”

Closing the watch she looked at Braggock, then frowned and opened the watch again with a sigh that could have been heard around the ‘verse. “Please.. and thank you.” Though the end it sounded more like a grunt or a snarl. At least the Assassin was trying to be polite. Even if she/he/it sucked at it.

"I'm here, I'm listening, I'm Oscar Mike!" Natasha Irons replied-- she pelted down to the weapons vault, keyed the entry lock, and furtive, studious eyes drank in the lockers' contents in moments--

"Got them! Always did love prime numbers. ...Roman numerals, though, that's an interesting motif..."

"Attaching teleport targeting circuits now... adjusting for altitude and wind conditions... and... sending!"

Blue green light flashed in front of Renegade, and the four packages she'd requested arrived instantaneously, coalescing in the moondust before her.

"And, uh, you're welcome, but maybe pop a lozenge or something? You sound almost like my Uncle John with those vocal stylings and he's got this whole G1 Unicron thing going, Hella spooky."

Braggock nodded slowly at the politeness, though. He liked it when superheroes weren't mean.

 

[ChasNicollette]

(Yes, she responds to M&M. Just don't call her "Peanut.")

Snarling growling sounds rippled from The Riders throat as flames and smoke billowed from it’s nostrils. It wasn’t happy, not like it ever was..

But at least for the moment she/it wasn't blowing the moonbase to smithereens or a big molten pile of slag – which is what Raven had requested it do.

"That's it, easy, save your animus for the, uh, tangoes," Rose cautioned in her most placating tones, desperately hoping for a spotter, here...

Raising an eyebrow Wondergirl looked over and asked, “So.. M&M what other superhero secrets are you not sharing?” But she was grinning, so she was teasing. Rose didn’t keep secrets, just like Wondergirl didn’t keep secrets.

"Uh," Martian Manhuntress hesitated, "according to my research Superman never actually used phone booths all that much, and fourth-wall breaks are harder than they look."

Of course, Rose did have a pretty massive secret. But she didn't know that, so that didn't count as keeping it from Wondergirl.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Let Slip the Dogs of War.

“You’re deaf and stupid. Have to be. Maybe a Redneck redneck?” Raven mumbled to herself. She was tempted to dimensionally shift the whole place into a black hole. Maybe she could teleport Steven Hawking up here and let the two of them bitch it out?

"I would hardly be the self-made ruler of a meritocracy if I conformed to your underestimations," Havok snarled, switching tactics, combining magic and science in a single stroke, keeping up the angelic shield he'd crafted to ward off Raven's Eighth Plague...

And pointing a hand at her, unleashing a massive plasma blast to try and force her back onto the defensive.

But then he paused, and swept the battlefield with his sensors.

All of his cadre were down, save him.

The Extremists had been defeated... and only their leader remained.

He squared his shoulders, pale white cape billowing around him.

"So it comes to this. Eminent, imminent, and immanent-- HAVOK stands alone."

"As always he must, in the end."

He beckoned with both hands, an unmistakable let's do this gesture. "Come then, 'Justice' League. This is but a lull before the crescendo. My symphony will echo in eternity!"

 

[Varshanka]

"I would hardly be the self-made ruler of a meritocracy if I conformed to your underestimations," Havok snarled, switching tactics, combining magic and science in a single stroke, keeping up the angelic shield he'd crafted to ward off Raven's Eighth Plague...

And pointing a hand at her, unleashing a massive plasma blast to try and force her back onto the defensive.

"As always he must, in the end."

He beckoned with both hands, an unmistakable let's do this gesture. "Come then, 'Justice' League. This is but a lull before the crescendo. My symphony will echo in eternity!"

“You’re symphony is over, and you're in the wrong concert hall anyway. Dumb ass.” Raven replied, her fingers twitching as her own shields deflected Hvoks plasma and she returned fire with beams of light. He liked to use Celestial spells and forms. So, attack light with Light. He had great defense against darker spells, but what about neutral.

Sending a pulse of power at his feet she quaked the ground, cracking stone and vibrating sand. As her own shields regenerated.

 

[Varshanka]

"Uh," Martian Manhuntress hesitated, "according to my research Superman never actually used phone booths all that much, and fourth-wall breaks are harder than they look."

“What’s a phone booth?” Karan asked. “IS that what those big blue boxes are in England? Don’t they call them “Public Call Police Box?” They have phones on them. I think. They’re attached with a wire, but people talk into them.”

Mouthy the words ‘Fourth wall break’, Wondergirl looked totally confused. “I don’t see any walls that need breaking. Other than the ones the Rider is smashing at the moment. And which is the Forth one? OR do you mean like a tv show when a character looks at the camera and speaks to it? But we aren’t characters. We’re people. Though Renegade might be a character, from a Mission Impossible movie.”

 

[Varshanka]

Blue green light flashed in front of Renegade, and the four packages she'd requested arrived instantaneously, coalescing in the moondust before her.

"And, uh, you're welcome, but maybe pop a lozenge or something? You sound almost like my Uncle John with those vocal stylings and he's got this whole G1 Unicron thing going, Hella spooky."

“I can show you spooky things I can do with my vocal cords later..” Renegade replied, unaware her mic was still active. Not that they ever cared about discretion anyways.

Opening the three black crates Renegade reloaded with various weapons of heavy destruction. Sometimes a small tactical nuke would be nice to have. Unfortunately not even people like Luthors would let her buy one. Maybe someone in the middle east or Korea? The Russians used to be good for that sort of thing, to bad they went legit. Sigh.

Looking around and doing a mental check Renegade counted everyone down except for Carney and HaVoC. Magic. Renegade hated magic. Unless she was paying a spellcaster to remove shit. Not that any of them had managed to fix their condition. Ah, Zatanna, now there was a pair of legs to admire. Fishnets even. Could make a grown girl cry. Several times. Constantine on the other hand made her wanna buy some cigars and see how much of him she could inhale. Just the right amount of hero and villain all rolled up into one sexy package. Rawr.

Either one of those two could pay her to do some bad things. Maybe even with handcuffs. Sigh. Renegade needed to get laid, maybe Nightwing – or Batman. She could always try Connor, but he looked like he had a fire fetish going on. Raven was being bitchy. The wondertwins? Nah, take to long to heal from that fun park ride. Didn’t red have a roomie? Maybe…

While thinking Renegade had shifted appearances, and changed clothes. “Don’t mind me,” she said looking at her rather solid partner. No, she told herself as she looked at him. Just.. no. “I’m all girl at heart. Sometimes.” Sliding the rather tight pants up her bare legs she did admit Spellcasters did have uses. Especially off the books.

With gear and weapons in place she rolled her neck and listened as a few vertebrae ground against each other. Luthor better hurry the fuck up with her fixit.

“Ready?” she asked, walking towards the gathering of Villain and Heroes.

 

[Varshanka]

"That's it, easy, save your animus for the, uh, tangoes," Rose cautioned in her most placating tones, desperately hoping for a spotter, here...

Wings of fire slowly unfurled from The Riders back, and if anything she seemed to get just a little hotter, it’s feet sinking into the molten surface of the Moonbase. “Vengeance.” It intoned, a gravely sound that skittered across souls. Mortals quaked and peed themselves when it spoke. But there were no Mortals up on the Moonbase.

Looking over at Rose it looked eyes with her for the briefest of moments, “Innocent..” It whispered, almost with.. longing/sadness?

Centuries had passed since it had least a fully innocent soul. Mortals were never truly innocent. But many didn’t have the right sin marking their souls. Only certain crimes got The Rider on your tail. Humans always got things wrong. The Truth didn’t give a flying fuck about Sapphic or Homosexual unions. As long as love was involved. Fornication was an issue. Fucking for the sack of Fucking – that was a sin. Two or more girls partaking of carnal pleasure when they were mated by heart and soul, that was not Fornication. That was.. Love.


******
Many centuries in the past.

The crowd outside was blind, having seen the Light of Truth, which the wicked could not see. Casting their gaze upon Lot and his Family the duo intoned Judgment. They gave instruction to him concerning his family and his in-laws and with the dawning of the morning they left the city.

As they, Lot and his family, crested the hill his Wife, Sara looked back and saw The Word of Judgement. In an instance she was as a Pillar of Salt.

*****

Xarathos stood looking upon the twin cities of Sin. It had felt the violations of mankind growing but had been denied entry to this place. And then a year ago as mortal man counted time it had felt the pull. The Summons. The Need. To be in a certain place at a certain time. Crossing the crest of the hill Judgement gazed upon דָּוִד and Sammael. Neither of them spoke to another as they crossed paths, But Judgement gazed at each of these mortals. And for Mortals, Humans, they were remarkably innocent. Not as pure as a Celestial, but far more pure than any Mortals should be.

Sinful, wicked, creatures.

Nothing was stopping in now. The twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were laid bare for it’s Divine Wrath. Shedding the vestige of shadow used to cloud the minds of Mortals it revealed it’s true form to the world.

A cry of anguish issued from the man.. Lot as he was named.

And Xarathos moved. A streak of burning light and fire. It brought JUDGEMENT to all the sinful in those two cities. Burning with Rage unleashed. No force in all creation burned at hot as Xarathos, not even the Smithy fire of Stone. Mt Vesuvius was a taper compared to this fire. St. Helena was just a glimmer of heat.

Xarathos stood alone, the cities brought low and reduced to ash and dust. No two stones lay together. No life breathed in a blade of grass. Neither insect or disease touched this place. Not until the True Scion of Truth gave permission would these lands taste grass, or seed, again.

Screaming with incoherent Rage the Voice that was Xarathos echoed across the Land. A warning to all Humankind. A warning to never do this again. A warning against the Wrath of Judgment.

******

Gazing at Rose, Xarathos wondered if it was time once more. She so looked like the Family of Lot. Was it Time to Cleanse the World once more. The innocent were in a safe place, and the wicked covered the World. The Truth had told Noah never again by water. But Xarathos was not water.

But until that call was made. Until that chain was taken away, The Rider was fettered.

But somehow, those eyes of fire seemed to weep. Even if only for a moment. Then the Fires of Hell and Rage burned once more and it was gazing at Havok. “Guilty!”

 

[ChasNicollette]

That's Like... 16 Walls.

“What’s a phone booth?” Karan asked. “IS that what those big blue boxes are in England? Don’t they call them “Public Call Police Box?” They have phones on them. I think. They’re attached with a wire, but people talk into them.”

Rose hesitated. "Okay, new plan. We watch Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure while I write a different book-- on 1960's scifi."

Mouthy the words ‘Fourth wall break’, Wondergirl looked totally confused. “I don’t see any walls that need breaking. Other than the ones the Rider is smashing at the moment. And which is the Forth one? OR do you mean like a tv show when a character looks at the camera and speaks to it? But we aren’t characters. We’re people. Though Renegade might be a character, from a Mission Impossible movie.”

"In the Mission: Impossible films they peel their faces off when they're done playing an alternate character," Rose pointed out. "I've never seen Renegade do that. But no, we're not in a TV show. At least, as far as I know. If we were fictional I think we'd be more of collaborative internet fanfic based on comics, but I'm not an expert. I just mean-- 'genre-savvy' people pretending to look at The Fourth Wall, it's not an exact science."

 

[ChasNicollette]

"Like a strange people left on Earth after a judgment day."

“I can show you spooky things I can do with my vocal cords later..” Renegade replied, unaware her mic was still active. Not that they ever cared about discretion anyways.

All the way East in Metropolis, Natasha blinked. "Did you just... hit on me? I mean, I ain't mad, I'm not calling HR, it's just-- you're hard to read."

While thinking Renegade had shifted appearances, and changed clothes. “Don’t mind me,” she said looking at her rather solid partner.

"I don't judge," Braggock replied, simply.

“I’m all girl at heart. Sometimes.”

"'I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess,'" Sandman riffed wryly.

With gear and weapons in place she rolled her neck and listened as a few vertebrae ground against each other. Luthor better hurry the fuck up with her fixit.

“Ready?” she asked, walking towards the gathering of Villain and Heroes.

"Ready," Braggock nodded, cracking the knuckles of one rocky hand against the palm of the other, and then repeating it the other way around.

"'I will go with you,'" Sandman agreed, "'as man with God has gone.'"

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

As Batman put him down, Green Arrow quickly surveyed the scene. It looked like most of the team was still alive and kicking. He could see G.R.I.D., Kat and Beast Boy standing over the prone body of Gorgon meaning at least one more villain was down.

Raven was battling it out with Havok and it seemed like she was holding her own.

Martian Manhuntress was hovering near Xarathos, and it was Xarathos, not the Rider or Danni. It seemed like it had once again broken out and decided to go on a rampage. Those explosions he had felt earlier had not been a result of battle, but it blowing up things.

Wondergirl was near the two of them and in the distance near the edge of the rock he could see Renegade, the new guy Braddock and the mysterious guy that had shown up out of the earth.

However he could not spot Velocity or Rebel and he hoped nothing had happened to them, nor could he see Aquagirl. He was about to count her among the missing when he caught sight of her next to the body of Barracuda. He was glad to see she was okay and it also meant another of the Extremists was out of the fight.

He also couldn't spot the would be lord of dreams anywhere but as his puppet Shadow Suparna was down and out, perhaps he was too.

All of this took him only seconds to process and he took less to make a decision. With the firepower they had on hand their was more than enough to take on Havok for now, but they would need the Rider and for now she was trapped as Xarathos and of no use to anyone and actually more of a threat.

Taking off to where it was he tried to formulate a plan. By the time he got there he still hadn't thought of one. Just how did you try to reason with a demon anyway. If he knew that he might have gotten a bit further with Danni, although he had enjoyed his time with her, a lot.

Maybe he would just try talking to it and try to drag Danni, or the Rider back to the surface, it was worth a shot.

Standing in front of Xarathos he looked up at it and with a little bit of trepidation he began to talk.

"Xarathos, I know you want to punish the Guilty and I understand that, but you were bonded to a human host and are supposed to do it as the Rider, not yourself. Look at all the destruction you have caused. Some of those buildings contained dangerous chemicals that are raining down on the city below. How many innocents are YOU hurting because you are not controlling yourself? You have to let the Rider or Danni come back. We need them to defeat Havok. Believe me he will still get punished but you need to let them be in control."

Connor just hoped he was getting through and he was judged innocent enough that Xarothos wouldn't squash him on the spot.

 

[Aussie_Wolf]

Velocity was able to contain the rest of the Fallout. She did have to add on to the jar a little but it seemed things upstairs had calmed down and she was able to suck all the smoke and ash down and into it before sealing the top by melting it over making it air tight.

She hardly wanted to look inside it was so disgusting inside. The sides dripped with black and green ooze as the contents condensed, while black gaseous clouds swirled around carrying particles of ash and other multicolored pieces.

Later she would have to find someone who could dispose of this safely. Someone back at the hall would probably know of a facility. However for now her first priority was getting back up to the fight.

Luckily a solution to that was close at hand. Zooming back over to Rebel she looked up and smiled at her. "So ready to join the fight again. I could use a lift or I am going to have to use a trick I have been working on and quite frankly I am not sure if it will actually get me that high."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Gamechanger.

“You’re symphony is over, and you're in the wrong concert hall anyway. Dumb ass.” Raven replied, her fingers twitching as her own shields deflected Hvoks plasma and she returned fire with beams of light. He liked to use Celestial spells and forms. So, attack light with Light. He had great defense against darker spells, but what about neutral.

"Philistines never appreciate a groundbreaking performance in its time," Havok bellowed, fingerspelling furiously, like a kata, like a Baguazhang form, the last spell's gestural component flowing into the next-- "The Eight Encirclements of Erebor!"

Eight glowing azure rings formed out of nowhere, parrying Raven's blasts of light and ricocheting them away...

Sending a pulse of power at his feet she quaked the ground, cracking stone and vibrating sand. As her own shields regenerated.

Havok chuckled at that.

Actually chuckled.

And then the chuckle rumbled into outright laughter.

"Yes. Yes, quite right."

"Let us burn our ships and strike forward into The New World."

And he held out a metal-clad hand over an undamaged patch of moonrock.

"My armor is engraved with the hallmarks of The Sons of Ivaldi. Dwarves of Norse myth."

Runes lit up all up and down that hand, that arm.

"Rivals and nemeses of Eitri and Brokkr of Niðavellir, who forged The Lighting-Axe of Wundajin."

The moonbase began to crack beneath his outstretched palm. Crack and quake with a rumbling bass.

"Wundajin the Thunderer, whom Diehard bragged of felling."

"Did you not wonder what happened to his weapon?"

The whole Moonbase Ex shuddered. And quavered. And quaked.

And buckled.

From somewhere deep, deep inside the moonrock there came a grinding roaring rushing sound...

...and a gleaming, double-headed axe burst from the rock and snapped up into his waiting hand, coursing and coruscating with snarling, tangling bolts of lightning.

This was the massive power source at the core of Moonbase Ex that sensor scans had detected earlier. Off the scale.

This was the power that had let the Moonbase soar through space. Powered its forcefield generators and life-support to let The Extremists survive on the face of the moon of Angor, and again in space and the journey between parallels when the Moonbase had become unmoored.

And now it quivered in his hand.

And without it...

...without it...

...Moonbase Ex began to crumble.

To fall apart.

To crack into massive chunks.

And to drop from the sky and fall down towards Seattle below.

"THE STORM IS RISING!"

Havok roared.

"AND AT THE HAND OF HAVOK, SO SHALL YOU FALL!"

 

[TertiusHuman]

Garfield lowered the limp form of Gorgon to the ground and released the limp body to fall that foot or two to the ground. A heartbeat later Garfield landed in a knee-bend crouch and straightened up to look around.

"Well I think that we really deserved a milkshake break."

He looked at the watch on his wrist and tapped it, it seemed worse for wear, but still operational. He activated the comm-link

"HQ this is double B, I do hope that you will be having milkshake later on with us...or at least those of us who would want to go have a milkshake. Also be advised, we have several combatants on our side which I have never met. Oh and before I forget, we will have to make my watches sturdier. Over and out and around the mulberry bush we dance."

He closed his link and grinned, shifting into a gorilla