Cassandra looked towards Novikova as she made her suggestion and smiled a bit and nodded towards her.
"That I can do." She said while Agent Thompson came up to introduce herself to the team and shook the agent's hand as she stood up.
"Nice to meet you Agent Thompson." Cassandra said and then looked towards Bonnie surprised that Flynn had kissed her, as she looked at Novikova, feeling it getting warmer outside.
"I saw an Ice Ray gun prototype my ability isn't working right now. I'll keep trying but bring it just as a backup for the time being." Cass said as she headed out and made her way towards Creed Financial.
Novikova nodded, grabbing the gun and she put it on her. She had changed into a suit as well that allowed her to be more in tune with the vibrations of the Earth, and she still wore the ruby red sunglasses that Marygold Isley had given her.
"You got it, boss," Novikova said, following Cass. She had been a bit surprised as well that Flynn had kissed Bonnie - and it had caused her thoughts to go briefly towards Maria.
Flynn had no idea what it was that the other two were planning on doing, or where they were planning on going, but he thought that he might as well check to see if the others were coming, and from what direction. Glancing over at Hawkeye and Tempest, he headed that way, eventually noticing the group as he walked over, and luckily not running into anyone for the moment. He gave them a slight wave, not really sure what else they were to do.
Victoria, in the meantime, had taken the greeting of her fellow agent before being informed that there was an ice ray gun prototype nearby. The prospect of being able to handle such a weapon was incredibly tempting to her, but she had to take a backseat since there were agents who were more than likely more qualified to handle such a tool. She wasn't sure what else she was to do for the time being. All the preparations were being made and Victoria wasn't exactly sure what her role at the moment was. She looked just as lost as fellow Agent Flynn.
As the team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents continue to walk, Barton paused for a moment. Parts of the floor looked as if they had been worn away by friction.
"The enhanced has been here," Barton said. Nikolai, for some reason unknown to anyone with a sane mind, bent down and licked the surface.
"Recently," Nikolai said. Barton gave him a look, a clear ~what the hell~ and Nikolai just shrugged.
"I have gift," he said.
"Sure you do..." Tempest followed along with the others. She scanned the area for guards, but it seems as though they handled things.
"Remember guys, the mutant detection system will only be down for so long so we need to get in and out quickly or we'll have a huge mess on our hands." Hopefully with all of them Luminous would be handled easily, though judging based on what happened with von Bardas' place, it wouldn't be.
Cassandra looked at Hawkeye, Flynn, and Renior as the three of them caught up to them, as she started to think of a plan to go against Luminous now she turned to look at Novikova, and Thompson.
"Novikova, I want you to use Dimensional Energy Perception, once we find Luminous if theres any other weaknesses relay it to us and use the ice ray on her. Thompson, watch Novikova's back in case something happens." Cass told them, and nodded towards Renior for a moment they didn't have to much time then.
"Flynn, and Renior you are on support duty, if either of us gets injured get them out of the line of fire. Hawkeye, use your arrows find other ways to possibly distract her, Nikolai you are with me, we can try and take her down, or at least keep her busy." Cassandra said, as she looked around there wasn't a sign of her yet, until she felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned around to see that it was
Luminous herself.
"Aren't you just adorable?!" Luminous said with a smirk. She had Novikova's glasses in her hands and she crushed them under her feet. The Sci-Tech agent took a deep breath and looked in the direction of Luminous voice, managing to catch a glimpse of the silver speedster. She saw flashes of another world - of Luminous on something called Counter Earth, of a synthetic being phasing through Luminous and putting her into submission.
Novikova saw Luminous standing over Maria's body, holding her heart in her hand before squeezing it and it burst. The images were going faster and faster - and Luminous just smirked, staying in Novikova's line of sight and the mutant couldn't look away. The alternate realities were becoming more and more overwhelming, as Novikova slowly stopped breathing, her functions shutting down.
"Go on, try and stop me," Luminous said, holding her hands up.
"I'll even give you a free shot!" "Yeah, pretty any sort of plan is right out the window Reed, no offense or anything," Flynn said towards Cass when Luminous showed up. They weren't prepared to run into her yet, so as far as he knew, they were likely going to all end up dead or something at this rate. So, figuring that odds were that they were all going to die anyway, he might as well get a shot off. He grabbed the shotgun he had and fired it off, and now he was wondering if potentially shooting at her would have been better if she had been moving around. It just grazed her shoulder, punching a small hole in her suit. Well, this was going to end horribly.
Tempest was hardly paying attention until the others started going crazy as Luminous appeared in front of them, taunting them. Tempest kneeled down quickly, thinking at a speed faster than she thought possible.
"All right you speedy twatface, you want a shot, I'll give you one." She pulled out her watch (which was becoming ever more handy with each use) and scanned the woman for devices. She had a communicator on her as well as a pedometer (how on point) that was Pokemon themed. Points to that, but Tempest still got to work, latching onto the pedometer and was able to track Luminous as she moved. She didn't want to show her hand though so she stood up and pulled out her gun and pointed it at the speedster, making a threatening face as she did so.
Cassandra watched as Luminous snatched Novikova's glasses, and breaking them and then Flynn took a shot at her, only grazing her by the looks of it, Cassandra looked towards Flynn and rolled her eyes slightly, they needed to do something.. She started to try and concentrate on changing the season around them, but noticed that there wasn't any real change at all seeing Novikova wasn't looking to well as she attempted to try and get her to respond.
Novikova was still stuck, staring at Luminous as more and more images pushed their way into her head. However, the speedster just smirked a bit. There was a blur of silver and then Nikolai dropped to the ground. His heart had been ripped from his chest and Luminous dropped it to the ground, crushing it underneath her heel.
"I'm so scared," Luminous quipped.
"I'm quivering, whatever will I do?!" "Guys, don't know about you, but I'm running out of ideas, fast on what to do," he muttered, before he decided to hell with it and just attack her. They were running out of options, they were up against a speedster, so odds were, after what she had done to Nikolai, they were all going to end up dead. He whirled the ax end of the shotgun around and tried to hit her with it. Luminous was a lot faster though, and managed to grab it from him, snapping it over her knee. He stumbled backwards, feeling a bit feverish for some reason, and he had no clue why. Maybe it was from the nerves of fighting when he knew that they were likely going to end up dead?
Watching Luminous get close to Novikova and Nikolai, Victoria could only watch as Luminous just eliminated Nikolai like it was nothing. Tearing his heart out, it was like she was watching a scene straight out of Mortal Kombat. It was gruesome, but she didn't have any time to mourn the sudden loss of Agent Nikolai before it started to come for her and Novikova. Victoria raised her ICER, trying to aim for center mass. She needed to land the best shots that she could, otherwise the duo were going to be in some trouble that was going to be a difficult time to dig themselves out of.
As Victoria pulled the trigger, however, she only heard the sound of a cartridge being jammed in the slide. Tilting her gun, it seemed that the shell didn't eject properly and had lodged itself against the next round in the magazine. Cursing to herself, she pulled out the magazine in her gun. Clearing this jam was going to take a while, and with Luminous slowly coming toward them, Victoria had to get this jam cleared as fast as possible. Pulling the slide back, the jammed round ejected itself from the gun, falling to the ground as Victoria reloaded the gun. Chambering yet another round, Victoria trained her sights on Luminous as quickly as she could and fired a couple of shots -- both of which, missed.
"Shit!" Tempest had every intention of ensuring Luminous would be caught and taken into custody, but she had not anticipated the actual threat and maybe that was on her. The speedster, though she tracked her, surprised them all by literally taking out Nikolai's heart. Tempest felt sick, not because of the gore, but because someone she cared about had died so quickly and mercilessly. She had enough. She ran over to Novikova, attempting to break the girl from whatever spell she was under. She managed to move her from the line of sight, but she was still out of it.
So Tempest did what she thought best, she took out her watch keyboard again and faced her opponent.
"All right bitch, my turn to take a shot." She knew guns would be useless, so she opted for what every person had on them. Electronics. She knew where the communicator and pedometer were and she knew electronics like the back of her hand. So she latched on to them both and typed in the command. It was a command she had used before, usually to wipe things away if she were ever caught or to cover her tracks, but she knew it was effective.
Luminous would too as both her communicator and pedometer exploded while she had them on. It would hopefully damage her enough to prevent further attacks or bring her down entirely.
Cassandra just stared as Nikolai dropped dead, seeing the hole where his heart was, and the rest of her fellow agents were having a dark time. Except for Tempest as she used her computer skills and watched the earpiece Luminous was wearing exploded, as well as the pedometer that was on her. She gently took the ice ray gun from Novikova's hand and quickly aimed it directly at Luminous and fired off a round at her, but didn't aim correctly hitting the mutant's hand, turning it to ice.
"Rude!" The ground around them shook slightly as Novikova gasped and she shut her eyes tightly. Barton handed her a piece of fabric and wrapped it around her face, tying it like a blindfold so that way Novikova wouldn't be in danger of getting trapped in her powers again.
"You'll have to BirdBox this, Agent," he advised her and Novikova nodded. It was probably a bit of a shame that she couldn't see Luminous anymore. The genetic experiment's hair had been half burned off from the explosions, there was a nasty gash in her side, and her hand was encased in ice.
"Okay, enough going easy on you idiots," Luminous muttered. Normally, speedsters healed incredibly quickly but her gash wasn't showing any signs of healing. It must have been the ice, slowing down her cells. Luminous' eyes went red as she switched into using her other skill set: Chaos Magic. The red glow then transferred into Novikova and Victoria's heads, plunging both of them into nightmares. They wouldn't be able to tell that the nightmares weren't real and it was all just inside their heads.
Inside Novikova's head, she heard the sound of sirens, warning of an incoming nuclear strike. She forgot all about Luminous and S.H.I.E.L.D. and was instead filled with a huge sense of terror.
"... Got to get to the shelter..." she mumbled under her breath, as if asleep and merely muttering during a nightmare.
Flynn was still feeling feverish, and he was starting to sweat a lot, and he hadn't even really done anything yet. This was so confusing for him, but a moment later, everything seemed to make some sense as he was completely engulfed in flames. A second later, the flames seemed to die away, and he had no idea what the hell even just happened. He looked down at his hands, before noticing that his entire shirt he'd been wearing was basically gone, having been burned away. Well that was certainly comforting,
"...What the hell?" he muttered, before he decided to try and create fire to attack Luminous with, but only caused a few harmless sparks.
Tempest noted that her teammates were slowly being picked off. If they wanted to turn the tables on Luminous, she needed more than just herself. She moved over ot Novikova, who had falled into a deamlike (or nightmarelike) state. Tempest didn't know if it would work, but she had to try. So she put her hands on Novi's temples and imbued her with her healing power. She could feel the light combatting the darkness within and, soon, the fog cleared. Novi should begin to feel better.
"We need you now more than ever girl." Cassandra took a few more steps back and aimed the ice ray gun at Luminous again. She fired five times at her, the first three missed her as she fired the last two, one hit Luminous in the right knee as well as her left ankle.
"Thanks," Novikova told Tempest. She figured it had to have been Tempest, even though the blindfold kept her from seeing. Cassandra's ice blasts had slowed Luminous down and Novikova, feeling through the Earth like it was an extension of herself, was able to feel the movements of the speedster. She clenched her fist and the floor started to fold around Luminous' feet, trapping her into place.
"...Is it hot in here?" Novikova then asked.
"That's just Flynn," Hawkeye explained.
"Is now really the time to be cracking jokes Barton?" Flynn snapped, and he felt really weird, his body feeling like it was on fire. He knew he had to do something, that was for sure, and he decided to channel his annoyance with Hawkeye, and see if he could do something more than a few sparks. There was a blast of flames that circled his arm and hand, and the fire slammed into Luminous, causing severe burns to her chest. Finally he could do something useful.
Suddenly, Victoria's world went dark right after she fired off some shots at Luminous. There was nothing but darkness, until the light showed up again, to reveal an unfortunately very familiar scene. It was Afghanistan, and there were insurgents about to point their gun at her. She was aware she had a weapon in her nightmare, and it was something that she turned to use very quickly. Taking the dream rifle and using it, she dispatched all of the insurgents rather cleanly. Three round bursts into them, and they were deader than a bag of bricks.
Unfortunately, however, the figures were then consumed by a cloud of darkness, before lifting away to reveal something that Victoria was more than horrified to see. All of the dead bodies were now dressed in ACU camo, just like Victoria was. Their bodies resembled American soldiers' bodies, before more American soldiers caught up, weapons raised at her. Before they could shoot at her for blatant blue-on-blue action, Victoria was yanked back to reality, once again face-to-face with the mutant that had put her into this. But, she was quickly incapacitated by her rather strong migraine, struggling to raise her weapon once again to take some more shots at the mutant.
With both Novikova and Victoria back in action, all that was left was Luminous herself. Any attempt to get the girl to be incapacitated went out the window with Nikolai's death and the use of Chaos Magic to bring two of their own into nightmare states. She pointed her gun at Luminous and fired, but the girl dodged it merely by gyrating her hip. They needed to cool her off more. Her speed could be monitored, but her magic maybe not so they needed to get her down quickly.
Cassandra figured that with Luminous' ankle and thigh frozen she wouldn't be able to move as fast, as she quickly slung the ice ray over her shoulder. She then charged forward as she got up close and personal to her and tried to punch her, only to see the speedster simply moved her hips to the side away from her punch, groaning in frustration.
"These hips don't lie," Luminous said with a bit of a smirk.
Novikova gritted her teeth and moved her hands upwards. The earth used in the foundation of the floor came up and then gripped onto Luminous by her knees, adding a little bit to the immobilization of the speedster. Hawkeye attempted to fire an inhibitor arrow at Luminous, only for the speedster to catch it and snap it into two. At least for the moment, Luminous didn't seem to be able to move from where she was - her feet were stuck and the cold was preventing her from phasing through.
He suddenly thought about how heat generally was a good thing for speedsters, since it let their body move quickly. Figuring trying to hit her again would be bad, but his eyes fell on the arrow Hawkeye had shot at her. Flynn charged at her, she moved to try to keep the arrow tip away from him, but he just barely managed to grab it. She moved again when he made his first attempt to hit her with it, causing him to miss, but the second time around he got lucky. Hitting her with the arrow tip, he injected her with the inhibitor.
"Maybe now your speed will be less annoying..." he muttered.
"Good work Flynn." Cassandra said towards Luminous as she took and aimed the ice ray gun again, as Flynn hit her with the inhibitor, as soon as Flynn was out of the way. She took a deep breath again, and shot the gun again aimed directly at Luminous' chest which was spot on, seeing her chest area freeze up quickly.
Luminous' eyes were wide, realizing that she was close to defeat. She never had been put into a situation like this before in her (admittedly short) life. No one had managed to beat her - not even the Fenris twins despite their best efforts. Large patches of her body were covered in ice, she had an open wound, her hair was ruined, and an inhibitor was pumping through her system. Something in her brain snapped and she just started to laugh like a crazy person.
"You guys are awesome!" she said through her laughter.
Novikova shifted, a bit uncomfortable with all of this. She continued to try to push upwards with the earth to further restrain her, managing to encase Luminous in rock up to her neck.
"Let's book her, before our luck turns," Hawkeye told the team.
"Hey Barton, you wouldn't by chance have like a grappling arrow or whatever with a rope that we could use to restrain her? And any more arrows with inhibitors that would be useful too..." Flynn said, feeling a little bad that his past with OMEN actually was useful in situations like this, and made him play a little more on the cautious side when it came to dealing with people with powers.
"Knock yourself out," he responded, handing him both arrows he asked for. Flynn hit Luminous with another inhibitor, before he took the arrow in his hand and let the rope out, pulling at it. No one really had anything useful to restrain her with, so he had to go with what they had. He nodded towards Novikova who allowed him to get to Luminous' hands, and he proceeded to restrain her, making it so that they could move her.
"Let's get out of here," he said, nodding to the others, still a bit weird since he was standing there shirtless, but that didn't really matter now, they had to finish the job that they had set out to do.
