Blizz

Titans of Gotham

This wasn’t the most ideal plan- Going in without most of their gear and without Bolt. Tia couldn’t go on and Zen was taking care of her, so Monolith quickly started to take stock of the situation. Bolt must’ve blacked the place out, because it was damn near pitch black out. Not a single light but the stars and the moon. They were right in front of Peacekeeper 01’s lair, the very place he warned about. He was going to give Bolt a piece of his mind for running off ahead of the when this was all-

Bang. Bang. Bang. Three gunshots. Loud enough that they were nearby, and likely aimed right at Bolt. Monolith’s fingers balled into fists and his face scrunched up with fury. He took a breath and knew what he had to do. ”Keep her safe. I’m going in, do not follow me yet. Wait here for a few minutes, until I spring as many traps as I can and have him distracted.” Without so much as a moment to wait for their approval or acknowledgement, Monolith punched the entrance open, shattering it like a window and charged. The ground rumbled like a packed stadium as Monolith stormed down halls and through doors. Landmines exploded beneath his feet and wracked the place, but the worst they did was scorch the clothes he was wearing and singe his hair. His skin and even the rest of his body were virtually untouched.

Mines, shrapnel in a can, razor tripwires. One after another, they triggered but were ineffective against him. Stealth was not a consideration anymore.

”PEACEKEEPER! Monolith shouted at the top of his lungs, full of rage. It was a far cry from the gentle personality the rest of the team had gotten to know lately. His voice rang out like thunder, and the halls shook. There was another booming noise, which signaled Monolith blowing open a hole through a wall, which Peacekeeper was standing on the other side of. He recognized the arm and the leg, and the metahuman bleeding out on the ground. Something inside of Monolith snapped, and he blitzed Peacekeeper. Bits of concrete and detritus were flung outwards with every forceful step, as the young hero swung a fist straight for his chest.

He didn’t even notice the strange sword that Peacekeeper had. He was seeing red far too much to process that.

Inferno - STRIKE THE MATCH! - Concluded

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Jack Hawthorne

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Location: Limbo
Skills: Agility, Magic Combat
Spells: Shadow Scythe Spear???, Cloak of Levitation, Shadow Arm
Outfit

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“Jackass.”

That never got old.

”Their weaknesses are-“ Alas, he didn’t get a chance to finish that sentence as a particularly ugly demon named Kog’Thakan. They tumbled towards the ground like a pair of intertwined snails, while Jack did his damndest to not get stabbed by a weapon of demonic origin. After about three seconds of this, Jack had the idea to take matters into his own hands and let the Cloak of Levitation do the work for him. He willed the cloak to stop them, and they stopped on a dime. It was almost jarring, and Kog’Thakan got a mouthful of umbral energy as Jack shoved a spear through his face.

That only seemed to piss the demon off, though. While impaled on a spear, Kog’Thakan snapped and growled and hissed to get his teeth around Jack. ”I’ve been eaten before, once or twice. I’m told I taste like burnt rubber, so if anything, I’m doing you a favor by starving you, you poor thing.” Jack pulled his spear free of the ugly bastard’s face. He then gripped Kog’Thakan with his black, shadowy hand and warped it. The arm grew longer, and eventually, Kog’Thakan was ripped off Jack, who dangled him roughly seven feet away with a supernatural amount of strength in the arm.

”If you see Belasco on your way back to whatever pit you crawled out of, do tell him that the Stranger in the Moonlight is bringing his daughter home. Have a nice trip, and I’ll see you next fall.” Clearly possessed of great situational humor, Jack released Kog’Thakan from his grasp, and watched him fall to the ground far below. To more pressing matters, he quickly floated back up to the fray of combat where the rest of the demons were in active combat with Madalyne and Annika. He saw another one fall from the top and smiled to himself.

”Ladies and demons, it seems their weakness is gravity!” He proclaimed loudly, a few feet above the battlefield. as everyone present could clearly see his black arm wildly reel back into a normal shape, like a tape measure or a spool of wire. It would’ve been comical if not for the current situation. ”Now then,” He continued, pointing the weapon in his hand at the demons in a threatening, cocky manner. ”Which one of you hideous whelps wish to be thrown over the edge of the tower?!”

No one could accuse Jack of not being a snarky bastard when he felt like he had outwitted his enemies.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

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Quite a bit happened before Shirik's eyes. They brushed off Kareet's comment about their ability to cook, since that was a conversation for another time. Vigdis and Kareet swapped intellectual subjects back and forth about Kanth-Aremek and Earth, as well as numbers and eventually life magic itself. Shirik had half a mind to jut in and bring up how those in the Myriad were some of the best life mages in this world, but they both seemed to be so enraptured in their discussion that Shirik kept silent and just observed, silent as a tree... An immobile one, at that.

When Kerchak came over and started talking about it, though, Shirik watched with more attention. Being in their condition, Shirik couldn't benefit from life magic- One could not heal what was already dead and laden with ash. Kareet's hand withered and died, just before she withdrew a knife and removed it. The sight was distasteful at best, Shirik remembered a time when losing a limb wasn't so inconsequential. Ixtaro ran off, but charged back over to help Kareet. Understandably so, only to find that Kerchak had regrown it for Kareet.

"When I was as young as all of you, we were quite "attached" to our hands." That was what passed as a joke for Shirik. "Worry not, Ixtaro. We live in a world where horrific injuries are not an instant death sentence. Or even a life-changing experience. I once saw a man regrow over half of his body after a wild beast attempted to eat him alive. He knit his own flesh and feathers back over the course of an hour, all while-" Shirik was interrupted- rather rudely, in fact- by the horn of the Warden. If a scarred Iriad could make facial expressions like humans, theirs would be one of annoyance. Shirik looked into the distance and saw Silbermine and Zeynap talking. Neither of them seemed particularly relaxed.

"And I thought today would be simple. A feast between new friends and a mocking of a noble lord. But alas, today just had to be the day when she appears. If you three will excuse me, I'm going to see what this is about. There is more fish by the fire if anyone is still hungry," Shirik said as they politely, yet abruptly excused themself from the discussion. Their first thought was the swing by Nellara's fancy tent. They walked down the grassy hill to where she and her soldiers were stationed. If the Tekeri were spooked, they didn't seem to catch Shirik's attention.

Brashly, Shirik poked their flaming, yet hooded head through the flaps and intruded on whatever the Castigator was doing. "If you didn't hear the hideous fanfare just now, the Warden has elected to grace us all with her presence, and I assume you wish to meet her-" Shirik craned their head around and saw the big man himself everyone hyped up recently. "General," they greeted him, having not forgotten the tact of rank even after so long. Closing the flap behind them and leaning on their staff, they continued. "I just saw everyone's favorite Mythadian lord talking with Zeynap as the horn sounded. He likely patronized the Warden to her, and I don't imagine she'll be incredibly pleased to have more guests outside their vessel."

The new recruits of S.W.O.R.D.

@Ignorancebliss

Not dead-set on it yet. Might go a different route entirely and make some freak of nature or a straight up wizard because every superhero team needs that one weird mf who has to wave a magic wand to do anything unnatural lol

The new recruits of S.W.O.R.D.

Ok consider me interested

How does a superhero from space sound for this? Someone from another planet who rolled up and the SHIELD people were like “hey kid you wanna fight your own people” and he said “fuck it we ball”

Or perhaps he has alien tech at his disposal through shady means but no one can operate it but him so everyone around him is like “alright you’re hired”

Avengers Academy 💥

Leah Jordan

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Location: Framework
Skills: Battlefield Manipulation
Today’s Fit

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Well.

Shit.

Her hair caught fire, and something sniper her in the throat. For the brief window of time where she could full pain, that felt like shit. Leah was promptly banished out of reality and back into it on that weird pedestal thing. Was this fucking Minecraft? She had hearts over her head. Okay, that was weird. Leah was about to start over when Victoria came over to give her advice on how to deal with her. This confirmed she was, in fact, a mini Iron Man. But how mini... Leah briefly wondered if she could throw Victoria like a missile and smack a motherfucker with another motherfucker. Victoria didn't look particularly heavy, but neither did Leah and she clocked in at around 280lb thanks to her inhuman strength. So... She probably couldn't smack a motherfucker with that motherfucker in particular.

"Hm... Right. Okay. I have two ideas for that." As Vicky got herself into a distance and planted her proverbial feet, Leah thought about the science behind blasting solid rock with heat lasers. She wasn't exactly sure what kind of stone the ground was made of, since she didn't have the time to stop and give the terrain a geologist's inspection. That wasn't particularly important so long as she could manipulate it all the same. And since she could, it didn't matter at all.

Leah put her arms out in front of her, and made a motion like she was lifting something heavy above her head. The ground began to rumble as she attempted to turn this otherwise flat battlefield into a veritable pin cushion of giant stone pillars, giving her ample cover between herself and Victoria.

Rolls

Rolling to have Leah shoot up an shit ton of pillars around the arena to provide as cover. Calling the battlefield manipulation skill.

Artist's Interpretation

Inferno - STRIKE THE MATCH! - Concluded

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Jack Hawthorne

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Location: Limbo
Skills: Agility, Magic Combat
Spells: Weightless Body, Shadow Scythe Spear???
Outfit

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"Dealings is one way to put it. Strange is- Was the sorcerer supreme of my world. I say mine because there are countless ones, each with a sorcerer supreme that prevents each world from melting and merging with another. His death means the world I'm from- and likely the one we're all from- Will eventually begin to collapse on itself. That is what they call an existential apocalypse, and not a very pleasant experience to subject one's self to- I'm sorry, I'm rambling pointlessly. Anyway, yes. I've had dealings with him. Strange's position is one so important that it becomes necessary to fill it the moment the sorcerer supreme of a world dies or cannot perform their duties. That, according to this letter he sent us, is why we have his cloak and amulet. What I don't know is why we all have copies of them both. That is unusual, but anything is possible in the grand scheme of things, so we may find an answer."

Jack was many things. Short-winded in speech was not one of them. Something crosses his mind. "I have a question for both of you. The world we stand in does not experience time like other places- What year it where you two are from. Where I am from, it is the year 2026."

As they walked towards the castle, its impossible, borderline non-Euclidian height made itself totally apparent. This tower was here for a reason. It was ominous, like all things in Limbo. He thought to look for a door, when the scream rang out. Jack's head began to swim like a kaleidoscope. It was agonizing, but not entirely unfamiliar. "I think I know that voice, wait here." Turning his back to Annika and Madalyne, Jack took a few steps forward, bent his knees and pushed off the ground. The coat he wore fluttered with the umbral magic that radiated off of him. If Annika or Madalyne were particularly sensitive to the presence of magic energy, they might've felt something strangely inviting about the sudden shift in the atmosphere. Jack floated upwards at a pace of several feet per second, climbing higher into the air and not stopping.

As he neared the top, he saw a familiar face. Ananym, the young child of Belasco himself, being circled by demons. He knew that child, he even got an invitation to one of her birthday parties. He would've gone if he wasn't busy riding a dead Celestial like a comet through a new solar system at the time. Alas, this was a defenseless kid, and Jack wasn't quite that heartless. He flexed his artificial fingers and shaped a shadow into a weapon. He intended for it to be a scythe, but Limbo had a strange way of receiving Everdark energy, so it only turned out as a spear. He could work with that. He floated towards the edge of the tower and shouted at the top of his lungs.

"DEMONS! LEAVE HER ALONE." He pointed the black, impromptu spear at some of them. "THIS IS NO WAY TO TREAT THE DAUGHTER OF BELASCO, RELENT OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES!" Jack quickly shot Ananym a dissonantly gentle, sympathetic look as he turned his full attention to her attackers.

Titans of Gotham

Having followed Tia back into the main room and listened to… Everything, Oscar couldn’t help but be taken aback by just how much it was. Most of them wanted to go after Peacekeeper. Trask had even pinned down a location, but some of them were still scared. It was an overwhelming majority that had taken initiative already. Taking into account from the literal robot among them, and the two people who who could turn into much tougher, less damageable things, Monolith was the sturdiest. A tank could be pointed at him and ordered to fire, and Oscar would only be jarred where he stood. They weren’t so fortunate in their abilities to take brute force attacks like they were nothing. Their anger was justified. They were supposed to be the second coming of the Robins and Batman. They couldn’t just stand around, but they were all so vulnerable. As far as Oscar was aware, few of them had experience like him in combat. But what was he supposed to do? He knew Gemini.

”Everyone, slow down,” He said, suddenly and sternly. ”I don’t know what you all have seen before, but Peacekeeper and I have faced each other a few times by now. I know he expects people to look for him, especially the teammates of the hero he killed. He will be armed and his “supervillain lair” will be riddled with traps meant to take out multiple types of metahumans. He’s out of his mind, but he isn’t stupid. He’s unpredictable when he wants to be. I think it’s a bad idea to go after him him, but I’m not letting you do it alone. He knows me better than he knows all of you, but that works both ways.”

Monolith felt an obligation to be the rock in this situation. The anchor, the voice of reason, the thing that keeps people from doing stupid things.

”But I refuse to let any of you get yourselves killed for no reason. You need a strategy. If this blimp is his HQ like Trask says, I can’t join you on it without sinking the whole thing to the ground like a damaged jet,” He warned. ”Poisoning him or electrocuting him is too easy, he’ll expect that. Before we set foot outside this room, we need a cohesive, solid, bulletproof plan. If you all go charging in without one, I’m going to do the uncool thing and tell Oracle that I’m leaving to drag all of you back here, by any means necessary.” Oscar didn’t consider himself the team leader by any stretch of the imagination, but Avalon had burned the absolutely paramount nature of strategy into him for the better part of a decade. If these people wound up hating him for pulling them away from that blimp by force, Oscar could live with that so long as they didn’t get themselves killed by acting stupid.

He wondered what the chances were that Oracle didn’t stop listening to their conversation this whole time.

”Start planning.”

Avengers Academy 💥

Leah Jordan

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Location: Framework
Skills: Battlefield Manipulation
Today’s Fit

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How did Leah know this was going to be a shitshow so well? The digital world manifested around them, and they were in the fucking Hunger Games. Leah felt like she was going to get turned into a fucking YA protagonist who wasn't like other girls within a week at this point. Whatever, she thought, Usagi wants a fight? By God, she's gonna get a fight. Leah scanned the battlefield and saw that Ed- Arcade was the only one thinking to move and grab a weapon. She had a feeling he was easy to intimidate based on how little they interacted already. Leah stepped into the grass and swung her arms into the sky. The ground beneath everyone's feet became to tremble and quake, as it split and rose into the air. Steep, massive spires of rock and dirt spiked up over center of the arena, forming a sort of radial pyramid shape. From every direction, rock caged the cornucopia in, and no one could access the weapons now that they were walled off. She did this at an angle because Leah knew at least two people here had a movement advantage that would easily allow them to get up over perpendicular walls.

Diana couldn't get to a bow and arrows, Vicky couldn't get to anything, and Leah had her fists.

She then stopped and considered who was the biggest threat now the weapons and supplies were out of the picture. Diana could teleport and she had some moves of her own as far as Leah was aware, but she wasn't the type to fight head-on. Knowing her, she'd avoid a slug-out. Assuming Vicky was planning to load that suit of hers in with her, she'd be a wild card that Leah would have to get creative with... An unknown for the time being. That left Arcade. The knife was an obvious problem, but he was a tech wizard allegedly, like Vicky. And he had been fiddling with the Framework at some point. Could there be a slim chance that tinkering included more than emulating fossilized games? Unlikely, but if it did, then Arcade could bend this entire reality to his whim. Vicky and Diana were known threats, and Diana had the movement advantage. It was a slippery slope to believe she could just entomb all of them one by one- In theory, it was absolutely possible. But the different between theory and practice is greater in practice than it is theory.

Vicky was a heavy hitter, just like Leah. That meant they were a match for each other. An even match that could swing either way, but it was her expertise to hit things hard and think fast. Leah looked for her, and kept the uploading of that suit in mind. If it appeared, then fine. If not, even better. Leah ran for her with malicious intent.

Star Wars: Jedi Academy

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This was freaking her the fuck out.

Master Mala's confirmation that this place was a nexus of the force only put her on edge more. It would've been palpable if Sildarg wasn't good at masking her emotions. When everyone walked to the cave it felt warm but strangely hollow. At the edge of the crystal caverns, Sildarg felt the cold again. Snow fell in through a chasm overhead, and light poured from the darkness. This was a step she knew she had to take, but Sildarg dreaded it all the same. She had to wonder if a crystal even would call out to her, or that they called out to the Sith. Sildarg was never given the opportunity to build a lightsaber back on Korriban. She was just handed one after killing her fellow apprentices. Not a good memory to look back on by any stretch, but this wasn't any less foreign to her.

She dropped her hood and stepped forward. Looking back to Mala and Airus, her metal hand glittered in the dim lights. "Well- This is it. If I don't die, I guess I'll have a crystal to work with. I'm going. I'll be back- Probably."

She trudged down into the beaten paths, and was gone.

---

Seconds became minutes in the dim light of the caverns. Minutes stretched to an hour in what felt like no time at all. The only sound Sildarg could hear was the echo of her boots hitting solid rock. The only light to guide her way were the scattered crystals, and those did little to light up the caves. All Sildarg could do was use how close or distant she was to them to determine whether she was walking in a straight line or about to walk into a wall. She didn't understand what to do. The Force wasn't guiding her, it was all around here and flowed through everything like oxygen, but it felt like she was a fish in water. The Force just didn't feel like it was there. She tried to breathe and reach for it, but all she could hear was a ringing noise when she tried, and it muddled Sildarg's concentration. She shuddered, this was what she had been doing for months now. She studied the texts in agonizing detail for hours until she couldn't keep her eyes open. Sildarg spent entire days on D'Qar training to wield the force in a way that wasn't built on hate. She wasn't a scholar by any means, but she had the drive to study and learn, and Sildarg applied that without relenting.

And yet Sildarg could barely lift a stone the size of her hand on a good day. So of course she couldn't find a specific magic rock in an entire cave of them that was supposed to be her lightsaber.

"Where are you?" She whispered, and tried it again. She let the Force flow, feeling it wash over the cavern walls. And the crystals around her all hummed like nails on chalk. It almost hurt to listen to.

"You're down here. I can't just take any piece of rock down here, so let me find you..."

The humming only got louder, she could feel all the crystals around her. They all felt the same, like looking for an apple in a sea of red water. But she pressed her thoughts through, to try and will the Force to show her what she wanted to see. Nothing happened. Sildarg grumbled, and almost had to cover her ears because she sound just wouldn't stop. It was so loud that she couldn't hear the faint rumble that sang through the caverns. She was losing her patience. She didn't want to get lost down her, to starve or freeze death.

That faint rumble became stronger.

Stronger.

And stronger still.

"WHERE ARE YOU?!"

Cracks split up and down the walls. Crystal rocked in their place, and some fell to her feet. The stone around Sildarg quaked and broke apart, dust fell from the ceiling as a fresh hole fell away. The force of the tremors almost knocked Sildarg to the ground, but when the faint haze of dirt cleared, another cavern opened itself to her. Unlike the usual, milky pale glow of the kyber crystals, Sildarg saw faint glows of something with a green and sickly tint. Something dripped loud enough that it echoed out and past her ears. Water, or perhaps melted snow. Sildarg stepped over loosened rocks and dust, into the dry, frigid air. The strange light was growing dimmer as she approached it. But it glowed brightly enough nonetheless that she could see the ground and her own hands. They were shaking, and it wasn't just from the cold.

Sildarg saw a kyber crystal growing in the wall. It was... Wrong. All across its surface, there was a rocky, yellow-green corrosion that infected it. She touched its surface, and it felt like she was holding sandpaper. When it embraced her fingers, there was no more light to be found. She was now in complete darkness, where a normal kyber crystal would have glowed like a candle. It looked ugly, but what stung even more was that it seemed broken. Kyber crystals were bright and shiny. They gave of the light of the force eternally. They were pure, they were figments of dead stars made whole through the Force. The one that called to her was dead in its own way. Sildarg balled her hands together and buried her face in them. The gesture quelled the urge to shatter this entire pit, but the Force steamed off of Sildarg in a way that she felt ashamed of. If she came back to Mala empty-handed, she would be disappointed. Sildarg could already see the look on her face, that unmet promise not to hold back, the time wasted on her. It bubbled up in Sildarg's chest like acid. She-

The broken crystal began to hum and glow again. Sildarg looked up and saw shadows dancing under its surface, flecks of darkness caught and immortalized by the passage of time. It was close to blinding, but Sildarg saw her reflection. Where her reflection was cast, the dark patches vanished. The humming noise didn't hurt her ears. It was loud, like the rest of the caves, but it didn't bring her discomfort. She felt acclimated to it. But the light died away all the same. Sildarg was confused. Something about this strange kyber crystal was aware of her. She placed both hands in front of it, and willed the Force to pass through her fingers and into the crystal. The light came forth again.

It was sensitive to her use of the Force.

The crystal grew brighter as Sildarg continued to feed it with the energy of the universe around them, like it resonated with her. The doubt and self deprecation faded, and was replaced with awe. Sildarg felt its pull in that moment. The kyber crystal wasn't dead, it was incomplete. It was a broken, unwanted thing that the light of the Force made into something else, but needed someone to guide along that path. Flawed, rough around the edges, and trying its best in spite of everything that holds it back. Just like her. All it needed was direction, and it would find the way forward one way or another. It was then that Sildarg knew why this crystal called out to her, out of all the countless thousands that could've been found. They both needed each other. There was a crystal for every Jedi to ever live, one that was perfect for them and recognized it by virtue of being connected to the Force in ways a Jedi could never aspire to. It was reassuring to think of this. Sildarg reached for the crystal again, and clasped her hands around the poor thing to loose it from the wall. It cracked and splintered as it separated, glassy flakes of the crystal littered her hand and floated around it, animated by the Force.

"They haven't given up on me yet. I won't give up on you."

---

Nearly an hour passed before Sildarg found her way back to the entrance, where the masters were waiting. Sildarg approached her master and gently showed her the strange crystal. Dark and murky, unlike what the others would surely find. "I know what it looks like, but there's more to this than what you can see." She put a hand out, and reached for the Force. The crystal began to glow in its own, unusual way. Some of the small splinters started to dance around it like tiny moons around a planet. Most kyber crystals glowed on their own, but hers just needed a push. "The crystal called out to me for a reason. I won't judge it by the way it looks."

There was something uncharacteristically calm about Sildarg right now. Neither Mala nor any of the other masters or a apprentices had seen her this at east since they met her. Normally, she was always defensive in some way, like she expected a blaster was trained on her every moment. Now, though, Korriban didn't exist in this moment. Hadris wasn't on her mind. There was only peace in her accomplishment. Sildarg had just taken one of the foundational steps, and that was enough.