Summary:Koa and Keiko call in support when trying to compromise the stelae network. Darkstar and May and some unexpected helpers arrive. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
Related LogsTheme SongNone |
    |
Laynia Petrovna has an office with a desk and a computer and everything. That probably required a little bit of wrapping her head around since computers aren't what they were in the 70's and the internet was barely a thing back then. Well okay, it wasn't a thing, not for the public but for super secret russian spy agencies…
Anyway. An e-mail had come through with a new tasking. WAND had requested the services of the Darkstar by name. Which is apparently either a compliment or a curse, depending on how one looks at it. Two WAND agents were going to be waiting for her at a remote location in Adirondack National Park in Upstate New York.
Koa Turner is at said location, arms folded, looking at what looks like some kind of obelisk or monument on a hill overlooking a lake. This place is miles from anywhere, but it sits on the intersection of several ley lines and the energy around the area is palpable if one knows what to look for.
Standing just to the side of Koa, arms folded in a similar fashion is a small Peruvian woman that is familiar to Laynia. The small woman is wearing a jacket, given the weather, and it's hard to tell that she's no tattooes on her arms anymore.
Whatever is happening, she doesn't look happy. Then again, Keiko rarely looks happy. So there's that.
Laynia does find it a tad odd to have her own office, she's not had one of those since her days as a liaison to the UN for the Soviets during her taksforce days. Man, that was a LONG time ago, and yeah, she's still getting her head wrapped around the ubiquity of them thar intarwebz. FORTUNATELY she was wise enough not to start a FaceBook, that's just…yeah, and no goddamn Twitter or Snapchat for her either. Nope. She will -never- be a social media maven, not even close.
That said, she gets tasked once again to aid WAND, and really, she's okay with it. Not a curse, they've already shown her some interesting new facets to her power, she had NO idea she was actually a magical girl — and no, not familiar enough with anime to realize how bad that turn of phrase might be!
Rather than just fly, like she was going to, she seeks out Agent Mae and together they take a Quinjet, this way there's another agent in situ, AND they get to arrive in jig time.
Laynia is in her physical Darkstar costume today, a bit retro, but classic!
"Hello Agent Kurita, Agent Turner." She greets pleasantly enough.
One thing can definitely be said about WAND work - it is never dull, not so far anyway.
Being tasked to transport Petrovna to a WAND investigation site is more simple enough. Flying the quinjet a measly 250 miles is more of a hassle getting out of NYC airspace than anything else. The chitchat was, well, it was mildly annoying, but Agent May has dealt with considerably worse. Landing the 'jet was the matter of a few extra moments, as they're in a remote enough location to not have convenient things like parking lots or other open spaces. But, they've arrived, and well within the requested time frame.
Walking alongside Petrovna, she nods a hello to the WAND agents already on site.
Uh oh. Thus begins the duel of the dour faces. Who will crack first?
The first thing that's notable about this site is that there are several broken trees around it and drag marks on the ground. "Agent Petrovna. Agent May."
He gestures to the obelisk. "This, as you might imagine, isn't supposed to be here. Agent Kurita and myself need to sabotage it which we attempted to do about an hour ago. When we did there was something of a problem. It's related to some kind of 'dark energy' field that this thing is throwing off so I thought that Agent Petrovna might be able to disable it.
There is, indeed, darkforce energy emanating faintly from that thing. Nothing she shouldn't be able to handle.
"With any luck, Agent May, we'll get this finished and you can get on with your day." Koa certainly doesn't mean to keep the senior glowering agent waiting while he does arcane sabotage.
Or, more properly, while KEIKO does arcane sabotage.
Laynia is actually capable of not being too chatty, especially when May proves to be as taciturn as always. Amused a bit, Laynia will spend most of the flight in companionable silence. She can do less verbose!
Cinnamon eyes are anything but sugary as Laynia studies that obelisk. A moment to fly over to it then land, and then Laynia nods. "Is Darkforce, da." Caefully she extends her left hand, holding it up with the palm facing the thing, and then concentrates, seeking to ground out the energy and disperse it harmlessly. She COULD try to absorb it, but after their encounter IN the Darkforce Dimension, she's a bit leery of such — and that is also why she will not be shunting the energy back directly, just in case.
By dispersing it she hopes to minimize risks all around.
If she /can/ disperse it.
"Agent May, Agent Petrovna." Keiko answers quietly. Her backpack - that May is more than familiar with - lies on the ground at her feet. There's no sign of her staff, but that won't be far - it never is.
"It won't let me get close enough to enter the network." The peruvian says. "And I need to do that so that Koa can his bit from out here."
As Laynia works, Keiko shrugs out of her jacket and lays it on the pack - her arms are bare of ink. It makes her look very, very different.
Pulling the staff from her back, Keiko shakes it open and looks at Koa, stepping up the column when Laynia finishes. Without another word, or a reasurring look, she fits the end of the staff to the base of the pillar.
That's all it should take for her to access it. The silvery demon tattoo on her back starts to glow though.
May stays there next to Koa as Laynia and then Keiko step down toward the obelisk to do whatever it is they're doing there. Being a Muggle in all but the most literal sense, she can't really tell what they're doing — not that she doubts they're actually doing something out there. She was only tasked with being the taxi driver on this run, after all.
While anyone else might opt for a bit of idle small talk, May refrains. Even if it were like her to do so, she can't really think of anything worthwhile to say to the agent. Oh, wait, there is one thing.
"Did you receive your bell back in good condition?"
"We did, thank you." Koa says as he watches Laynia do her thing. She can indeed manipulate the darkforce and bring the field down and once she does Keiko can get close and begin to do what she needs to do. And for just one moment, it looks like everything is normal. Or at least as normal as one can expect a WAND investigation to get. And then, of course, all hell breaks loose.
There's a blast of cold as two men arrive. One is swathed in robes and a cape. The other is wearing a black body suit with a cowl that comes over his head and a symbol on the chest that looks like a sun in total eclipse.
"Good of you to let us out." The non-masked, bald one says. Laynia can feel powerful darkforce emanating from both of them.
"Shit!" Koa grabs for his weapon and starts shooting. Immediately the bald one breaks left, the suited one breaks right and both unleash blasts of darkness at everyone standing around.
Laynia mutters something triply unmentionable in Russian when things go pear shaped. Again.
Her eyes go solid black, dripping Darkforce energy as she raises a shield wall to hopefully protect her allies. For the moment she is taking the measure of the inbound attacks, the instant she gets a feel for which of the two guys is the weaker, she'll launch an attack of her own. She was considering just blasting away, but that's potentially dire if these guys are adept at all with the Darkforce, which seems likely.
No, her solution this time is to create a massive Darkforce hand to grab up one of the fallen trees and using it like a bludgeon.
The hand is joined to her own hands by a streamer of black and will drive that tree down with many tons of force.
"Shit." It's succinct and said in a very Keiko way as the pair emerge from network. "We've seen you before …" When they were fighting Nightfall. She's sure of that. Still, that's not something to worry about at the moment.
Her staff whips out, connecting with the ankles of 'Eclipse'. It will sting - the gossamer forged metal is good like that.
Dark leathery wings start to sprout from her back "Not …now …" she growls. She doesn't need to fight the demon and these.
The appearance of the two strangers seemingly from nowhere has May already reaching for her ICER. To her credit, though, she doesn't shoot first. Though, once they start flinging dark stuff around, she's thinking maybe she should have just shot them the instant they appeared.
Breaking in the same direction as the suited one, she switches out her ICER for the lethal sidearm, paperwork be damned. Though, WOW. seeing that tree being used as a particularly massive bludgeon, it's a good thing she didn't rush in to fighting these guys in close quarters.
"Turner," she calls out, "do I need to call in backup?"
"Do you think it'll get here in time?!" Koa calls as he has to dodge dark blasts and duck under the tree trunk that Laynia is swinging. She clocks Darque and sends him tumbling but he quickly rights himself midair and zooms up. Both of his hands lift up and all around them… bones.
"Of course the necromancer raises skeletons." Koa says as he moves near Keiko. "Do what you need to do agent, I'll cover you!"
May's going to be swarmed with skeletons in a moment and Laynia… gets charged by the man wearing the eclipse on his chest who summmons a pair of large axes into his hands composed of darkforce energy and goes right at the russian.
And then… BOOM!
The skeletons near my get momentarily blasted back as a bolt of what seems to be lightning hits the ground. When the flash clears there's two men there. One guy who looks like a canadian knock off of Capatain America and another guy who is wearing green armor, tight white leather pants and wielding a massive hammer with a warhead the size of May's upper torso.
"Never fear, maiden fair! Angus McFife is here by the power of Hoots!"
He's uh… well he has to be talking either to May or Laynia. He probably can't actually see Keiko, he's facing the wrong way.
"FOR CANADA!" The cap-knock off says as he charges, throws his shield, misses and strikes a rock… followed immediately by a reverbium detonation which sends things flying AGAIN!
Keiko nods to Koa, jamming her staff back in the base of the pillar. That only really lets her see the network and speaks volumes for her relationship with Koa - that she'll even let him at her back while she does this.
"Fuck." People can hear her as she moves through the network. "They've upgraded. I need to find the connection to this pillar." The demon spirit really doesn't like this - not with Koa at Keiko's back. Not with skeletons spawning around it. And definitely not being in the network like this.
Keiko starts to growl as the obsidian scales slide over her body slowly. She's fighting the change but it's not easy.
Sadly, Laynia's teleports are not speedy - she has little in the way of options when charged by the dual wielding Eclipse, so…a moment to flick the tree at Darque as a distraction more than anything, and then she leaps into flight, turning an elegant flip (Hopefully!) over the axe man's head. When she lands she conjures a hammer and sickle, the hammer a homage to her brother's former weapon, and both weapons composed entirely of Darkforce.
If she gets a chance she'll be only too happy to wallop him one from behind!
And then enter the Canny Canuck of Courage and his Scots friend who also happens to be wielding a hammer. "Maiden fair?" Laynia asks bemusedly, and then focuses on the fight, wincing at the Canuck's lack of accuracy, and where does he keep getting Reverbium shields? Didn't they take his last one away?
May echoes Keiko's sentiment (but in Mandarin) when the skeletons appear and pulls one of her taser batons for her free hand. She's not planning on using the taser function, but from what she remembers of the many, many nerdy ramblings of a former partner agent, bladed weapons don't work as well against skeletons as bludgeoning ones.
Firing off two quick shots at the suited enemy (the crack of a real pistol might sound out of place amongst all of this chaos), she can't help but pause for a moment when two new people join the fray. Her cursing in Mandarin is far LESS polite this time, especially when that second reverbium detonation is much too close for comfort.
"Get clear!" she yells at the amateurs, because that is very clearly what they are. And if they don't, she'll show them exactly how STUPID those stupidly tight leather pants can be.
After she deals with all of these damned skeletons.
Bladed weapons don't work unless you're going to use them to sever bone which does take some strength. Koa gives up using his gun and breaks out the chain that he often uses to imprison spirits. Now he's whipping it around and using it like a flail and thus far he has the area in front of him covered in bone shards. But there's a lot of bones coming out of the dirt.
That's not good. He whips up to try and grab Darque by the foot.
Koa Turnereiko finds that she's not alone either. G'Frn is in there and he is not happy. You again, false consort? The demon tries to eject her before she can establish her connection and make a mess of EVERYTHING.
Laynia does manage to slip Eclipse's rush, but he's quite agile. He turns before she can take him from behind and goes at her once more. It's a much more fair fight now… or it is until he reaches out with some kind of dark feeling power and tries to rip the life force right out of her. "Oh. You didn't think Darque was the only one who has mastered Darkforce necromancy, did you?"
May… May is stuck on the ground with two amateur heroes who do NOT know enough to really get clear. To the credit of the tight pantsed one he does seem quite strong and swings that hammer around well. He swings it with all the grace of a baseball bat but it gets the job done and smashes skeletons. He seems to be having a right good time.
As to Captain Canada? He gets cut off and surrounded and if people can't see him they can hear BONG! 'SORRY!' BONG! 'SORRY!' BONG! 'SORRY!'
May herself might note that while the skeletons are not armed, once she starts smashing them the ones in back pick up branches and rocks which has the unfortunate effect of making her opponents more dangerous the more that she defeats them. Some even pick up bones to use as weapons which is… slightly macabre.
"Keiko! Focus! We need you to shut that thing down!" Koa calls.
"I am fucking focussing." Keiko growls at Koa. He knows when her temper is getting out of control and it is now. Which is when G'rfn appears, getting a louder growl from the small … demonness. Clawed fingers flash out to try and grab the pale demon when he pushes her back. "I told you. I'm stronger than you think." fingers close around the demons throat and she lifts him.
"My consort will enjoy your skin as a rug. And the Darkchilde will enjoy your skull to drink from …" Keiko's eyes glow yellow behind the obsidian scales, wings flaring behind her as a … barbed tail slashes back and forth. That's all the others can see - they can't see the fight she's really fighting.
Taking a step, then another step, Keiko-demon pushes G'rfn backward to the centre. "I'm going to break this pillar with your body." He, it, can feel as Keiko levers against him, trying to drive the demons body into the stone where the 'circle' is marked near the pillar.
It is truly unfortunate that Laynia's in a fairly even fight, she much prefers the uneven ones. Alas, when hers goes uneven, it is /not/ shifted in her favor. More's the pity.
Striking, darting, twisting…she fights to the best of her ability with the man, and then the tables turn as he succeeds - partially - in ripping out her life force, the thing is that Laynia is bound to the Darkforce in a very real, very symbiotic fashion. In fact she has a twin soul - she is arguably always in contact with it, which relationship is uniquely hers alone. At least so far as she knows.
Hurt, pale hair goes stark white and her cheeks sink, she looks ghastly, like a war prisoner, but she DOES. NOT. FALL.
Her body limned with darkling energy she unsummons her weapons, and then her hand spew razorwire formed form Darkforce in a swirling mass around the man with the axes. If he's not very very careful he's going end up with a serious case of 'shredded dead'. This effort is not without a price for her, however, both nostrils leak blood, it is plain she won't be able to sustain this much longer, in truth if he manages another drain like the first there's a very real chance the former Soviet Super Soldier could die.
But she's a heroine.
You take your lumps in a fight - sometimes that's the price of doing business, and yeah, sometimes people die.
As soon as May no longer has a clear shot at either of the two Darkforce wielding enemies, she puts away and pulls out her chain whip — yes, Koa's idea is a good one. She just happens to have a more purpose-built weapon for this occasion. Foresight? Probably not. Old school paranoia? Most definitely.
Setting her chain whip to spinning fast enough to make a low whirring sound, she knocks skeletons back or completely bashes them to bits with her chain whip, trying to keep as many as she can from getting to where Koa and Keiko are. Mostly Keiko. She'd have warned the two amateur yahoos away again, but Hammer Man seems to be doing a decent Casey at Bat imitation there, and the Canuck is off elsewhere. As long as she can still hear him hitting things and apologizing about it, she knows he's okay.
Koa's snag on Darque's ankle lets him yank the man from the sky and use him as a flail. Which he does, spinning him around in front of him before turning to hurl him at Eclipse. Both Laynia's attack and Darque hit at roughly the same time. The impact of the razor foam is vicious, cutting and slicing, but not nearly as much as it would an ordinary human. Still, it's going to take them a moment to recover from that, but also that's an opportunity for follow up.
Keiko actually manages to get ahold of G'frn and slam him into the pillar. She can see the fear in his eyes. He calls down the power of the network to try to simply burn her out, but it isn't there. She's inside now. She has the ability to issue the orders. She can do what she wants. And if she wants to break him…
May has just about cleared the space around her when the ground beneath her feet cracks. And beneath Angus' feet as well. A very LARGE set of bones begins to emerge. Oh yay. We're not dealing with human skeletons anymore. It's time for something from the Jurassic. And it's coming up right under them.
"Canada has your back! HAH! You can never keep a canny canuck down!" Captain Canada rushes out of the skeletons he had been bashing, leaps into the air and slams his shield down on the ground. Right in front of May and Angus. As an undead T-Rex is pulling itself from the ground.
"SORRYYYYYYYYYY!" He calls as his own blast sends him flying back. And he probably won't be the only one.
"Little demon…" For the first time in a long time, Keiko smiles. Well, demon-Keiko smiles. It's not pleasant. Pulling the demon forward again, the peruvian rams it back into the pillar, causing it to crack.
"I told you I would have my due …" She slams him again. "… I'm going to break this network and then I'm going to break you. When I'm done, I'm sending you back to your master. A broken, pitiful thing. And you will have to tell him that the *false* consort did this."
This is not the woman who people know. This is angry Keiko. Vengeful Keiko. Keiko who has accepted the demon spirit as part of of her.
The pillar cracks again as Keiko draws her knife and slices at G'rfn. "The Heir will like the rug that I'm bringing him."
"I am not finished with you, yet, villain." Laynia says as she drops to one knee, a hand bracing her as the ground shakes at the emergence of the undead Dino ripping itself from the ground and into the light.
She grits her teeth in a rictus snarl, she's definitely looked far better, that's for sure, and pale skin shows the blood trails from her nose in sharp contrast.
Delighted that Koa has hurled Darque into the mass of razor foam, she is only too happy to do her best to follow up as they reel.
Ears ringing from the throbbing of her head, her pulse pounding with adrenaline and pain, Laynia opens a portal behind her to the Darkforce, and clasps the hand of her otherself through the event horizon of the rift.
BOTH Laynia's look like hell, one pale and human, the other infinite shades of darkness in a human shape.
Fully expecting to pay for it, Laynia channels as much power as she can from the Darkforce into a conical vortex of destruction focused on the two villains. She sustains that violent dark-clasm as long as she can, and then…slumps, the portal shutting even as her eyes do.
Having cleared a bit of open space, May looks around as she catches her breath. Damnit, she's hadn't realized how far out of shape she'd gotten. She's about to go find the shield-wielding idiot when the ground rumbles and she's knocked nearly off her feet by the newest — and biggest — skeleton emerging.
But then said shield-wielding idiot tries to be all heroic and crap, and she gets knocked well back by that idiot's shield just like the Canuck himself does.
Muttering extremely vile curses in Malay and Cambodian now, she grimaces then pushes to her feet as quickly as she can. And … aw damnit, where the hell is her chain whip?
It's dangling around the T-Rex's neck like a half done collar. It is also sent stumbling by the big blast then it steps on the Canuck and looks at May and roars. Do not think too hard about how it does this without lungs.
Fortunately Laynia has ejected the other two. There's no sign of them. Are they dead? Possibly. But probably not. They've proven annoyingly resilient in the past.
Keiko's stab causes the crack in the obelisk to rupture entirely. The stele just crumbles in on itself leaving her with part of a G'rfn. Enough to make something for the kid possibly, macabre as that sounds.
Which DOES still leave a T-Rex that needs dealing with. No rest for the wicked.
"Keiko!" Koa points. She has a staff. He has a gun. May's out a weapon but maybe she'll go get it and Laynia…
Gets picked up by the thing. In it's mouth. And then it bites. Or tries to.
Keiko is left growling and snarling as the stelae crumbles, the flap of skin that she's holding dripping black ichor over her hands.
Yellow eyes turn to the T-Rex as Koa points. Wings beat down, pushing her up in the air to the things eye level. "Pick on something your own size…"
The quarterstaff swings round to connect with the thing - just as it tries to bite down on Laynia. It should just crumble … as Keiko reaches out a clawed hand and grabs for the SHIELD agent.
May looks up at the T-Rex skeleton as it has Petrovna in its jaws and doesn't really have time for niceties. Rushing over, she snatches the ridiculously overlarge hammer from Idiot McFife and swings it as hard as she can at one of the dinosaur's legs. Archaeologists can go cry somewhere else.
This stupid hammer is heavy, but at least it's well balanced.
The leg just shatters. The shinbone breaks into a million pieces and is at that point no longer connected to the thigh bone. The thing goes down on one leg just long enough for Keiko to break its' jaw and snatch Laynia out of it. Then a gold light washes over the scene. One of Koa's wards has just gone off. The last of the necromatic energies in the construct fizzle out and it falls to pieces.
Agent Turner blows out a sigh. "Well… that could have gone worse." What does it say about the life of a WAND agent that this is his first response?
Keiko deposits Laynia on the ground and then retreats as far as she can from the others. Yellow eyes glowing she looks at the group, the piece of G'rfn still gripped in her hand.
Hissing at Koa, her wings beat down once more to lift the small demon into the air. Then she's winging away. To where? That's a good question. That's not a good thing though. Not at all.
May is gearing up to swing at the T-Rex's other leg despite its owner's squawky protests when there's that wash of gold light and the thing just fall apart. That's probably for the best, she can already feel that her back is going to tell her all about the folly of taking that swing.
Turning to track Laynia as Keiko sets her down, she shoves the hammer back into its owner's hands and goes to check on the Russian. "Turner, status update." She'll go get her chain whip back later.
Koa watches Keiko flap off and muddles a curse. "We've got wounded, the two amateurs are out and Keiko has flown off. So it's a mess."
The rather broad built man puts both Angus and Captain Canada over his shoulder. "You've got a car right? I'm throwing these two in the back. You can take Agent Petrovna to medical. I need to make sure that Kurita doesn't get into anything she can't get back out of."
How is he going to do that exactly?
Well his truck isn't far from here, of course.