Labyrinth

[raptorcanaria]

Here's the thing about Milliways: It's not the Real World. Dinah has a very clear delineation in her mind: there're things that happen in the bar, and there are things that happen at home, and even if people visit from one to the other, they're very different places.

Justice League, supervillains, Oliver. Those things don't follow her in. Which is good and bad, because it becomes a place to escape. And escape becomes too safe, somewhere where actual threats aren't real. That's the problem with the place. It's not home, and it doesn't touch home, and if she wanted, she could stay in the bar, rent a room, and never have to worry about outside. And that's what's so dangerous.

Not that she's thinking of danger right now, even deep in the forest where there might be demon rabbits. She's just thinking of the run, and the exercise, and also where she wants to take Ollie for dinner tonight. That's how she manages to get lost.

And how she finds herself facing a rough hewn stone wall, with a door cut into it.

Dinah stands in front of it, stretching out her warm muscles, staring at the door. Has that always been here?

Comments

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo follows her gaze, shaking away the dizziness as best he can. The blood loss is staunched, but he's still lower, lower than he's ever been.

"Conquest via the democratic process. I dig it."

He steps out, his weapon raised.

"Stay behind me."

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah comes up beside him, placing her good hand on his shoulder lightly.

"Hey, big man. It's okay. I still have three quarters of my limbs working. I don't need protecting."

And if she sees another of those girls in armor, she'll scream at her.

"Come on."

A few yards away, she can see a tree with a triangle engraved on it.

[boston_bruiser]

"Three-quarters ain't four-fourths," Voodoo says, making his way over to the triangle. "But if you insist, then at least keep out of my nine-to-three."

He tugs on one knot of the bandage, grimacing as it tightens, then taps the triangle.

[raptorcanaria]

She obediently takes a half step back to come out past his three, and keeps her hand touching him as he presses, using a minor force of will not to tighten her grip.

The trunk of the tree swings open towards them, exposing a stairway down, below ground.

"Oh no, I was just enjoying the fresh air."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo grunts, keeping his eyes forward. "You too?"

He starts down the stairway, one step at a time.

He's really starting to wish he brought some NODs.

[raptorcanaria]

"Yeah."

She lets him take the lead, and glances over her shoulder before following him down. There's a card she can play better outside.

The staircase is worn, wooden, and leads down into what looks like an old flower shop, lit by a dusty electric light in the ceiling, and a flickering streetlight through a shop window that doesn't have an associated door. Broken shelves of potted and cut plants line the walls, are littered in soil and water. And the cause of this destruction fills the center of the room. A large plant with a central bulbous leaf arrangement that stands taller that Voodoo, roots breaking out among shards of terracotta, looping and reaching into the shop floor.

[boston_bruiser]

"Oh, fuck me."

He keeps the submachine gun up, but keeps scanning the shop as he enters.

"Little Shop of Horrors. It's Little Shop of Horrors."


"Never seen the movie, though," he admits. "Get that fuckin' pistol ready."

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah stares at the plant with a puzzled frown on her face. She nods blankly and reluctantly reaches for the gun in her shorts...

...only to have to leap back as a green shoot rockets out of the broken floor beneath her, wrapping tentacle like around her wrist. Before Dinah can react, the plant has jerked violently, to the sound of bones cracking in her wrist, forcing her hand open and the gun to drop.

"Ah-ah-AH," a rich, male voice booms - from the large plant in the center. "That won't help you now, Sugar."

[boston_bruiser]

"Dinah!"

As the crack of bone echoes through the room, he grits his teeth and raises the MP5, centering the front sight post on the bulbous center.

"Pal, I am a long goddamn way from home. You get one warning: drop her or die."

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah was already pale from the last limb some monster broke. She's white from this, and the sprout wrapping around her forearm seems to be doing it just to lift her arm up, against the protests of the shoulder that's been dislocated and reset twice in as many hours.

The huge bulb of leaves moves, tilting down to a horizontal position, two of them peeling back in a way that looks like lips around what are definitely white teeth.

"Lotta tough talk, Son. How do you plan on following up on that?"

Another shoot, thin and tentacle like as the last, shoots up from the floor towards Voodoo, racing towards the barrel of his submachine gun.

[boston_bruiser]

It's a testament to Voodoo's fitness that he's able to roll out of the way of the shoot before it ever makes contact. It's a testament to his training that he's able to come out of the roll, lock the stock of the MP5 to his shoulder, and fire off five quick shots at the creature's mouth.

All of which ricochet off with thowcks and tings.

"Shit goddammit-"

[raptorcanaria]

"Voodoo!"

Not that he particularly needs Dinah snapping at him to stop, but she's in pain and fighting to get her arm back and she's getting rapidly angrier.

The plant keeps its mouth closed during the shooting, but as soon as it stops, it laughs again.

"Nice try, Son. but how about I just eat this little lady and then show you to the way out, hmmmmm?"

[boston_bruiser]

"Fuck you."

Voodoo keeps his eyes on the plant as he circles it, his weapon up - for whatever good that'll do.

"Here's my counteroffer: eat shit and die, freak."

[raptorcanaria]

"Wait."

Dinah's raised up on her toes now in an attempt to keep the strain off her shoulder, her eyes fixed steadily on the plant.

"Eat me, and you'll let him go?"

"Mmmmmmm," the plant seems to consider this. "Well, probably. That depends on how filling you are."

[boston_bruiser]

Wait, what. What.

His hearing must be going. His hearing's going, right?

"Nah, man," he says, keeping his gun trained on the plant, "she looks bony as fuck to me. Plus she's all hot 'n sweaty, 'n that's gotta muck up the taste. I wouldn't eat her."

He throws his best really not the time for heroics glare at Dinah in-between sentences.

"Tell you what: you let us go, and we promise to direct the next fat fuck we see to your little hidey-hole."

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah misses most of the glare, but catches the last of it as she shoots a look in his direction. One that tries to say I know what I'm doing but gets lost around shut up for now.

She kicks her feet pointlessly until a second shoot finds one of her feet.

"Now," says the plant, "how stupid do you think I am, boy?"

[boston_bruiser]

"I think you're pretty fuckin' stupid," Voodoo says. "Ugly as sin, too."

His grip around the MP5 tightens. "Now I won't say it again - drop her, or I will find a way to kill you."

[raptorcanaria]

"Aw, now I know you're just talking tough."

He sends another shoot rocketing towards Voodoo, crashing through the cash register as it does.

Dinah breathes in, taking a huge lungful of air, but then the shoot around her foot yanks her towards the plant, and she falls to the ground, the wind knocked out of her.

[boston_bruiser]

He's not as fast as he was before he dropped a pint, but Voodoo's still quick enough to drop the MP5 to let it hang by the sling as he unsheathes the tomahawk with a shick. The oncoming shoot gets hacked to bits, and he vaults over the counter, twirling the tomahawk in his hand as he sprints toward Dinah, the clomp of his boots on the aged concrete reverberating in the space.

She's not dying today. Not if he can help it.

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah is being pulled along the floor by one foot and one arm, but the expression when she looks up at Voodoo is done with fear. She glares at the plant, then looks up at Voodoo with nothing in her eyes but white fury.

"Voodoo," she says firmly, nodding at the destroyed counter to his eight. "Take cover. Now. You've got three seconds."

The plant, meanwhile, is just laughing at them both.

[boston_bruiser]

"Yeah, whatever," Voodoo says as he grabs the shoot on her foot and starts hacking away. "Save it for after we get out."

(Because martyrdom is a Dick Move, Dinah.)

He's hacked away the one on her foot, and it just about to get the one on her arm when-

[raptorcanaria]

- when she rolls onto her shoulders, plants her two free legs on either side of his hips and scissor-throws him across the room.

"Dammit Vood..."

Her words are cut off by a jerk on her broken wrist pulling her towards the plant, still laughing and shouting about how delicious she looks. But on her feet now, looking into that leafy mouth she has the second she needs to finally draw a breath, look the plant straight in the mouth, and...

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Cut off mid-laughter, the plant as room for a surprised scream, that can't be heard above Dinah herself. The ruined building starts to shake - despite the fact that the sound is mostly muffled by the plant's open mouth - and cracks on the ceiling deepen until a chunk starts to fall.

But then suddenly the plant explodes under the force of the sonic scream, chunks of leaf and vegetable flesh flying through the room. The last force of the scream before Dinah shuts her mouth causes another block of masonry to fall in.

Exhausted, she falls to her knees.

[boston_bruiser]

And Voodoo?

Well, Voodoo's lying in a crumpled heap in the corner, under a pile of rubble, unconscious.

(Knocking your head against concrete will do that, helmet or no.)

The rubble has torn the bandage off. Fresh blood, red and coppery, mixes with the old on his BDU. The tomahawk is clenched in his hand, and the MP5 lies on his chest.

All is quiet.

[raptorcanaria]

"Voodoo."

Dinah says it quietly from where she's kneeling, panting hard from the effort.

"Voodoo."

Then she makes herself stand, biting her lip with the pain as she unravels the dead shoot from her fractured wrist. Looking up, she finds him, and sprints over.

"Voodoo!"

She kicks the rubble from him, clearing a pace to crouch down next to him.

"God, don't you dare do this to me now." She reaches for the bandage, but hisses in pain when she tries to move her hand.

[boston_bruiser]

There's nothing. No movement.





Then he slowly opens his eyes, blinks once, twice, and draws in a shaky breath.

"Dinah Lance..."

A gloved hand claps onto her right shoulder, and he glares up at her from the rubble, brown eyes looking into blue.

"You - are a fucking asshole."