raptorcanaria | (no subject)

Entry tags:

canon: jla year one

(no subject)

Unlike many of the major US cities in this universe, the Chicago of the JLA's world is remarkably similar to the Chicago of many others. Certainly, when the door from Milliways opens onto Lake Shore Drive, the cityscape ahead of the visitors might look familiar to one or two of them.

Well, except for the glass giants laying waste to the city, and the squadron of giant yellow birds in the sky.

Black Canary is already shouting out instructions over the din of the destruction.

"Keep close and watch each other's backs! Clear the city and for God's sake watch out for civilians! Do not! Let their eyebeams touch you; they'll turn you into one of them!

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! "

Without taking a breath, her shouted orders turn into a scream and the diamond giant bearing on them from the left shatters into huge clear chunks that shower to the ground.

"Go!"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ellen makes an unhappy squeaky noise at the description of the eyebeams, but it's doubtful whether anyone else can hear it. She's got her helmet on, and the battlefield just got loud anyway, so...

Might as well find out just what the freshly provided local guns can do, right?

Since Dinah has the left flank covered, X breaks right.

The first thing to test is whether or not adamantium claws have an effect on aliens made out of diamond.

If not, she will have to get creative.

It is not something she minds.

Edited 2011-03-06 02:04 (UTC)

Green Lantern and Black Canary have had plenty of experience working together by now, so he's already in motion as her cry goes out.

GL had had quite enough of the yellow bird aliens before, so he decides to start with the diamond giants. Problem is, what can you use to smash a diamond giant?

Well, there's always another diamond giant.

With a flash of his Ring, a long length of green rope appears, and the noose at one end tightens around one of the giants. GL sweeps his arms to one side,as if swinging a baseball bat, and suddenly the giant is flying through the air, swept along a wide, curving arc that ends with the giant slamming right into another giant. There's a tremendous shatter, and both giants go down. Not dead, but they won't be getting up again either.

With a grin, GL turns and looks for another target.

Combat is something that Max is very, very comfortable with. His natural inclination is to go straight down the middle. And with Canary on the left and X on the right, there doesn't seem to be any reason to go against that.

He rushes forward, simply barreling straight into one of the giants nearby applying his earthcrafted strength in a huge shove to knock the thing over.

One thing that can be said about these Earthlings: they sure don't know when they're beaten.

The middle giant is sadly not knocked over by Max's onslaught: instead it's clearly annoyed, forced into taking a step backwards to maintain its balance. Something made all the more difficult by the fast drying polymer being fired at it by Ellen. That its feet are now closer together can't be a good thing for the giant.

Meanwhile, X-23's experiment has interesting results: the diamond giants aren't harder than adamantium, but they're still pretty tough. The effect is rather like a grappling hook on rock - Which makes the giant's shin a perfect climbing surface.

Ooh, now that's convenient. If she'd had one of these things in Olney, Ellen would've been a lot happier about her chances against the deathclaws. (Wretched lizards're fast.)

Ellen darts forward in a zig-zagging motion, the better to throw off the giant's aim, and opens the throttle on her goo gun some more. As soon as she's gummed up the works enough Max will have a chance at knocking the thing down properly.

Before beginning her ascent to the diamond giant's face, X takes a brief moment to determine how effective hamstringing is.

And regardless of whether it does anything or not, several seconds later she is scrambling up the giant with an ease most other people reserve for staircases.

Maybe the gut -- or the eyes -- are similar enough to human physiology to increase the stopping power of an injury in either location.

A big green palm appears several yards over and shoves a giant in mid-stride, sending it tumbling into two others.

Hal then swoops back to see how the new guys are doing.

Huh. Pretty good, actually.

"Good, aren't they?" Dinah says, using her inside voice to the communicator in her choker. She has to save her shouty voice for times when it can do most damage.

Like X-23, she's heading up - jumping from foot to knee joint over grabbing hand, focusing her energy on evasion right now. When she gets higher up, she'll be able to survey the battle better.

Max scowls at the giant's refusal to fall over. He spares a quick glance-and-nod for Ellen as he realizes what she's doing. Smart plan.

He draws on windcrafting to pick up speed, getting some distance from the giant in question before reversing direction and blurring as he launches himself upward, aiming for the thing's knee.

A glassy hand swipes ineffectively at the running human, and misses entirely, caught up as it suddenly is in the classic motion of the about-to-fall-over, that of windmilling wildly before the whole body topples forward, then backward, then forward again, crashing into the ground.

Meanwhile its colleague is finding it quite hard to fire diamond-zombie making eyebeams while a mutant claws out its eyes. This is very inconvenient, but doesn't stop it trying to smack the nuisance away.

"X!" Dinah yells. "Stay up here!" Pointing ahead of them, she indicates the yellow birds that caused Hal so much trouble. "GL'll keep you airborne!"

Right, Lantern?

In the meantime, she leapfrogs over the head of the giant she was climbing up and ducks under the eyebeams of the giant behind it, buying her time to shatter them both with a sonic scream.

The biggest thing Ellen's ever fought was around eighteen feet tall. Her key strategy there involved destroying its knees. Some things are fairly universal. The fallen giant gets a grin- not that anyone can see it, given Ellen's helmet.

She whips around for the next nearest target, giving her gun a moment to cool down before opening the valve again.

X does not say anything in response to Dinah's call.

Initially she's busy trying not to be flung away from the diamond giant -- not because of the potential for broken bones and grievous wounds, but because it has not gone down yet, and climbing back into position would take far too long.

But once her strategy of clinging like a burr with at least one limb at all times while tearing at the eye socket -- and what lies behind it -- with at least one other limb has played out (hey, it worked with the kraken), she's got other plans.

Those largely involve being airborne.

At least she prefaces her leap with a cry of "GL!"?

A giant green catcher's mitt is right there where she needs it, and a second later she's right back in front of that eye, or what's left of it.

Because sometimes you go with a old classic.

Hal keeps the theme going by giving the giant right next to it a gigantic baseball bat right in the face.

"Batter up!"

Max glances around. Well, might as well make sure this one's going to stay down. Fortunately he brought a hammer.

A really, really big hammer.

Now he just needs to remember where he dropped it..

Aha! Right over there!

...

Underneath another advancing giant thing's descending foot. Great.

The diamond giants are suddenly having a hard time of it.

They're strong and hard, and usually difficult to crack, but the two humans on the ground are moving just too fast and keep splurging them with goo that immobilises their ankles. Then there's the blonde woman who keeps vaulting over them and that whir of claws at their heads - it's not a good situation.

Fortunately they have back-up: a flock of silent yellow birds that swoop in all at once, red beams fizzling out of their eyes at their targets.

And then there's the giant that sounds like it's laughing as it brings its foot down on Max's head.

Laugh while you can, giant boy. There's a heapin' helpin' of goop a-comin' straight for your face, and even if you don't need to see to step on the guy it's coming at a speed that's gonna give you some issues with little things like balance once it hits.

This is where things get tricky.

X hangs on to the toppling diamond giant with one hand, gaze flicking between it and the oncoming rush of yellow birds.

If she can just --

time it --

right --

Maybe she can leap across the gap and keep herself airborne on one of them.

Max shoots Ellen a grateful look. He'd buy her a drink or something later.

Then he grabbed his hammer, hefting it with a grin. Maybe a 200-pound chunk of steel would help deal with these big crystal guys.

Dinah would be laughing if she wasn't so determined to save her breath. She does drop down to street level though, grabbing on to giants to ease her descent.

"Keep it up everyone! We're driving them back!"

Hal grits his teeth. Man, he hates the big yellow birds.

Yellow, yellow, yellow. What's he going to do about--?

Hey. The diamond giants. They aren't yellow.

So Hal waits for the next giant to charge one of the heroes--building up a nice big pile of momentum--and then uses that, plus a big green rubber band, to swing the diamond giant up and around in a wide arc, sending it straight into one of the birds with one hell of a BOOM.

That really is one hell of a boom.

So here's the situation: The ice giants are now driven back downtown, and as more appear to help squash the humans, that's just more to drive together.

The birds are more of a challenge. They're flocking together and diving down onto the streets to the rescue of their companions. All of them, that is, except the few that are plummeting screaming to the ground under the claws of one vicious mutant

Hosing down multiple aerial targets? That's... almost like fighting bloatflies with a laser pistol. Almost. It's not like the laser puts up much of a fight or like bloatflies move particularly quickly, but it should be similar enough for Ellen's contribution to make more than a few birds miserable... right?

What with all the flocking, the effectiveness of the isolated plummeting approach decreases with time.

This may prove to be problematic. And with a thinner array of birds at her altitude, getting to the ground -- or another target -- may prove difficult.

Which is why, when her last target shrieks and drops, X drops with it.

Free-fall is fun.

And maybe she'll get lucky enough to drop onto another swooping cluster of birds. Or the head of a diamond giant. If there are enough of them left for that.

Dinah glances up when X starts to fall, but can't keep her eyes up for long.

"Don't catch her, GL. We're this close to finishing it."

Max also glances up at X as he swings his hammer through another crystalline knee. Somewhere at the back of his brain he considers dropping his weapon and doing one of those ridiculous running dives to catch her. That part of his brain notes that A) it's unlikely to get her to sleep with him, and B) it's a stupid gesture anyway. He's seen her handle worse.

He remembers the kraken.

So he goes back to hitting things with his giant hammer.

Hal, meanwhile, agrees with Canary that it's time to wrap this up. And apparently he means that literally, because a giant green net appears above the battle ground and with a might sweep of his arms, Hal uses it to scoop up the remaining aliens, making a few last-minute twists to avoid catching X, Max, and Ellen in the trap.

He signals to Canary: "I'll get this bunch to Blackhawk Island. Meet up with you after!"

And with that, GL soars into the air, dragging the enormous net behind him.

One thing's for sure: he won't need to be hitting the gym for at least a week after this.

Edited 2011-06-16 02:33 (UTC)

Dinah lifts a hand over her eyes, part-wave, part-salute, part just keeping the sun out of her eyes.

"Thanks so much, guys. I'll drop you off at the bar; we can take it from here."

Part of this is that Flash is in her ear telling her she's needed in Central City, and he can't take all five of them.

"Your drinks are on me until I get back."

They've done all she can ask of them, but she suspects it's going to be a long time before she can take this wig off.

"You'll have to share a few with us," Max grins. And by 'us' he very, very obviously means 'me'.

And, in case this was somehow unclear, he isn't just offering to drink with her.

If you know what he means.

And you do. Because subtlety isn't really one of Max's strengths.

"Thank you," X says, after having picked herself up off the ground.

All of her pieces are present and accounted for. She's going to need a shower to get the blood out of her hair, though.

Ah well.

"Do not get killed."

It is more useful thank saying 'good luck'.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only