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Post by Lissilambe on Aug 29, 2008 12:53:37 GMT -5
In Keystone City, in a dilapidated parking lot nudged between a bombed out warehouse and the STAR Labs research facility that operated it, a war raged in the dead of night. Mammoth and the legendary Hercules pounded away on each other like the myths of old, thundering blows from ham-sized fists slamming into muscled chests. “Damn! This is great!” Mammoth cried out as he sent a thundering right hand across Hercules face, only to receive a brutal uppercut into his midsection. “I can really let loose, Selinda!” he cried out to his sister.
The leader of the Fearsome Five, Shimmer, merely rolled her eyes up in her head, and turned the ground between her and the twins, Carla and Juan, into tar. The siblings stumbled hard in the sticky material, their speed neutralized by the criminal’s transmutation powers. “I’m glad he’s enjoying himself,” she sneered as she looked for Gizmo. “Giz, we need to be going. Our target’s gone, and there’s no time to pick for leftovers!”
“Right you are, Shimmer!” he called back as he maneuvered his jetpack and headed towards the ruined warehouse. He watched as the sorceress in white, Jinx, smashed apart the wall of rubble that was being hurled at her by the weird guy who appeared in the wake of the vibratory cage’s destruction. “Hey, Jinxie! It’s teleport time, let’s get a move on!” he shouted at the witch as he tossed a rounded metal sphere over his shoulder into the parking lot. When it struck the center, several smaller spheres bounced out and leaped towards Speedy, the twins and Kid Eternity.
The scarlet archer felt the sphere connect with her stomach and the world started to spin around her, and the twins soon discovered the same difficulty, high-pitched screeching disrupting their balance and making them sink to their knees. The last sphere merely floated through Kid Eternity, however. He snapped his fingers with a shout of “ETERNITY!” and an imperious looking man with red hair dressed in regal Roman robes stood next to him.
“You summoned, oh lad of the centuries?” asked the newcomer with a snide, tired voice.
“Yeah, Caesar, we need to get back on track,” Kid Eternity said as he watched Mammoth and Hercules continue to pound on each other. “Herc’s not going to last much longer, I need to get into this fight for real, and we’re seriously outmatched. Put that military mind of yours to work!”
“A mob of barbarians pounds at random until nothing is moving,” Caesar explained in a superior tone. “A disciplined army uses that, and works together. Look at what you have: fine warriors with a fierce determination to survive and win, against a force that’s looking to retreat, but failing to work together for that aim. And,” his gaze fell on the Kasumi, “a weak link waiting to be exploited. Their female warrior. She doesn’t belong to them. Now, get to it, master of yesteryear!”
Hercules began to vanish from sight, as Mammoth turned back to Kid Eternity with a great big smile. “Okay, it’s nerd-stomping time!” he growled as he started to charge towards the shimmering teen. Kid Eternity merely charged towards Mammoth as well, and at the last second, his body seemed to grow hazy and he leaped through the charging brute. He could hear Mammoth cry out as he crashed into something large and metal, probably a car outside the lot.
Speedy struggled with the sphere that was clinging to her stomach, as she slowly curled to her side on the ground. Shimmer raised her hand, and the ground beneath Speedy began to slowly heat and melt. Kid Eternity ran up to Speedy and tore the metal sphere from her body, then pulled her free from the pit of bubbling ground that was turning to lava, and turned her towards the group in the warehouse. “Jinx, the one in white, fire, now as many as you can!” He said to her while he snapped his fingers and called “ETERNITY!”. A parrot appeared circling his head, and Eternity pointed towards the bare-chested man who was now diving for cover from the bolts of force being unleashed by the Indian spell caster.
Speedy recovered her bow and started to release arrows as Kid Eternity ran towards Shimmer, who gave him her attention, turning the air around him into various elements: first steel, then noxious gasses, then harsh acid, but he grew hazy and indistinct and ran through it all as he pointed up to the flying Gizmo.
The unnamed, shirtless teen peeked out from his cover to see the parrot circling his head and distracting him. Only when the parrot arced into a straight line and then sailed at Jinx did he see what was up. The sorceress had also been distracted by the approaching bird and saw the arrows only at the last moment, turning to blow them away with her wind wall again.
“Haven’t you learned, little bowgirl, that you can’t hurt me with your toys?” she said in a snide voice.
“Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” squawked the parrot as it zipped past her head and she turned to see the wall of rubble crash into her.
In a now cleared section of the warehouse, the teen dusted his hands and waved to Speedy as he said, “No, but she sure can keep you from paying attention.”
Shimmer turned to see Jinx get buried in the crashing debris and snarled. She ran over, converting the material into air as Kid Eternity ran past her to Kasumi.
“Okay, kid,” he said to her. “Listen, I know you sure as hell don’t want to be involved in any killing. We can hold our own, but if you help us, we can actually win this. And then you won’t be in any trouble, and no one has to die. Okay?”
Gizmo swooped down to fire on Kid Eternity, but was taken by surprise and thrown off-course when the twins raced past him, one on either side, the wake causing him to crash into the ground. “How the hell did you two break out of the vertigo spheres?” he growled, and cursed as he pulled himself up to his knees and grabbed a different metal orb from his belt. “Doesn’t matter to me, try this on for size!”
Mammoth had now walked back to the opening of the lot and looked around. He saw his team in trouble and grabbed a nearby car. He threw it at Speedy and called out, “You go splat now!”
The scarlet archer looked up at the car hurtling towards her and swallowed hard. She knew there was no way she could dive far enough fast enough. Instead, the shadow grew larger and more ominous, and she could feel each beat of her heart in slow motion.
But the car never hit her. Instead, it seemed to pause in mid-air and then crash to the ground in mid-arc. A metallic flash had passed over her head moments earlier, and pulling himself from the heap of metal was Victor Stone. Now though, he had a metallic sheen over his skin, and some of his flesh even seemed silvery.
“Okay! Enough’s enough! You want to bully little girls?” Victor Stone glared at Mammoth, one eye more like a red LED, but it flared and cast a red tracer on Mammoth’s chest. “No more!” With that, Victor Stone pumped powerful legs and charged into the black-clad powerhouse, sending him reeling. He battered Mammoth’s face with blow after blow as he straddled the huge chest. “No! More!” he shouted, almost beyond reason. Speedy merely watched the display in shock.
“You, boy, are going to die now!” Shimmer yelled as she cradled Jinx’s head in her lap. She wiped away a spot of blood from Jinx’s lip and then lifted her hands towards the stranger.
“The name’s Vibe!” he said as he lifted his own arms at Shimmer, and energies from both people crossed paths in the air.
Shimmer felt herself being struck by what felt like hammer blows as vibrations rattled her body, and she would have been shoved back hard if she weren’t already kneeling. Vibe saw no immediate effect of Shimmer’s attack until he was buried under a sudden wave of blood from the wall behind him. It suffocated him, as he accidentally swallowed the copper-tasting liquid, and he dropped to his knees, choking and gagging.
“It’s mud now, you bastard! Blood for blood!” Shimmer cried back as she picked up Jinx and turned to her friend. “’Jinx, wake up and port us out of here now!” she slapped Jinx’s face to rouse her, then turned to Kasumi, who was staring at the brutal battle. “And you, deadly assassin chick, kill him already!” she demanded as she stared at Kid Eternity.
“Don’t worry, I got you like I got the twins,” said a small voice from a tiny green gerbil as it skittered towards Vibe, who lay face down in the thick pool of blood. The animal shifted its shape, becoming for a brief moment a teen boy with emerald skin before that was replaced by a huge green gorilla that scooped up the choking hero. Then the gorilla kept loping across the ruins of the warehouse to get Vibe to safety.
“Decision time, Kas,” Kid Eternity said softly as he stood next to her, hands crossed behind his back. “Throw your lot in with them, or stick with us.”
Gizmo turned to Kid Eternity and added a small, square device to the side of his pistol. “This should take care of that phasing thing of his,” He muttered with a wicked grin as he leveled the pistol. He never got to fire, though, as a Nerf arrow crashed into his temple and sent him sprawling.
Speedy was nocking another arrow and racing towards the warehouse herself now, as Gizmo tried to recover. She was out of her boffer arrows, and instead fired the broadhead at his gear. She struck the harness of his pack, and the circuitry began to spark and overload, forcing the dwarf to hastily detach it from his body.
“Damn you, bitch! You goddam whore! I’m going to kick your head in!” he screamed as he struggled to his feet.
Suddenly, Vic Stone came crashing down from the sky, landing on his back with a hard-sounding thump and a rush of air from his lungs. He looked up at Speedy and smiled, an ugly purple bruise swelling under one eyes, and a cut lip bleeding an oily looking liquid.
Sirens were now sounding in the distance, and Shimmer stared hard at Kasumi. “You’ve been useless this entire fight, you stupid bitch! At least do something right!”
Kasumi pulled out a small, well-balanced club from her belt and threw it with swift precision, smashing Shimmer’s nose and knocking her onto her back. Jinx landed hard on Shimmer’s chest, knocking the air from her as well. Kid Eternity smiled with pride as he stood behind Kasumi while the flashing blue lights grew closer. Mammoth was standing, and wiping blood from his own nose as he looked at the scene around him. He turned and started to run down the street, smashing through a police car as it screeched to a halt in front of him.
Gizmo had reached Speedy, fists out, and threw a wicked punch at her midsection. She stepped back and smoothly landed a spin kick into the side of his head that put the crude, genius midget on his back.
Slowly, the various teen heroes moved towards each other, feeling the effects of the combat, shaking the cobwebs from their heads or rubbing damaged joints and limbs.
The police stormed into the parking lot and circled the fight scene, weapons drawn. Speedy looked scared, unhappy with the exposure. She’d managed to avoid police attention, and she tried to step behind Vic Stone. The twins had moved to their friend as well, while Kid Eternity stepped forward, arm still on Kasumi. He smiled, and snapped his fingers with a call of “ETERNITY!” A wisp of smoke brought forth a man in an elegant Napoleonic era military uniform, black hair and thick beard and mustache.
“We need to look and sound good, Flashy,” Kid Eternity whispered to the newcomer over his shoulder. “That’s your bailiwick.”
Harry Paget Flashman smiled and nodded and started to whisper in Kid Eternity’s ear as the teens were largely grouped together now, and the police moved into the warehouse.
“What’s going on here?” demanded the ranking officer, staring at the group. Flashman drifted back into a wisp of smoke and Kid Eternity put his hand out to shake.
“Kid Eternity here, sir,” he said with a disarming smile. “From Fawcett City? The Marvel Family?”
The shirtless teen calling himself Vibe stood unsteadily on his feet, still wiping blood and coughing, and leaning on the green-skinned teen who was in nothing but black spandex shorts. Both were confused but okay as they stepped into the group as well. An older cop stared at him and looked stunned.
“Hey, ain’t that that Beast Boy kid?” the junior officer pointed at the green-skinned teen, making many in the group also turn. Only Kid Eternity kept from doing so, needing to look in control of the situation.
“I’m familiar with the Marvels, yes,” the ranking officer said. “Sergeant Burke. What’s happened here?”
”The Fearsome Five attacked, but a tip by this little lady, Speedy,” Eternity answered with as mile as he held his hand behind Speedy’s back, “and excellent inside undercover work by Kasumi here,” he pointed to the other young lady now, “enabled me to put together some heroes and put them down. I suspect they were working for Dr. Sivana, and had come to steal some kind of device being stored here.”
Sergeant Burke looked incredulously at Kid Eternity, and then gazed at all the assembled teens, while his men carefully brought out Jinx, Shimmer and Gizmo from the ruined warehouse.
“It’s definitely the Five,” one cop shouted out. “Well, three of ‘em, anyway!”
“Sarge,” said the stunned cop as he nudged his superior and pointed towards Vibe. “Ain’t that…I mean, doesn’t that look like…the Flash?”
“I think you need to lay off the donuts, Billings,” Burke replied. “Who knows what the Flash looks like under that mask?”
”No, I mean the old one, sir,” Billings pushed. “The really old one, that is. The JSA Flash. Garrick.”
Burke looked over now, and started to nod. “I think you’re right. Good God, he hasn’t aged a day, though. Isn’t Garrick an old man?”
“Indeed,” Kid Eternity said quickly, listening to the advice given by the master of the grift, Harry Flashman. “That’s the next job for my partners, to get to the bottom of the mystery of Jay Garrick. For now, though, we’re calling him Vibe, since he doesn’t seem to have his speed powers anymore. We need to rest up now, actually, Sergeant. Is it possible for me to take these guys back to base, and I’ll contact you in the morning with details, and for questions?”
Before the cops could respond at all, a large flare-up of light from the squad cars drew everyone’s attentions as Jinx wove her spell and opened a portal.
“Quick!” Shimmer ordered as the three villains stepped through, the rip in space sealing behind them before any of the assembled groups could respond.
Kid Eternity peered over his glasses as Kasumi ground her teeth and clutched her hands tightly. “You know where they went?” he asked the silent warrior, who nodded in return as she stared at the now-normal space.
“We need to go after them, officer,” Kid Eternity said. “We haven’t any time to lose, I hope you understand?”
“We got a lot of questions, but this seems out of our field for now,” Burke replied as he shook the kid’s hand. He looked over the rag-tag group of youths and shook his head uncertainly. The police began to secure the crime scene as Burke added, “Get going. I’ve got this covered, I guess.” He turned to his men.
Kid Eternity hustled the group out of the lot, and explained, “I’m not kidding. I think Sivana’s tied up in this, and behind the Fearsome Five. Kasumi can help us track them down, and I think I can arrange for some transport, but no one has to come with us. This is potentially big. And the Five, they’re going to be aching to hurt you guys bad.”
“Hey, I’ve been at this hero game as long as you, Kid,” Beast Boy said with a smirk. “Throwing myself into certain death is just what I need to shake off the rust of being...well, missing for...however long now. I'm in Keystone, you say?”
“Well, I’ve got not other options, so sure, what the hey?” Vibe said with a sheepish grin. “Um, I don’t suppose you could spot me for a shirt, too, huh?”
Vic Stone just looked at himself, the sheen of his body, and stared at Kid Eternity. “Somethin’ happened in that lab, and you’re a super-hero, so you can figure it out. I’ll stick with you for now, but you gotta be helpin’ me to understand this.”
The twins repeated what Vic had said, holding each other’s hands. “Yeah, pretty much what he said,” Carla said. “This is just too freaky.”
“Cool, though,” Juan added. “I mean, we got super-speed. That’s super-sweet! How can we not use it to help?” Carla gave her brother a sour look, but just stood at his side.
Speedy seemed uncomfortable, very uncomfortable, but nodded her head slowly. “I really shouldn’t, but I hate to leave things undone. Heck, at this point, I almost got a car dropped on me, and dropping into a pool of lava. I ain’t getting left out now.” She laughed nervously.
Kid Eternity gave a look of admiration at the group of teens and nodded his head. “Okay then. Let’s see this through to the end.”
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