The Harvesting

June 28, 2015:

Harvester and Eclipse make an appearance at Hells Gate….

Hell's Gate - Metropolis

Characters

NPCs: None.

Mentions:

Mood Music: None.


Fade In…

Hell's gate has been fragile ever since HYDRA broke reality there. There's still a rift there, right over one of the residential neighborhoods. It's sealed shut thanks to the efforts of several powerful mages, Zatanna and Illyana among them, but its still there and the whole area around there is sort of… susceptible to deminsional breaches. Its also one of the easier areas to pick them up in because the 'skin' of reality is so thin. And for wahtever reason now, the ley lines around Hells Gate are pulsing like someone's taking a magical snare drum to them. Rapid, urgent. Something's happening there and the scale can only be a very serious problem.

This is Fenris. I'm moving to Hell's Gate. Anyone available please respond. Be careful though. Don't know what's happening yet.

A Way Tears open as the God Wolf arrives and looks around. There's an eclipse. Odd. Fenris hadn't seen anything even remotely like that in New York just a minute ago…


This is Zee, on my way

The Mistress of Magic is becoming used to this type of response. Focussing on Fenris, she teleports to stand by Fenris's side, appearing with a soft pop sound. Not dropping the power she's holding, she looks to the Wolf God and then around…. "Is something trying to come through?"


A drenched Hax (teleport spell STILL not working properly) looks down at the orange band on his wrist. The band is giving off eratic pulses of light. Hax shakes his wrist of couple of times and re-examines the band, "These readings make no sense".

He continues to walk down a narrow alley trying to pinpoint from where the source of the pulses emanates until he sees the Wolf God emerge from thin air. This causes Hax to stop dead in his tracks and re-examine his band. "That what it is?"


Misfit reporting to duty!

Charlie will snag her utlity belt as she bounces off her bed and then does this little dance around her room as she gets into her costume and armor. Then she just ceases to be in Gotham with a flash of pink and purple smoke >pinkurple> stepping out by Fenris from another slash of smoke and looking around behind her goggles.


Fenris. May. En route now.

Luckily, now that WAND is a thing, May abruptly saying she needs to leave and vacating the Triskelion like the building is on fire perturbs very few people anymore. It takes her a few minutes to gather her belongings and then get someone from the motor pool to drive her to the closest ley line (much faster than running), and then she's … stopping dead at the really unsettling sensation.

I'm thinking the ley lines are probably not safe for travelling right now.


I'm on my way

Kara had instead taken the scenic route, flying over the city of Metropolis towards the directed area, asking outloud when she arrived, "Why is there an eclipse?"


"There shouldn't be." Is Fenris response to Kara. He glances over to Zee. "Yes, can't tell what yet though. Somone is harvesting power nearby and its destabilizing the…" There's a sudden overwhelming smell of salt water in the air. Hell's Gate isn't that far from the Ocean, being as Metropolis is a coastal city, but it's usually not that bad. Zee and Hax can both feel the presence of powerful individuals. Yes, Plural.

"Kara, I need a birds eye view. Something's approaching. Zee, see if you can figure out what the source of the disturbance is. If it destabilizes the gate we may end up with some dimensional problems here. Misfit…" He's about to say something when he sees Hax. "Who the hell is that?"

May, the Ley Lines around here are being destabilized. Teleportation is risky. Possible, but risky.

There's a spike in magic that everyone can feel. And its coming from somewhere ahead of them.


Zee sighs and waves Hax over "That…" she looks at the other mage "is Hax. Another homo-magi. Has an interesting way of manifesting his power… " magic nerd Zee is in full swing… and she catches herself before nodding to Kara and Misfit "Who will teleport, May, Fenris?" Zee's eyes glow bright blue, she doesn't waste a moment really

~~wohS sU ehT ecruoS fO ehT ecnabrutsiD ~~


Hax smiles at Fenris (that nervous kind you make when meeting someone's parent for the first time… please like me) and upon seeing Zee the smile turns from nervous to genuine happiness. His eyes fall a little to floor as is his custom, but upon feeling the spike of energy his band lights up. Not in pulses. Lights up like a bulb.

"I, um, t-think I found my answer"

Hax then turns to face the direction of the energy spike and summons AI to his side.

"How may I assist you, sir?" The floating orange ball asks.

Hax points in the direction of the energy spike. "Analyze this signature." and AI begins to scan the magical signals emanating from the spike (what kind of energy, how large is the spike. A standard spectrum analysis).


Well Misfit wasn't given orders so she steps >pinkurple> and appears behind Hax. She looks at him from behind then to the floating Orange Ball. She cocks her headstudying it then huhs. "Okay that is pretty awesome." she might even startle Hax who knows, her teleport is magically silent and all. Then she bounces back >pinkurple> by Fenris and taps her temple, activating a ChaosSight <tm< spelll and looks in the direction of the Spike.


Great. Just great. Fenris couldn't, say, ask Misfit to pop over and give her a safer route over? Nooo, of course not. So, she braces herself for a VERY unpleasant journey, and concentrates on getting to the leyline closest to Fenris' location, no matter how compromised that particular area happens to be.


Kara nods to Fenris and smiles a little at Zee and the others with no time to greet the newcomer Hax, "Sure, I'm on it." Kara leaps into the air flying high into the sky to see what she can spot in the air or on the ground from the air.


AI picks up a massive surge of necrotic energy coming from the area in front of them. Charlie can see it through her chaos vision almost as a mushroom cloud like flare. Only of darkness rather than light. As to what's causing it… Zee's spell highlights a pair of flying objects that quickly come into view for everyone. One is a tall, almost impossibly thin man in a black suit with a symbol of an Eclipse and a ridiculous upturnned collar. The other… is hard to make out as a man at all. He's a humanoid shape made of water riding a pillar of water.

"Medllers!" The more human of the two calls down. "I might have known that you'd come to intervere with the Master's plans again. Water, go see to the rest of the harvesting! I'll deal with these…" He lifts a hand and ghosts begin to materialize all around them.

"Tremble before Doctor Eclipse! And KNEEL BEFORE THE WILL OF MASTER DARQUE!"

Fenris looks around at the ghosts and then up at Eclipse. "Someone shut this idiot up. Zee, Mage, stop the harvesting and seal the rift before it opens. Everyone else… time to get your Dan Akroid on."


"We won't kneel… you should know that by now." Zee plants her feet and looks up at Eclipse before snorting softly at Fenris' last comment.

Looking to Hax "Hax, I'm going to try to close down the rift, can you do the harvest?" Hopefully May makes it through the leyline… if not, Zee's going to go find her…. Drawing her power to her, Zee focusses on the rift …

~~ laeS ehT tfiR ~~

A simple enough spell, but Zee expects there's more to it than that… she braces for the expected backlash.


Hax nods to Fenris and Zee, and pulls open his magic interface (a 35x40 inch orange, holographic screen) and begins writing a counter-harvest spell (almost like taking down a hacker. Heh this will be fun).

He says to Zee in a slightly monotone voice (almost as if it was an after thought), "Harvest being interrupted". To the Dan Akroyd wanna-bees "I will need a moment to write a counter. I don't have the proper tools on hand to handle this many ghosts."


Misfit mutters "On it…. this is personal…." after all this is the guy who almost broke her brain box. She steps behind Fenris using him as cover >pinkurple> and in Gotham she drops from the air building up some speed. While dropping she clicks her heels together while tapping her gloves. Both start to glow with Ruby Chaos Energy. Then… >pinkurple> and she appears at velocity in the air behind floating Eclipse guy and aims a kick right at the back of his idiot head. "Dark Vengeance!" hsssssssss. Of course she times her catchphrase with the hopeful impact, she doesn't want to warn him.


Melinda May arrives finally, feeling the really unpleasant effects of having travelled over the severely disturbed ley lines and reeling for a moment. She forces the disorientation back, gets her bearings, and promptly pulls her oil-shiny chain whip from a pocket and sets it spinning fast enough to whir through the air. Anyone — ghost or not — that gets too close to her is at risk of getting hit with a very solid piece of stainless steel moving at high velocities. So if you're a friendly, stay clear and let May do her job.


Uh guys? There is a massive wave down the street, like from the Ocean. Kara transmits with the Ley Pendulum, Oh, it's also full of zombies. Maybe like the ones from.. Oh god no, seriously? Um Fenris, what should I do?

Kara starts flying towards the tidal wave wondering if she could freeze it or something.


Eclipse is nothing if not fast. The first hit rings him but the second hits air. The thin black clad man zooms to the left and turns, unleashing a volley of dark bolts at Misfit as he starts to circle. Which is fortunte. He had been about to intercept Kara. Well, fortunate for Kara. Misfit now gets to deal with a powerful, crazed, Darkforce enhanced Necromancer.

Kara in the mean time approaches the wave and Water, who had been returning to his work, looks up. "Oh no you don't, Supergirl!" The wave morphs and forms several spikes which lanuch out at her and near supersonic speeds. Not ice, no, just water but… water's pretty hard when you get it going fast enough.

Back on the ground Fenris pulls his blade and motions to May to join him and help him cover the mages. The spell tapping the ley lines here is complex and powerful and they're going to need time. Add that to the fact that the Rift is opening again - a separate problem - and… well… it's gonna take both Zee and Hax to manage it. "Work fast you two.

The ghosts start to swarm in… only to be cut down in droves by Fenris who, despite being mostly depowered, is still one of the most dangerous swordsmen around. He'll need help though. Let's hope May is on the ball.


Zee's focussed on that damn rift, there's something fighting her spell, she can feel it. She'll trust May and Fenris to look after her physically… the rest is up to her. "Hax, there's something fighting me… I'm going to send a spell through the rift to upset them, when I do… try to close it, please." She focusses on the dark bolts that Eclipse has loosed, they'll do as a start.

~~ treviD emoS fO ehT kraD stloB hguorhT ehT tfiR ~~


Hax finishes his counter spell. Nothing too fancy. A simple magical firewall that intercepts the incoming magic tap and sends it into the magic equivalent of an endless "while" loop, which hopefully will cause any incoming signal to either "crash" or explode in the caster's face. Focusing for a brief moment Hax charges the spell with power and runs the magic-code. Upon gaining his composure Hax brings up an old spell meant for draining magical energy. Should do the trick. Maybe with a couple of modifications to deal with the necro-energy, but in theory it should drain whatever is maintaining the rift. In theory. Could also drench his clothes again like his teleport spell (I swear I can never get that one to work).


Thankfully Misfit is quite fast too, she only has one target as opposed to trying to tag an entire group with multiple bounces in this case. She vanishes with a slash of >pinkurple> even as Darkforce bolts fly right at where she was. She doesn't do what is likely expected though and appear anywhere on the level with hi,. She also doesn't appear above him to get the drop on him.

No sir. Misfit appears right under him and reaches out to tap an exceptionally charges UnLuck Stone (chaos rune) to his foot. Flying Combat… so many opportunities… Chaos Runes.. God only knows.


May returns Fenris' nod, and that's all he gets for now. She's busy. But the number of ghosts is disturbing, and they're closing in faster than she can reset the chain whip. So, she launches it at a particular group of enemies and lets it go, leaving the heavy chain-and-weight weapon to slam into a wall and clatter to the ground probably a bit close to Hax. And then her butterfly swords are out and it's ginsu time. Zee is probably accustomed to seeing the shiny blades in her peripheral vision by now.


Kara does her best to dodge the spikes, calling back to whoever was taunting her, "What's your deal anyways? Did hell run out of room and start sending jerks back up top?" She's almost hit by a water spike and when she turns to look at a sparkley object; she messes up.

In her moment of distraction Supergirl is hit by a water spike and sent tumbling into the air, it will definitely take her a few moments to get her balance and momentum back.

Reaching into her pocket she grabbed the defensive amulet Fenris had given her and slips it around her neck, that would help with evil magic.


Chaos runes cause bad luck.

Bad luck for whom is the question. Doctor Eclipse, for all his F-List Villain monologuing and costume from the 80's is no slouch when it comes to power and he senses Misfit below him. And begins charging up a spell to deal with her…

And then there's an explosion. It's enough to knock down even the ghosts. Fenris only stays upright by using his rod to form a shield of swiftly moving air to sweep everything to one side. It's a fairly big one. Did Misfit get out okay? And where's Eclipse?

Zee's spell takes hold of Eclipse's dark-bolts and tries to turn them. And… well touching power like that means touching the darkforce. She does manage -barely- to get them turned. But it burns and stains within. Moments later Hax sets up his firewall. With whatever's on the otherside hopefully distracted, it'll be one down one to go. Now they just have to stop the harvesting. Hopefully.

Supergirl is sent tumbling but the strike itself has no magical properties. That changes as zombies start to swarm out of the wave and toward the group battling a couple streets over. Water isn't going to hold them anymore. He's got other problems. Rising up on a now 100 foot tower of animated water he begins to charge a necromatic attack, one designed to rip souls from bodies. Then he lashes out at Kara in a single pitch black beam that he slews around like a laser pointer.

May's oil coated meteor hammer does the trick nicely and any ghost struck by it bursts into flame and literally renders to ash. The trouble is there's so. damn. many. And they just keep coming. Worse, they're mostly trying to ignore her and get to the mages behind her. Fenris is on the other side, still reaping a swath out of them with his moonsilver blade. "Hold up okay there May? Zee, Magus, how much longer!"


Zee stumbles backward as the backwash of the explosion and the burn of the darkforce hits her. She pales and blanches at the feel of the darkforce but she forces herself to focus and stands straight again - they can look at the effects of that later. "No… no idea Fenris. Working on it." she mutters…

Mays weapons, glimpsed from the corner of her eye are actually a comfort to the teen mage - someone's looking out for her. "Hax? The Harvesting, now…." It's going to take Zee a moment to get the next spell sorted out.


Hax oblivious to the surrounding chaos finishes the last modifications to his energy drain spell, and with a gleam coming off his glasses he says "Got it."

He quickly charges the spell with power and maps it to his number 4 hot-key with hot-keys 1-3, 5-10 slotted with something called "Fire Prism".

"My spell is ready! I might have a way to stun Squirtle over there long enough for the spell to take effect, but I'll need a hand."


Meanwhile in Faerie admist a blastered ruined city two figures appear and are blown apart into the rubble. The very red crystaline rubble. It is pretty sad whatever happened in this city. It seriously looks like there was a war, buildings and towers crushed and collapsed. Lots of sharp ruby fragments to fall on for instance. The once likely beautiful river looks like some sort of glittery toxic sludge as well.

One of the figures flung towards the rubble disappears in a slash of >pinkurple> and reappears on the ground under the other hurtling figure. It looks like said goggled Misfit plans to wait to see if he splats on the building and in the meantime she is charging up a batarang with red energy, suspiciously like the buildings around her, and slots another chaos rune in the batarang like a small explosive and hurls it up at the figure after gauging the distance. If one did all that, what will a second one do.


Kara did her best to fly around evasively while keeping the charm handy as she tried to keep away from the black beam of death, "Squirtle?" She had heard Hax, she had no idea that was her enemies name; they must have been a pokemon fan.

When she manages to get away from the death beam she flies in to punch squirtle super hard!


You know, this whole 'protect the mages' gig would be a little EASIER if the damned mages had chosen to stand a little closer together. May has no idea who this new kid is (and for the record, anyone younger than forty is a kid in her mind until proven otherwise), but Fenris said to protect him as well as Zee, so she'll do her best. Which means for a second there, she's got both swords in one hand and is throwing a small blade past Zee's face to hit the ghost on the spellcasting woman's other side from her. She's about to demand that Zee coat her hair and clothing in holy oil before arriving at scenes like this, for crying out loud.


The spell falters as Kara punches Water aka Squirtle. Were it anyone else that wouldn't do much. Kara is actually capable of punching him hard enough to convert a not inconsiderable portion of his mass to steam. Heat transfer and all that. The water based necromancer backs away. He wasn't actually knocked back. But he's a bit worried now. Especially since his backup seems to have gone AWOL. "Blasted JL:A. Meddlers! Usurpers! You'll answer for this!" It's timt to get the hell out of there. He flattens and makes for a storm drain while commanding the zombies to try to swarm Kara. They're magic. That might be an issue.

Fenris has been backed up more or less right to Zee by the press of ghosts but with both necromancers now gone or fleeing they're starting to thin a little. The ghosts May is dealing with are backing away now. Some have faded back into the realms of the dead entirely. Now if the mages can just 'seal the deal' as it were.

As for Misfit… her rune is suddenly and explosively batted back at her. Eclipse appears, having seemed to anticipate that. The batarang? That he hasn't anticipated. Yet.

"What the hell?!" Where are they? Wait… Faerie?


"Just do it, Hax. I'll cover you." Zee's worked her spell out… if she knew May was going to insist she oiled up, she might be complaining - just a little.

~~ lecnaC ehT gnitsevraH woN ~~

She's not feeling all that well, whatever the darkforce has done to her… it's probably not all that good.


Hax dashes forward evading the what ghosts remain. Closer. Towards the still battling Kara. Need to get closer. Let Squirtle go. Zombies. Kill it with fire. As Hax is positioned vertically beneath Kara holographic buttons appear in front of all his fingers except his left pointer. Hax presses the buttons and they light up, manifesting nine red-orange glowing power crystals in front of Kara that begin to spin rapidly. As the crystals build speed they unleash elemental fire beams with increasing frequency towards the oncoming zombies.

Hax then turns towards the rift and summons his last holographic button and points his finger at the rift. He unleashes the energy drain spell and in a moment a bluish-white conduit of flowing streams of energy funnel into a collapsing vortexes. Hopefully this will drain the energy sustaining the rift.


Charlie blinks up as her own rune is blasted at her. Well he doesn't seem to expect the batarang that should be exciting. She vanishes >pinkurple> and appears up on the ruin he didn't splat onto. She takes a running dash at a large chunk of rubble and applies her shoulder to tip it off the building. Then she bounces again >pinkurple> out in front of him mid-air. "Hey Jerkface!" she hurls two more batarangs. She is really hoping she judged his position right, not to distract him and hope the chunk of falling building lands on him.


Melinda May keeps right on fending off ghosts, but she's starting to visibly tire. In one sweep past Zatanna, she hastily pulls something from her jacket and slaps the plastic ziplock bag into the mage's chest. "Use it. Now." It's the oil-saturated rag she's taken to carrying with her, Zee is likely very familiar with it as well.

What? It seemed to work for Jesana that other time.


Kara allows Hax to deal with Squirtle after she's punched him does her best to stay out of reach of the zombies by flying, unless these were flying zombies and then she was probably in real trouble.

For the most part, she's using her laser eyes to take care of the zombies; trying to cut a path of destruction through them.


The fire crystals and Kara's own laser vision absolutely decimate the waves of zombies which is a good thing. Who knows what they would have done otherwise. There are people here after all. The ghosts, meanwhile, are finally fading as Water escapes into a storm drain. Just a minute or so more and they'll be gone. The rift drains of power and the eclipse starts to clear as Harvesting is cancelled. Harvesting of what exactly will be a good thing to look at. It seems to have been centered on a small, old graveyard in this quiet neighborhood.

Back in Faerie Doctor Eclipse takes one batarang hit with an explosion of ruby energy. Then a second… and cleverly dodges out of the way of debris… just in time to get hit by a third. Clearly they do hurt him. His response? To take off skyward. This isn't his land and he's not going to stick around and battle Charlie. Besides, he's pretty banged up. Better to recover and plot her downfall. "This isn't over, Misfit!"

Fenris sighs, on the other side. "I think that's over."


Zee let's her magic drop as she's thwapped in the chest with the bag…. Looking at the oily rag and then to May, she wrinkles her nose. "Maybe next time, Agent May." Putting her hands on her thighs, she takes some deep breaths. "Um Fenris, I might need some help…. " she murmurs "Or maybe just some time… How are the others?"


Hax falls unceremoniously on his rear and just sits there. He's thrown out a lot of power to charge those last couple of spells and needs a breather. Thankfully, his clothes are starting to dry out a bit. Small victories. He looks over at the graveyard. Why tap a small graveyard? Well, sure it's a place for necro-energy to build up over time, but it's small enough that any harvested energy should be small.

Hax redirects AI "Give me an analysis of the graveyard's energy." and AI whizzes over to the graveyard.


Charlie yells after Eclipse "Good luck getting home you jerkfaced dragon sniffer!" then well the young woman looks around and has sudden onset migraine that causes her to topple off her perch. She >pinkurples> before she even hits the ground there.. in the pain and panick that grabs her mind she wants to be somewhere safe. Misfit appears by Fenris's feat in the slash of colored smoke.


Melinda May looks around as the last ghosts finally dissipate and relaxes from her combat stance with a faint grimace. She can't handle prolonged melee combat like she used to. And, since Zee no longer needs it, she takes the oilcloth back and goes to retrieve her chain whip from where it's still sitting on the ground. "Fenris, do you want me to bring in a SHIELD team to help determine what those two were after here?" She really would like to. It'll give her ducking out of that briefing more credence.


Off in the distance, Kara heard someone in trouble and she could not ignore it, "You guys have this now, good work and make sure Zee is ok!" Without any further word or warning, Supergirl could be seen flying off into the distance to help deal with some other trouble!


Fenris glances down as Charlie arrives. "Ah there you are." He'd been about to go looking. Hax's construct flies off (As does Supergirl, but Fenris will send his thanks later) which leaves just May and Zee. "Yes, I think that's prudent. They were after something, let's see if we can figure out what. I'll work this from another angle." He glances over to May and then to the two Magi. "Might want to see if they can help you. Either way, do your thing." This is SHIELD business now too, after all. Well, WAND business.

The Old Wolf offers a hand down to Misfit. "I'm headed out. Anyone need a ride?"


Shaking her head, Zee pulls herself upright "No, I'm going to go straight home." Looking to Hax, she grins a little "Nice work… tell me what AI finds out? You know where to find me… " Nodding to May "Always at your disposal, Agent May." and with a murmur, the Mistress of Magic… simply disappears.


Hax gives a warm smile to Zee and nods. With his back still to Fenris, Hax reaches into his pocket and pulls out a palm-sized stone with a word of power etched into it and holds it up for Fenris to see. If Fenris has any rune magic knowledge he would recognize it as a hearthstone (very old-school). Afterwards Hax sits there patiently waiting for AI to finish its analysis.


Misfit reaching up she accepts Fenris's hand up with a groan "I think I may puke… stupid migraine…. I left Idiotface in Faerie and kicked his ass but he fled…"


Melinda May looks over at the new kid curiously now that she has time to do so, looks toward where the… what IS that? just headed toward the nearby graveyard, then looks at Fenris again as she pulls her phone, calling in the SHIELD research team. And no, she doesn't explain to them how she managed completely sans SHIELD issue transportation to get from the Triskelion to Metropolis faster than someone could have crossed Manhattan — the narrow side — in a car.


Fenris nods. "If he ran he'll be back. That's the second or third time he's showed, I hear." The old wolf murmurs. "Let me know what you all find." Then he steps through the portal, presumably with Misfit, and it closes behind him.

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