Interlude: Squad v Demons

September 26, 2018:

The Suicide Squad is sent to retrieve a package. (STed by Ravager)

Burnley - Gotham

Burnley was once a gleaming gem that signified change and growth of industry; the origin point for Gotham's Uptown Jazz scene back in the 1930s when it was covered in theaters, restaurants and jazz clubs. A place people used to go to escape and get a taste of something new and progressive.

Now Burnley and most of it's connected neighborhoods are horrible poverty stricken slums covered in housing projects and an overshadowing sense of dread and desperation. The Burnley of the 21st Century is comparable to Harlem during it's worst days.

Closer towards Bay Side the separation line of Grand Avenue divides the African American populace from the Hispanic (before the '09 quake there was also a strong Irish population that has since relocated to south Chelsea). This general area, with it's massive amounts of housing complexes is called the Hill. It's a constant source of gang related violence and trouble for the GCPD and just about anyone else.

A notable landmark here is the small neighborhood of Toxic Acres named as such due to the Kane Chemical Plant meltdown that made the neighborhood uninhabitable. That facility still stands to this day but is now Ace Chemicals.

Characters

NPCs: Amanda Waller

Mentions:

Plot:

Mood Music: [*\# None.]


Fade In…

The Comms for the Squad have been relatively "Silent".

Like having your head held under water, you're just waiting to surface and hear that breath/e~~…

Fresh air in the form of a Wall? It comes, a matter of time as the communicators go live and the residual screech of feedback is followed by that deeper tenored bemused voice of Amanda Waller.

"Burnley."
Address not spoken but fed through the GPS coordinates, as well as the 16th level of the apartment and the side of the high rise it faces.
"Mr. Barnes has locked himself in his Panic Room with a Safe Box. What is in the Box is our target. Get the Box, Barnes is an option." (After all, he took on his (late) wife's last name, not his own. (Safety lock on that file and Surname).
"Also, have you heard about the 'Demons'. It's what he claims are after him and that Safe Box." The tone is placid from Waller, but amusement is in the backdrop.

"Hell or High Water, you have 2 Hours to report back."
Silence.

-

Ravager is sitting on a bunk, the angled chains keeping it aloft rattling as she rises and lifts the communicator to listen and flare nostrils to sweep her screen from communications to the News Feed and set it aside to get her suit on and slide the barred door aside.

No she has not had to stay here, but she has had nowhere else to go aside from 'Joyrides', but this is a deep breathe of Fresh Memento Mori.

"Ravager, in. On my way to Burnley." Fed out to any who were a part of this next mission of Suicide.

-

The chomping of several large pieces of grape bubblegum can be heard smacking over the radio that is supposed to be Harley Quinn's comms, and then whining begins. Her whining, not her pets, although they're not far from her as she answers back into the device. "I jes' got back from New York. Whatta pain! There ain't any demons, like, ON this mission, right? Cuz I absolutely forgot to pick up some extra champagne poppers."

There's a lengthy pause, and then Harley offers quietly. "I ain't kiddin', ya know. They were seriously gaga for glitter. I mean, not like yers truly, but who could be? I'm pretty singular." And the world breathes a collective sigh of relief for that point.

-

Taskmaster caught the call and reluctant as he is to skip out on the job he is currently working he sighs, standing up to shove the woman off of his lap that was swaying under a dancers stage. "Another time, toots." He rumbles deeply.

The disguise he has on his person fades away with a pixel like distortion as he goes from a balding elderly man in a Hawaiian shirt to a tall, broad and armored up skull-masked hitman.

The dancer, lets out a shrill cry and stumbles away from him to fall upon the ground yet he doesn't bother to look back. His mark will show up here again. It's not like seeing something like this is anything new.

Outside near a bike he puts one knee on it, resting there the screen LED of his phone illuminates his mask, he goes through the brief instructions sent by Waller, "I'll be there in the next 10." He responds with reply text, a half a dozen emojis that are just skulls showing up.

-

Enchantress stood on the far side of Amanda Waller's desk, here in the closest thing that Belle Reve had to a bunker, almost completely insulated from the noise and violence of the prison. Except, of course, when Waller chose to play the video feeds and watch the prisoners and the staff human and almost human rats in her own personal maze. The witch said not a word, as she watched the woman, hands and fingers dangling loose at her sides as she listened to the woman contacting the other members of the 'team' such as they were.

Even after the dark-skinned woman was finished speaking, Enchantress offered not a word, only those oddly alien eyes tracking Waller's movements. When the word finally came, a derisive three syllables, "Go on, Girl," Enchantress simply went, flashing out of the office in a shower of dust and embers and appearing on the street below the building she had seen on Waller's satellite feed. She did not approach. She simply waited. Waited, and watched for demons, a thin-bladed knife in her hand.

-

When they all arrived, no matter their points, - The visual GPS of Individual DNA Tracking showing where one or the other is located, goes in to effect once they are all within coordinates of the Mission Point-. Spots align on the Communication Band of their devices.

-

Ravager is on the roof of an opposing building, leaving her approximately 10th floor to the 16th of the Rise this Barnes is hiding within. Harley's voice draws a brow to hike the fuck up on her brow, lips parting to say something until Skulls litter the screen. June is unheard, an unknown player in this mission for now. All of them she has known, or knew before…

-

The building seems stable, nothing abnormal, certain bungalows, apartments, and levels lit or unlit due to the hour being almost 1 A.M. …

Blink.
You'll miss it…

Lights that seem stable are flickering, and on the 14th level beams of tube lights in the hall hang, flicker, and swing.

Shadows cast and pitched to/fro show an abnormal shifting, the sparks from an elevator door (ripped open).

Level 16:

Mr. Barnes had hit the alarm 30 minutes ago and made the call. He had been witholding for a higher bidder, but the response he got was unexpected in an inhuman shriek that leaves the wall of his Panic Room dented inward and raked against while a war wages outside of his Safe Place and tears his Flat into a ground zero.

Waller was the first contact but last resort, for "reasons".
He has regrets this night.

-

From that level across the street, Ravager's bionic eye moves from night to infrared and catches the lashing of a spined tail that swings an Alienoid creature wearing chitinous armor upwards, a roaring impact pummeling it through a window that shatters glass onto the empty sidewalk below.

"Anyone else see this or do I need to go back for diagnos—-" The smacking of bubble gum has her pause. "…sticks…?"

-

Harley does get there eventually, although her revolver remains securely in her shoulder holster as she sits outside the building in question and looks up at it from across the street, a little further down and in sight of the front door. "I don't see i—," the blonde clown begins, perched in the windowsill of a small diner facing it. Her hand done pants and tee shirt that put her in quartered red and black are slightly less obnoxious than usual.

"Okay, yeah, I saw that," she says of the glass as it loudly explodes everywhere, demurely picking up her booted feet just in case.

She adjusts the bag slung across her body and then squarely settles the handle of her mallet in both hands. "So. Jes' in and up to the 16th floor an' back, right? Like a speed run of Super Mario Brothers. No biggie."

-

"I had a good thing going." Taskmaster jokingly complains as he joins Ravager on the roof opposite of the building that is their target. It is not exactly standing out for him to see 'demons' in Gotham of all places, scaling that structure. The shattering of glass picked up though, audible even at these heights and distances. Looking directly that way Taskmaster sees nothing. Not immediately.

"Got nadda. Someone just jumped to their death? Mission over I can go back to the job that was gonna actually pay?" Bone white teeth flash a grin. No, he doesn't see this 'creature' not yet, mainly because his minds not comprehending it yet and hes been avoiding whats happening in New York.

"Instructions are vague. We're headed in there. Lets get on it." He is already loading up a mechanism on to his forearm, clamping it in and taking aim. A grapnel launcher.

"Got Clowny pants below?" Taskmaster inquires, though shes on the same com line. "Last in buys first rond."

-

Enchantress lifted her eyes, scanning the area around the building, picking up the whispering and shivering of shadows as the hunters gathered. Darkness, like water trickling down along the sidewalk, finding purchase on the structural members of the highrise, oozing upward, like so much sentient mercury. The plunge, of a body through glass, a hand waving away the splintered glass, leaving a clear path for any of the team that were coming on foot or by some other conveyance, as well as keeping it away from the blonde woman who waited on the street with her, after a fashion. Her voice, sibilant, slightly resinous came over the comms, "There are indeed demons on this mission." And in that voice, what sounded almost like amusement, as she began to stride towards the building, tracking the shadows as they shivered, either under their own power or simply in some instinctual reaction to her presence. "A handful in the building and more arriving in moments. I will deal with the newest arrival. It has something that I want." And blink and you miss it, and she was inside the building, stepping out of nowhere onto the glass covered floor of the apartment the demon had crashed into.

-

Ravager is tapping the temple-socket beside her bionic eye, a trigger that is one to make her bionic vision reset and refocus…. Even though her good eye is focusing a pale blue on the news feed from New York.

Apparently Ravager and Taskmaster are not Enchanted, nor EnSane! enough to see the truth, or believe it quite yet despite their designations, but a glance from the True Eye towards Taskmaster has Ravager closing down the relay of DepressNews and tucking it inside her suit. "I'm with them." Ravager states.

-

Insane?!

Enchantress' haunting tone was enough for her, Harley's assurance adding a cherry on top…. STOP CHEWING ON THE COMM! ~Cringe…~

The rain of glass is just confetti to Ravager as she looks forward and fires her own grapnel upward, but one floor above the 16th! "Or second round." Her voice still disbelief….

-

"Come on Harls', like old times. Go in swinging, even if we don't see it like Withcy McSpook—-"(-ypants…) Unsaid as Ravager rolls through level 17 and meets rooms full of bloodshed and attempted artistry in Runes, her heels skidding across a glowing circle!

Taskmaster will meet the same, like a shatter to "reality" once he pierces the veil of what was cast around and throughout the building.

Apparently they did not expect the Enchantress, nor the level of insanity(Harl!), a Wall can serve.

-

"We have orders!" Ravager proclaims to the low-spoken Enchantress as she backpedals and reaches back for her swords, Kherubim in metal, but unknown against this…

Harley below is suddenly shadowed in a darkness as the building goes dark!

Enchantress is met with the recoil of a serpentile figure that rises upward like a cobra, and slams down!

The quake is enough to rattle the man in his Panic Room, Mr. Barnes attempting 9-1-1.

"Sorry. Wrong number, again. You should have called me first." The tone of Waller comes back to him and his phone starts elevating in temperature to Ravager Red Hot!

-

"First one in doesn't pay at— HEY! DO YOU EVEN DRINK? THAT'S CHEATING!" Harley is already at full tilt across the street, ready to throw herself headlong past the front doors and into the building. "FINE!" she bellows as she slams her mallet at the glass revolving doors so she can not be thinking about things like 'residential pass codes.' "First one in who ain't got some creepy goofball appearance Konami Code trick to pull."

Yup. Just like old times.

Until it goes dark. Quinn's head goes straight up and back as soon as she's inside. "AUGH! Really?!"

-

"Artistic." Taskmaster regards once they are in, a fingertip rubbing over the ridge of one skull socket. Adjustment to the visual settings.

"Demons? Thought that was just in New York." Unless Enchantress is being funny. Probably is.

"Clear up here. Got no movement." He states as a firearm rises up and a laser ignites the red bead sweeping about.

"And if we're talkin' actual demons… I am under equipped for this shit."

"Left all my holy water in my Sunday morning pants."

"Lets hurry this along." The mercenary huffs. Nowhere near Harley at the moment he is unable to comment or give suitable praise for her mad mallet skills.

"This guys locked himself in a panic room? Real stud."

-

Enchantress flitted along the floor of the building, seeking her prey, leaving wisps of embers in her wake as she moved, coming to a standstill as her quarry rose, towering to the ceiling, before it dove down, fangs bared, dripping some black ichor, acidic enough to hiss and spit on the carpet as it dripped from its open mouth. And passed right through her, Enchantress' body as insubstantial as smoke to the demon, before the witch blinked out again and appeared directly behind the creature, her very substantial hand stabbing forward, as she drove it into the creature's back, supernatural strength driving her fingers through muscle and soft, serpent bone as she sought for its heart, tearing it from it's body. "Oh, dark child, you should have broken your chains." When she withdrew her hand, something that both was and was not met was clenched in her fist. When her voice finally came back on the comms, it was with that same air of amusement, "That is why you have me, Taskmaster. I will clear the way for you. Find your objective. I will, how do you say, 'have your back.'"

-

Ravager needs to go down, and Task as well as Harls need to go….

"Up. Up. UP!" Heeled boots with heavy tread backpedal against the opening of enchantments that open a black hole rimmed in an ethereal glow lead her, Down, DOWN, down.. into the Panic Room below.

A whirlwind like an opening to the Kraken for Piracy, take the one eye'd woman down into a lock-box of survival just as swords are drawn and the man known as Mr. Barnes backpedals to pin himself against an opposing walll while the world opens above them!

… and so below…

Taskmaster and Harley are not devoid of the premordial pull that opens and either seeks a life, or a life-force. Succumb or Sacrifice!

On the 16th level of this hell that reptilian coil unfurls and lunges towards the Enchantress, only to lead through her "being" into the levels below.

But unlike the 'surreal' placement of the Enchantress, the Demon passes through several Layers… Floors, of the complex!

Every level hammered through until a sudden stand-still where open maw and hooked fangs hover, a pause while eyes of flame go milky and it's Essence is ripped from it's Being by the Enchantress, the limp form a stepping-stone upward for Taskmaster and Harley.

From that figure smaller leech-like forms writhe and create a 'life' that can be seen or unseen - depends on how they BLINK!

"Seriously?? I am in a box with a Pus—-" Ravager is ranting, and on the other end the carnage is heard in flickers of sound like the lighting.

Behind Task and Harls is that massive beast, slinking through the sparks and ethereal shadows, the barbed tail lashing behind it to finally seek a place to plant itself with a roar that shatters the rest of the windows in a crack…

Than a crumble!

Mr. Barnes:
"Ple——"

His Room goes Black.

-

"Shit snacks." Taskmaster releases in an oath as he spins to see the massive creature stalking them and seeking entry. "Aight… I got you covered Harley, you go back up whats-his-nuts, Barney… I'll play with the Predator monster for." He holds up his wrist, then flicks a thumb along it, setting a time. "Exactly 90 seconds. I die, run away or it's not as tough as it looks." The com chatter for him goes silent as he reaches down to his belt, snapping off several rounded devices, explosives, shrapnel inspiring ones that act like claymores packed in to tiny fun presents.

One lobbed towards it's front the other it's back. Then as if to get it's attention further a gleaming orange-red energy blade snap-crackles to life, drawn up over the mercenaries shoulder while those toys pop violently alive in a spray of micro-pellets in all directions.

"Make it 60." Fear is a powerful thing and right now his adrenaline is firing off in a piston inspiring wave through his physique.

-

Enchantress' voice whispered low, not through the comms, but in Taskmaster's ear, at his words, as though she stood behind him, though the woman was nowhere to be seen. "If you die, I will only bring you back." Whether that was intended to be reassuring or terrifying, well, it was Enchantress. Six of one, half dozen of the other. But even unseen, the woman moved, doing as she had said she would do, clearing the levels, one patch of darkness, and one demon at a time, collecting their essences as she went, the gore on her hands soaking into her skin as if she were absorbing it, leaving her hands pristine, though she had not yet reached the level, or the evil that now stalked Harley and fought Taskmaster.

-

The floor to floor hunt and fighting is violent, chaotic as can be expected and taxes the members of the Suicide Squad. Though, the Enchantress is very much in her element.

These things once upon a time could have even been her servants.

The panic room's floor blossoms in a fiery eruption as the floor below it caves way, bolts snap and one side of it peels downwards to dump Ravager, a mangled contact and debris in a scatter, parts of what may have been an animal or several fall down, like a pouring of the unwanted discard from a slaughterhouse.

-

Ravager had risen her sword above, another below, and if Mr. Barnes was but a piece of raw meat she would have had him clutched between, the silence on the radio in seconds enough to have her on a path to Kabob the next face on the Wall-Carton!
…but that seemed unnecessary.

Taskmaster's game of cat and mouse ends only when the creature is tricked in a plunge back out the window to the streets below, even the supernatural do not stand up to massive amounts of damage or great impacts. Not always at least.

The Enchantress in fashion of the old world strides through the arena a victor in each small encounter, even draining the essence of lesser ones…

Harley's escapade no less cinematic, possessed workers and security taken by those smaller serpentine escapees, meeting the business end of her 'insanity' and that trusty set of gadgetry. A demonic hoard at birth, already disposed of with a (not-so)subtle slam of a mallet and likely the gnashing of her "Partners'" teeth, leaving a spatter of disbelief on the road in front of that High Rise.

When the gore, shower of smoke, fire, and demonic cries cease they're standing around Rose Wilson and what remains of Mr. Barnes, clutched to his chest is a briefcase, no longer just 'wrapped' to his wrist by a handcuff but seared in to the bone and meat of it, along with the charred shirt he wore.

Ravager, Rose exhales and looks around as charred remains both massive and HuMundane fall to pieces around them. "Got it." Reaching forward she rips the briefcase from the grip of Rigor.

Ignore the Hellfire and Brownstone behind them.

-

Her voice is a sing-song as Quinn responds to Taskmaster. "On it!" All Harley needs that small bit of reassurance from Taskmaster at her heels, and then the slender blonde does what she does best. She stops thinking and just starts racing forward, trusting her instinct, good reflexes, speed, and reflexes to get her around the thing so she can work up. "And remember! First one to die gets the worst bagpipes player in town at the funeral!"

-

The whispered promise from Enchantress has Taskmaster staggering forward and spinning, it takes a form of restraint not to toss an elbow at the sudden appearance. Inwardly he has always been terrified of the witch.

"Yeah… I heard that same promise was given Lady Mastermind too. Where is she at?" He doesn't elaborate, instead turning in time to wave off Harley, "Stop stop! That's our gal and our ma…. whats left of him." A low exhausted chuckle as smoke trails off of his armor, "Cmon, lets go report in and call the Ghostbusters for clean up. They do demons, right?"

-

"Alive," was that whispered answer.

They had called her a goddess once. And perhaps she was, in the reckoning of mortals. But if she was, she was not the sort to wear trophies for sport, as it was said one dark-skinned goddess wore her necklace of heads, and her skirt of hands. No, when Enchantress emerged from the building, treading through the debris on bare feet, all trace of the essences she had gathered were gone. She took in the sight of the companions she could see, felt the ones she could not, and made her way towards the prize they had been sent to seek, perhaps, in her way, to ensure that they would return both in one piece, and within the time limit set for them by the woman who was, at least for the time being, pulling their strings.

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