Disclaimer: None of the League here are mine, and Eilidh, Fiona, Sarah, Kate, and Gash belong to themselves and their names are used here with their permission.
Feedback: Much appreciatedHiril Moon: Well, he has every right to be; after all, they were recruited because they're the best of the best. By the way, thanks for clarifying about who you were referring to, but I'm still a bit hazy on what you mean; what do you think Riley's choosing?
Sean Malloy-1: Sorry, I didn't.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2004
The tank raised what appeared to be its primary weapon, a large gun on the front, much like the gun on an ordinary tank- and pointed it at the League. As it moved from one member to the other, each member was tensed, ready to spring into whatever action they'd need to make when the time came.
The gun stopped.
It had settled on the Doctor.
"NOW!" Bond cried, the Doctor and Elektra joining him as he dashed back towards the Geminschaft Bank, pausing only to fire a couple of bullets at the tank. None of them did any damage, but it distracted the tank's drivers long enough for the other League members to make their moves.
And make their move they did. Before any of their opponents could react to what had just happened, Clark and Angel had charged directly into the tank, their combined superhuman strength denting its armour badly and even cracking it in some places, while Eilidh, Gwen, Harry, and, the rest of the League assumed, Fiona charged towards the large metal men behind the tank, Gwen's electrical powers short-circuiting a couple of the suit's weapons before the three women and the wizard had even reached the suits.
As soon as she and the others had reached the men in the suits, Eilidh sprang into action, grabbing the two armoured men in front of her in a psychic grip and throwing them into each other. The suits were so heavily armoured that she failed to do much damage to them, but the impact apparently dazed the people in the suits enough so that they'd be out of action for a while.
Spinning around, Eilidh watched as Gwen launched electric bolt after electric bolt at one of the massive suits, while Harry fired various assorted curses at any suits within his range, and an unseen force that could only be Fiona apparently dashed around the numerous suits; a torn cable around the left elbow joint here, a dented power cell there... All kinds of minor damage was being inflicted on these guys.
Then she saw one of them look in Fiona's direction, raise a gun to point at the apparently empty air, and swore.
They had infrared vision!
Gwen! Eilidh yelled telepathically at her new friend. Take out the suit's eyes! she added, indicating the glowing red spots on the suit's heads as she transmitted a brief explanation behind that command.
Nodding, Gwen launched herself into the air, her electrical energy pushing her up off the ground. She hovered for a few brief seconds, waiting until she'd attracted the attention of the men in the suits, and then launched several small lighting bolts at the suit's eyes. They let off several assorted sparks, and then exploded, spreading the small glass shards across the streets.
If it hadn't been for the fact that the sight of all the high-tech weaponry had driven most of the civilians away in fear, the injuries and potential casualties would have been numerous. As it was, most of the glass shards struck Fiona, who barely even noticed them thanks to her invulnerability; Harry had dived behind one of the suits and had completely escaped the exploding eyes.
Smiling, Fiona glanced over in Eilidh's direction.
"Thanks!" she called out, before she turned her attention back to one of the suits in front of her. She briefly wondered to herself why she was calling it 'the suit', but then decided not to worry about it; after all, it would probably help her take it down if she didn't think of it as being an actual human being.
Diving between its legs, she rolled over onto her back and kicked out at the back of the suit, striking some of the cables that connected the suit's legs to its body. The force of the kick disconnected some of the cables, turning the leg into just a bunch of dead weight. The suit swayed, tried to hobble forward, and fell flat on its face.
Fiona still wasn't sure how these suits worked, but at least the kick gave them some idea of where to hit them to take them down.
"Hit the joints!" she called out to Eilidh, Harry and Gwen, as she leapt back onto her feet and quickly scanned the area around her. "If we tear the cables, they're immobilised!"
"Right!" Eilidh nodded, as she glanced herself briefly, her eyes falling on a long piece of metal that had been torn off one of the suits. Using her telekinesis, she picked it up and waved it in the air like a sword. It wasn't much, but it would certainly do some damage.
Plus, it might draw attention away from Fiona; they'd probably assume that it was her holding the metal in the air, rather than Eilidh...
The only question is, Eilidh asked herself, as she swiped desperately at a nearby suit while Gwen tried to overload two of them as Fiona continued to dismantle a third, how much longer can we hold out against these guys? Taking out the cables was all well and good, but it would appear that the guys inside the suits had heard Fiona as she called out their weakness, and were going to far more effort to protect their cables then they had previously.
If they didn't get in someone with great strength as a superpower to help them, Eilidh didn't like to think of what might happen; her makeshift sword and Fiona's human fists could only do so much, and Gwen's electric powers were only able to shut the suits down for a while, and not stop them permanently. Harry's spells were effective, but they would only really work if they hit the cables; they'd never been intended to be used against something like these suits.
If they didn't get some help, fast, they were going to lose.
From the rooftop of the Geminschaft Bank, a crouching figure stared down at the League, as six of them struggled desperately against the heavily armoured suits. Smiling, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a mobile phone, accessing the first number on his speed-dial.
"They've engaged the first wave, boss," he said. "They're not doing too well, but they appear to be coping with them fairly well. Shall I call in the rest of the Syndicate?"
A brief pause, then the man nodded.
"Very well, sir," he said. "Gash out."
He terminated the call, and smiled down at the figures fighting for their lives below him.
"Time to die, League," he said.
Then he turned around and leapt onto the next building, heading for the rest of his team.
This time, he vowed to himself, the League are going down.
After the two of them had briefly destabilised the attacking tank, Clark and Angel, as though working on a pre-arranged plan, stepped back from the temporarily immobilised tank, and turned their attention to its guns.
Angel glanced over at Clark.
"You take the minor guns; I'll handle the big one," he said, indicating the weapon it had almost shot at the Doctor with. "Immobilise the guns, but don't make anything blow up yet; we might want some of the guys inside for questioning."
Clark nodded. "Check," he said simply, before he leapt for one of the minor guns, bending it back and welding the end shut with his heat vision for good measure. That done, he turned his attention to the gun just below it, repeating the performance in a matter of seconds.
Grabbing the tank's primary gun, Angel exerted all his strength on it, bending the gun back as far as he could. He only managed to get it pointing upwards slightly, but there was a dent in the gun that was so thin nothing would managed to get out of it, and that was all the League needed.
With their biggest gun out of action, Angel glanced up at Clark, noting that he seemed to be coping with the smaller guns fairly well; with his speed and strength, the rest of them would probably be out of action in a few minutes.
Angel doubted Clark needed his help right now.
The rest of them?
He glanced down at the three girls and the wizard, who were holding their own against the armoured suits, but looked like they could be doing better. Eilidh and Gwen appeared to be doing a fair amount of damage, but Harry's spells were only hurting the suits if they hit them in certain places, and Fiona was only just managing to stay ahead of the suits; at least, he assumed she was. Loss of Angelus had lowered his senses of smell and hearing considerably, but he was fairly sure he could still detect Fiona's scent.
Making his decision, he dived forward and rammed one of the suits hard in the back, driving it directly into one of Gwen's lightning bolts. The suit sparked and crackled as it was shaken by the powerful bolt of energy, and then Eilidh stabbed it with her makeshift blade. The suit turned around, as though trying to maintain some degree of control, and then crashed to the ground, as though the guy inside it had just been hit in the face.
Gwen smiled at Angel. "Nice going, saint," she smiled at him, using a little nickname she'd started calling him in recent times.
"Anytime," Angel smiled, before he leapt forward and tackled one of the other suits. "Keep fighting!" he yelled, as he launched a punch at the thing's head, denting the suit but not wounding the man inside. "We've got to take these suits out at least!"
"Right!" Fiona called from somewhere, as another suit suddenly found itself with an unexpected load on its back and began to hop backwards trying to regain its balance. "Any recommendations?"
"Find a power source!" Eilidh said, as she briefly dropped her blade to use her telekinesis to vault herself over one of the suits. "We can't last against these guys in one-on-one, and there's still more of them then us!"
"Not for long!" a voice yelled from behind them.
Instantly, one suit found itself being forced to the ground as it was rammed in the back by the Doctor, Bond, and Elektra.
"What the...?" Harry asked, briefly pausing his attack on the suits to look at the surprise additions. "What happened to the idea of you guys staying out of the line of fire while we handle the big guns?"
Elektra smiled. "Clark and Angel handled the biggest gun already," she smiled, indicating the tank with her dagger. Glancing up, Angel saw what she meant; almost all the tanks gun's were now welded shut, and Clark was currently attempting to tear its armour apart. "We figured, with it out of the picture, why not help you guys out?"
"Besides," Bond said, pulling out his gun and firing it at one of the nearby suits, hitting it in the left arm, "We might as well start getting used to fighting as a group before we confront our adversary in his lair."
"Oh, that won't be an issue," a voice suddenly said from the other end of the street. "Because you'll be dead in a few minutes."
"What?" Bond asked, looking up in surprise at the voice. His face paled as he saw something. "Oh no."
"What?" Fiona asked, as her opponent finally hit the ground. Looking in the same direction as her new boss, she swore silent. "Ah crap."
Realising that something had attracted their comrade's attention, the rest of the League stopped their respective struggles and looked down the street. The people in the suits didn't even bother pressing their immediate advantage; they appeared just as surprised at the sudden turn of events as the League.
Standing at the end of the alley were eight figures. Two of them were recognised by the entire League- Sarah and Gash- and three other figures that they recognised from the descriptions of Harry, Angel and Fiona as Malfoy, Drusilla and Kate.
The first new addition was a tall man, around Bond's height, with piercing blue eyes and fair hair. He was dressed in a black combat suit, and had a Walther PPK hanging at his side; the same weapon that Bond possessed. However, his most notable feature was a large burn on the right side of his face, covering that side of his face and stretching up to near his ear.
Bond swore. "Alec..." he whispered. But how could his old foe/friend be alive?
The other figure was a similarly tall man in a leather coat and trousers, wearing a black sleeveless vest. He was totally bald, and had the image of a target tattooed in the middle of his forehead.
Elektra winced at the sight. "Bullseye," she groaned, instinctively reaching down to the wound in her chest; even after all this time, it still hurt under some circumstances.
The third figure wasn't quite as remarkable as the others; he was wearing a simple pair of jeans, a black t-shirt, and a brown leather jacket. He had a fairly handsome face, with blue eyes and short fair hair, and was grinning like a maniac.
Clark just stared at the young man in horror. "Whitney?" he whispered. "How?"
However, it was the fourth figure that really drew Angel's attention. It was a young man, looking about as old as Angel did and around the same height, with short fair hair and blue eyes, one of which was slightly disfigured by a scar down the left side of his face. He was dressed remarkably like Angel, in a long black leather coat and trousers, and a dark shirt, which didn't exactly suit him.
Angel briefly chuckled at the sight. "Riley?" he asked himself. "Who the hell recruited him to work with these guys?"
"Someone you know?" Elektra asked the ex-vampire.
"He dated Buffy- my girlfriend- at one time," Angel explained briefly, as their opponents started to walk down towards them. "There's some bad blood between us, but I don't get why he's working with these guys; he's a jerk at times, but he's not evil."
"We can worry about that later," Bond said to the others. "In the meantime, we need to stop these people before they stop us. Everyone pick their target, but I'm after the man with the burn."
"Right," Clark said, having briefly abandoned the tank to join the others. "I'll take the grinning maniac-looking character."
"I'll handle Bullseye," the Doctor whispered. As Elektra started to speak, he raised one hand. "I am aware you must have a history with him, but I'm sure I can fight him myself. Handle Sarah for the moment; let me worry about him. You're likely to make mistakes if you challenge him yourself."
Elektra was about to protest, but stopped herself in time. As much as she wished otherwise, the Doctor had a good point.
"I'll tackle Riley," Angel whispered at the others. "Harry, Fiona, you two deal with Kate and Malfoy; Gwen, you'll have to handle Drusilla."
"Guess that leaves me Gash," Eilidh said, as their new opponents got ever closer to the League.
"On my word, everyone whose powers allow it throw on these suits at those people," Bond said. "Even if some of these people are stronger than normal humans, it should distract them long enough for us to get the advantage in the fight, even if only for a little while."
"Right," Eilidh said, as she reached out with her mind to grab all the suits around her, as Angel, Clark, and Gwen moved into similar positions. The people in the suits either didn't hear what the League were saying; either because they were too distracted by the new arrivals, or simply couldn't hear anything below a certain volume through all that armour.
The game is on, Bond thought to himself, as he pulled out his gun and slid some extra bullets into it.
He could only hope that the League would manage to win this round...