May 23rd 2016 , The Watchtower, Earth's orbit, 10:00 P.M EDT
"I don't like this plan." I said flatly as I stood in the loading bay of the watchtower, tracking the massive planetary superweapon heading toward earth. It had been visible from quite a ways out because of the sheer size, but it was only not coming into range.
Kara, who was my backup on this, snickered at my comment. "It was YOUR plan. You were the one who volunteered to be the distraction."
"Well sure." I grumbled. "If you want to be all logical about it. But since when does anyone listen to me? I'm the son of a master criminal."
Her smile became soft, her hand landing on my shoulder. "No one judges you for that Nick. You showing up here to help means more than any DNA test. You're a real hero, and I'm proud to be here fighting beside you."
My perfect body control was the only reason I managed to not grimace. I was fairly certain she'd misread my thoughts here. I wasn't concerned about being worthy or whatever, I was worried I might fucking DIE. The Warworld was a massive abomination of divine tech and powerful weapons. It WAS technically A rank, but it was at the very edge.
I wasn't sure I could survive a blow from that thing at full power, but someone needed to keep it busy while the team infiltrated it and stole the key. Barbie was going to be on that mission, and I wasn't going to let her get got because I was afraid of a little laser blast.
Now wasn't the time for that shit though. We were in position, which meant it was time to move out. Kara could think what she wanted, maybe it would get me into her pants later. Collecting a kryptonian could be nothing but helpful to me. Still, I pulled away from her hand, nodding to the shadowy form of Batman at the controls, and he opened the air lock.
Despite breathing in space being physically impossible, I was fine, as was Kara. A rankers were so far removed from human we didn't need to worry about things like lung exploding depressurization or lack of oxygen. Pushing off, I spread my wings, using them to steer as I glided out into the depths of space.
The Warworld loomed over the planet like a second moon, ominous and imposing, and I glided toward the space between the two planetary bodies, shifting as I did and assuming my full draconic form.
Ten thousand feet. The scale of a dragon god was beyond belief. I'd expected to be smaller, but I think I hadn't really internalized how BIG ten thousand feet was. I was half as tall as Mt. fucking Everest. This was bigger than last time. I was pretty sure my shift in Gemworld hadn't been to full size. Probably closer to one or two thousand feet.
THIS…this was monstrous. I was about the same size as the Warworld, tail to snout. The distance to impose myself between the thing luckily, was pretty much nothing at this size (though I did have to be careful not to swat the fucking Watchtower out of orbit with my tail). Arriving in front of the weapon, I tried my best to look imposing.
Past this point…I didn't have much of a plan. Just be a nuisance. I was really fucking big and an actual dragon, so drawing attention should be more than doable. Opening my jaws wide, I released an earth shaking roar. Or a roar that WOULD have been earthshaking if sound could travel in a vacuum. Which it couldn't.
Grimacing internally, I reached for my magic. Grabbing the newly formed karmic links that connected me to the Warworld, I tried again, roaring THROUGH them, transmitting my voice directly into the construct as I boomed out. "Mongul!"
This time it worked. I saw the Warworld shake slightly as my roar was transmitted. There was a shift in the surface, the outer shell peeling back to reveal a short barreled gunlike contraption with a large lens over the end. A quick appraisal told me it was a projector, so I didn't bother to destroy it.
There was a flash, and suddenly, a massive (though still smaller than me) holographic image appeared in the void. A thickly built powerful alien creature with orange skin, red eyes, and a serious underbite. Around me, I felt a slight shift, as if a film was being projected along with the image.
It took me a second to realize he was projecting some kind of zone of air onto the space around us, presumably so he could talk. "Creature." He boomed viciously. "You bar the path of the Warworld, the universe's ultimate weapon. Your grit amuses me, so I will offer you just one chance to leave."
I sneered at him. "Fucker, this is my planet." Inside the air zone, my voice worked normally, and issuing from a throat the size of mine meant it had fucking POWER. You could fit a fucking skyscraper in my lungs. "Talk your weird, orange little ass back on the road, or we're gonna have a problem."
Behind me, I sensed an approaching force. Looking back I saw the huge fleet of fucking Reach ships approaching. Fantastic. Because that was all I needed.
Kara imposed herself between me and them, my backup not wanting me vulnerable as I dealt with Mongul. I gave her a colossal nod and turned back to the projection. He laughed cruelly. "You don't even know what I'd be saving you from. You should THANK me. Conquest is a small price to pay for safety from the reach."
I stared at him for a minute before I started to hum. "Ooompa loompa dupity do. I've got an ultimatum for you." Not the most dignified draconic behavior, but seriously, he was basically a worker at the evil space chocolate factory.
From behind me, I could hear Kara burst into giggles thanks to the air zone. Mongul's face tightened, which I assumed was the expression ugly rock face aliens made when they were mad. Either that or he had to shit really bad and didn't want to interrupt the posturing. Did aliens even shit? On second thought I didn't need to know.
"You spit on my kindness?" He snarled, eyes narrowing. "You would throw away your once chance at salvation? The Reach are endless, they WILL take your planet, even the forces currently arrayed against you would be too much for any creature such as you to overcome. But me?" He raised a giant holographic hand and snapped.
Six panels slid back and half a dozen cannons emerged from the Warworld. From one blink to the next they fired, beams of red energy arcing toward the ships.
The Reach vessels swerved deftly, but the blasts actually curved, slamming into the ships and blowing them to bits on contact. The remaining ninety five or so ships scrambled, reorganizing into small groupings before glowing blue shields covered them, synchronizing defenses to make themselves tougher.
"Neat trick." I rumbled. "But can it do backflips? The Reach aren't a problem. I can handle them." I was pretty sure anyway. And I was betting this little show would be a powerful deterrent. "So why don't you quit with the join up and get to the die part of your demands. Because getting blown out of existence sounds so much less annoying than listening to your smug fucking voice you half assed tang mascot."
With a roar of rage, the image vanished, and the Warworld began to shift. Plates pulling back, one after another. As I watched, the thing basically hollowed itself out, opening up a huge cavity that led almost to the very core to reveal a COLOSSAL gun pointed right at me.
Along with it, another thousand or so guns revealed themselves, all beginning to charge up an energy blast. There was a hum and the Reach ships blurred forward, all of them launching batteries of laser blasts at the smaller guns, even as the things fired back.
One after another, ships and guns exploded. I caught a few stray blasts, but given my size they weren't even able to pierce my scales. No, I was much more worried about the big daddy laser cannon pointed at me, and beyond me, at the fucking earth.
I wasn't a sentimental guy. Not really. I cared about my girls, about my old man, about my stuff. A few friends I'd made along the way like Waylon, and my old buddy Zach who I hadn't seen in months, and hell, even Mal from the fighting pits. But despite not caring about much, I DID care about some things. I cared about a few people. And I couldn't let some alien fuck blow up the planet I lived on.
Granted, my reasons for that might have been less altruistic and more because there was a fuck ton of points I could potentially harvest, but hey. Greed is good, right?
As the energy in the cannon built, I cursed to myself. I'd had a whole slew of good insults ready, some really nasty stuff about his mother, sexual history, and unusual fondness for farm animals, but I wasn't going to get to use any of it. What kind of intergalactic tyrant loses his shit over a Willy Wonka joke? Had he even SEEN Willy Wonka?
Which meant my timeline had been officially moved up. I'd been hoping NOT to have to eat a full powered burst from that main cannon, but it looked like I was going to have to match him blow for blow or I was going to be deep fried dragon.
Ignoring the nonsense space battle around me, I started to inhale. I pulled on my power, every ounce of it, and packed it into my throat as I prepared to breathe out pure negative karma. I could tell almost instantly it wouldn't be enough. I needed more. Luckily, I was never alone, not really. Not because of some power of friendship bullshit either. I was a karma dragon, I was CONNECTED. To everything.
So I found every fucking strand connecting to every person I'd ever met and started to CONSUME. This was a one off shot, I couldn't do this again once their karma had been drained, but that hardly mattered. I needed it now.
I didn't pull the good karma. My girls would need that and it would have to be converted anyway. I pulled the BAD. Every person Lilith had ever killed, every girl Geri had ever pimped to the court, hell I grabbed PENGUIN'S strand and started yanking, guzzling down bad karma like gatorade.
As the energy flowed in, I felt the power inside me build. I wasn't internalizing this shit, I was just shoving it into the ball of awful karmic energy in my gullet and it was getting fucking DENSE. I hoped the girls would use this time wisely, because IF I survived this I wouldn't be in any condition to take another blow.
Finally, the karma built so high I felt like it might destabilize, It felt like I'd swallowed a magical reactor core. Looking at the Warworld, I could see the karmic threads around us waving and shifting in the presence of all this power. This next shot was going to be the single biggest blast of energy I'd ever even seen.
There were a lot of ways I could have played it. I could have made a snide remark, a grand proclamation, or even just a your mom joke. But none of those seemed to fit. No, I knew exactly what I should say while I was wrecking the Warworld's shit.
Puffing up my chest, I condensed the power into the smallest possible package, readying myself to expel it all in a single torrent. Then, with a massive shit eating grin I began to chant. "KA. ME. HA. ME. HAAAAAAA!" The last syllable came out a volcanic geyser of dark karmic energy even as the massive main gun fired right at me, the two beams slamming into each other in open space. Gods my life was fucking cool sometimes. I just hoped this wasn't the end of it.
May 23rd 2016 , The Watchtower, Earth's orbit, 11:00 P.M EDT
I was alive. Mostly. I was REALLY fucking sore, but I hadn't gotten straight up obliterated by that damned cannon blast. For the sake of the girls and their mission, I pretended like my whole fucking body wasn't on fire, glaring at the Warworld as I snarled out a booming. "PATHETIC!"
All around me, Reach ships were being blown apart as they took chunks out of the blasters the Warworld was aiming at them. A few blasts were getting into my wounds, my scales having cracked when that fucking blast had pushed back my breath attack and then exploded right in my fucking face after expending most of its power.
Mongol appeared again, the projector emerging, his image relaxed as he stood in the middle of a battlefield, his holographic form untouchable. "Impressive." He complimented. "I must say, it's truly awe inspiring the power you can bring to bear. I was unaware the earth had such a defender. It's a shame that you can't take another blast." The massive gun began to glow again.
I shrugged my colossal shoulders. "Maybe I can. Maybe I can't. The question is, can you make one?" My appraisal was telling me that main gun wasn't made to rapid fire. It used up a massive chunk of the Warworld's power, but that wasn't the main issue. The thing HAD power. It was also a physical object though, and while the Warworld itself might be A rank, the individual metal pieces that made it up weren't.
They weren't cheap, granted, but the metal was B rank at best, and that big fuck off canon was still white hot on the inside. If he fired that bitch again it was going to slag a lot of very important machinery.
He had to wait for everything to cool, which in space wouldn't be TOO long, but frozen vacuum or not, it was going to take time. Especially since the melting point of B ranked metals was EXTREMELY high, so they could hold a lot more of it.
Mongol chuckled. "I think I like you. Insolence aside. You're a being of true power. Perhaps even more power than myself, barring access to my Warworld. Must you get in my way?"
"Look. You don't know me." I rumbled. "But I have a rule. Nobody takes my stuff. Nobody. That planet is MINE. It might know it yet, and I might have work to do still to claim it, but it belongs to me. The people, the countries, the objects. They're mine. They're ALL mine. You're here to take what's mine, and as we just discussed, I don't take kindly to theft."
He gave a thoughtful nod. "I suppose I can understand that. You've certainly got the power to claim this world. The Kryptonian has it as well, but he never would, as for the girl…" He sneered at Kara. "She's weak. A predator attempting to be prey. The Kryptonian may be pathetic, but at least he knows his place. He doesn't ASPIRE to be trash."
Kara bristled at that, drifting sideways to avoid a blast from a Reach battleship before blurring forward, punching right through the thing, then spun on Mongol. "People like you are so sure of yourselves." She snapped. "So convinced of your own superiority. But being weaker doesn't make someone less. Humans have feelings same as we do. They love, and dream, and hope. They-"
Mongol flicked a finger and several of the Warworld guns fired at Kara, blasting her back. They got blown off by the Reach right afterward. "Ah." He drawled. "Blessed silence. Admittedly, the smaller one has a much prettier mouth, but that makes it no more bearable." His red eyes flicked back to me. "Now-" His eyes went wide. "Wait…what have you done?"
The image vanished instantly, and I grinned to myself. "Ah. Blessed silence." I turned my head, focusing in on Kara. "Supergirl, are you alright? That looked nasty." I resumed my human shape, appearing in front of her, and she blushed as she pulled her cape around in front of her.
"I'm fine!" She squeaked. "No problems here. Except…I might need a change of clothes. Those beams didn't hurt me, but my costume wasn't so lucky." A reach ship exploded nearby, and the shockwave set her cape fluttering, eliciting a high pitched squeal of panic as she tried to keep covered.
She failed, though she fixed it after a second. I blinked in surprised appreciation of her frankly exception body. Tight and toned without being bulky, and her tits were shockingly perky. She blushed hard and scowled at me. "Seen enough?"
I grinned at her. "Not if I spent the rest of my life staring, but I'm happy to look away if it makes you uncomfortable."
Her cheeks darkened. "I…that's not. We should be fighting." Reaching into my pouch, I fished out a spare dress I had picked up in gemworld. It was only D rank, but it was better than nothing, and it was Barbie's size. She told me she and Kara shared clothes sometimes. I held it out.
"Here." I said with a chuckle. "This should cover you. Sorry about the ogling. You're a beautiful woman, but it was rude to stare." I figured she'd respond to chivalry best, and sure enough she basically dissolved into adorable babbling as she took the dress.
She pulled the cape off and let it hang in front of her in space. There was a blur and then she was dressed in the blue dress. I was going to flirt some more, but a shockwave of power rolled over us, and a quick check showed me exactly what I expected. Mongol was down, Barbie must have taken him out and gotten the key.
"Phase two!" I bellowed, putting all my power behind the shout. There was a series of light flashes, and members of the League began appearing in the air next to us even as the Warworld powered down. "Take out the Reach!"
Crowing with bloodthirsty glee, I flapped my wings once, propelling myself towards the nearest Reach ship. I let my horns and scales cover me, though I kept my human shape and face, using a partial hybrid form like I'd used back when we first went to Gemworld as I hit the shield of a reach ship and TORE through it like paper.
I came out the other side covered in bug blood and oil, and the ship exploded behind me as I called out for Raven. "Rae! Second wave time. Bring the girls."
Darkness crawled up from between the stars, appearing before us as Raven stepped from nothingness, followed by Zee, Donna, and Barbie, who I assumed she had stopped to pick up on the way. I grinned at my big titty goth as she flexed her new power, a gift from me before the battle started.
[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Rachel "Raven" Roth- A ranked Greater Daeva of the Darkened Soul. Daughter of the great demon Trigon, thanks to help from her master, the Dragon God Nicholas Lord, Raven has shed herself of her father's darkness, abandoning her tainted demonic heritage to walk the path of the Daeva, a guardian demon set on protecting humanity.]
"Enjoying your new powers?" I asked with a grin, loving the way her new white costume really plumped up those gorgeous jugs of hers.
Her face softened as she stared at me in complete adoration. "I've never felt so free. No darkness, no hate, only light and hope and love. It's like living in paradise. I can never repay you for this, Nicholas, but I will spend eternity making the attempt."
I grinned at her. "I'll hold you to that." I'd made sure she kept all the sex related goodies her part demon heritage gave her. Daeva's WERE demons. Just good demons. It had been much easier to convert her because her link to her dad was gone, but now she was free of even the remnants of him. I was honestly really happy for her. "First mission? Get started on the ships. Tear them apart. I don't want a single one left."
She nodded, as did the other girls, and they took off to join the League members who had come to help. They were doing much less to help sadly, since they insisted on trying to subdue the ships nonlethally, but hey, any port in a storm.
Which reminded me to get back to work. I spun and charged at a ship, tearing it apart. I decided this was taking too long and retook my dragon form, which made destroying the ships much easier. I just ate them.
We made short work of the battleships as a group. The Warworld had really whittled them down, and the remainders were damaged enough that groups of Leaguers and my own girls were able to take them out. The battlefield was littered with destroyed ship fragments, floating debris, and the odd fucked up ship hull the League had left intact. I appraised each of them, making sure they were actually out of commission, and when I confirmed it I shifted back to human.
Meeting up with Barbie, I grinned at her. "Cut it a little close don't you think? I'd have appreciated if you spared me that fucking blast."
She threw herself on me, squeezing me tightly as she breathed in my scent. "I'm so glad you're ok. I killed Mongol as soon as we got close enough, that place was a maze. He was so sure the League was just going to talk at him, he never even felt me come up behind him."
"Ouch, guessing that's not going to go over well with the caped crowd." I said with a wince. "Sorry, I know you care what they think."
She smirked. "Actually, Diana was on point for that mission. She tends to be more…open, to elimination in situations where it's warranted. Amazons are new to the whole nonlethal thing, and it's more a guideline to them than an actual rule. There's a reason Diana has always been one of my favorite League members."
I grinned at her. "I suspect there's two reasons, and they're tightly packed into a particularly fetching corset. I'm betting you've jilled off to Wonder Mommy a time or two, haven't you Barbie? Maybe we can get her interested in a threesome with you and Donna."
Barbie shuddered in delight at the thought, her nipples hardening enough that they were visible through her costume. Sadly the pleasant mental image was cut short as ANOTHER fucking hologram was projected in the darkened sky we floated in.
"You…insignificant WORMS." Thundered the green bug guy glaring down at us. "You dare destroy a battlefleet of the Reach? You dare act against our empire? We were INVITED here. We laid claim to this world, we tended it, and seeded it, and it BELONGS to us."
Superman floated up in front of the hologram. "Earth belongs to its people." He said righteously. Mongol had been right, the speechifying was much less pleasant when it wasn't coming from soft looking pink lips and a supermodel face. I wished he'd let Kara talk again. "We will not be cowed by bullies, no matter how powerful. You'll never rule us."
The green guy looked less annoyed than I'd expected, which boded…poorly. His smirk as he looked at Superman was condescending and sadistic. "Perhaps not." He said poisonously. "But that doesn't mean you're safe. What is that delightful phrase some of you humans use?" He put on a thoughtful face, then grinned. "Oh, yes. If I can't have it, no one can."
He pointed at earth dramatically, and a beam shot out of the ship that had been projecting him. It wasn't a blast or a laser, those were inactive in the broken battleship. It was an activation sequence. He turned back to us. "I've activated the magnetic field disruptors we've hidden on your planet. Good luck finding them all." And with that, the image vanished. Well, fuck.
May 24th 2016 , The Watchtower, Earth's orbit, 1:00 A.M EDT
"Ok, so…what the fuck do we do about this?" I said as I slumped down at the table. One upside of the whole 'potential end of the world' thing was that it distracted the League from all the aliens I'd probably just murdered. Still, it was a net loss as far as I was concerned. I'd evacuated my girls to Gemworld just in case, but my fucking house was on earth. That thing had been a bitch to make.
We'd left the Reach ships floating out there in orbit. We didn't have time for a cleanup crew, because apparently that beam the green bug had sent out was some sort of killswitch signal that started an expedited countdown.
Green bug had been happy to brag about it when we tried to make contact, informing us in no uncertain terms that we didn't have much time.
So, faced with the destruction of all my things, I'd returned to the space station to help plan how we would…save the world. Gross. Batman, once we'd headed in, had headed to a terminal and started typing rapidfire, and after a half hour had called us all together to the same big fancy table for another meeting.
"We're going to stop this." He said bluntly. "I've spent the last half hour scanning the earth with the watchtower's hi definition orbital observation device. We weren't able to identify all or probably even most of the locations these items are placed, but we DID find a few of them. We've scanned the designs and uploaded a simulation to familiarize everyone with the equipment."
He pressed a button, and a glowing blue image of a large mechanical device showed up above the table. "This." Said Batman darkly. "Is a magnetic field disruptor. We've managed to locate about eleven of them placed at strategic points across the globe. They condense a powerful magnetic field into a chrysalis of energy that erupts upon reaching critical mass."
Ray Palmer, the Atom, flinched. "Eleven…I don't know if that would be irreversible, but magnetic storms of that magnitude would tear apart the earth's magnetic field. If they have more of them it might be enough to destroy it entirely, and the consequences would be catastrophic."
"As in, it would be difficult to find time to work on my tan?" I asked suspiciously.
He shook his head. "As in, the planet would tear itself to shreds under a twisting vortex of gravitational forces and inclement weather.
"I'm gonna be honest." I said dryly. "That's pretty suboptimal for me. I assume there's some way we can make sure they DON'T do that? Because I've got a date this weekend and the world being destroyed will seriously limit my venue options."
That got a snicker from a few League members. Batman wasn't one of them. "We've begun drawing up plans to dispatch teams to take out the disruptors, but some of us need to stay here to continue combing the planet for signs of them. We don't think this is all of the devices, and if we miss and we risk one setting off a chain reaction that detonates the rest."
I grimaced. "I can't promise to solve that problem completely, but I can probably help. If these machines are meant to be used as a network, there'll be a karmic link. I can find and follow some of them, though I'll need to do it one at a time. Have we identified a timeline here?"
"Three hours." Said Superman solemnly. "Based on the current levels of magnetic accumulation, we don't have more than three hours until the earth is destroyed."
Standing, I headed for the zeta tube. "Alright. Drop me at the nearest disruptor to my place. I want to make sure Brightedge is gonna be standing before anything else. I could use some backup though, given the number of these things is unknown and we don't have any idea how far apart they are."
Kara practically teleported next to me. "I'll go!" She said cheerfully. "I'm the next fastest after Kal and the Flash, and they'll both be working on taking out the ones we've already found." She gave me a warm smile. "I'll try not to get in the way."
"The more the merrier." Barbie said with a grin as she put an arm over her friend's shoulder.
I turned to Raven. "Stay up here and try to help them isolate and take out any newly surfaced disruptors. We don't know how sturdy these things are or how to disarm them, but your soul self should be able to swallow them up and like…teleport them into the sun or something."
"Condensed magnetic fields make magic tricky." She frowned. "Energy is energy. But I'll do what I can. Be safe."
I winked at her. "I'm the dragon god. It'll take more than some jumped up bug zappers to put me in the ground. You're the one who should watch out. And if things get to hairy, you're to go and check up on Amy and stay with her. That's an order."
She grimaced as the Brand took effect. She wouldn't like that, but I didn't care. I wasn't losing any of my girls. If the world was going to be destroyed she could teleport her jiggly goth ass to Gemworld and wait there.
With that done, we stepped into the Zeta tube, and with a flash we were standing on earth again, coming out of a shitty phone booth behind an equally shitty apartment building I was sure used to be in Gotham. "Alright. Where the fuck is this disruptor?" I asked Barbie. The other girls had joined up with other teams, so it was just the three of us.
"According to my tracker, it's about…fifteen miles that way." Said Barbie as she pulled out some weird device I'd never seen. Probably some bat technology or something.
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Slaughter Swamp." I said with a groan. "It's in Slaughter Swamp. Fanfucking tastic." I couldn't think of a more annoying place for it to end up. Slaughter Swamp, while NEAR Gotham, wasn't IN Gotham, and as such hadn't been merged. It remained the weeping infected asshole of the eastern united states despite the marked improvement in the local area.
Despite the distance, between my wings, Kara's flight, and Barbie's shadow travel, it only took us a minute to reach the target area. It was easier to spot than I'd expected, on account of the big flying metallic ice cream cone looking thing, and the whirling cloud of magnetic force on top of it.
"So…quick question." I asked with a grimace. "Is magnetic energy supposed to be blood red? Because I feel like that's not a normal thing."
Kara looked disturbed. "Color isn't really something you see in magnetic fields. The energy oscillations from the disruptor should be blue though. It's unusual for it to manifest in such an…ominous way."
Of course, I knew WHY it was doing that. Like Raven had said. Energy was energy. Magnetic energy sourced from a tainted piece of land would be tainted, and I could see fucking forests of dark strands knitted through and out of this place. Most of them were leading to a spot directly under the disruptor. Deep under.
"So, Barbie, just to confirm. What exactly is IN Slaughter Swamp?" Because I was pretty sure I knew, and I was also sure if we fucked with that thing it would wake up.
She swallowed hard. "Solomon Grundy. He was put down recently though, he shouldn't be awake again for another few years. But if he does wake up…it would be bad. Solomon is someone Superman has trouble taking down when he's at his worst. He's a living avatar of the Rot, a primordial force of death. It's nearly impossible to kill him, and if you manage it'll only be temporary."
I nodded. "I see it. This whole area is horrifically cursed by…something. Something awful. Grundy is its guardian, and the bad karma funneling through here is gathered on him like a reactor. I think the magnetic field is condensing the energy and supercharging him. If we try to move it he's going to wake up."
"I can disarm that." Said Kara confidently. "But I'll need someone to help me stabilize the field while I work. If I do it wrong the whole thing could go off. Thus kablooie. Thus death."
I glanced at my redhead. "Barbie, you're on field stability. If he's A-rank, which he'd have to be to match Superman, your powers aren't going to work anyway. Hell, the death energy might feed him. I'll keep him off you while you work, just hurry it up and get it finished before he gets in a lucky shot."
"If you rush a miracle worker." Said Kara. "You get lousy miracles." At our surprised looks she pouted. "What? I've been watching movies. I liked the princess bride. Don't make fun of me, just go do your job."
Winking at her, I gave her a slight smarmy bow. "As you wish." Barbie snickered as I walked over to where the disruptor was. Glancing over at the two of them, I nodded. "Grab it and move the thing as safely as you can. When he comes up, and based on the karmic ties literally infesting the ground under that disruptor he will, you need to be clear."
Kara nodded, approaching the device. She leaned forward to study it, squinting and letting her x-ray vision activate I think. After a minute, she triggered her laser vision, carving into the side of the thing. The laser was surprisingly slow at cutting in, but the device itself remained undisturbed by the action thankfully.
It took maybe five minutes to laser off a square of metal so she could get access to the actual device. Slowly removing it, she looked inside with a frown. Slowly easing her hands in she withdrew a pair of cables. She neatly severed them with her heat vision, before lowering the output and fusing two of the ends together again, leaving two exposed cables. She passed them to Barbie.
"You need to hold these on either side of the cocoon. It's going to start to try to repel them, but if you don't hold them steady it'll destabilize and go off."
Barbie nodded as she took the cables, leading them around and holding them up as instructed. Once the cocoon of energy was stable, Kara put her hands on the thing and started to push. Slowly, surely, it moved in the air, drifting about twenty feet before she finally stopped.
"Alright, I'm going to start the disarming sequence. Get ready. If he's going to wake up it'll be now."
Slowly nodding, I stared at the ground where the nest of black threads was collected. As she started to work, the cocoon shifted, the red energy pulsed, and threads drained some of the bloody light away, beginning to run down the threads.
The nest below the ground began to twist and writhe, and I saw the energy inside of it congeal and sublimate, going from a huge spiderweb of threads to something more compact. A human form. Before my eyes, the form began to move, slowly inching its way up, and finally, a massive chalk white hand smashed through the dirt.
As the dirt began to roil and the massive form attached to the arm followed it out, a chill erupted from the ground. All this concentrated power had supercharged this asshole alright, I could feel the weight of his presence. As his head finally emerged, wide, insane eyes snapped up to lock onto me, glowing a blood red like the magnetic energy.
Trails of demonic looking light ran through his veins, dying them a red so deep it was almost black as he peeled back his lips from blocklike grey teeth. "Solomon Grundy!' Rumbled the monster. "Born on a monday!" Well, this did kind of feel like a monday. I wished I had some fucking lasagna.
May 24th 2016 , Slaughter Swamp , 1:30 A.M EDT
Solomon Grundy was a fucking prick. I really wanted to go full dragon and just snap him up, but he kept going for the disruptor, which was like…twenty feet away, and if I'd transformed I'd have smacked into it and the girls as they tried to disarm it. So I had to stick to my hybrid form.
As for Grundy…he was fucking STRONG. I suspected some of it was that fucked up energy he was OD'ing on, but the fact that his body recovered from any damage I could do to it was making the fight more difficult than it should have been. A LOT more durable.
I ducked a giant chalk white fist, the sound barrier shattering from the force, and ducked in to smash my own draconic knuckles into his ribs. Work the body and all that. I felt ribs crack and splinted under the blows, but he didn't even seem to feel it, and I was forced to duck out as he swung a vicious backhand at me.
His aura was a fucking mess, all that energy pumping into him still from the swamp. The damage I'd just done was already gone by the time I checked.
This place was turbocharging him. I tried to follow the tangle of awful energy back to a source I could destroy, but it seemed to lead of into…nothing. Whatever this shit was connected to wasn't anything I could kill either. The power it was generating was within A rank…technically, but there was also WAY too much of it. Something stronger than me, something S rank, was interfering, even if indirectly.
Which didn't mean much in the here and now. Whatever it was either didn't want to be noticed or couldn't take a more direct role, it just kept shoving more power into Grundy until he was full and then re-upping when he used more.
I missed a dodge staring at the strands and got decked in the mouth, and got bowled over backwards. Knocked off my feet, I was set sliding across the swamp behind me, carving out a fucking trough as I slid, until I went through a few trees and slowed down enough to shift and spin up to my feet.
"You goth motherfucker." I growled. "You got mud all over my fucking wings." I wished I had any fucking simulacra made, but I'd been swamped (no pun intended) for most of the day with all the alien bullshit. Before we left the watchtower I'd rewired all the ones I had made to work for the girls. Just in case.
"Lizard man hurt Grundy!" He howled. "Lizard man PAY!" He charged me, eyes, glowing with a primal madness as he telegraphed his entire fucking attack like a dumbass.
I neatly sidestepped, sticking out a foot and tripping the big brute. He flopped facefirst into the muck and slide like I had, and I took the opportunity to put myself between him and the girls. With the extra distance, I wasn't so limited anymore. I shifted into my hundred foot dragon form, my smallest possible shape via full transformation.
Grundy got up, spinning around, hate painting his features. Then froze. "Big lizard!" He roared. "Where lizard man? Lizard man hurt Grundy!"
I paused. "Are…are you serious?" I rumbled. "It's me. I was in my partial lizard form before." Wait. "Dragon form, fuck, stop calling me a lizard! Anyway, we going to do this or just keep talking about it?"
"Grundy have no problem with big lizard!" He growled. "Grundy fight lizard man!"
"Oh for the love of-" I groaned, transforming back into my hybrid shape. "Here! Are you happy?" Honestly I probably could have strung him along as a distraction and avoided a fight, but being part of this level of stupidity was almost physically hurting me.
Grandy snarled. "Lizard man! What you do with big lizard? Big lizard do nothing to you!"
"I…how are you this dumb?" I floundered. "Like, seriously, it's a good thing you're fucking indestructible of someone would have killed you decades ago. It's ME you fucking idiot. I'm the big lizard. It's my other form."
He gave a snort of derision. "Grundy not stupid. Not fall for lizard man tricks. Bring back big lizard! He have nothing to do with this. Your fight with Grundy!"
I closed my eyes, sighing in annoyance. "I'm not doing this 'who's on first' bullshit anymore. I'm going to fucking murder you now. Watch close, this is where 'big lizard' went." I transformed into my larger shape.
"Big lizard! You back! Grundy-" I slapped him with my tail, sending him careening about fifty feet into a tree. I actually had to hold back because if I hit him full force he'd get knocked WAY too far, and then I'd have to go get him and leave the girls unattended.
I shook my massive head. "Nope. Just told you. Not doing that shit. I'm done. Sorry for your confusion, but you're going to die either way, so please stop talking, you're giving me a fucking migraine."
Grundy came back to his feet, roaring with incandescent rage and thankfully too furious to babble any more as he charged me head on.
Sadly, this time I had the girls behind me, so no dodging. Happily, I was a fuck mothering DRAGON right now. I lowered my horns and took his fucking charge head on, absorbing most of the impact, and spreading my wings to prevent myself from being easily moved.
Once he stopped, my head shot forward, teeth clamping down on the bastard, and ripped one of his big chalky arms off. His other punched me in the temple, which fucking hurt, so I headbutted him with my horns, sending him sailing back the way he came, pinwheeling through the air.
"Fuck." I spat. "OW." I reverted to my hybrid form. Small me meant less mass to aim at. Going big might not have been the best strategy, even if the detached arm in front of me boded well for this fight.
Or it WOULD have, if the giant asshole hadn't already regrown it by the time I looked up. "Oh COME ON!" I shouted in exasperation. "Why won't you die?"
"That Grundy's secret." He said smugly. "Grundy already dead." I sighed and literally facepalmed. He was so strong. But he was so GODDAMNED dumb. I felt like his idiocy might literally be a meme hazard. I was almost stunned by his stupidity.
"PLEASE TELL ME YOU'RE ALMOST DONE!" I yelled to the girls, both of whom I could hear trying to smother rampant giggles at the conversation. Nothing like watching your boyfriend get mocked by an undead reject from 'are you smarter than a fifth grader?' to tickle your funny bone.
Stifling her laughter, Kara called back. "Almost, just give us another minute or so. We need to dissipate the field without setting off armageddon but we don't have time for a slow leak, so I'm going to vent it straight up into space. Once its past the atmosphere we should be fine, but it's taking a bit to set the shaping parameters."
Seeing Grundy ready for another attack, I held up a hand. "Stop!" He did, looking confused. "The first phase of this fight is over." I said seriously. "Everyone knows that supervillain fights aren't all about muscle. We need to be clever too. So recently the World Supervillain Council instituted a riddle portion for villain on villain combat. You ARE a real supervillain right?"
Completely bamboozled by the absolute bullshit I was spewing, Grundy glared at me. "Grundy real villain! Grundy realest villain ever. Grundy best at riddles in whole world. You tell Grundy riddles, then Grundy crush your skull!"
"Only if you get the riddles right." I said solemnly. "If you can't get the riddle then I get to hit you once and you can't block."
He looked kind if uncertain about it, but since denying me would mean admitting he wasn't a 'real' villain, he had no choice. "Fine." He grunted. "Say riddle lizard man, Grundy crush words like puny lizard skull."
"First of all." I said in annoyance. "You crushed NOBODY'S fucking 'lizard skull'. You hit me once in the head and I'm fine. Secondly, why don't you wait until I tell you the fucking riddle? Ok. Now. 'A box without hinges, key or lid, yet golden treasure within is hid' what am I?" Yes, it was one of the riddles from the hobbit, but it's not like I was competing with Einstein.
"Box of gold." Thundered Grundy triumphantly. "Treasure chest! Grundy get to hit lizard man!"
I held up my hands. "Whoa, what? No, that was the wrong answer. I didn't mean a fucking literal box."
"You lie?" He said sharply. "Lizard man cheat, Grundy win! Gundy is smartest! Lizard man pathetic puny brain no match!" He raised both arms, cheering in triumph as Barbie and Kara tried not to literally choke on their muffled laughs.
My plan was apparently hitting some snags. This dumb asshole was SO dumb that I was having trouble tricking him. It was like he wrapped all the way back around to being smart again by being so motherfucking stupid. "I didn't lie. The answer was an egg. It's a riddle, not everything I say is literal."
"Egg not box." He snorted derisively. "Stupid lizard man. Never seen egg before?"
It was liking talking to the world's dumbest brick wall. "You know what?" I said testily. "Fine! I lose. Punch me once. Maybe you'll hit me hard enough that I won't be able to understand the dumb bullshit coming out of your mouth."
Roaring triumphantly, Grundy charged forward, pulling back a fist and slamming it right into my face. It…hurt. I'd been taking hit, but mostly glancing ones, a proper haymaker with a windup was worse. Still, I was braced, and I might not have dodged but I DID use my karmic magic to disperse the force a bit since I had some time to cast.
The ground around us groaned. Compacted by the force evenly distributed over a fifty foot radius. We were now standing in a five foot deep pit, not that Grundy noticed or cared. "Grundy smartest!" He cackled. "Lizard man so stupid. Never beat Grundy."
Of course, as he gloated, he failed to notice something pretty important. The veins on his body had settled down, and his eyes weren't glowing. I smiled unpleasantly as I started to walk toward him. In the background, a massive pillar of red light fired straight up into the sky, venting into space.
He grinned, massive gravel gray teeth bared. "Lizard man angry? Want to fight Grundy with fists again? Grundy too smart to tri-" He was cut off by a heavy punch from me.
Without the extra power he wasn't near my match. He stumbled sideways, eyes widening. "What happen?"" He said in confusion. "Big bat say Grundy strongest. Why Lizard man punch so hard?"
I was mildly curious to hear what 'big bat' was, but the world was ending so it could wait. "Sorry to say that's not the case bud." I kicked out his knee, forcing him to the ground. "Look, you're annoying, but not a bad guy." Reaching out I put my hands on his shoulders. "Maybe one you wake up again we can have a chat. Sadly for you, that's going to take a while."
Ignoring his confused expression, my hands snapped up, gripped his head, and ripped it clean off, tossing it across the swamp.
"Do you want me to…" Barbie said, looking down at the body as she and Kara came over. "Take care of it? Now that he's gone I think my powers could sever his like to this place. Not sure what would happen to his soul at this point though."
I sighed. "It's fine. Let him recharge and come back. He was kind of like a really aggressive puppy. No need to end him for this little dustup. I kind of feel bad for the guy. Besides, we don't have time. Onto the next disruptor. We need to get this shit done fast."
May 24th 2016 , Peru , 2:00 A.M EDT
"Gotta love those zeta tubes." I said as we emerged from the run down abandoned gas station we'd teleported into. "Obviously super convenient, though I'm a bit worried about the radiation." I grimaced at Kara. "Does my hair look weird?"
She giggled, ignoring Barbie's eye roll. "Radiation doesn't do that. You're thinking of static, and no, it looks fine."
I grimaced as I stepped on something that squished, but it turned out to be a REALLY rotten banana. This place had apparently doubled as a grocery store, before it was lost to the elements. Which was a poetic way of saying this shithole had been eaten by the jungle.
Barbie was looking smug as we stepped out into the dark parking lot, or what was left of it. "Well, according to my tracker, we should be heading this way." She pointed into the trees. "We're looking for some kind of ancient pyramid. I suggest you both stick close to me, I have training for this kind of environment, and it can be dangerous."
That got a loud snort from me as I ignored her and set off in the direction she'd pointed. "Dangerous?" I said with a laugh. "I'm a dragon god. What out here could possibly-" I pushed a thick branch aside with ease, and suddenly the whole world went dark…and wet. And buzzy. Reaching up, I gripped the sides of the fucking beehive that had dropped on my head. "Oh, eat a dick jungle."
Of course the bees couldn't HURT me, but it was still annoying, and the laughs from the girls weren't helping.
Smirking at Barbie, I shook my head incredibly hard like a dog, and the honey flew off my hair and pelted both of them, as well as the surrounding trees. Having been too busy laughing to avoid it, my redhead squawked in outrage and shot me a hurt look. I just shrugged.
Still snickering, Kara floated off the ground, drifting past us to slowly enter the jungle around us. "So. Tell me the details of this thing again?" I said as we started to make our trek. I could have just charged in, but the trees and shit would have been exploding left and right, and we were going for subtle here.
While we could completely disarm the things, we couldn't be sure there wasn't some crazy emergency detonation switch the Reach lackeys could hit.
Barbie sighed. "This particular disruptor was the first one Batman found, and the most obvious, but chances are good it's also heavily defended. This was the disruptor the signal was sent to first, and the one that bounced it to the others. Which means-"
"Which MEANS." I said with a grin. "It's karmically linked to all of them. We can get a heading on every machine and match them to the ones they have. Plus I can tell you how many of the damned things there are. That's brilliant."
She smirked, blowing on her fingernails and buffing them on her costume. "I try."
Kara, who had been watching us, burst out laughing again, but since that one wasn't really funny, we both gave her an odd look. She shrugged. "Sorry. But it's just…Barbara, you used to be so cold and distant most of the time. We were friends, but I always kind of felt like the little sister, looking up to the implacable badass."
"I'm not badass now?" Barbie said archly, raising an eyebrow and basically radiating 'fuck around and find out'.
"You are." Said the kryptonian hurriedly. "But you're also FUN. You're happy and joking and confident. I mean, you were always confident, but it's next level now. It's nice seeing you so at home in your own skin I guess. I think Nick has been good for you."
My redhead paused, and I could almost see a greatest hits reel in her head. Our meeting, our fuck at her place, our date to the bar, getting wrecked in the alley, her Brand. Everything she'd been through since we met, everything I'd done to her, and to my pleasant surprise, a smile spread slowly across her face.
I'd expected a bit of discomfort over our early time together, but it seemed like she was past that. "You know…he has." She said fondly. "He's a crude, horny, ruthless ass sometimes. But he cares. He really does, and I think that makes it all worthwhile."
Kara looked a bit lost, but she snorted and shrugged anyway. "Either way, I'm glad you're doing better. Your breakup with Dick was pretty rough to watch. It seems like you guys are MOSTLY ok now though. You didn't try to punch him on the watchtower at least. That seems like definite progress. And you and Zee seem to be much closer."
I had a mental image of them scissoring, and then made a mental NOTE to get them to do that for me and had to hold back a laugh.
The heart to heart was cut short, sadly, when Kara's head snapped up, eyes darting around. "What is it?" I asked, opening my karmic eye to take a look and…groaning. "Well, I just figured something out." I said, without waiting for her answer. "I figured out why none of those reach battleships were deploying many scarabs."
Surrounding us were dozens of lines heading for a singular point. Familiar lines. Technological lines. The strands of karma that linked Reach tech. Easily a hundred of the damned things all guarding the obnoxious magnet bomb thing. Because of COURSE they couldn't make it easy.
When we stepped into the clearing, it became obvious where the strands were going. On the pyramid I saw a rainbow of scarabs. Blue, then Purple, then Red, then Green, then at the top, standing at the apex, Black. I appraised them all. B rank, most of them, except the six at the peak of the pyramid. All A ranked Black Beetles.
I sighed, stripping off the coat I was wearing, and then my shirt, and stashing them both. I took of my shoes too. I wanted maximum grip, and while I didn't usually bother with dragon feet, this time I was giving it my all. I let the change roll over me, black scales and wings erupting from my skin, horns curling back.
"Go around." I growled. "I'll make sure they're distracted." This was…a lot. Even for me. A hundred B rankers and six A rankers. I wasn't worried they'd kill me, more that they'd drag me down long enough to hit the girls. Luckily Kara was here. She could stop any rampant Black Beetles.
They nodded, taking off, and I strode forward into the cracked and overgrown plaza in front of the pyramid. From the top, the towering Black Beetles grinned down at me. "MEAT!" Howled the largest. "You come to deliver us dinner?"
I grinned back. "The irony of that statement is probably lost on you, but trust me, you'll get it soon."
The Beetle snickered. "I don't think we'll get much out of this. ATTACK!"
The rows of beetles moved as one, darting toward me, and I howled with bloodthirsty glee as I blurred forward. I had my eye open, seeing the lines of their karma, and as they attacked, I watched them all…blend.
Not like a spell exactly, but a different form of cohesive power. A battle formation. I watched the strands, following the flow as I waded into the crowd, clawed hands grabbing, tearing, and ripping. My teeth snapped, horns flicking as I gored and broke the B rankers. I saw their moves before they did, and none of them were fast enough to stop me.
The first Black Beetle hit me from the side, but I was already poised to take it. Fighting Grundy had been annoying, but it let me really get a feel for my strength.
Cannons blasted, blades slashed, but it all bounced off my scales, the few rare cuts that got through healing almost as soon as they were made. I had the Black Beetle in a triangle choke, and I was pummeling the living shit out its face, when two more grabbed my arms and dragged me off him.
I tilted my head back, roaring out a blast of bad karma into the face of one, then goring the other on my claws as I released me.
Sadly, I couldn't transform. The plaza was too fragile, and if it collapsed we might lose the disruptor. I felt the other Black Beetles close in, and I cackled, reaching out through my bonds to pull in power. Not enough to disable or weaken my girls, but enough to give me a boost. I CONSUMED. Power flooded me, and I dashed in at one of the Beetles, spitting in his eyes and then driving my claws into his gut.
Getting up under him, I planted my horns under his chin, tearing my head away and taking his fucking face and jaw with it.
Two others tackled me to the ground, pinning, me with their armors. Black scarabs shifted into effectively giants staples, anchoring my arms and legs, while two others stepped up, a third taking position behind him.
The armor converted into a giant cannon, the two helpers fusing their own in to make it bigger, until I could see the ominous blue glow growing so bright it hurt to look at.
I snorted, inhaled, and BLEW out a torrent of bad karma. Nothing on the level of my big breath attack in space. But then, I didn't need it to be. Their blast hit mine, and after some tug of war, I pushed through, blowing out their cannon and sending the three of them flying, scarabs damaged enough to make them useless for a minute.
Shifting my arms one after another (but not my body so I didn't collapse the place) I tore free of the two holding me, using the shock to reach out with both hands and TEAR one of their fucking heads off, lobbing at the other one like a dodge ball, the impact sending him fyling. Tearing free the loose metal pinning my legs, I grinned as I threw it aside, heading for the three injured ones.
Coming to the first one, I stomped on him like a cockroach. My draconic foot punched right through his armor, smashing him flat. I kicked the next one in the head, snapping his neck and sending his head flying, as I walked up to the last one.
Broken, bleeding, this one was the one who had been main'ing the cannon. He'd taken most of the damage, and he glared up at me ferociously. "Meat." It rasped. "You anger your betters. Your world is doomed."
"Fuck you." I said succinctly. "I changed my mind about showing you how ironic that statement was. You're not worth eating. The last one of you I munched tasted like shit."
Seeing a shift in the karmic threads, I sidestepped, reaching out to rip the throat from the last Black Beetle, the one I'd sent flying with the disembodied head. The one on the ground recoiled, and I grinned at him, long draconic teeth flashing. "Oh, sorry, were you counting on him? Maybe the others can help you?"
Looking around, I spotted no one. The other scarabs had been scared away, or possibly recalled. Whatever the case, I'd killed about twenty of them, which was plenty. Unfortunately I hadn't been gentle. The backpack units were mostly destroyed. I'd probably be able to salvage two A ranks and maybe ten B's. Enough to upgrade three more of my girls.
Staring down at the last one, I grimaced as I looked down at his destroyed scarab. He and the other two had theirs shredded by bad karma. Not only had it blown them apart, everything possible had gone wrong with them. They were scrap, and I'd torn the guts out of the one I'd horn murdered.
Oh well, points were points, at least I got some windfall. I stomped down on the thing's head, smashing it like a melon. Now I just needed to clean all this up before the girls were done. I'd never fuck Kara if she saw THIS shit. Guess this is what they mean about waking sleeping dragons.
As per usual pat-reon has the advance chapters at that site /malcolmtent 10k words advance content minimum hope everyone enjoyed the chapter.
