With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

Ngamer11 · Dec 20, 2022

Okay, I didn't realize that Paul can use that Construct-Lantern to act as a sort of super disease. Will he be using biological warfare more in the future? Also, he's still gender inverted, isn't he? Or she, as is the case.

BlueMangoAdea · Dec 20, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
The longer they live, the longer we feed.

Parasites don't want their hosts to die. Not until they reproduce.

LanguagAe · Dec 20, 2022

Ngamer11 said:
Okay, I didn't realize that Paul can use that Construct-Lantern to act as a sort of super disease. Will he be using biological warfare more in the future? Also, he's still gender inverted, isn't he? Or she, as is the case.

I have to wonder how much of the black it's connected to, or if it's emulating it's old connection.

Darko · Dec 20, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
but I've have been on board

"but I'd have"

Mr Zoat said:
But no. Smash and grab.

That seems to be a fairly standard Apokoliptiab action.

Mr Zoat said:
take a respectable amount of because Pontico

It's missing something between "of" and "because"

Mr Zoat said:
I blink as knowledge… That was technically in my head already pushes itself to the front of my mind

Remove "already"

MajorPane · Dec 20, 2022

Yay Gary, look at you, already innovating and proving yourself a up and coming go getter. The Praexis demons never showed this kind of initiative! At this rate he'll wind up as Paul's second in command.

Citizen · Dec 20, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
My first shot hits an unexpecting Citizen, bursting through her cuirass and causing crippling burns to the flesh beneath. Strong-willed though the citizens are, when you nerve fibres are literally cooked there isn't much you can do to keep fighting. She drops, quiet croaking sounds coming from partially-fried lungs. Theoretically survivable, with treatment that she might get if the fight is concluded quickly enough.

My second shot hits a Citizen as she turns and raises the thicker material of her forearm mounted gun. My plasma bolt punches through easily and explodes the capacitor before carrying on into her neck. That… That's not survivable. Her jaw and neck have been incinerated and her brain's been cooked.

Stop. Shooting. At me.

...please.

Abandoned Account · Dec 20, 2022

Astarte? Better break out Satanus and the New Ascendant construct-lanterns. Heck, maybe the Saremite and Reach Thralls too. They should be powerful -- or distractively -- enough to at least buy Paul some recovery time, right?

Chojin Patriarch · Dec 20, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
1st January 2013
22:10 GMT
Preservation.
Pontico staggers, presumably as a result of the effort needed to block the radiation with his New God armour. I cut it out immediately, flying out of-.

Aramis hits my construct bunker and cracks it, giving me the opportunity to stick a cold zone around her. She draws back her fist and freezes, a thin film of ice covering her body.

Ah, a friendly. And given what we saw yesterday, probably coming to let OL know what's going on back on Minosyss. Now, how quickly can OL pivot his plans,head off the bad guys at the pass... And maybe regain 'little Paul' at some point.

Her eyes are still moving, slowly shifting towards me-.

Oh, they're not moving slowly. They're moving at normal speed, I'm just accelerated.

You know you've stumbled into a hard fight when you start running your thinking bits at FTL and don't realise it.

Front rows of seating have burned faces and arms, where their armour doesn't cover. But they're going for their weapons.

"Laaaaannt-"

Because of course second- and possibly third-degree burns are only a minor annoyance to them...

Rebuild construct bunker around the boom tube aperture, construct cold gun and shoot Aramis again to try and keep her out of the fight.

"-ern, they're attacking New Orthys!"

See, you should have led with the cold gun. Freeze her, shatter her and claim the win while her bits are still pulling back together... If they even do that.

"Understood."

I shove him back through the boom tube and then fly through after him. We're back on the command deck of New Chronus, and-

- should be closing the door right now, please? Last thing you want is a super-strong, rapid-healing lunatic running riot in the heart of your command centre.

Duty
-Pontico shuts down the boom tube before pointing to the holographic display.

"They covertly attacked the prison holding Sparta, and now they're cutting down the garrison. Our strongest Ascendants are occupied with the ritual, and we can't-."

Right, then. Excrement has hit the rotary cooling device and is now being flung about the room. Time to clean up.

"Understood."

Because they didn't have enough of a reason to focus on me. This wasn't about presenting an ultimatum to the planet or following their normal rules of engagement. This was about getting New God stuff. Or maybe it became that because Grayven wants the Seeds to increase his power? If he'd come to me with a plan for using them to beat Darkseid… I'd have negotiated for him to visit Earth first, but I've have been on board and I'd have argued his case.

...While keeping a very close eye on his innate back-stabbing impulses, of course?

But no. Smash and grab.

"Boom tube me there, and keep me updat-"

Subtle, aren't they? How very Jagermonster of them...

BOOM!

"-ed."

Quick fix on my armour's more stressed components, construct armour and construct plasma gun set to bypass their armour and go! I fly through the boom tube and-

Heh. Going to be an unpleasant surprise for them when their defences do nothing against your weaponry...

PHZP!

-take a respectable amount of because Pontico isn't a combat specialist and deployed me directly into combat rather than letting me approach from further away. I evade, generating construct shields to block fire and return fire myself. My first hit melts off a woman's arm, and-. And she doesn't cry out. She just drops her two-handed gun and flies through the air towards me, forearm-mounted weapon charging.

He can be excused for not munchkining the instant teleportation system... Meanwhile, there's that 'Third-degree burns? Bah!' toughness in action.

So I shoot her again before moving onto a new target.

A group are trying to cut their way into the ship still docked in the upper part of the tower. Point defence guns are trying to hit them, but they're not designed for people attacking the ship with melee weapons are the Citizens are intelligent enough to stay out of their arc of fire.

Sadly, this kind of thing isn't exactly common amongst most space-going cultures...

I switch targets. From the scans I'm getting of the interior of the building, the Citizens opens a boom tube on one of the lower floors and then attacked upwards-. And that's Astarte, and that's Sparta. They probably don't have any other New Gods, so killing both of those will stop this strike. Might result in their whole fleet turning up-.

New God technology. They're just got Astarte and maybe Theana, though if I remember correctly they don't generally let her out. Which means that they probably have only one ship that can open a boom tube. And it may not be able to do that when its captain isn't on board.

Resulting in a very worrying situation if you take down the leaders. The Citizenry might flee... They might launch their provider-things. But they will not surrender, that's a given.

Interesting.

My first shot hits an unexpecting Citizen, bursting through her cuirass and causing crippling burns to the flesh beneath. Strong-willed though the citizens are, when you nerve fibres are literally cooked there isn't much you can do to keep fighting. She drops, quiet croaking sounds coming from partially-fried lungs. Theoretically survivable, with treatment that she might get if the fight is concluded quickly enough.

...Let's not be in too big a rush on the medical front, eh?

My second shot hits a Citizen as she turns and raises the thicker material of her forearm mounted gun. My plasma bolt punches through easily and explodes the capacitor before carrying on into her neck. That… That's not survivable. Her jaw and neck have been incinerated and her brain's been cooked.

The rest begin to leave the hull, trying to either close the distance with me or get the hull between themselves and my gun construct.

...No big loss, mind. Even if you're trying to be less callous about killing... Some people do deserve it.

Come.

Alright, ship's making best time down, and with two ships on hand the point defences should actually be able to defend the exterior of the tower.

Which just leaves the raiders inside.

Charging Citizen one. I take x-ionised blades out of subspace and wince when I realise that I left the others on the Citizenry mothership. They probably can't reverse engineer the process from a few examples, but that's not a sure thing. Stab through the flesh of her bare arms and into her nerves. The super-sharp nature of x-ionised knives mean that she'll barely feel the stabs, but she can't aim her weapons any longer as her arms fall nervelessly to her sides. Fixable by space age medicine, but permanent otherwise.

Really should consider adding an anti-tamper self-destruct or something if you're just going to forget them like that. A small crumbler charge or something in the hilt, maybe.

Charging Citizen two-. The point defences behind her fire. Most of the shots hit her armour and -without an Ascendant to reinforce them- do nothing, but one hits her upper left arm and burns through the flesh. She instinctively jerks away from the source of the injury, which is why my blades cut her arms off rather than rendering them nerveless.

She drops, the sudden loss of blood pressure from the vigorous arterial blood expulsion causing her to lose consciousness. It's almost beautiful, seen from the air and in three dimensions as she spins around. Like liquid wings.

...I suppose you could say she's been decisively disarmed.

I redirect my constructs, shoving her onto the tower's upper gantry as I cauterise her blood vessels. She probably won't die, and we can always make her new arms.

Third Citizen-. Already closed the distance. I punch as she comes in with her short sword, hitting her in the face hard enough to concuss her, fracture her nose, teeth, jaw and vertebrae. She joins Amanda Armless on the gantry as I fly up to get a clear shot against the Citizens hiding behind the ship.

The joy of power armour. Even simple blows are nasty.

PHZP!

Their shots fly past me as I reposition, considering-.

No doubt frustrating them to no end. I doubt they're used to any foe this mobile.

Animals.

I blink as knowledge… That was technically in my head already pushes itself to the front of my mind. Huh. A really nasty fungal spore that will do a number on the humanoid respiratory system. And the Citizenry don't wear ABC protection. I can… Fabricate that.

Huh. Is this the first time we've seen on of OL's Construct Lanterns speak for itself?

And I can make it live. Release me.

Don't make me regret this, fungoid. I don't want them dead.

Bah. Dead animals are fodder for growth... But live ones are better.

The longer they live, the longer we feed.

As you like.

The fungoid Construct Lantern leaves my ring and lunges upwards through the air, a barely visible trail of highly dangerous spores following in his wake. A moment later and it adds construct leaf fronds to blow it towards the Citizens.

See, now this is how smart and powerful Construct Lanterns should be. I wonder how much of that is because of OL expecting it to be?

Right, that's handled. Now I can-.
Die.
Astarte's shots catch me straight in the chest, burning through my defences and leaving me gasping for breath!

Ah, the end-boss of the scenario has arrived. Time to kick some ass.

Looks like things are about to get messier. This is not going to be an easy fight for OL, unlike the battle the Renegade had with her. I expect she'll be throwing Godspeech at him while attacking, while he tries to dodge and blast her... And that's assuming her guards don't try to get involved in the fight too. Though Gary seems to have them under control for now...

Vaermina · Dec 20, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
Animals.

I blink as knowledge… That was technically in my head already pushes itself to the front of my mind. Huh. A really nasty fungal spore that will do a number on the humanoid respiratory system. And the Citizenry don't wear ABC protection. I can… Fabricate that.

That's not a good thing...

Rebu · Dec 20, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
And the Citizenry don't wear ABC protection

I'm guessing you meant NBC? Or did the acronym change when I wasn't looking?

Signaller · Dec 20, 2022

Can construct lanterns create second-order construct lanterns?

BR549 · Dec 20, 2022

Rebu said:
I'm guessing you meant NBC? Or did the acronym change when I wasn't looking?

It never was NBC in his country.

NBC = Nuclear, Biological, Chemical = the one we Colonials are used to.

CBRN = Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear = the current Britishism

ABC = Atomic, Biological, Chemical = the old Britishism.

Abandoned Account · Dec 20, 2022

Signaller said:
Can construct lanterns create second-order construct lanterns?

I know the Praexis Demon could reproduce and create new construct-lanterns if that's what you mean. I also know it was stated in "Contingency" that construct-lanterns could also assimilate beings themselves.

Mr Zoat · Dec 20, 2022

BlueMangoAdea said:
Parasites don't want their hosts to die. Not until they reproduce.

It would be more true to say that it's not in their individual interest to kill their host. As a system, both long term infection and short term infection have their merits.

Darko said:
"but I'd have"
It's missing something between "of" and "because"

Thank you, corrected.

Remove "already"

I think that's correct?

BR549 said:
It never was NBC in his country.

NBC = Nuclear, Biological, Chemical = the one we Colonials are used to.

CBRN = Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear = the current Britishim

ABC = Atomic, Biological, Chemical = the old Britishism.

Mr Zoat · Dec 20, 2022

Signaller said:
Can construct lanterns create second-order construct lanterns?

No, but they can create more first order ones.

Lord Ernest · Dec 20, 2022

Mr Zoat said:

Hey, honest question, although I don't know if it's impolite to ask. So does the anthem change now? You know, swap the Queen with King in the lyrics? It was my prevailing thought everytime England played in the WC and I just remembered to ask.

Mr Zoat · Dec 20, 2022

Lord Ernest said:
Hey, honest question, although I don't know if it's impolite to ask. So does the anthem change now? You know, swap the Queen with King in the lyrics? It was my prevailing thought everytime England played in the WC and I just remembered to ask.

Yes, but she was in the job so long that it's difficult to remember that she's not in it any longer. It's like, you know Bill Gates isn't running Microsoft any longer, but...

Duke Long · Dec 20, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
Point defence guns are trying to hit them, but they're not designed for people attacking the ship with melee weapons are the Citizens are intelligent enough to stay out of their arc of fire.

'and the Citizens'

Mr Zoat said:
From the scans I'm getting of the interior of the building, the Citizens opens a boom tube on one of the lower floors and then attacked upwards-.

'opened'

Mr Zoat said:
They're just got Astarte and maybe Theana, though if I remember correctly they don't generally let her out.

'They've'

Mr Zoat said:
Strong-willed though the citizens are, when you nerve fibres are literally cooked there isn't much you can do to keep fighting.

'Citizens'?
'when your nerve'

rkyeun · Dec 20, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
Yes, but she was in the job so long that it's difficult to remember that she's not in it any longer. It's like, you know Bill Gates isn't running Microsoft any longer, but...

Have you considered a thanatocracy? It's worked great for North Korea and would really put the pretender in his place.

Darko · Dec 20, 2022

Chojin Patriarch said:
Huh. Is this the first time we've seen on of OL's Construct Lanterns speak for itself?

Teekl could talk and Hell Nabu was fairly talkative.

Mr Zoat · Dec 20, 2022

Duke Long said:
'and the Citizens'
'opened'
'They've'
'when your nerve'

Thank you, corrected.

'Citizens'?

Either work fine, I think.

rkyeun said:
Have you considered a thanatocracy? It's worked great for North Korea and would really put the pretender in his place.

If we changed the system just because something else would be better then we'd be no better than foreigners.

DeathReaperZ · Dec 20, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
She drops, the sudden loss of blood pressure from the vigorous arterial blood expulsion causing her to lose consciousness. It's almost beautiful, seen from the air and in three dimensions as she spins around. Like liquid wings.

Starting to wonder if he actually wants to seem more callous or insane.

Duke Long · Dec 20, 2022

DeathReaperZ said:
Starting to wonder if he actually wants to seem more callous or insane.

I know, right? Only 'almost' beautiful? I guess he's in too much of a rush to appreciate it.

rkyeun · Dec 21, 2022

Mr Zoat said:
If we changed the system just because something else would be better then we'd be no better than foreigners.

That's a very strange way to call yourself inferior to foreigners.

Coda · Dec 21, 2022

Lord Ernest said:
everytime England played in the WC

The WC is no place for playing. Do your business, wash your hands, and get out!

Lord Ernest · Dec 21, 2022

Coda said:
The WC is no place for playing. Do your business, wash your hands, and get out!

I'm... sorry? I think my comprehension failed me there...

Stsword · Dec 21, 2022

Lord Ernest said:
I'm... sorry? I think my comprehension failed me there...

Water Closet. WC.

Also known as a bathroom, restroom, the john, etc.

Prince Charon · Dec 21, 2022

Coda said:
The WC is no place for playing. Do your business, wash your hands, and get out!

A lot of teenagers find it very convenient for playing, due to the privacy factor that they may have problems getting elsewhere.

Mr Zoat · Dec 21, 2022

1st January 2013
22:13 GMT

And there go my boobs. Chest… Uaargh. Yeah, that shot a nice hole through my construct, force fields, armour and flesh. Heart-. Yeah, lost my heart, as well as a lot of lung and my oesophagus. Fortunately, it looks like whatever the gun fires is a purely straight line thing, rather than crawling though my body to hit every vital organ. So my brain's still fine. Or maybe she doesn't realise that I have one? This armour doesn't have a distinct head unit after all.

I'm falling. Good, playing possum in a situation like this is a reasonable ploy, because if my defences don't work the only thing I've got to fall back on is phasing and that's a lot easier to bypass than the rest.

Ring, image of Astarte?

The armour is clearly a New God riff on what the rest of her people are wearing, with the helmet being replaced with a diadem. New God technology, so it'll probably work fine on the areas it's not covering. The forearm weapons are blasters rather than being plasma-based, which explains why she was able to bypass…

Ugh, Hippolyta's been sandbagging, hasn't she? Is Ares Astarte's father, too? Might explain-.

Right. Regenerate my chest… Yes, just repair, I'll redesign later. Have to evade attacks, rather than tough them out. Restore armour and start dodging at once just in case.

How to actually attack her?

Fungoid, go after her.

"One animal is much like another, as far as I'm concerned."

Where even-? The tower. And I'm going to assume from the fact that she is having to fight the defenders that she can't just blast her way through the New God armour that the Ascendants are wearing.

I scan the lower levels of the tower, and… Yes, a couple of dead Ascendants.

Well, there's no point in wearing armour that I know doesn't work. Construct armour should be able to handle the other weapons. I fly downwards, forming a crumbler ram to crumble a circle out of the wall and slam into the Citizenry's rearguard.

Literally.

It turns out that in addition to properly phased plasma, their armour also doesn't stop crumbler fields.

My construct armour takes fire from the three survivors, and I feel reassured that it takes the hits without much difficulty.

I lash out with filament cluster constructs, and two respond by diving to evade and the third slashes at the cluster coming at her with a glowing short sword. The short sword works best, cutting through about 80% of the oncoming filaments. It doesn't make much difference as I only need one to tag her for a shock crown, but it does to show that evading isn't always the best option as the other two are hit by all of the filaments I send at them.

Right. Take their weapons, send them to subspace. Nerve impulse suppression collar, slap that around their unwisely exposed necks. The version with the anti-sabotage decapitation charge. Now… Yes, they've shut down the boom tube and the next closest squad are several floors up.

I step

out of my armour and grab the two Ascendant corpses. The armour… It's not going to give me complete coverage, but it'll be better than nothing. Muttering a prayer to Hades, I strip the dead of their armour and strap it onto my own body. And… Each of them get an obol in the mouth, which probably won't matter, but is appropriate and respectful, especially if I'm stealing their soul-bound equipment.

And now…

I feel the shape of my desires, the fabric of reality flexing in response to the orange light within me. I feel the networks of desire I'm not even touching respond to my actions, reshaping themselves without requiring my direction. I feel myself partially material and partially in the Honden of Avarice, existing as an aetheric creature.

That… Seems to be working. Faintly-glowing tron lines, and… It's easy enough to move in. Makes my breasts more apparent than the fully enclosed power armour, but…

Just ignore it.

For a moment I consider getting back inside my power armour and using this as an undersuit, but I just don't think it adds anything.

I fly-

Ooh, that's interesting. Flying by ring power feels easier and more responsive. It's like I'm… More aware of the universe around me without specifically telling my rings to feed me that information.

-up the tower, construct armour forming around me. The ship is moving away from the tower, training its guns on the tower but not actually firing. Do the crew know about the ritual? How much of the tower-?

The attackers aren't destroying the New God systems in the tower's structure. Are they-?

There are many more Ascendants on the planet than are in New Othrys. The logical thing to do would have been to boom tube directly into the ritual space, unless they couldn't because it's shielded. With the power boost from the Seeds, Sparta or Astarte could overwhelm the system… Broadcast her power over the whole planet. Or just override anything that might stop them boom tubing out. At the same time, I can't just tell them to wreck the tower because Athyns wants to do the same but for our side.

Astarte is two floors down, battering the last set of defenders between her and her goal, their New God shields barely able to block the hail of plasma coming up at-.

For a second, Astarte locks eyes with me through the wall evade!
Die.
Ow! Right in the-! Boobs again! Armour took it, and… Stayed whole, but it's visibly damaged and I'm seeing the downside of the extra erogenous zones. Stings.

Destructive pulse.

My armour shimmers as the orange bolt fires back along the path taken by Astarte's blaster shot, the woman herself evading it easily with a sidestep she barely seems to think about. Three thousand years worth of experience and this is all she does with it.

Destructive pulses.

I fire a barrage, orange bolts punching through the walls and slamming into the Citizens, bursting apart their armour and flesh.
Die.
Astartes takes another shot at me, so I try to intercept it with my own. It's… Partially successful, repeated destructive pulse hits eating away at her blaster bolt until what hits my armour is barely a fart. Grinning, I focus fire on Astarte and force her away from the staircase, fire from the defenders causing a crossfire. And since they're Ascendants, she can't just tank it on her armour.
Die And Be Damned!
She makes her choice and backs up towards the far wall, letting the defenders hit her in exchange for getting more shots off at me. She's moving her arm around to change the angle, but I'm in the air and moving slightly to intercept a gun that fires more slowly than I do is no real hardship. She's-.

Wait, where's Spa-?

"MINEIT'SMINE!" "MINE!"

Sparta throws the bodies of fallen Citizens at the distracted guards and then throws herself at them. The bodies only block a couple of shots but Sparta doesn't even notice the burns on her skin as she throws herself at them in a frenzy. Astarte switches targets, managing to hit a guard who was trying to fight Sparta off in the head and creating an opening for her. Sparta charges past them, a New God mace appearing in her hand as she assaults the fortified door protecting the ritual space. Astarte switches target again, shooting the wall behind her with a wide beam shot before throwing herself out. I fly into the building, trying to-.

BOOM!

Through the hole in the building I watch Aramis spit out an ice cube.

"Hey there sugar plum. Miss me?"

Chojin Patriarch · Dec 21, 2022

A few bits of godspeech, all in a blob, but one of them is kinda significant...

For a second, Astarte locks eyes with me through the wall evade!
Die.
Ow! Right in the-! Boobs again! Armour took it, and… Stayed whole, but it's visibly damaged and I'm seeing the downside of the extra erogenous zones. Stings.

Destructive pulse.

My armour shimmers as the orange bolt fires back along the path taken by Astarte's blaster shot, the woman herself evading it easily with a sidestep she barely seems to think about. Three thousand years worth of experience and this is all she does with it.

Destructive pulses.

I fire a barrage, orange bolts punching through the walls and slamming into the Citizens, bursting apart their armour and flesh.
Die.
Astartes takes another shot at me, so I try to intercept it with my own. It's… Partially successful, repeated destructive pulse hits eating away at her blaster bolt until what hits my armour is barely a fart. Grinning, I focus fire on Astarte and force her away from the staircase, fire from the defenders causing a crossfire. And since they're Ascendants, she can't just tank it on her armour.
Die And Be Damned!
She makes her choice and backs up towards the far wall, letting the defenders hit her in exchange for getting more shots off at me. She's moving her arm around to change the angle, but I'm in the air and moving slightly to intercept a gun that fires more slowly than I do is no real hardship. She's-.

Wait, where's Spa-?

"MINEIT'SMINE!" "MINE!"

...Bad news, that ain't OL at the end...

With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

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hey, little Anna, you're the one

Know what you're doing yet?

This is filth! FILTH!!

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