Chojin Patriarch
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Oof, the Shadows getting awful touchy-feely. Thankfully, OL has lots of melee options that should be effective against them. Best option, though would be not being in melee range in the first place. Too late to get away now, though, or so it seems...16th September 2012
17:24 GMT -2
"How's you sense of-?"
Two great hands made of shadows close in on either side of me. Ah. Large crumbler gauntlet constructs and punch and no, okay, grab?
Hopefully whoever's behind the shadows is having the same kind of mental feedback that Lanterns get when you smack their constructs with Crumblers. Which might cause them to let up enough to get the dodge out of Hell."Distance? We're not in-"
Grabbing and overcharging the crumbler system appears to disrupt the formation of giant hands. It's even making the faces a bit blurry. But they're not going away, and I don't think I'm doing any actual damage like this.
Urgh. I pity any child Clark has someday, because his Dad Joke skills are as super as the rest of him...
Might be time to start turning up the heat, Supes. Holding back won't help you here.Superman looks around, firing short bursts of heat vision in all directions, possibly attempting to illuminate the area and find a source.
"-worse than the-"
At least they aren't going for his pants. Last thing anyone needs are those kind of tentacles...No luck, and now the tentacle mouths are wrapping around his legs and chest. They don't seem to be squeezing, but they are impeding his movement.
"-teeth."
Maybe sonar would help? Or is the Ring already running that only to find no solid masses to ping off?Making sense of what's happening with no many translucent phantasms appearing in the blackness isn't easy, but-. Blade!
"You've got-"
Well, that's lucky. Seems like the shadows aren't being uniformly controlled, or whoever's in charge simply doesn't care.I generate a shield construct in the way of the approaching spear made of shadow, but it punches through! Superman spots my construct and pulls himself aside, narrowly dodging and causing it to slice the tentacles binding his legs in half.
"-armour."
...Honestly, that might work. A whirlpool of turbulent water might help to break up the mass of shadow a little, let them get their bearing.
Fascinating. Simple dismissal of the cut parts, or is the shadow-user actually finding himself unable to rebuild them?I take x-ionised knives out of subspace and try using them on the shadow tentacles. It… Sort of works. I cut them apart and they don't just reform, but it doesn't stop more appearing.
"Is that a serious suggestion?"
The joy of trying to fight someone with superspeed. Presumably whoever's in there isn't able to think quickly enough.Multiple giant blades thrust towards Superman and he dances through then, striking the flat of each with his fists as he passes.
"Is that?"
Eh, a visit to the Honden might be a bad idea around here. The local Ophidian might take exception to a stranger coming into her place. And every other method is kind of reliant on navigation...He grabs a broken blade tip and hurls it at an oncoming shaft. Both crack and fracture before merging with the background blackness.
"You don't have some kind of portal?"
Hopefully the bad guy's getting tired? ...eh, probably not."Several. None I've tested in conditions remotely similar to these."
The faces are swimming in and out of focus. I send a crumbler gauntlet construct at one of them, but again, not enough effect to get excited about.
That's putting it mildly."How about the Ophidian?"
"Parallel universe. Might work, might get the local one and don't really want them exposed to demon magic. Last time I did, I became rather brusque."
After all, most of his constructs are low-intensity. His shielding constructs are probably the ones being pushed hardest..."Brusque? I'd hate to see that. How are you doing for ring power?"
"A long way from worrying."
Damn, they're too smart to leave an obvious weak point (Of course it wouldn't be glowing, being shadow...)Ring, analysis. Is there one primary head? One head which always starts the facial expression?
No observed primary head.
...Right, the Earth-16 League don't know Shade's been sandbagging for fun, do they?"I can try assimilating it?"
"Isn't The Shade weak against sunlight?"
Huh, and you're going to use it.. as a flash-bang? I suppose it'll super-charge you too, as a handy side-effect."It negates his obtenebration, yes. It doesn't actually hurt him."
"Glad to hear it." He reaches into his belt pouch and pulls out a small crystal. "Har-Zod called this a sunstone."
Dangit, OL, this is not the time to be that RPG player. You know, the one who doesn't use the rare and unique item because it's rare and unique?"If it's unique, don't-"
He throws it back the way we came, then fires a burst of heat vision at it!
Ah, the source of the darkness? The caster in charge? Snaggit!Blinding white light blasts outwards, the blackness vanishing and normal water reappearing as it goes. I blink as the sudden change happens faster than my ring can adapt to, the blur causing-.
Something-. There.
And it looks like the Sunstone has made the shadows wary. I'm impressed.I rocket forward, grabbing the figure before putting a bubble around him and rocketing back to Superman. The light burst has faded and the shadows are creeping back, though nothing like as quickly as they arrived.
"Who is it?"
Huh. Now, did he flee here after Demon Superman took over, or is he...
Well, shit. What a time for Supes to not be wearing his usual top, huh?Behind his smoked glasses his eyes snap open, and-
"You do not bear the mark!"
Don't worry, he doesn't need it as much as you think he does. Joy of being a portal into an eldritch abyss, that just happens to look human out of habit.-the shadows are coming back and mage slayer round through the bubble and shoot him in the head!
"Uh-!"
Evidently the focus of the corrupting spell is the 'S'-symbol on the forehead. Good to know, even if you can't really use the same method against other more squishy sufferers.Because with all this Shadowland influence around I'm hoping that there isn't quite as much demon magic around here as there is everywhere else. And… Yes, shadows move between the top and bottom of his mouth and return its dimensions to normal, and there's a little more of him in his eyes-. He tries focusing on me.
"You…"
Toss another mage-slayer into his head? Or is this going to require something more drastic?"Mister Swift?"
A swarm of skulls made of shadows batter into the inner surface of the bubble!
Yes, because that wasn't creepy enough yet. Thank you."You do not bear the mark!"
And the faces are back.
"Mark." / "Mark." / "Mark." / "Mark."
Welp, there goes the stockpile. But sometimes, you just gotta blow the good stuff on a mini-boss...
The first to make him fully corporeal...He fires a line of heat vision down a row of faces as he tosses it to me, and I grab it with a construct. One railgun round for that, one with a tiny piece of one of Angela's discarded feathers and hope that he was serious about that whole 'God wants nothing to do with me' line.
Bubble down fire sunstone shield eyes-
And the second to... Purify him? That or put him down. But I don't see OL wasting a potential ally that easily.
...Ouch. Yeah, that'll leave a mark. Hopefully not one of Cain, mind."AAGH!"
Gold fire roars over his body, causing him to shudder-. Oh whoops, that's a light source. Hs skin burns and blisters as the demonic magic is -hopefully- purged from him. The Shadowland immigrants around us fall away and fade, and as I look upwards I see the ocean's surface.
Probably wishing he had the strength to swear at you. Because I bet that really, really stung. Like, 'paper-cut dipped in lemon-juice' painful... Could have been worse, I could have said 'stepping on a LEGO 2x4 brick in the dark'.."H-aa. H-aa. H-aaa."
Mr. Swift is… Not is good health, but there's no sign of demonic activity and his powers appear to be under control. He weakly opens his eyes, makes momentary eye contact with me, then loses consciousness.
...Because sometimes, the mini-boss can be recruited.
Well, that's a potential game-changer. I assume Swift is in charge, or they'd look like a horrible little cajun dwarf. Though I shudder to imagine the state of his mind. How long was he stuck like that, I wonder? And how have the O'Dare family of Opal City fared, since his lady love of that era was a part of it... I fear that the Shade may be in for some more pain, of the emotional kind...