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

Wonder what would happen if the jcirrent ustice league accepted Titan power ups.

Who would get what?

Aquaman gets Oceanus.

Superman gets the sky so Uranos or maybe sun so maybe Helios.

Wonder woman is already a zeus baby

Batman gets nyx as patron....


They'll be ruling the world so it maybe kinda fits.
Wonder Woman is Gaia's daughter, not Zeus's.
 
30th March 2013
00:58 GMT +2


Sharkteethserpentheaddodge!

I generate a shield as I lurch to the side, Kon and Mitchell evading in different directions as the giant thing lunges past us!
So something not entirely natural. Unless it's some ancient sea creature with plate-like dentition. And to be fair, around a place like this, a gateway into a realm of the dead, there's bound to be ghosts. Which might be even worse than a real creature.

Kon looks at me. **What was that?**

The neck-. Ah, isn't there..? And the head that lunged for us appears to have faded away. Mitchell tries a blast of heat vision, and then recoils as he discovered why that's a bad idea underwater as his entire body is enveloped in steam.
...A serpent head with no neck? There's a few mythological candidates, though fortunately the Medusa Head is not one of them. :p Wrong universe.

**Went through my shield.** Which I dismiss. **Alan?**

**Giant snake head with no neck? Yeah, I've got one o'those, too. Goes right through the constructs.**
Does the neck look burnt? No, wait... They burned the stump, not the severed head.

**Thana, what exactly did the Nazis-. West!**

I'm moving as Kon and Mitchell look westward, the snake head thing coming right at them again! Kon tries-. I tether Mitchell and pull him downwards out of its path as Kon glows with the light of Helios and swings at the swimming head with his right fist.
Probably one of the most useful attacks they have, given the association between Sunlight and purification of undeath. ;) Unless it's not a part of Helios' Blessing, but would he leave out something cool like that?

**Ah!**

His fist goes through, but from the way he jerks-. He's bleeding from small wounds all across his torso.
Oh, that's just cheating. You can't touch it, but its teeth can touch you?

**-summon?**

**Conner!**

M'gann swims towards him with a shout, but he raises his right hand to warn her off.
Don't do it, girl! You have even less Defence than he does.

**I didn't hit anything, but its teeth could still hurt me. Don't touch it.**

**Thana?**
Good, sharing useful intel even while injured. Good to see he's still got a level head on his shoulders.

**They didn't-. I mean, everything. They just tried to summon up the shades of the dead. But I don't know what that is.**

**Can you tell how strong it is?**
So this is something that came along after that incident. Though it happened something like seventy years ago, so that's plenty of time for someone to go fiddling about.

**It feel-. Strong, but it shouldn't be strong enough to threaten someone as powerful as you.**

**How sure are-**
So more likely, it's an echo of something truly powerful. So much so that even the barest shade is a threat to a divinely-blessed Hero.

It comes at us again, this time from.. down-east. Mitchell, Kon and M'gann all evade but I decide to use a magic-draining construct shield. Link it to my tattoos, and see how you like that.

From the way that it's still coming at me I'd guess that it doesn't-.
Doesn't even feel it, or doesn't like it? It'd be hard to tell, I think, without human emotional responses.

**Paul! Behind-**

I don't hesitates when I hear M'gann's mental voice. I shoot upwards immediately as a second agh!
Dangit, damn double-team bosses. Always one hitting you in the back while you fight the other. :mad: And this one probably scales to the party you bring too.

I'm not sure exactly-. Something sharp raked my left leg, and I'm bleeding from a nasty gash. Healing… Isn't working, which is… Probably due to the death magic rich environment. Shut down the veins manually by r-uh-h-hurrh-.

Yeah, death-. Death magic confirmed.
Well, that limits the number of culprits. Either something underowrldly-related, or Dark Druid has been nosing about...

[Head incoming]

I evade downwards as the first head-. Or maybe a third? Swims at us from the south. I shift my shield into a sword and swing it at its face. It-. Doesn't evade, and-. It flickers as it hits the sword, the construct shattering without really slowing it down. I'm not-. Sure if that actually hurt it, or-.
Ugh, anti-Construct protection. This just gets worse and worse. On the upside, he's getting a nice clear signal from M'gann.

**Thana!** Kon looks down towards the blue glow marking Alan's position. **This is where Herakles killed the hydra, right?**

**Close to here, yes.**
Well, shit. The Second Labour, huh? Thankfully, there's no sign of the main body, and these are disembodied. So they're not going to spawn more if you somehow defeat one.

**You know what a hydra's head looks like?**

**N-no, I never-. Oh gods.**
Yeah, I think it just registered just what OL meant by his question. And she probably has the best understanding of just how screwed they might be.

Oh gods yes. So every head he cut off before Iolaus started burning the stumps could be a separate shade.

**Ah…** I get a mental image of Donna preparing her lasso. **When you said that it didn't feel all that strong, were you talking about each head individually, or all of them together?**
Wait, Donna has a Lasso too? When'd she get that? It's been a while since she appeared on-screen, after all... And more importantly, what does it do?

**I only saw one head, so I-. Alan!**

**I see them. No need to fear. I've been fighting monsters-. Ah, well, not as long as some people you know, but longer than most.**
Not something like this, old man. Ghost hydra heads might just be a little more than even you can handle.

**Princess Diana made no mention of this. Other shades-.**

**Could it eat them? The same way-.**
A metaphorical devouring? Eating their essence to empower themselves?

I feel [disquiet] from Donna. **The way Hades does Erebos. Not-. Consuming, but draining their power with them still inside it.**

Mitchell is looks around with some concern. **Inside them.**
Well, at least you won't have to worry about an army of Shades... Just the giant untouchable dragon heads

I look around-. Eight of them this time.

**Eight up here.**
Let's hope they're not multiplying exponentially. The next pass could have sixteen...

M'gann grows extra eyes all over her body and grabs Kon while Mitchell jerks his head around at super speed. I… Ah, scans don't show me anything-. Assemble the pictures from my eyes in the ring and calculate move!

The first passes underneath me, probably aiming at Mitchell but neatly cutting me off from a downwards retreat. The next comes from my left-. They can pass through each other. Then above and down-right-. Dghu, from behind but that's going to miss anyway-.
The question is, are they moving with coordination, or just at random individual vectors?

Wait, that one-.

**They eat spilled blood!**
Oh, joy. And of course their attacks are like razor blades, so that their prey bleeds all the more.

The blood Kon spilled and the blood I spilled is no longer in the water. Ring scan stopped being able to detect it when the heads swam past. I-.

I roll as heads come in from left, right and front, with one passing just above me. Can't entirely evade, but if the teeth are where they look like they are-. Brr, moving through that one didn't feel pleasant, but I didn't pick up a new wound.
At least you don't count as hit unless the teeth actually touch you. The joy of small hitboxes. :p

I hear M'gann nervously laugh. **I wasn't trying to bleed, but I'll be extra careful now.**

**Alan, we need to go lower. If the gate still exists, I can force the shade back through.**
Risky, Thana. Going deeper means limiting your manoeuvrability in the depths.

**I don't-. I don't suppose you can just tell it to knock it off?**

Left-dodge. Left again. And-. A moment of space.
If someone could have done that when it was living, they wouldn't have needed to kill it. I doubt it's going to be any more tractable now.

I turn and try to reach out for its desires but all I hear are echoes and a force running in a groove.

And I'm a little worried about my tattoos absorbing death magic like this.
Too bad you couldn't have installed an off-switch or something. At best, you're stuck relying on protective charms against it.

**I'm trying that. It knows no authority!**

**I can't hear its thoughts.** M'gann looks around. **Should I be able to?**
If you could, I'd be even more worried. Given that said thoughts probably consist of 'hungry!', 'food!' and feed!'.

**Probably not.**

**Okay, slightly problem everybody. I'm trying to take Thana down but more heads just keep turning up. Can you distract them or something?**
Oh, no, they are multiplying. Or at least drawing the attention of more.

**Yes. Everyone, move away from me.**

Kon frowns, ducking and weaving around the heads that have scented his wound. **We can-.**
Honestly, all of them must smell like delicacies to the ghosts, with all of their unique mystical signatures. Two spectrum-empowered humans, a human-krypotinian-genomorph hybrid, a near-full-blooded kryptonian and a Martian? Thana probably seems mundane by comparison.

**Spontaneously generate more blood for yourself? No. Move.**

I reopen my wound and increase my blood pressure.
Dump so much blood that they eat themselves into food comas? Cocky plan. :V

Well, looks like someone really doesn't want people coming near that gateway, if they left something like this as a guard dog. The question is, if they back off, will the hydra heads calm down, or will they pursue until the intruders are dead? It makes me wonder if there's a history of mysterious disappearances around here, and if so, when they began...
 
Wait, Donna has a Lasso too? When'd she get that? It's been a while since she appeared on-screen, after all... And more importantly, what does it do?
She got it after Paul was able to confirm her origin. It's called the Lasso of Persuasion. It can compel those who are captured by it to answer questions of its wielder truthfully so long as the user's willpower is stronger.
 
So, some coffee comments.

1. the stuff in the pods is usually not the same as what's in instant coffee. The pods are ground coffee beans, and brew when you prepare the cup, and instant coffee is usually more already brewed coffee that has been dried and is ready to be rehydrated.

2. how to heat the water: When US-ians talk about a 'kettle' we usually mean something like this
q3101-17ss.jpg
. Or we use a pan to boil some water. Or some people use a microwave. Or folks who use a lot of hot water and have the kitchen space use an electric kettle.

Edit: If you want to know how folks make tea/coffee without an electric kettle, just ask "hey, how did the British make tea before electricity? Or how did South Americans make hot chocolate before electricity?" You get a container that can go on the fire, and you boil some water.
 
That should say 'hesitate'.
Thank you, corrected.
I don't remember brackets being used like this before. Is this new, or an error?
It was used in the amnesia episode, and a couple of times since. It indicates than an image is being sent, instead of words.
Wait, Donna has a Lasso too? When'd she get that? It's been a while since she appeared on-screen, after all... And more importantly, what does it do?
The Lasso of Persuasion. I think she's used it a grand total of once in this story. It lets her mind control anyone or anything she lassos, if she can win a willpower contest.
Yet another random encounter that is inexplicably immune to all of the vast range of abilities that OL and his many allies can use.
It's a ghost with no brain against a team of physical fighters and one telepath. It got a little hurt by Kon, but he got hurt more. It got a little hurt by the SI, but he's rightly wary about absorbing that much death magic.
 
Mr Zoat, since Match is helping out in this mission, is he now an official member of the Team? Or is he still only a part timer like Kara Zor-El?
 
Wonder Woman's heritage depends on the iteration.

In this story, as per YJ and New Earth continuity, Wonder Woman was made of clay. In this fic, and New Earth continuity which is where I assume Zoat got it from, that makes her of Gaea, because Gaea is all of the Earth in New Earth continuity. In NE continuity all the original Amazons were crafted from clay, actually. They could merge back with Gaea to heal and then pop up again when healthy.

Post Flashpoint the whole made from clay thing was a lie and she's one of Zeus's many byblows. Don't like that myself. Zeus probably has enough kids to have their own pride parades and conventions. Also the case in the DCEU.

In the DCAU she was made from clay but apparently Hades and Queen 'Lyta made her together presumably in a scene reminiscent of Ghost.

There's another continuity in which Wonder Woman is the child of Hercules.

And one I thought was nifty in which Diana was made from clay but her mother drugged the wine of the Olympians and then milked their blood to add it to the clay, so that Diana is arguably the daughter of all the Olympian gods.
 
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Ahhhhh, damn. Can't believe I actually caught up with this fic for the first time. This Anti-Life arc and the fallout alone have taken at LEAST a year or two, right?
 
He'd quite like to rescue his mother and he's capable enough to help.

But his mother was explicitly not on Themiscyra when it disappeared, and has been noted to be around since the anti-life started, so he's only rescuing at best his grandmother.
 
I think I've forgotten something. When was she last mentioned?

After the anti life appeared, it was mentioned themyscira vanished, and that Diana thought that it wasn't destroyed, just moved somewhere.

She also notably wasn't mentioned when they reached Themyscyira when trying to get to Melinoe
 
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As someone who has studied psychology, that's very much not what the Milgram study was about. Frankly, your conjecture just sounds like pop-psych at best
You're right... in our world. But the fic doesn't take place in our world. It takes place in a comic book world. And in a comic book world, a lot of pop-psych stuff is significantly more likely to ring true.
 
I honestly hadn't realised that the stuff in the pods was the same as the stuff in the jars of instant coffee.
Apparently it isn't, but my own answer is messed up because I got confused about what you were asking. The usual coffee machines that don't use the pods are the ones I'm used to, I've only seen the kegel pod machines a few times, and probably hadn't known what was up with them until reading Huttj509's post, above.
 
Unreal (part 8)
30th March 2013
01:03 GMT +2


My 'reserve' of life energy is quite a bit more than a normal person's these days. John and Clarice did an excellent job with my tattoos, and in much the same way that a magician will gradually improve their reserve capacity by using magic my tattoos effectively do the same. The rate is slower, but it's working literally every moment that I'm in a magic-rich environment.

So even as the blood enriched with my magical essence starts leaking out of my leg, I'm not especially worried. But I did speak too soon a moment ago. While a death magic aura is the most likely, it could just be a curse on the wound itself.

Drain.

No, still can't fix it, and… I'd much rather that Thana sent this death magic back to Erebos rather than try ingesting it myself.

Move. I need to leave a trail. Kon, Mitchell and M'gann are heading down, and though I'm not entirely sure why I suppose that any 'away from me' direction is as good as any other.

Or not. A head come up from below, forcing them to split apart. It's lined up on me too, so I dodge north. It tries changing its angle, but it doesn't seem-. A ghost should be able to turn on a sixpence as they're not really part of the physical world. Most don't because they're an echo of a person and so tend to do person-like things, but these are hydra-heads. That head is angling like a swimming animal changing the direction it's swimming in, which is why I'm able to avoid it relatively easily.

Did it-? Yes, it passed through the blood trail. Let's see-.

Two more, that's a start. Ring, use visual identification to try tracking individual heads. See how many there are in total.

Compliance.

And… I don't want to breach the surface because they might not follow, or they might follow and ravage eastern Greece, and neither of those is acceptable. Left-down, get a good taste of blood, yes-. Ring, did it accelerate, or was that just me?

Minor speed increase observed.

Right, deploy-. Ugh, don't have any-

Dodge up.

-aquatic drones in reserve. Fabricate, and-. Wait, what does a purple healing ray do to ghosts? No, drone, send it away and have it transmit the camera view to my ring. How far do the heads have to get before they fade?

Dodge down-left, giving it a whiff of blood.

Error.

For one terrifying moment I think my rings are about to conk out, but then I realise that it's talking about the drone. Why-? Because it can't see the ghosts, right. No significant magical presence, nothing to react to. Makes sense. I'd need-

Dodge down and west, coming a little quicker now.

-some sort of integrated scrying spell. Probably wouldn't be all that hard for a wizard with any familiarity with technology to do. Check my environment-. Five.

Dodge down down left down and stop as it tries to predict my movement and turns where it thinks I'm going to go, down right… Clear for a-. West as one tries to use the others as cover while it comes in from above.

And they all got a taste of my blood.

Okay, this lake isn't that big. I can't risk hugging the edge of the lake in case it turns out that they can swim through rock and earth. Which means that I'm pretty much stuck-.

Oh, here they come.

Stuck staying in the middle of the body of water so that I can see them coming and dodge properly.

**Donna, I just asked my ring about the hydra. You got any idea how accurate the myth is?**

**I think the crab was a metaphor and Herakles probably used Iolaus as bait, but it's probably accurate apart from that.**

**Including the thing about only one of the heads being immortal?**

**Maybe? I never fought a hydra. Why does it matter?**

**Paul once told me how important ritual funerals are. I was wondering if we were supposed to bury it.**

The drone idea is no good, but I might as well give the healing ray a try. It's not affected by water, so it-

Dodge up, then hard left and-. They're using each other as cover more. Ring?

Six individual heads identified.

Left… Ah, south, more. Move away from the huddle a little.

-should just be a matter of pointing and shooting.

I pull one off my harness-. Looks like they're all coming in from the west this time, trying to deprive me of the space to move between them. Up, up-. No, they're too fast. Okay, calculate the positions of the teeth and towards them, move between the eyes and the sides and-.

B-hur.

And stay behind them, see if that does anything. Follow follow-. They're accelerating away from me and I.. didn't think I was this far from the side of the… Lake.

**The lake does not appear to conform to normal spatial dimensions.**

Aim the purple ray emitter and fire.

The head hit stops accelerating immediately and begins thrashing in the water. Okay, it's doing something-.

**Paul?** Kon sounds worried. **A head coming at us just broke off its attack and started swimming upward.**

**You're clear?**

**Yeah, and I'm trying to find hydra bones, but-.**

**So you can do that without a distraction. I'll handle the-**

The wall of swimming heads in front of me blur and-. Pull back! They dissolved themselves and reformed! Looks like that angered the-. Animating spirit enough to forget how it swam in life. Leftdownfuuuuuck

**-heads.**

Backbackrightdown… Aaaah… Gap there. Ah. Prepare to step out, send a filament… Filaments everyway just in case I need to try trans-.

Uh.

Transitioning. Okay, send again… Their behaviour appears to have reverted, but there are a lot more than before.

Nineteen individual heads identified.

**Paul, the heads are back!** M'gann sounds decidedly worried. **We need-.**

I wince, start heading east to try and get a head start, and aim the purple healing ray. **Got it.**

I fire and fuuuuuuuck. Ring, are they bigger?

Confirmed.

Ah… I point at the closest, though that's a pretty near thing.

Assimilate. You're mine.

Orange bands lash out and pass through-. Tattoos, anchor it in my-!

The head jerks, it's neighbours slowing and aaaaghthatwasaterribleidea!

**I've got the head! Do we smash it, or-?**

Something is pulling me down, down, and my eyes are closing and I feel cold.

**Paul!**
 
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For one terrifying moment I think my rings are about to conk out, but then I realise that it's talking about the drone. Why-? Because it can't see the ghosts, right. No significant magical presence, nothing to react to. Makes sense. I'd need-
Italics are stuck on from this point.
 
30th March 2013
01:03 GMT +2


My 'reserve' of life energy is quite a bit more than a normal person's these days. John and Clarice did an excellent job with my tattoos, and in much the same way that a magician will gradually improve their reserve capacity by using magic my tattoos effectively do the same. The rate is slower, but it's working literally every moment that I'm in a magic-rich environment.

So even as the blood enriched with my magical essence starts leaking out of my leg, I'm not especially worried. But I did speak too soon a moment ago. While a death magic aura is the most likely, it could just be a curse on the wound itself.
I foresee endurance being an issue with this plan, even if he has a lot of life-force to throw around, since I doubt synthesised blood without that spice of life-force will work so well as bait. He's also got to watch out for that death-magic...

Drain.

No, still can't fix it, and… I'd much rather that Thana sent this death magic back to Erebos rather than try ingesting it myself.
Damn straight. After all, if it starts to stick to your soul, even respawning in a new body may not clear it out.

Move. I need to leave a trail. Kon, Mitchell and M'gann are heading down, and though I'm not entirely sure why I suppose that any 'away from me' direction is as good as any other.

Or not. A head come up from below, forcing them to split apart. It's lined up on me too, so I dodge north. It tries changing its angle, but it doesn't seem-. A ghost should be able to turn on a sixpence as they're not really part of the physical world. Most don't because they're an echo of a person and so tend to do person-like things, but these are hydra-heads. That head is angling like a swimming animal changing the direction it's swimming in, which is why I'm able to avoid it relatively easily.
Well, that's fortunate for you guys. Too bad they're not still attached to the original corpse, or they'd be limited in their reach.

Did it-? Yes, it pass through the blood trail. Let's see-.

Two more, that's a start. Ring, use visual identification to try tracking individual heads. See how many there are in total.
And hopefully those heads aren't paying attention to the others, then.

Compliance.

And… I don't want to breech the surface because they might not follow, or they might follow and ravage eastern Greece, and neither of those is acceptable. Left-down, get a good taste of blood, yes-. Ring, did it accelerate, or was that just me?
Exactly what I was worried about yesterday, yes. Best to keep to the water for now.

Minor speed increase observed.

Right, deploy-. Ugh, don't have any-
Hmm... But is it because they're feeding on his blood, or because they want more of it?

Dodge up.

-aquatic drones in reserve. Fabricate, and-. Wait, what does a purple healing ray do to ghosts? No, drone, send it away and have it transmit the camera view to my ring. How far do the heads have to get before they fade?
I mean, OL, how often do you operate underwater anyway? I mean, outside of visiting Atlantis, there was maybe one undersea operation, namely the Maltusian ship with the Burning Martian remnants?

Dodge down-left, giving it a whiff of blood.

Error.
Oh, that's not good! Ring, you really should try to clarify errors when you announce them!

For one terrifying moment I think my rings are about to conk out, but then I realise that it's talking about the drone. Why-? Because it can't see the ghosts, right. No significant magical presence, nothing to react to. Makes sense. I'd need-

Dodge down and west, coming a little quicker now.
Which kind of makes them even more terrifying, because that means they're practically invisible to non-living sight.

-some sort of integrated scrying spell. Probably wouldn't be all that hard for a wizard with any familiarity with technology to do. Check my environment-. Five.

Dodge down down left down and stop as it tries to predict my movement and turns where it thinks I'm going to go, down right… Clear for a-. West as one tries to use the others as cover while it comes in from above.
Ooh, pack tactics. And they can recognise simple patterns too.

And they all got a taste of my blood.

Okay, this lake isn't that big. I can't risk hugging the edge of the lake in case it turns out that they can swim through rock and earth. Which means that I'm pretty much stuck-.
That just makes them scarier. Let's hope they can only exist within the water...

Oh, here they come.

Stuck staying in the middle of the body of water so that I can see them coming and dodge properly.
Just be careful, your hitbox is a lot larger than theirs, which means they can and will try to box you in...

**Donna, I just asked my ring about the hydra. You got any idea how accurate the myth is?**

**I think the crab was a metaphor and Herakles probably used Iolaus as bait, but it's probably accurate apart from that.**
True, I don't see Hera of all people wanting to help him. And really, given the temperament of the DC Hercules, who didn't see the bait thing coming?

**Including the thing about only one of the heads being immortal?**

**Maybe? I never fought a hydra. Why does it matter?**
...Huh, that is a thing in the myth, that the one immortal head was severed and buried far away from the rest of the corpse... What would happen if they brought it back, or destroyed it somehow?

**Paul once told me how important rituals funerals are. I was wondering if we were supposed to bury it.**

The drone idea is no good, but I might as well give the healing ray a try. It's not affected by water, so it-
I don't think animals, even mythic ones like the Hydra, worked under the same rules as people in Greek myth. But who knows?

Dodge up, then hard left and-. They're using each other as cover more. Ring?

Six individual heads identified.
Six of how many total, though? Given that he'd spotted at least eight earlier, unless he was counting ones multiple times then.

Left… Ah, south, more. Move away from the huddle a little.

-should just be a matter of pointing and shooting.
Just watch any micro-biology in the water doesn't get a boost from it. Assuming it would, anyway.

I pull one off my harness-. Looks like they're all coming in from the west this time, trying to deprive me to the space to move between them. Up, up-. No, they're too fast. Okay, calculate the positions of the teeth and towards them, move between the eyes and the sides and-.

B-hur.
Good to see he's learned not to keep all his gear in subspace now.

And stay behind them, see if that does anything. Follow follow-. They're accelerating away from me and I.. didn't think I was this far from the side of the… Lake.

**The lake does not appear to conform to normal spatial dimensions.**
Oh, joy. Hopefully that's a property of the gateway, rather than the spirits, and that it'll go away once both things are dealt with.

Aim the purple ray emitter and fire.

The head hit stops accelerating immediately and begins thrashing in the water. Okay, it's doing something-.
Let's hope it's something useful, rather than say, making it grow a new body.

**Paul?** Kon sounds worried. **A head coming at us just broke off its attack and started swimming upward.**

**You're clear?**
Sounds like they are linked, and he just pissed them off.

**Yeah, and I'm trying to find hydra bones, but-.**

**So you can do that without a distraction. I'll handle the-.**
Right, then. That's a plan. Whether it works, we'll see.

The wall of swimming heads in front of me blur and-. Pull back! They dissolved themselves and reformed! Looks like that angered the-. Animating spirit enough to forget how it swam in life. Leftdownfuuuuuck

**-heads.**
Aw, shit. He just triggered the Enrage state.

Backbackrightdown… Aaaah… Gap there. Ah. Prepare to step out, send a filament… Filaments everyway just in case I need to try trans-.

Uh.
Careful, OL, you can't take too much of that ripping and tearing.

Transitioning. Okay, send again… Their behaviour appears to have reverted, but there are a lot more than before.

Nineteen individual heads identified.
The situation has escalated. :eek:

**Paul, the heads are back!** M'gann sounds decidedly worried. **We need-.**

I wince, start heading east to try and get a head start, and aim the purple healing ray. **Got it.**
The joy of being the tank when you're not a tank build, because of special encounter restrictions...

I fire and fuuuuuuuck. Ring, are they bigger?

Confirmed.

Ah… I point at the closest, thought that's a pretty near thing.
And I bet they aren't getting any prettier either.

Assimilate. You're mine.

Orange bands lash out and pass through-. Tattoos, anchor it in my-!
That sounds like a bad...

The head jerks, it's neighbours slowing and aaaaghthatwasaterribleidea!

**I've got the head! Do we smash it, or-?**
Oh, dear. :confused: Result of trying to assimilate something that's already dead (since demons are technically living things,) or... Did someone lay a trap into it just in case he turned up?

Something is pulling me down, down, and my eyes are closing and I feel cold.

**Paul!**
...I hope he's got a backup clone ready, or he might have to learn how to animate his own corpse.

Hopefully whatever they're doing with the Hydra's bones, they do it quick, before OL goes bye-bye. Because I doubt he's going to have an easy time respawning, what with all the death magic and a gateway into the Underworld right there. ...Worst case, he gets pulled into Erebus and gets some face-time with Hades while his team scramble to fix his body up to return to.
 
Ah… I point at the closest, thought that's a pretty near thing.

Assimilate. You're mine.

Orange bands lash out and pass through-. Tattoos, anchor it in my-!

The head jerks, it's neighbours slowing and aaaaghthatwasaterribleidea!

**I've got the head! Do we smash it, or-?**

Something is pulling me down, down, and my eyes are closing and I feel cold.

**Paul!**
There's no way he wouldn't know how bad connecting to anything associated with Death is for a Lantern.

Because he knows about the Black Light.

So this attempt is just pure stupidity.
 
There's no way he wouldn't know how bad connecting to anything associated with Death is for a Lantern.

Because he knows about the Black Light.

So this attempt is just pure stupidity.

To be fair, he did assimilate Gary the Rot Fungoid without any reprecussions..though, I suppose that Gary probably counted as a living being, he did have an association with death..or am I misunderstanding what the Rot is?
 
Private weapon ownership has become a lot more common since their invasion. Europe's resisting, naturally. Politicians there point out that conventional firearms didn't do much to Sheeda Lowborn due to them being invisible most of the time, and never did anything to their Highborn. As such, arming the civilian population wouldn't have improved their ability to fight and might have either caused the Sheeda to kill them rather than trying to capture them, or have made things harder for the police and military. And… Yes, they do have a point. I'm not hypocritical enough to say that private citizens shouldn't be armed, but the fact that there isn't any sort of training requirement in the US still makes me uncomfortable.

In the less… 'Staid' parts of the world, the governments had no chance against the overwhelming need of their citizens to protect themselves. Russia tried training people as army auxiliaries but there were just too many. They ended up with a network of state-sponsored gun clubs. China put the political commissars in each region in charge of organising People's Militia training, and it's actually quite a popular development with older communist party members. In other places people have been arming themselves as best they can, often in defiance of local law.

I could mass produce enough high-end infantry weapons to allow people to fight off most aliens in Sector 2814. But the problem is that weapons like that would also let them fight other humans. I don't know if I'm worrying needlessly; America and Russia hated each other for decades without nuking each other. Would a few million cold guns make Earth a more dangerous place to live when we've had the ability to scour it of life since the sixties and not used it? Or… Would the problem come from the fact that the people carrying them wouldn't be citizens of the two most powerful countries on Earth but rather decidedly less powerful places? A few countries with a lot to lose, versus two hundred countries without much to lose?

I thought that I squared that circle by getting hold of a L.E.G.I.O.N. fleet. Recruit a few hundred humans, let them gain seniority, and let them handle it. But basically everyone who applied was a government agent.
So, this was from way back during the aftermath of the Sheeda invasion.

I'm kind of failing to remember what happened to the LEGION fleet that had been near earth. Did they move?
I'm also vaguely interested in how all that rise in everyone wanting access to their own guns has interacted with the Anti-life and the aftermath of the anti-life.
I sort of wonder if the various peoples' militia groups in China may find themselves rallying around a revolutionary movement worshipping the White Light Entity as a locus of resistance against the government in the aftermath of the antilife. That'd be pretty strange.
 
Decay exists as an extant form of life, or so I am told.

Decay happens because of bacteria and/or fungi.

That actually got mentioned in a Swamp Thing story post flashpoint.

In an alternate future, Swamp Thing decided to destroy the Black/Rot.

He asked the elemental powers of the Grey (fungus) and the Divided (bacteria) to take over the duties of the Black/Rot, and then he asked the Metal (machines) to supervise them to make sure they don't get drunk with power and try to pull some Last of Us nonsense or something.
 
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