El!
El has been with the site for nearly two years now and has continued to prove her value. Currently, she is heading up our site event, Battle for Liberterram, on top of keeping up with her own personal plots.
CHARACTER
SPOTLIGHT
Peggy Carter!
Lux's posts are all wonderful to read. She has done a wonderful job of grasping the new universe and incorporating Peggy into it.
CHARACTER
SPOTLIGHT
Peter Parker!
It's good to see Spidey back on the site. Watching him deal with the universe shift in his own snarky way has been nothing short of entertaining.
THREAD
SPOTLIGHT
Eight O'Clock on the Dot!
El and Lux are making magic in this thread. Straight up fireworks, and the way they've played with drawing out the reveal is top class.
As the West Coast attack hits its stride, Chitauri have begun an assault on the East Coast as well. With SHIELD having focused the brunt of their strength on the West Coast, it is the heroes left on the East Coast that must take up arms against these forces.
The few SHIELD Agents on this coast are also armed with bullets that contain nanites that should be able to shut down both the biological and electronic systems of the Chitauri at once, they are more prepared for that threat than before, but the Chitauri have brought with them beasts that Earth has not seen before.
Guidelines:
Posting Order: @deadpool , @nessa , @taint , @jax
Official Occurrence: May 16th; mid-morning.
You are allowed to control as many enemies, allies, and civilians in your posts as you need to.
Event thread should take priority over other threads.
You will have three days to post once its your turn. If you miss, the next person can post. If you miss twice, your character may receive a more serious injury that will disqualify them from further phases.
Available Enemies:
Chitauri: Garden-variety Chitauri soldiers; the bioweapon crafted by Tony Stark and Bobbi Morse will work to shut them down. They are hive-minded. Armed with Chitauri guns or spears. (Approx. 300)
Leviathan: Large, flying, whale-like creatures built for destruction, the bioweapon is not effective on them due to their size. Armed with teeth and size. (Approx. 3)
Chitlian: Bulked-up Chitauri soldiers that are more machine than biological. The bioweapon will take them down for brief periods, but they do reboot the system. Stronger than regular Chitauri and exempt from the hive-mind. Armed with Chitauri guns and spears. (Approx. 150)
Available Allies:
New York Police: Armed only with their issued weapons, the police will mainly handle crowd control.
National Guard: Armed with the weapons of their trade, the National Guard is attempting to hold down the fort in DC, but could use assistance.
SHIELD Academy Members: With only basic training, they are not the most efficient agents, but they want to help.
The attack on the West Coast did its trick. With SHIELD's eye drawn away from home and the Avengers dispatched on the other end of the country, the nation was barely prepared for the attack on the East Coast. Though some of the National Guard was already mobilized for defense purposes, the military is less effectively outfitted for the threat it faces.
Emergency sirens wail throughout the entirety of New York City as the armies of Thanos move in. In a metropolis as sprawling and filled to the brim with people as the Big Apple, getting people off the street isn’t easy, but the men and women of the NYPD are certainly doing their best. It certainly helps that some of them have been through this exact scenario before. Members of the National Guard stationed in the city also help, bringing military-grade weapons to the fight. The last leg of defense in the city are the young men and women of the SHIELD Academy, and any remaining Agents left in range, bringing with them top-of-the line tech and weapons, as well as some of the best training around.
The final attack lands in Queens, spreading outward from the center of Citi Field - home of the New York Mets. All air traffic at La Guardia is at a total standstill - and has been ever since the first attacks hit the West Coast. Those who didn’t get a chance to leave, or were stranded in between flights, are rushing in and around the airport in search of safety while Air Marshals do what they can to help until help arrives.
The National Guard, NYPD, and the remnants of SHIELD are doing all that they can, but it’s quickly clear that it’s not enough…
"This is SO COOL!" Wade shouted, pressing his face against the glass of the office building as the alien forces began pouring from the stadium. He'd been on another job, some honest hired-gun work for once, when all hell started to break loose. "I mean, I heard this was going on across the country, but I thought those glory-hound Avengers were going to soak up all the action again! Can you believe it? There's another actual alien invasion happening! I get to play hero! Oh man, I've been waiting so long for this! Isn't it great!"
Wade turned from the window to the group he'd been talking to - not actually talking to himself for once. Of course, none of them responded, instead the group of six men in their very expensive suits just looked at him with wide eyes, a couple of them making muffled sounds around the gags he'd stuffed in their mouths. They were all tied to their rolling office chairs and gathered in the center of the room, acround a small cluster of Claymore mines that had been tied to each chair, with a string run to the pillar in the middle of the office in case any of them tried to roll away.
"Oh! Ohmygod, I'm sorry, you can't see ANYTHING from over there, can you? Come on, come on." He ran back over to where they all were, and started wheeling them to the window when they begain trying to scream through their gags. "Ha! Almost forgot, don't want that, do we?" He cut the lines, rolled them all right up against the glass, and clapped two of them on the shoulders, leaning in close between them. "Alright, now you boys sit tight, and enjoy the show. I'm going to go be a fucking superhero, and I'll be back to finish this whole blackmail thing we had going on later. Kaybye!"
He turned and walked away from the group, then pulled out one of his pistols and charged at the window, firing four shots into the reinforced glass to weaken it before he lowered his shoulder and crashed straight through the plate glass, throwing himself out into open space. It seemed a reckless move, like almost every one of his moves, but in fact he came out of the window right as one of the Chitauri's flying chariots was swooping past, and he landed right in the midst of the group on the rear of the machine. "Hey guys! I can't TELL you what a big fan I am, seriously! Woah!" One of them swung its weapon to catch him, but Wade ducked, grabbed the weapon, and used it to throw the alien into one of its allies, tossing both of them from the chariot.
"I mean, your work during the Battle of New York, just, WOW!" Another let out a shriek, but Wade silenced it with a pair of bullets in the head before kicking it away as well, then he turned to the last one and punched it square in the face. "Welcome to Earth. MAN I've always wanted to say that!" He put on his best (terrible) Will Smith voice for the first part before geeking out, and emptied two more cartidges into the alien before letting it fall. He drew a katana next and sliced through the tether that held the pilot to the controls, and shot him another few times - of course, making the chariot begin to veer off course and toward the overpass below.
"Woah! How did Black Widow do this last time?" Wade jumped up behind the dead driver, grabbing and trying to bring the chariot back into control. Apparently, he only succeeded in flipping the thing over all the way, falling off it and crashing himself through the windshield of a parked Taurus, while the chariot careened into the road surface and went tumbling end over end, flattening a pair of Chitilans who had been firing on a group of NYPD officers down the road.
"THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER!" Wade shouted from his landing spot, and rolled off the car and onto the roadbed, flicking shards of glass out of his leg. "WHERE'S IDRIS ELBA!? I need a speech for this shit! I'll accept Bill Pullman in a pinch!"
@nessa, @taint, @jax --- TIME FOR THE B TEAM TO SHINE. WHAT? WE'RE NOT THE B TEAM? NONSENSE, HAVE YOU SEEN MY COLLECTION OF TROPHIES? SO WHAT IF I STOLE THEM FROM CHILDREN!?
Of course, Nessa had heard the sirens, she wasn't deaf. However, she'd had a job to do. Never in a million years had she imagined that she and Wade would be working a job together. Their relationship wasn't what you'd call...conventional. but they were working on it. The two seemed to consistently be on the wrong side of each other, when he was bad, she was good and when she was bad, he was good. She'd finished the hack job just a few moments after the sirens went off and quickly made a bee line for the office upstairs where Wade was keeping everyone distracted. However, when she opened the door (locked of course but when had that ever stopped her?) and saw a line of terrified executives tied to their chairs and rolling about like helpless turtles with no Wade in sight she had to take a moment to calm down before she exploded and people died.
It was not one of her better qualities as Wade had informed her. Baby Steps Vanessa, Baby Steps.
Her image shifted slightly as she stalked to the broken out window to take in what was going on, the business attire and perfectly professional bun she'd been wearing (brunette obviously, rarely anyone noticed a brunette in glasses) shimmered away to reveal her favorite black cat suit and blue skin. Her red eyes narrowed as she spotted Wade prancing about down below and nearly getting himself killed trying to imitate a woman much smaller then he was he'd seen on the television during the last battle. Vanessa had been retired then and also had been more focused on her dying boyfriend then protecting the city from aliens. That was a heroes job and Vanessa really didn't much care for heroes, though she did love popping their ridiculous egos with push pins.
Pulling up the hood on her cat suit, she'd had cat ears added for effect, she let her white hair trail out of the hood, the slightly pink tinge contrasting with her skin. "Stop yellin or you're gonna draw attention to yourselves." She hissed to the men rolling about the office still laced with explosives. Instantly they stopped making noise so she could think properly. Wade was on a hero kick these days, so she was surprised he'd jumped in like a kid in a candy store, but she would be damned if he got to have all the fun on his own. This was probably the one time she wasn't getting paid for killing but it was also the one time no one would be breathing down her neck about how it was illegal either. Nessa hated labels, everyone got so offended these days.
She turned her attention up the street a bit to gauge the distance of the next alien taxi and then took a few steps away from the window to get a running start. Thankfully, she'd gone with her functional boots today and not the purely fashionable ones that made her ass look extra round. She counted to three and then took off for the window, drawing her daggers in the process and lept from the window right into the back of the alien vehicle. She made no attempt to take on the alien herself but merely cut through the cord tethering him to the vehicle and then promptly kicked him off with a boot to the rib cage.
Did they even have rib cages?
Leaping on the alien in the drivers seat, she plunged both daggers into his back and wrapped her legs around his middle for stability as she twisted the knives enough to make him turn the vehicle. For the record, it was much harder then Widow had made it look on the TV. MUCH HARDER. Still, she managed to steer it safely towards the ground so she could leap off onto the pavement without breaking a leg, but not before finishing off the alien. "Were you going to tell me that you were just gonna leave me up there?" She glared at Wade as she moved up to him and punched him in the shoulder as hard as she could, which was quite hard though not enough that Wade wouldn't come back from it shortly.
One of the Leviathans came careening around a corner down the street and her red eyes widened in pure shock at actually seeing one of the massive creatures up close. From a secret pocket on the inside of her cat suit, Nessa pulled an epi-pen. Well, it used to be an epi-pen, she had it altered and now it was the perfect quick release system containing enough of Wade's blood that she could copy him. The two had come up with the plan to keep her alive in case Wade wasn't around when she got herself in trouble but now looked to be the perfect time to not be her squishy self.
She pulled the cap off and jammed it into her leg, her red eyes sliding closed as she allowed her power to take over. In just a matter of moments Vanessa disappeared and a second Wade had replaced her. Being able to copy someone like she did, no one would be able to tell the two of them apart biologically. It brought new meaning to the phrase 'Playing With Yourself.' Though that also meant that now Nessa was privy to the swiss cheese that was Wade's brain. Which apparently included Alien Ass Kicking theme music.
"Idris Elba is busy guarding a rainbow. We need some bigger party favors. I've always wanted to steal a tank." NessaWade told RealWade. "Come on Good Twin, let's be heroes." She told him with a wink before stealing one of his Katanas and pulling her pistol to jump into the fray. That Leviathan was raining down Chitauri, they needed to take it out before there weren't any civilians left to protect. She really wished she had something bigger then her pistols, felt kind of like bringing a knife to a gun fight. Where was a rocket launcher when you needed one?
The first sign that Katya had realised that something was seriously wrong was when she had walked out of a coffee shop and felt something drip on her cheek. Wiping whatever it was from her cheek, she looked down at her gloved hand and saw red liquid on the striped wool. Frowning, she titled her head upwards and her jaw dropped open as she stared with open eyes as a stream of black started to stain the blue sky. Utterly without words, her big blue eyes followed the movements before she realised that this was something more than a simple show of military strength or a parade involving vintage airplanes. As what she could only describe as ‘freaky aliens’ soared around her, Katya ducked as one soared straight towards her. Dropping to her knees, she narrowly missed having her head taken off and panicked, scrambling towards a parked car and hiding behind it.
Clutching her heavy bag full of textbooks, she peeked timidly over the trunk of the car and eyed the thing that had tried to kill her as it eyed him. Swallowing as it approached her, she tried to think what to do as her knuckles tightened around the strap of her bag. She knew that with her deafness she was no good in a fight, years of play fighting with her siblings had proven that, but she was pretty sure this…thing…was going to ignore that and try to attack her, with the way it was stalking towards her. Looking down at her bag, she got an idea and scooted out from the car, then took off running. Looking behind her to make sure it chased her, she skidded in her boots around a corner and waited with held breath.
As the chitauri came stalking along looking for her, it passed her hiding spot and she lashed out with her bag at his head. With the element of surprise coupled with the incredibly heavy load, the bag was an effective weapon as it came crashing against its head, knocking it to the ground. Hitting it again and again out of sheer panic, Katya stopped only when it stopped twitching and stood there half horrified at what she had done, the body evidence she had killed someone or something. Grabbing her cell phone, she desperately typed a message to Jason for help and pressed send before she took a long deep breath.
Not hearing the second alien come up behind her, she screamed as it threw her to the ground and rolled onto her back. Staring up at the horrible thing before her, she grabbed for her bag but found it out of reach. As the chitauri reached for his weapon, Katya kicked at his legs in panic and brought him down, scrambling to her feet and running for her satchel. Pulling it up by the strap, she started to twirl it in front of her as a shield , throwing it at the second ones head then pulling it back each time, a bit like a yoyo. Eventually succeeding in taking it down, she stood there triumphant but covered in dirt and stains. Looping the bag onto her shoulder, Katya’s eyes fell upon whatever the weapon this thing had and she approached tentatively, bending down to pick it up. It was a little heavy but she thought she could carry it, maybe. Holding what looked like a handle, her eyes roamed for the trigger and pressed what she thought it could be. Her eyes widened as it fired something out of the end, before she headed off back the way she had come, carrying the gun thing.
Seeing explosions up ahead and cars move, she ran that way and found a small group of people running towards her. Waving, she yelled as loud as she could. “Come! Get off street, is not safe! Come with me!”
Ushering them behind her, she led them to a nearby building and poked her head in to see if the café was empty and safe. Finding it deserted, she waved them in. “We stay here, yes?” she instructed then looked the group of eight over carefully. “Injured? Hurt?”
As one girl nodded, covered in blood, Katya yanked off her gloves and knelt down. Taking the arm in her hands, she closed her eyes as her power flowed through her and into the injuries, the blood disappearing and the wounds closing up. Ignoring the replicated wounds on her, she opened her eyes and smiled reassuringly.
“There, all better,” she spoke. “Others hurt?”
Tending to the wounded in her group, she could feel herself growing more and more tired but struggled on. Once everyone was healed, she stood at the door with the alien gun thing and searched the roads nearby with her eyes in case anyone or anything came near them.
Jackson, for a time, was unaware that there was even an invasion happening. The way his day started, he had decided - of course - to go for a jog, but to add up a bit to it. To discipline his body, he decided to jog while carrying all of his equipment - sword, uniform, and all - on his back in a new double-strapped guitar case he'd gotten. To discipline his mind, he made an effort to block out worldly distractions - he was conscious enough to note people and make his way around them, but the fact that everyone was glued to their phones just seemed normal, didn't it?
His run had taken him to Queens, and it was when he'd gotten decently into the borough that the attacks hit New York. He'd run pretty far that day, and this seemed like a decent stopping point - his one regret was that he probably wouldn't be able to find his brand new guitar case once this was all over.
He ducked into an alleyway as soon as he saw the first of the invasion, knowing that he was going to need to add to whatever resistance was put up. As he changed, he actually decided to pull out his phone and check the news - the Avengers were on the other side of the country, so it looked like it was up to Jackson and whatever superhumans were left in New York to protect it, which... Were probably enough, considering he'd come here specifically because it was frequented by those sorts of people.
But boy, oh boy, what he wouldn't give for some actual super-powers in this situation. Sure, people made their jokes about Hawkeye in that Battle of New York, but at least his weapon had given him some distance. Jackson had a sword, and martial arts skills - granted, his sword was very sharp, and cut through pretty much everything Jackson had ever tried to cut through, but it still didn't reach as far as an arrow would. He slid said sword into its sheath on the back of his uniform once he was all dressed up for the party, pulling up his face mask and setting his probably soon-to-be-gone guitar case against a dumpster. He walked over to the entrance of the alleyway, already hearing the fighting out on the streets. His heart was pounding and he hadn't even started fighting yet, so he had to calm himself - deep breaths, eyes closed. "Strength to act, to defend the defenseless, and strike down my enemies. Serenity to think before I act, to know who needs my protection, and to know my enemy. Today, I know my enemy - whatever Gods there may or may not be, grant me strength to defeat them."
Eyes snap open - for a split second, time slows, what's the target? A couple across the street with a big alien baring down on them, an older woman trapped in her car in the middle of the street with one of the troopers on the hood, and one - Right in front of him! A grey fist went towards Jackson's face, the shinobi twisting his form just quick enough to only be grazed by it instead of directly struck. He used the momentum of his dodge to counter attack, dropping down and outstretching a leg to sweep out the Chitauri's. It hit the ground, and Jackson was quick to send another kick into the side of its head, hopefully hard enough for a knockout, though he wasn't entirely sure how tough these things were.
He drew his sword now that he was in the thick of the fray, and dashed forward, tossing a couple of flashbang-pellets between the Chitlian and its targets, before stepping up onto the hood of the car with the Chitauri trooper, swinging his sword towards the alien's weapon. Whether or not he cut off the thing's hand - it looked like his arm went into the gun or something - he wasn't sure, and frankly, when these things were threatening so many other people? Jackson found he didn't care. The barrel-ish end of the gun fell to the ground, and Jackson followed up one cut with another, slashing at the alien's chest before kicking it off the car. He hopped off the hood and bashed in the passenger-side window of the car, reaching in and opening the door from the inside.
Now, the big one - Jackson turned towards the Darth Vader of Chitauri, more machine than... Alien? He gripped the hilt of his sword in both hands, charging towards the Chitlian with something akin to rage echoing in the should that escaped his throat. Somehow it helped Jackson add force to his strike - enough to drive the sword through the big guy's leg, aiming for any sort of joint gap in its armor. Once his sword was through - striking through the knee - Jackson pulled to the left, tearing through what flesh there was and bringing his sword back out of the invader's leg through the back of its knee. The lack of that muscle just made it all the easier for Jackson to spin-dodge a retaliation, position himself behind the Chitlian, and then kick out its leg and send it falling onto its back.
Jackson picked his foot up, and forgot a lot of the grace that came with the fighting styles he'd learned in his dozen-plus years with Kenzou as his sensei. Jackson stepped up onto the Chitlian's chest, using the foot closest the invader's head to stomp on its temple repeatedly until it stopped moving. It might have been dead - Jackson honestly couldn't tell with how much machinery had been built into its form. But if it really were more machine, than he hadn't really killed anything that wasn't already dead walking.
How many was that? Three aliens - three out of how many thousands, and already Jackson's breathing was heavy. He'd trained to fight humans - humans on steroids, in extreme cases, but still humans. He had armor to resist a few bullets, but these things had some sort of energy weapons, and they apparently had cyborg-troopers that were way tougher than the bigger guys he'd fought in Japan. What use he was gonna be, he had no idea - but he had to try. He turned to the pair that was getting attacked before, pointing towards the woman in the car. "Get her to shelter - all of you need to stay off the streets. If you can find a basement, go into it, bar the doors. Dunno much about these things, but I haven't seen anything come out of the ground yet, so -"
Jackson was cut off suddenly by one of the guys he'd rescued, just as a dull pain flared up on his arm. "Forget about us, are you alright? You're bleeding, man."
Apparently his dodge hadn't been as skillful as he thought - he had a cut right through his armor on his forearm. Didn't matter - had to keep fighting, and that wouldn't stop him. He waved off the concern, just motioning for them to do what he said before. That was when he heard the crash - and the yelling. Someone was actually happy about all of this? He looked in the direction of the voice and saw two people - a man and a woman, both in spandex. Good, backup - he started to make his way over to the pair when the woman became a man, and not just any man but the same man she'd been with before. Okay, then... Mutants. Awesome backup for him to have. "Hey, hold up - you have swords, I have a sword, what do you guys say to cutting some stuff together?"
End of the world meant one thing: all hands on deck. Jackson only hoped that this pair was like-minded in that respect.
"Oofah - oh there's the spleen, yeah okay." Wade muttered, cracking his back loudly - and probably actually putting a vertebrae or two back in place, now that he thought about it. Well, he wasn't exactly thinking about it, it just reminded him of the times he'd displaced other people's vertebrae, so, that probably was what it was. He wondered exactly how much these aliens had to worry about those things. Maybe he'd get a chance to find out! Not that he usually played 8th-grade-science-class with his enemies, but then there was a first time for everything. And sometimes a sixth.
"Hey, quit copying me." Wade called out when Vanessa jumped off another of the chariot things, and he didn't at all succeed in keeping a straight face while he said that. Considering it was kind of her thing - but then, the joke probably fell flat, considering how distracted he was by everything else that was going on in the city just now. "Aw, come on, you were gonna see eventually! Not like you could miss it, and and and - aliens! You know how long I've been waiting for this? I can't believe I left my flamethrower at home, I was so going to go all Ripley on these xenos."
The mercenary heard something behind them, and turned only about halfway before his pistol came up, and he put two in the skull of a chitauri that had just climbed up over the railing of the raised roadway. "Besiiiiiiides you were safer in there!" Before he could protest any more though, she'd used the Plan B vial he'd given her, and was stealing a sword. "Hey, don't run off with Butter!" he yelled, but then paused for a moment, tilting his head as he watched her - well, himself - run off toward the fight.
"I am so turned on right now." Of course, Nessa was still going to have to be more careful than he was - her supercharged regeneration would run out after a while, whereas Wade was basically the demon Energizer bunny, so long as there was any part of him left to regenerate from. Hopefully she wouldn't let his lambada cellular structure go to her head... where... well frankly it already was, if she was going to copy him that thoroughly. Gah... so many confusing impulses. And in the middle of it all, another guy with a swod jogged up, shouting something Wade really didn't quite hear over the sound of how awesome today was.
"Sword buddy!" he exclaimed all the same, throwing his arms up in greeting, before an energy blast slammed into the pavement next to him, and he let out an undignified yelp as he jumped to the side. As he landed though, he turned, pulled a grenade from his belt, popped the pin, and lobbed it. The grenade landed right in the bed of the passing chariot, which swerved around to try and go for another pass before exploding.
"AND THE CROWD GOES WILD! C'mon ninja guy, I'm gonna make Will Smith look like a fucking pussy. LEROOOOOOY JENKIIIIIIIIIIIIINS" There was another group of the aliens, leaping on their tethers from one of the huge Leviathans overhead, and Wade ran right at them, sliding his sword home again before he drew his second pistol, firing while he reloaded the other one single-handed. He might be crazy, but the Merc with a Mouth did have skills... One of the big mechanized creatures swung at him, and he dropped to his knees, leaning back as he slid under, firing up into its stomach and crotch the whole way.
"You may experience some discomfort after the procedure, but we promise, no little baby aliens after this." It turned, still on its feet, and swung at him, but Wade had moved already, grabbing a smaller chitauri and shoving it into the way of the swing - the result was satisfyingly gory, and Wade rolled under another swipe before grabbing one of the fallen rifles, shoving it into one of the holes he'd made in the Chitilan, and blowing a much larger hole out the other side. "Holy shit, these things are sweet!"
@taint --- I still figured you were away from the rest of us, but let me know if you want to meet up
Vanessa's only response to Wade's joke about copying him was to stick her tongue out at him before she did just the opposite and became him anyway. Once she was fully transformed into a perfect copy of Wade, her eyes narrowed at him as he said she had been safer up there. "Shut up and stab something." she told him, turning to run off. As he called after her she merely flipped him the bird over her shoulder before leaping over a car to stab a Chitauri on the other side and shoot his buddy who'd been standing next to him. Vanessa didn't believe in wasting bullets but it was hard to tell how many it would take on an Alien so she opted for old double tap routine from her Merc days. One in the head and one in the heart...did they have hearts? God she hoped so.
Pulling her sword free, she spun to stab the next in line. Though her mind was trying to come up with ways to take down the Leviathan still barreling down the street towards them. They needed some serious fire power on that thing, fire power she didn't have currently. Running back over to Wade, Nessa draped an arm around Jackson's shoulder as if they were old pals. "How you doin?" She asked, her tone of voice a spot on imitation of Joey Tribbiani. Might ahve had more impact if she wasn't a guy but either way she didn't really care. What effect it did have however would have been completely lost as she nearly doubled over laughing at Wade and the undignified scream he made at nearly being shot.
As Wade ran off, his attention span already on something else, Nessa turned to Jackson. "I'm Copycat, that's Deadpool, though I won't be offended if you can't keep it straight at the moment considering I'm technically Deadpool at the moment too." She introduced them and then turned to yell at Wade. "Hey Cheese-for-Brains, find me some bigger party favors before we become the Jonah to that whale!" She pointed to the Leviathan down the street bowling over cars like they were dust bunnies.
Ask and ye shall receive. "Oh look, the Cavalry decided to show up finally, where the hell have you guys been? And please tell me you saved some donuts for us." She called to the Military unit that came waltzing up the street like they were just running drills. Good news, they brought a tank, bad news...She had the urge to liberate it from their rules and regulations. She also had a terrible idea for a way to take out the big guys...and it was so terrible she was going to have to PM the Admins.
"Hey Sword Buddy....wanna steal a tank?" She asked him.
@taint Because now it's your turn, don't worry, he'll pay later for trying to skip me.
Poking her head out of the refuge they were staying in, Katya gave a long drawn out sigh of relief as she found nothing waiting outside to pounce on her new charges. Putting the weird alien gun thing down on a bench, she ran a hand over her face tiredly as the toll of healing these people hit her. Bracing herself against the bench to combat the tiredness and the waves of nausea hitting her, she focused on just trying to keep upright despite all her body trying to bring her downwards. Gravity was awful sometimes, she just wanted to curl up and sleep but she knew that it was stupid. Who knows how many aliens were out there waiting, hurting good people just trying to make a living? Forcing her eyes open, she turned to the group huddling in the back and spoke slowly, deliberately.
“You stay together until help come, yes? Not move unless no other choice. Guns needed, use guns.”
Forcing her feet to walk, she smiled and waved as she picked up her new thing and her bag then determinedly headed out onto the streets. Turning left, she headed out down the decimated sidewalks and picked her way through debris and clutter carefully, knowing that she couldn’t afford to get herself injured. Clutching her left hand inside the weapon she had stolen, she kept her head constantly turning and rotating to make sure that nobody could sneak up on her. Her other hand clutched the heavy bag, her makeshift weapon, half to reassure herself it was still there and the other half to make sure she could grab it.
Coming to a halt as she noticed aliens up ahead, she hid behind a parked car then tried to sneak up on the group. Failing miserably, she stood stock still and then brought her arm up and fired at their backs. The first two shots went wild as the gun bucked and yanked at her, sending her aim off course. The next shots, however, hit their mark and downed three out of the four aliens. Gulping as it came running towards her, Katya had a thought and dug around her bag until she found what she needed: her mechanical pencil. Swinging the bag around as a shield, she hit out at its legs with her feet as she closed the space then smashed the bag full into its face and then launched herself onto it like her brothers did while trying to imitate American football moves.
Overbalancing it, she thrust the pencil into its neck as hard as she could, slimy liquid covering her hands before she rolled away and ran for her bag. Grabbing it, she could see the alien rising slowly, the pencil still sticking out. Counting on it being preoccupied, Katya charged it without thought to her own safety and hit it with the bag until it was down and quivering. Wiping the slime off her hands, Katya went back for the weapon thing and started to proceed past the alien bodies. Walking quickly, taking all lefts, she eventually came out near a group of people. They were strangely dressed, at least two of them, and the other guy had a sword too.
Approaching politely, Katya put on her best smile and called out. “Hello. You are fighting aliens too?
Funny enough, even among the end of the world, with aliens literally raining down out of the sky, Jackson was feeling most uncomfortable around his new "sword buddies." Hana had always tried to keep tabs on some of the different people active in their quote-unquote "social circle," and Deadpool was one that wasn't very easy to not know about. Had Jackson ever thought he'd be this close to Deadpool, let alone two Deadpools at once. Which begged the question, was this some sort of club and not just one guy? A bit of subterfuge, making people think he could be anywhere at any time? Questions upon questions, but all very less important than 'How do we get rid of the giant whale flying through Queens?'
He didn't exactly keel over laughing when one of the otherwise badass-looking Deadpools gave a very un-badass scream, but he couldn't help but laugh a little. Talk about having the image you have of someone in your mind absolutely shattered. He almost forgot about the fact that one of the twins had their arm around Jackson's shoulders, but that soon popped back into his mind. Much as they all seemed to be on the 'Earth' team, the one thing he knew about Deadpool was the 'instability' factor, and Jackson wasn't so comfortable having one be in such a position to snap his neck. "Doin' good, feeling a bit underdressed, what with the colorful individuals I find myself with."
Working with these two was either going to be the best decision Jackson made, or the worst - he'd decide based on how dead he was when this was all over. By the introductions, Jackson - having at least half a brain - was able to figure out that Thing 2 was a shapeshifter, which in any other situation than an alien invasion might have sounded like an insane conclusion to leap to. Still, Jackson couldn't help but feel a tad insecure about his own name - fourteen hours on a direct flight from Tokyo to New York, and hte best he could come up with was a play on the words "Ninja" and his own name. Meanwhile, "Copycat" got the point across pretty quickly, and "Deadpool" was... Well, "Deadpool" just sounded awesome. But, whatever, Jackson had made his bed and was more than happy to lie in it - it would catch on if he ever became public. "My ridiculous codename is Ninjax, if you're so inclined. As for the tank, well, I'm a morally upright ninja, so stealing a tank's not my speed... But, given the circumstances, I'm open to the idea of borrowing one."
The military was always a good sign, or bad depending on one's perspective. On the one hand, backup was here, and some more hands on deck was always a good thing - on the other hand, this was a situation so dire that it called for military intervention. Even the Battle of New York had just involved the Avengers and the NYPD, which only meant that the military showing up confirmed that this was much worse than the Battle of New York. Still, just because everything was falling apart didn't mean he was exempt from upholding the tradition he'd agreed to. He'd just have to be the one schmuck using only a sword among people with guns.
He was just about ready to charge into the fray when a voice sounded out behind them, sounding very... Calm, and polite, for someone in the middle of a war zone. Jackson turned with a raised brow, noting how the girl that approached them had one of the Chitauri's weapons with her. So even normal people had the common sense to grab one of the guns the invaders was using, meanwhile Jackson was sticking with Hōkutaron - a really good sword, for all the years he'd been using it, but a katana wasn't good for dealing with enemies that were far away. "Fighting is a strong word - I prefer to think of this as a... Physical disagreement, involving guns and swords."
"Excuse me, remind me who taught you to properly stab someone in the first place? I am the Master Stabber. Screw Logan, he cheats, freaking Adamantium, so cool..." Wade fired his pistols in unison, hardly seeming to pay attention to what he was shooting at, but it somehow didn't matter - Chitauri fell all the same, often in pairs. There were advantages to being completely ambidextrous, and Wade had that particular skill down pat. He hit the magazine release on one pistol just as it got to the last shot, and slid a new magazine in against his belt before he broke into a sprint for one of the vehicles. The merc leapt on top of the car, planting his feet before launching into a flip as he fired - four shots, straight into the armored skull of a chitilan, before he landed at its back and shoved one pistol up against one of the holes he'd just made.
"Headshot, mothafucka." he boasted before pulling the trigger - the armor was thick, but it couldn't take too many shots in the same spot, and the handgun round rattled around inside the helm, shredding the brain and sending the monster crashing to the ground.
At Nessa's demand, he turned to look her way. "Noooow who's wishing I'd brought all the Semtex!?" Of course, he only had so many pouches, and he had to keep some of them free for jelly beans and gum, but that was another story entirely. "But fine... alright, time to make the chimi-fuckin'-changas..." There WAS that downed SHIELD Quinjet half a block over... "Bee-arr-bee, kay L-O-L?" He turned then and launched himself back off the elevated street. Not that he had Spider Man powers or anything, but he could fall with style with the best of them. The merc caught himself on a lamppost, then launched himself onto an awning, jumped to the fire escape, dropped the lader, and rode that back to the ground before jumping off and continuing on his way.
The aircraft had slammed into a building, and smoke was still pouring out of it, but it hadn't caught actual fire yet, which was good - because it looked like the really fun toys were still nestled under the wings. "Alright babies, who wants to come with Uncle Wade? I'm gonna introduce you to one real big nasty, and I'm not talking about the sort that gets you on TV with Chris Hansen."
"Ya can't borrow somethin if ya can't guarantee ya can return it." Nessa pointed out to Ninjax and truth be told she kinda liked his name. Though it did remind her of Ajax a bit...what a tool. "What? Left your super suit in yer other gym bag?" She quipped in response to his comment about Wade's choice of red suit. She turned at the voice to regard the young blonde woman who had approached them .She admired the fact that she'd apparently managed to survive with just a book bag and a stolen alien weapon. Nessa had a soft spot for survivors. "I call it recreational confrontation. This is better then startin a fight in a Merc bar." She said excitedly. Without taking her eyes off Katya, she brought her pistol up and shot a chitauri behind her.
"Alright, I have two ideas, both are stupid in varyin degrees and one could get me killed..or worse. We need to take down the whales, and seein as the Heroes are busy across the country that leaves us and the do gooders back here. My Snuggleybug will be back with Party Favors shortly. I'm gonna do stupid plan number two, you two stick to stupid plan number one and see if you can't get them to focus their fire power on the whale." Reaching into the secret pocket of her suit, she pulled free a second epi-pen and pressed it into Jackson's hand. "When he gets back, you give him this. He'll know what to do with it." She told Ninjax, she also handed him the sword she was holding. "Take care of Butter."
Her plan was gonna piss off Wade, she knew that but they needed to get this under control before the entire city was swarming with aliens. She only hoped it didn't turn out to be as suicidal as her mind was telling her it was. "Shut up!" She told Wade's other brain under her breath as she took off down the street straight at the whale in the distance tossing cars like they were happy meal toys. Reloading her pistol, she popped off a few rounds into the Chitauri that rained down from the Leviathan above. Grabbing onto one of their ripcords she cut the Chitauri lose and started climbing.
Thankfully, she had Wade's strength and her own agility to rely on or climbing an alien rope while it was moving would have had a far different ending. Once she was high enough, she used all her strength to flip herself up on top of the whale though she didn't move to attack it. Instead, she focused and let the copy of Wade fall away, revealing the catgirl underneath. Leaning down, she pressed her hands to the Leviathan's hide between the chinks in it's armor along it's back and closed her red eyes, focusing hard.
It took a few moments, she'd never tried to copy something so big before. Her entire image shimmered and began to morph in a Leviathan. Contrary to popular belief it wasn't painful, though it did tickle from time to time. In just under two minutes, Vanessa had disappeared entirely to be replaced by a Leviathan the size of a very large Elephant. Well...that was smaller then she'd planned but hopefully she could make up for it. Breaking free of the Leviathan, she floated to the side and used her oar like flippers to cut the strings of the chitauri trying to launch themselves free, most fell the pavement below a few would survive.
With as much force as she could muster, she rammed the Leviathan, it cried out in anger and she wasted no time in doing it again. She used her powerful jaws to pull free bits and pieces of it's armor, tossing them to the side as she steered it towards the waiting military. Her red eyes and her size were the only difference between them, and Vanessa could feel something else tugging at the back of her mind.
A Voice that was very hard to ignore. The hive mind these things operated on was trying to take control and Vanessa wasn't sure how long she had before it succeeded. Shedding a copy so large would take time but Nessa's powers worked without her consious thought, which was where Wade came in. If he could inject her with his DNA, her body would instantly begin to react and shift back to him.
Turning as the red suited person in front of her raised the gun and fired it, Katya blinked as she saw the bleeding body and swallowed once, then turned back and smiled a little uncertainly. Trying to follow the movement of his..her..its lips, she occasionally caught one or two words but soon gave up because it was a hopeless endeavour. The mask was stopping any sort of enunciation from getting through and it was all turning into a giant mess of confusion. Brushing tangled hair behind her ear to calm and centre herself, she watched the strange person leave and then turned to the only one left in the epicentre of destruction – the man carrying a sword and holding a small round cylinder.
“I sorry but what that person say?” She asked him, indicating her face and then her head to show she didn’t understand. “English not my first language and I not hear well. Lips move so fast, not understand what saying.”
Dropping the heavy bag on the ground, she gave a long sigh and then steadied herself against a nearby wall as nausea swept over her, along with a deep tiredness from having used her powers more than she normally did. She hoped the people she had healed were okay and hadn’t ventured out, that they had obeyed her command and hidden. Raising a hand stained with streaks of dried blood to her forehead, she wiped her clammy forehead with the back of her wrist. The alien weapon sat on top of her bag.
Taking a deep breath, Katya pushed herself off the wall and looked around warily for any attackers. “I not sure what we do now…” she admitted. “I not good in fight because I not hear, so I not know person sneak up. We wait here, da? Or we go somewhere?”
“Your sword nice,” she added, waving a hand at it listlessly. “It yours or found somewhere?”
So much for stealing a tank, but apparently Jackson was being trusted to hold ALL the things. Soon enough, he had an epi-pen stored in one of the pouches on his sash, and he was now the proud sword-sitter of a blade that had apparently been named 'butter.' Jackson was holding two swords now, and as much as he felt like a total badass - including the fact that he'd actually trained in dual swords before deciding to just use his ancestral blade - he was also a little bit confused about what her plan was and why it involved her lacking pockets. "Wait, wait - 'Butter?' As in 'Comma Bread and?' Because that's, that's... Damn it, that's hilarious."
So now he was alone with the girl that'd come up to them with a backpack and a Chitauri gun, and as Jackson soon found out she was partially - if not completely - deaf, as well as not speaking very much English. He made a quick judgement call and pulled down his facemask, so that his lips would be readable for the Russian girl as she asked what the Lady-Man-Deadpool had just said. "She's going to go kill the whale... We need to go and get the military to help her do that, and waiting here will leave us open. Better to keep moving. Stick close to me, and I'll cover you - I have two swords now, so I'm twice as capable."
In fact, she asked about the sword, which... Seemed a bit ill-timed considering the world falling apart around them, but everyone had their way of hoping. He wasn't sure about Butter, but he held out his own sword - the blade gleamed in the light where it didn't have Chitauri blood on it. Despite him having run it through armor, and despite its centuries of age, the parts that weren't currently stained with blood looked pristine, as if he'd just made and polished the thing an hour ago. The hilt was unique - it had some detailing reminiscent of Japanese paintings, but the most prominent feature on the hilt was the silver Hawk, the same as the one emblazoned over Jackson's heart on his uniform. "Mine - Hōkutaron is unbreakable, can cut anything, and well... It's just plain pretty, I think. Now come on, I have to make sure the military doesn't shoot the wrong whale..."
Because apparently Copycat had turned into a smaller one to fight the bigger one, which... Yeah, okay, pretty useful as far as the apparent grab-bag of mutant powers seemed to be. But that brought up the idea of people who couldn't fight back again - he wondered where Kayley was in all this, considering her whole thing was disrupting technology, and not even on-command. Still, there were plenty of freaks and geeks like him in the city that could take on the aliens, so wherever she was she was probably fine - besides, Jackson had to focus on the here and now. If everyone was worried about what was happening somewhere else, than where they were would be lost, and soon enough everything would be gone.
He pulled his mask back up, not wanting his face to show up on any sort of watch lists for vigilante activities or something. Once he was sure Katya was with him, he took off in the direction of the tanks - with Chitauri fighting soldiers ahead. Sometimes, Jackson strongly questioned his lack of a firearm, but moments like these? Dashing through groups of Chitauri, using his agility to dodge attack sand then counter with his sword to create however many cuts on his enemy, it was good for justifying the use of a purely melee weapon.
Honestly, he usually wasn't usually so free with his sword making actual skin contact, but these were extreme situations. Still, he didn't try to do more than incapacitate the aliens he encountered, but there was movement everywhere. He couldn't be sure what one soldier would do with an incapacitated alien, what car was being flung and where it would land. He was also pretty focused on making sure no one snuck up on Katya, given her hearing issues - but as for the people in front of her, he was confident in her ability, given how she'd managed to get this far.
Once they reached the military group, Jackson... Wasn't sure what to do, given how he wasn't exactly as jacked as military personnel tended to be. Plus, he was dressed like a ninja - and while he knew that he was an actual shinobi, trained over years to earn the uniform, he'd learned quite well how much people tended to not take his persona seriously. Still, a few of the soldiers seemed to have seen him moving through the Chitauri, so maybe he could get someone to get someone else to tell the someone in the tank to shoot the right whale. He ran up to one of the soldiers that had started looking his way while Jacskon was moving towards the tank, using Butter as a sort of pointer to indicate the larger Leviathan. "I need you to get the word out - focus fire on the big one, because the little one is on our side. Won't get into too much detail, but the smaller one is a mutant shapeshifter who wants these things stopped just as much as anyone. Oh, and her boyfriend's Deadpool, so y'know... Eggshells, walk on them."
More than anything else, trying to speak with such authority - condescension? - to an Army Man made Jackson's heart pound. He was nervous about being laughed off again, but for the most part the guy seemed to take him seriously. Maybe everything Jackson said just made sense, or maybe he'd proven his worth a bit with that last group of Chitauri. Either way, it was working, and they would just have to wait and see whether or not the word got out about which whale Ahab in the tank should go after. Jackson turned back to Katya to make sure she was still with him, while also looking out for the artist currently known as Deadpool to unload the epi-pen, if only to sate his curiosity about what it was for.
A small group of Chitauri and Chitlian darted around the corner, hissing their disapproval at the barricade laden with human soldiers before them. At the command of one Chitlian, the group surged forward, their glaives and energy blasts slamming into the cordon as they moved. It didn’t take long for the vast majority of them to scale the makeshift structure, and soon enough a spat of close-quarters combat was upon them.
Two enemies swept in towards Jackson’s position, the Chitauri swiping and poking at the shinobi while his Chitlian comrade swung around in an attempt to flank. With a vicious backhanded swing, the Chitlian’s fist connected with Jackson’s wrist, successfully knocking the borrowed katana, Butter, from his grasp. The blade sailed away, finally crashing to the cement a few yards to the right before skittering conveniently beneath the armored tank parked nearby.
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For Wade's part, he just hoped that Nessa was careful ish - she might have had a healthy dose of his powers going on, but if she went and overdid it, there was no telling how long that dose might last. And running out of healing factor in the middle of trying to not die probably wasn't a very fun experience. Wade couldn't so much say from experience - the only times he'd been mostly-dead enough for it to matter, he tended not to remember what was going on at the time. Probably a side effect of the lack of oxygen to the brain, and all that. But of course, she was probably going to be the opposite of careful, because one she was Nessa, and two she was copying him at the time. Not exactly the human embodiment of caution and restraint, there.
Still, he had a job to do, and high explosives to raid. He broke open the casing around the Quinjet's missile pods, then began more or less carefully pulling them free from their homes. The damn things were heavy, he was only going to be able to carry two, but, well, two ought to be good enough if he could get them into the right place. Which... Well that was going to be a trick. He knew more about explosives than he generally got credit for, so he knew he wasn't going to be able to start the rocket motors on the missiles easily. But maybe... Huh... "Ohhhhhh I am a GENIUS. I shall paint a masterpiece of explosions! Upon a canvas of awesome!"
By the time Nessa and Jackson were executing their various parts of the plan to take out the first Leviathan, a second (well, other than LeviaNessa) had come around a corner from the direction of Central park, roaring as it clipped the corner of an apartment building with considerable force, sending bricks and shattered glass raining to the ground. Before it had a chance to bear down on the defenders from their flank, while they poured rockets and grenades into the leviathan Nessa had been distracting, there was a sharp WHOOSH, and Wade rode back up above the level of the overpass again atop a throne of fire. Well, it was a stolen ejector seat, but who was counting?
Wade had timed the 'launch' for the time the Leviathan was passing overhead, and he jumped off just as the creature opened its mouth in an attempt to scoop him up. He kicked off its snout, pulling the arming keys (which he had tied to a length of wire) from the missiles as he did. Startled by the impact on the roof of its mouth, the creature closed its jaws, and Wade, parachute deploying (too slowly) as he fell, squeezed his eyes shut as the explosives went off. The blasts tore the better part of the creature's head off, and meanwhile Wade's parachute caught on one of the freeway signs, jerking him up short of the ground - where he nonetheless shot a couple Chitauri to help the cause before he went still.
"SEE!? I don't even LOOK at explosions anym... OH GOD WHY DIDN'T I LOOK?!!? Was it a good one!? Hey, uh, can someone cut me down? And where'd Nessa go?"
