ic (IC) Pop Quiz: All You Have Is Your Fire

[Avenger Assembled]

Across the gulf of time and distance, Peyton and Riley stared at each other before the former put her good hand to her mouth, eyes wide and brimming with tears. "...RILEY!" she called out and ran for her son, throwing her arm around him and hugging him tight, Riley's arms going around her by reflex as she pressed her forehead against his. They were of comparable height and build up close; with her shorter hair and muscular build, it was much easier to see how this Peyton was related to Riley. "Oh my God, look at you - look at you, my boy, you're a man now..." She ran her hand down his face and the fuzz of dark whiskers along his chin and cheeks. "Oh, my god..." Riley stared at Peyton, murmuring back, and for all that had happened, and for all that would come later, they held each other, weeping, the rest of this world forgotten. 

 

"Mom, what happened?" Riley finally asked when they pulled back, the shock of her missing arm burned into his memory. "Your...your arm..." 

 

"A lot happened since you left," said Peyton quietly, only Merlin's hastily rigged-up connections to Riley's mic letting Robin hear what was going on below. "Things got bad for a while. But now my boy has come back to me from the grave, and none of that matters." She turned her head and called across the room. "Woundmaker, you have yourself a deal! I'll make it happen!" 

 

"A deal? What?" 

 

Meanwhile, across the room, another reunion was taking place. 

 

"...Raina!?" Raina's mother looked no less surprised to see her daughter - though she did shoot a look at her husband, whose grin was somewhere between self-satisfied and delighted. 
 

"Fate-binding?" he said cheerfully, earning a sigh that brought a look Raina herself had seen in the mirror. "Fate-binding," her mother replied, before guiding her descent. "Don't land in the ash patterns, dear" she said carefully, the hellish red light of the still-open portal casting an odd glow on her features. "There's too much life bound up in it! Come here, come to your mother!" She hugged Raina as the latter touched down, perhaps a bit more physically affectionate than Raina was used to - but nothing that was out of character, given how long it had been since they'd actually touched. "Oh, thank all the spirits! I can't believe you found us so fast!" 

 

"I don't recall you mentioning that your daughter _and_ her friend would be showing up," the man in black commented to Raina's father, sounding more amused than annoyed. Evidently he was the titular Woundmaker, barking orders at the troops in the warehouse who had leveled weapons in the direction of Riley and Raina for just a moment. "Secure the scene! Make sure they weren't followed." 

 

"And we won't even raise our fee for the free addition of a third caster," replied Eric Sanderson, pushing back his robe's hood, also looking pleased. "Come on, W.M., celebrate! We opened your portal, regained our third soul, and we brought you the boy you wanted!" He patted the man in black on the back before going over to join his family. "Look at you, my baby girl! I told your mother you'd find us the first chance you got, and I was right!" he hugged Raina, then added more seriously, "You and your friend, how did you get away?"

[alderwitch]

"I love you too," Robin whispered after Riley's vanishing form with the words she'd struggled long over aching in her throat. He might not even know she'd said them and, if it was true and he followed his mother through that portal, Robin might not ever know if he had heard her response. She gave a short, sharp shake of her head as she slipped deeper into the shadows. Hand by hand she paced the cluster of people below her to make sure that when she did drop to the ground, she'd be in position to put herself between the men with the guns and her friends. 

 

With her weight mostly supported by her legs and her body shielded in the shadows of the rafters, Robin kept her attention on the little drama playing out below with her grey eyes darting for anything that might disrupt the portal that seemed, at least objectively, the biggest threat tot he Fens.

[Electra]

Mentally Raina was flailing, but looking like she didn't know what she was doing had never proven to be a very good strategy before. "What, you think I can't get away from a boarding school?" she scoffed. "I was breaking into secure scientific testing labs before I was a teenager, and they don't even lock the dorms from the outside. I have to admit I'm kinda surprised to see you here though," she told them, which was both true, extremely true and also a lie. "I mean, I felt the magic and all, but I thought you guys were still, um, you know?  What are you guys doing with Riley's mom?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

"About two years ago, about the time I...thought I lost you, a new Feral came out of the Forest - bigger and tougher than anything we'd seen since the Millennium." Riley had seen his mother's eyes haunted before - but as her free hand briefly stole to the stump of her missing arm, for a moment he saw a swell of grief like he'd never known. "We weren't ready. And we lost - a lot of people." She released her stump, and put her arm around Riley, pulling his forehead against hers. "Woundmaker's people, they came out of the Forest a couple of months after that, while we were still trying to rebuild. They knew about the Forest so they hadn't gone in deep enough to turn Feral - and they helped us." 

 

"How did they find us?" Riley asked, automatically falling back to thinking like someone from the world he'd left. "The only people who could find a way back from here I've met were bad guys - they set Ferals loose on people in the Goodman Building." 

"The Goodman Building can go to Hell for all I care," said Peyton with great fierceness. "They helped us take that place down, and most of the other nests. We're finally taking the city back. The sword-Ferals, the Bear Council, the Wolf Kings? They're all dead or running for their lives now. I told them I wasn't sure about what they wanted after that, moving their people to our end...but I don't care. They gave me my boy back." 

 

-

 

"That? Oh, that's work," said Eric with a dismissive wave in the direction of the portal "I had a feeling it would bring you back to us but I had no idea everything would come together so smoothly. I don't think you ever met Dubyem or as I call him, Marv," he added with a confiding whisper and grin that was all too familiar as he looked over at Woundmaker, who was giving orders to his troops to run an "upstairs perimeter check and for the Lord's sake, make sure you don't miss any teenagers sneaking in!" "but he's an old friend of your mother's. Some of his people helped us leave shadow duplicates behind in our cell, long enough to get here and start earning our keep." 

 

"It's a bit of a comedown from the old days," admitted Raina's mother, "but it's better than prison - and the important thing is, it's a chance for a new start for all of us. They've been expecting you for weeks - we've been telling them we'd be stronger as a trio. The magic's a little more, ah, adult than you're used to," she added, "but you don't need to rush into anything, not until your father and I have finished your training. Now do you have everything you need? You can maybe make it back to that place once, but they'll be looking for us now - and probably looking for you, too." 

 

-

 

Upstairs, an agitated Merlin was silently showing Robin his discovery - while trying to hack the local network to send out a distress signal, he'd found that the network was far larger than he'd anticipated - they were on top of a complex at least three stories deep beneath their feet! And down below, the black-masked troops beneath were beginning to mount the stairs towards their hiding place in the rafters.

[alderwitch]

"Yeah, I don't think our friends are going to be able to think super clearly with their parents in the mix," Robin muttered to Merlin and then held out her arm with clear offer for the monkey to clamber up onto her shoulders. Her voice was rough, almost harsh, but not cold. Robin was well aware just how much she might do to enjoy a hug from her parents again and while she didn't begrudge her friends their emotional reactions, it seemed like she ought to step in to provide some buffer. "Quick way down. Tell Raina what you saw. Maybe she can get her parents and Riley's mom out," she explained, taking a few steps towards the drop and then plummeting at an arc that would bring her close to the portal. Hopefully Merlin would rejoin Raina once they were on the ground as Robin had a bad feeling that she was about to be shot at. A lot.

 

Straightening to her full height in the simple grey and red spandex, "You have to shut down this portal." Robin said firmly to the adults. "It's dangerous. I can't let you do this." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Riley felt his heart skip a beat as Robin hit the ground. Knowing a superheroine when they saw one, the guards went for their weapons and leveled them at Nighthawk, only Woundmaker's raised hand keeping them from opening fire. The Sandersons moved protectively to shield Raina, her father's hands glowing red and her mother's eyes the same in a familiar surge of protective magic that was all the more _unfamiliar_ from the breath of smoldering power Raina could feel from her parents. This close, with their magic up, that unwholesome feeling returned again - whatever Raina had detected from outside, whether it was the portal or something else - it was coming from her parents. 

 

"We're in the middle of a business transaction here, honey," said Woundmaker, his slightly muffled voice thick with sarcasm. "So why don't you put your hands on your head and come over here?" he inquired of Robin, drawing a large pistol he wore at his side. "Apologies for the interruption, Ms. Smith," he said politely to Peyton, "uncontrolled metahumans are one of the downsides of operating on Earth-3."  

"What _about_ that portal?" Riley demanded, trying to draw attention away from Robin without actually admitting he was with her. His mother caught his tension, and he could feel his eyes on her. "Aren't you worried about...infection?" 

"They've done it before," said Peyton, shaking her head. "The other end is in my office. They've come in and out there, and elsewhere, maybe twenty or thirty times that I know of. Our Forest likes home soil," she admitted. 

[Electra]

"It's okay, she's with us," Raina called out, raising her hands nonthreateningly and stepping out from behind her parents. "She's cool, she just doesn't know much about magic and stuff. What are they teaching us these days, right?" she joked, a little weakly. "But it is basically true that leaving a portal patent like this for too long is asking for trouble. It's already got some weird resonance thing going on that's making my fillings hurt." She ran her tongue over her teeth, then turned to her parents. "You can close the portal and open it again right here, can't you, so long as the ritual circle's' still in place? I've seen you guys do portal work before." 

[alderwitch]

Robin did not back down at the threat of a gun pointed in her face, and the tension in her jaw had more to do with keeping her gaze from darting towards her friends, and staying trained on the man with the guns. Her hands were curled, held loosely at chest height and her stance was wide but relaxed. It wasn't recognizable as any particular style but her friends, at least, would recognize it as Robin's 'ready' stance from which she was only a moment away from bursting into movement. The advantage of her catch-as-catch-can training was in not being immediately identifiable, though any professional would likely recognize the skill backing it up. 

 

"Home soil?" Robin wanted to know without taking her even grey-eyed gaze from the group's leader, narrowing, "...are you strengthening the connection between Riley's world and ours?"

 

It took a lot for Robin to sound horrified but she remembered the Goodman building massacre, and having to deal with clearing it. Hell, she'd almost died that time. Her voice was flat, "Are you insane!?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Woundmaker laughed, cocking his head in Peyton's direction, and seemed to refer to a conversation the rest of them hadn't been privy to. "You see? Just as I described them to you." Looking back at Nighthawk, he added, "Your teachers have certainly taught you well, little lady. Nighthawk, isn't it? Defending the Fens while you take a boarding school scholarship. At least your friends here don't put on airs of superiority to the rest of us." 

 

"I see it," agreed Peyton, "but is there any reason to point a gun at her?" Looking at Robin, she added sharply, "Don't mistake that for sympathy, by the way, supergirl. I'm just not going to let today be ruined by watching you be gunned down because you couldn't keep your mouth shut." 

"Mom!" said Riley, stung into action by his mother's words. "Don't talk to her like that! She's my-" Riley had never been one for subtlety when it came to emotions, especially not when romance was concerned - and the word he'd been about to say was obvious. "These are bad guys!" he added, gesturing to the armed goons all around them. "Nobody's even explained who they are, or why they're here - or how they know the things they know!" His crossbow was in his hands - but he wasn't going to escalate. Not yet. 

 

"Son, I really don't want to have this argument with you in front of your mother-" 

"You're goddamned right you don't," added Peyton, moving to stand next to her son. "Why don't we all just act like adults here instead of posturing gunmen? That means you too, Woodsman," she added with a look Riley's way. "Why don't you just give them the same talk you gave me?" she suggested. 

 

As the arguments continued, the consultants seemed more interested in other things. "Actually, with you here, closing the portal temporarily is going to be a snap," said Raina's father, not looking terribly interested in the teenage fight. "As long as, you know," he added, coloring ever so slightly and glancing at his wife. Too quietly for anyone else to hear, especially the teenagers that were evidently her friends, Raina's mother whispered, "Do you still honor Astraea?" Along with the usual talks about not making any rash decisions that could break her heart or otherwise endanger her future, the power that came from 'honoring the Virgin Goddess' as Raina's mother had put it had been a pretty basic part of her sex education from a very early age. 

[Electra]

"Mooooooom!" Raina hissed, her fair skin coloring to an embarrassed red. 'Are you seriously asking me that now? And here?" She looked around at the tumultuous gathering, then back at her mother, whose expectant face made it clear that she was, in fact, asking that question now and here.

 

Raina folded her arms. "Fine then, if you really want to know, there was this thing where my parents went off to prison a couple years ago and left me alone with a bunch of asshole relatives who dumped me into reform school, resulting in my teenage rebellion being supervised by the state of New Jersey instead of the people who were supposed to be taking care of me!"

 

Her voice had started out taut, but quickly climbed in both pitch and volume until she was nearly yelling. "And don't tell me it wasn't your fault either, because I know you were doing evil magic and that why I ended up getting ARRESTED BY SUPERHEROES in my PAJAMAS! So yeah, maintaining my "honor of Astraea" was not super high on my priority list, especially when the only way to have fun in Grandma and Grandpa's hick town is by being down to-" 

 

"Raina, language!" Her mother snapped, looking scandalized. 

 

"ARE YOU EVEN SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?" Raina demanded, not even realizing she was at full shriek till her throat began to hurt. "I'm eighteen and it's been four years since you went to jail and I swear and I drink and have sex with people I don't care about, and sometimes I even do superhero work when I feel like it, and you have nothing to say about it because you weren't ever there!" She sucked in a breath of air that wasn't quite a sob. "But what do you know, four years has made me a lot more powerful than I was, so hey, let's close a portal!" 

[alderwitch]

"Closing the portal would be good," Robin agreed, her tone flat and not budging from either her position or her stance. She didn't deign to rise to the obvious bait in the villain's tone. "Don't worry, Ms. Smith. It wouldn't be the first time."

 

Her gaze cut to Woodman, her grey eyes intent behind her mask as she shifted position ever so slightly and tipped her head a little towards the best exit for Riley to take his mom if everything went sideways. In Robin's experience, bad guys who put a lot of effort into opening portals, didn't like to see them closed. Squaring her body to present the most obvious target, she finally turned her attention to the latest in a long line of scumbags operating in the Fens, "So, 'Woundmaker', you gonna do what the lady asks and put away the gun?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Peyton's eyes narrowed, but as Woundmaker ordered his people to stand down, she listened, putting her hand on Riley's shoulder. "Put it down, son."

 

With a look of great reluctance on his face, Riley slowly began to stow his crossbow (obviously drawing the process out) as Woundmaker began his spiel, half-listening even so to Raina's blow-up with her parents. It was hard for him to miss things.  "I work for the League of Caine, an organization with a reach that goes across the multiverse. We have scientists, mystics, and sages doing work that none of the underwear perverts dare do. One of our purposes is giving human beings the power to control their own destiny, instead of handing it over to so-called gods in masks. They tell you that you need them, that they're the only ones protecting you from space gods and sea monsters, but think about it, boy. All the superheroes on your world died screaming twenty years ago - and did aliens ever come for you? Did Omega ever show up and eat your soul?" 

 

Riley considered that, blinking hard, and said, "...no. We always thought ev'ryone was dead - the Forest is so crazy, it made it seem like the whole universe had broken." 

 

"There are other worlds like yours - worlds where the metahumans tried to rule the normal people, or breed them into extinction, or just hunt them down and kill them all. We've done our best to help those people - and we want to help your people too. We've given them food, we've given them medicine, we've helped hunt down your monsters and rid you of them. Now that we know we can safely open a gateway from your world to this one, we can start sending over real help - and we can send you home, boy. Doesn't that mean anything?" 

 

Riley licked his lips, then said, "It...no! You sent people to my school! You put things in a man and turned him into a monster; and I'm pretty goddamned sure you're the ones who let the Ferals into the Goodman Building! What kind of people say they're defending human beings and let them kill their way through twenty-three people. Nighthawk and I had to take them down with our bare hands!" 

 

"The Goodman Building people opened the portal themselves. It's not our fault they couldn't control what they found. If you could have stopped Ferals with an implant, wouldn't you have?" replied Woundmaker reasonably. "And of course we spied on your school - your school is full of teenage would-be gods and goddesses, ready to rule over the rest of us and keep us from our destiny. I know you have friends there; and I'm not stupid, I'm not going to ask you to turn on your allies in front of your girlfriend here. I'm just asking you to-what the hell?" He stepped aside suddenly, raising a hand dismissively, and seemed to be listening to a distant conversation from elsewhere. 

 

Before Riley could speak up, Peyton said to the two teens. "Listen, honey, maybe we got off on the wrong foot. I don't know you, but if Riley trusts you, you must be somebody special. But living where we live is no place for somebody with powers, not having to spend every day of your life behind a fence with a gun on your neck. Just stay here and do your, uh, supering, and we'll be out of here before you know it. I'm not going to let my son stay in a place like this, not when I can give him something better." 

 

"Are things really that much better?" Riley asked his mom, not taking his eyes off Woundmaker as they spoke. "Things are...things are really great here! Why can't we just take the town and move people here?" 

 

-

 

Raina's parents, red-faced, looked around as if to see if anyone was staring at them - much the same way they might have if she'd thrown a temper tantrum as a junior high student. "We will talk about this later," said Raina's mother firmly. "What we need to do right now is close that portal. If we can't use your virginity, we can use something else. Come along now, you remember the chants. Claude januam inferis; claude januam inferis..." She stepped to one side of the portal, raising her hands, and nodded for Raina to do the same. 

 

Meanwhile, Raina's father had disappeared to one of the nearby crates - a big one, more of a large, open-sided shipping container, and somewhat irritably had called over one of Woundmaker's guards to help him manage...a cow?! "Listen, honey," he said, obviously trying to be reasonable, "Raina has every right to be upset with us. Sweetness, we have to do some deep-level magic here - after that, we can get out of here and you can call us out for going to jail all you want. Believe me, it wasn't our intention," he said as the masked goon with the cow's lead pulled out a large hunting knife and handed it to him. "This is a little gory, darling," he said apologetically, "so you may want to look away. After this, things will get better. I promise." 

[Electra]

"Really? A blood sacrifice right out here in front of everybody?" Raina snorted incredulously. "I guess you're just giving up the whole "we don't do evil magic, it's just the spirits beneath the earth" crap," she observed, rolling her eyes. "Honestly I don't know if I should be more pissed at you for lying to me or at myself for being so dumb and believing you. That's the reason I got tossed into superhero juvie, you know," she added, twisting the metaphorical knife even as her dad had to deal with the real one. "If I hadn't tried to protect you, they might have been nicer to me, but they figured I was just a chip off the old blocks. Whatever. Let's close this damn thing." Without even reaching for her parents, extending her own powers alone, Raina groped for the edges of the portal and attempted to pull them closed using mostly brute force. 

[alderwitch]

Robin was silent at Peyton's statement of intent to take Riley back through. She'd already brought up that he might have to decide if it was worth taking the risk to go home. "I know what I'd risk turning into in your world," Robin said simply, her grey eyes unflinching and wary. She knew she was taking her attention off of Woundmaker and, although it went against all of her experience, she let her gaze find Riley's. Her voice finally softened into reassurance, "It's okay, Riley. Whatever you decide you need to do, I get it. I'll be okay."

 

She took a slow, steady breath, curling her hands tighter into fists and bringing them up to chin level as Raina indicated they'd start working their magic. Her gaze slid reluctantly away from Riley, to his mother, "But you're wrong to trust these guys, whatever promises they've made or whatever you've seen. If they were good folks, they'd give a lot more of a damn about the normal, innocent people who died in the Goodman building. They wouldn't be using convicts from Blackstone to do their portals out here in the Fens. They've got things to hide and you should probably ask yourself what it might be. I know I am."

[Avenger Assembled]

"That is entirely enough, young lady!" said Raina's mother, her face twisting in a mix of anger and grief that Raina hadn't seen even when she was being taken away by the cops. "I cannot believe that after everything we have done for you, after every sacrifice we made for you, you would-. Do you know the things I had to-" She looked away, and actually wiped a hand across her face. 

 

The edges of the portal dripped with what Raina recognized as the aftereffects of dark magic - something bigger than a cow had died to open the portal to begin with, and down the edges of the portal, across at the other side, she felt just the touch of something truly foul, something as great as a whole world twisted by the same terrible power. Huang could have diagnosed exactly what was wrong on the other side, but she knew sickness when she saw it. If that was Riley's world on the other side, it was...exactly what she could have expected. 

 

"We will discuss family business later," said Raina's father, putting a sympathetic hand on his wife's shoulder before moving to his daughter's side. "Right now, all that matters is that we're a family again." He reached out with his magic to join Raina, and she felt the familiar edges of her father's magic around her own power. "Will you take the blade, darling?" he asked of her mom before turning to Raina with the smile she recognized from when things got tight. "You know," he joked, "if you're going to stay vegetarian when you're back with us, your mother and I are going to have to start exercising more - too much steak is bad for our digestion. But now, a death the size of that cow should take care of business for us." 

 

Raina's mother raised the knife and prepared to bring it down -

-

 

Riley was acutely aware of things, in the quick fashion in which he'd been trained in the time when normal boys were learning how to shave for the first time. He was aware of how vulnerable his mother looked, especially with the missing limb - and acutely aware of how vulnerable he and Peyton were if bullets started flying in this building full of high technology and armed soldiers. He wanted to tell his mother so much - that he'd expected to find a world of near-monsters here, or maybe a world of soft people who'd have no idea what to do in a real crisis. But they'd taken him in when he had nothing like the power or the skills of other people, and given him luxuries he'd have never dreamed of back home. She was wrong about this dimension. But how could he tell her that, when so many enemies were around? 

 

"There's another Riley here," he said suddenly, thinking of something he could say that wouldn't draw anyone's fire. "A boy like me. He deserves somebody watchin' 'im, don't you think? This world's safer'n ours, but there are still some bad people out there, and if these people are letting our problems out here, maybe it's our business t'-" 

 

As they spoke, suddenly a bare fist smashed through the floor from underneath! Another blow tore open a hole in the floor deep enough that the concrete partially crumbled beneath their feet, the building shaking hard enough that the lights flickered and partially went out, the sound of frantic alarms coming from below as three figures leaped into view. Riley did his best to get his mom out of the way, following the path Robin had shown him with her eyes, but Peyton would have absolutely none of it. Woundmaker shouted for his guards and drew his own weapon again. "The whole thing's a shitshow!" he declared, "Godslayer! Godslayer, dammit!"

 

But he and his men hesitated a bare second when the beings breaking through the concrete turned out to be not who they expected. The first was a bedraggled-looking Grim, a squirming, noisy bundle in his arms, who had Merlin clinging to his back - the monkey in the middle of declaring that he hadn't meant for them to come up _this_ way, oh no! Matt couldn't quite hear them, though, because he could hear his dogs nearby, howling through the walls of this place where they'd found themselves, kept away by main force. The second was Winifred, or maybe something like her - a woman who was easily seven feet tall and head to toe hard, athletic muscle rendered in the same marbled colors. The sleeves had been torn off of the remnants of her dress shirt and at her new height it rode up enough to showcase broad shoulders and washboard abdominals.  She was, of all things, smiling? 

 

The last of the three figures was in her arms - a semi-conscious, semi-naked version of Winifred with a shaved head and covered in metallic piping - its yellow eyes bright as it looked around suspiciously at all the new faces, then smiled with toothy recognition as it looked up at the still-open portal overhead. It looked - Feral. 

 

Peyton stared, then suddenly was pulling her pistol with her one good hand, aiming it at the creature clutched in the woman's arms as her eyes popped wide. And then she did something Riley had hardly ever heard her do. She raised her voice, her eyes flicking to the missing stump of her left arm for a barely perceptible moment. "That's it! That's her! You bastards told me you killed it!" 

 

With agonizing slowness, Woundmaker reached for his belt, hitting a button subtly placed above the buckle. Nothing happened. 

 

Uh-uh! declared the other Fred as she slipped out of her opposite number's grasp with impossible grace, bones popping as she hit the ground. She'd dislocated her shoulders to wriggle free but that didn't seem to bother her a bit. Indeed, with sharp, pointed teeth, she was smiling, and pointing down at the crater beneath her feet. No more switch! And then suddenly, with the sound of cracking bone and warping flesh - a thing erupted from her bones and skin, a pale marble mass of flesh shaped like a woman, but massive and bulky, with razors for teeth and knives for fingers and a gleam of terrible, maniacal intelligence in its glowing yellow eyes - the apex predator of a world of apex predators! The Alkahest of J-Disaster-One! 

 

HAH!

[Avenger Assembled]

Ignoring his mother's protests, Woodsman went for Peyton and pulled her to safety along the path Robin had originally suggested to them, her trigger discipline keeping her from firing a stray shot as they both hit the dirt behind a wooden crate that held the stuff that had been used to mind-control Mr. Archer - a serious problem just a scant handful of minutes ago. Riley felt his high school concerns bleed away as he considered the tactical implications of a Feral Alkahest loose in Freedom City, with a whirling angry portal back to his homeworld just behind it. Mother and son didn't speak to each other; they didn't need to as Peyton aimed down her iron sights while Woodsman loaded his crossbow. Woodsman, a Woodsman, supposed to be more Woodsmen. Maybe the last one, if they failed. He was completely terrified. He was ready. 

[alderwitch]

Nighthawk's jaw clenched. Sometimes she really loathed being right. People doing dodgy work in a Fens warehouse were pretty much never up to any good and this, really, took the cake for bad things that could have happened in a warehouse in the Fens. "Close. The. Portal." She gritted through her clenched teeth towards Raina and her parents, winding up her fist to hit the Alkahest as hard as she could. The blow that would have knocked a steel door off its hinges reverberated down her arm but barely. Fred's new 'look' she could give barely more than a nod to. "This needs to be on the other side," she told their Fred, really hoping that the intelligence in the Solution's eyes was on their side. Otherwise, Robin really didn't know what she'd do. "When it does."

[Avenger Assembled]

Woundmaker took cover as the melee began, barking orders in code to his men with a smooth economy of motion that bespoke long practice. From his perch behind a crate, Woodsman watched, with the small part of him that wasn't watching and loving Robin, or watching his mother watch this world willing to fight and die for the monsters her own and created, as Woundmaker pulled a long sniper rifle off his back and took careful aim, sighting down on his target with the steady hand of a born marksman. He fired and sure enough hit his target. 

 

The bullet spun Grim around as it skimmed his side with the force of a strong punch, nearly knocking him to his feet with a blow that would have knocked him back, or killed him, had it hit in a different area. The baby in his arms wailed as he moved, luckily it having been on the other side when the shot rang out. But in the pattern of his own blood on the floor in the wild melee, he saw a familiar face reflected in the droplets and heard a distant cry as someone began pushing through the door in the blood and death that just opened at his feet. 

[Gizmo]

"Huh, lookit that," the weirdly marbled woman said while shaking a bit of debris from the smashed wall out of her tousled hair. Whatever she'd been expecting to find on the other side it hadn't been so many familiar faces. She raised her free hand to cup her mouth and call across the chamber, "Ay, Smith! Issat yer mum? You look alike-- oi!" She grabbed at her deranged double a moment too late, the other Winifred slipping away. For the first time she watched a very familiar transformation from the outside and grimaced. "Well bollocks."

 

Before anyone else had had a chance to react Robin was already there next to her attacking the Feral Alkahest head on. "Haha, well done! That one's the baddie, if you were gettin' us confused, yeh?" She followed her roommate's lead and dropped low before swinging upward with a punch that landed squarely under the chin of her brutish mirror image. The impact resounded impossibly loudly, like a felled redwood hitting the forest floor, forcing the Feral Alkahest back several paces despite its size advantage. "Yer just embarrassing us in front of new people, cuz. Oughta--"

 

Again she was cut off as a shot rang out. "Mattie!" The grab she's made to get ahold of her opponent went wide as her attention was abruptly split. "He's holding a baby, you utter @#$%!" she screamed in the sniper's direction, the jade colour running across her skin like veins of ore flaring briefly with a disturbing fluorescence. Gritting her teeth she looked to Robin. "I'll fight my own demons, help him! Please!"

[Electra]

"Screw you, Dad," Raina spat in her father's direction, grabbing the knife from her mother's hand. "You don't tell me what to do anymore. You think I can't feel what opened that portal? You think I'm as blind as I was when I was fourteen?" She made a noise that was much too bitter to be an actual laugh and shook her head. "I defended you both for a lot longer than I'm proud of, you know. I was... I was just stupid. Anyway, portal now, therapy later."

 

She brought the knife down with all the force she could bring to bear, stepping quickly out of the way of the resultant mess. No matter how loathe she might have been to get too close to her parents, needs must as the devil drives, so it was she who wrapped her own magic around her father's and shoved it into the portal. Pointing both her outspread palms towards the portal, she began slowly drawing her hands into fists and singing softly. "Haven't you people ever heard of closing a goddamned door? No it's much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality..." 

[Fox]

Matt had been shot before; it wasn't much fun then, either, but at least that time he hadn't had to deal with the pain for very long.

 

He'd opened his mouth to tell them he was holding a baby, but Fred had beaten him too it, and all for the better - for Matt was distracted. His side bled blood and smoke, gathering in a tiny pool at his foot, and the pool was a tiny window to an upside-down view of a world in ruins. He almost laughed.

 

"Hey!" he shouted, taking several steps back toward some of the crates and what he hoped would serve as cover. His blood, left behind on the floor, was moving. "I found a hole in your wards!"

 

It was a skeletal limb, at first, the bleached, clawed bone of a canid that dragged its way out of the pool to grasp for purchase on the floor; a body wasn't far behind it, pulling blood and smoke after to belatedly make flesh and black fur and anger, so much, a hundred pounds or more of growling, scared, furious, unnatural dog, black lips pulled up over white fangs under two lidless eyes that burned like glowing coal. Its whole body twitched as it finished forming, red-tinged smoke shuddering in a breeze that wasn't there.

 

It stared at Woundmaker, head low, and opened its mouth. "YOU," came the noise like soot over gravel - less a word than a promise.

[Avenger Assembled]

 

As Sparkler struggled to master the power of the portal, her mother nodded in satisfaction. "That's done. You keep that busy, darling, I'll get us out of here." Spreading her hands, she began to chant "Gaap! King and Prince of the Southern Region! Of the Kingdom Under the Earth! Carry us to freedom!" She kept chanting, drawing eldritch power around her from the blood dripping on the floor, from the nearby presence of her husband, and from some great power that seemed to lie at their feet. "Let your seas wash over us! Let your seas carry us home!" 

 

For his part, Mr. Sanderson chose to fire a shot into the melee before them, casting a quick spell that sent an icy blast flashing from his fingers that soon had ice and snow crackling up Nighthawk's feet and shins. "That should hold them long enough - what do you think, darling, shall we head for Switzerland?" He asked his wife. "Let this ugly little mess sort itself out - and start rebuilding family," he said, giving his daughter a meaningful, almost apologetic look. 

 

Elsewhere, across a crowded room, Peyton Smith took careful aim with her heavy .38 and pulled off a difficult shot, blasting wood shards into Woundmaker's face but otherwise not seriously injuring the masked assasin. Woodsman had been prepared to let the dog take him on while he concentrated on the Alkahest thing, but between his mother firing on Woundmaker and Nighthawk coming under attack, he found his loyalties uncomfortably divided ."That's the one," Peyton was hissing while she reloaded her .38, obviously an old hand with the brass tool at her belt that let her slide another cylinder in. "That's the one that came and took my arm, and took two hundred other people. The first time it hit the perimeter." She looked at Riley and set her gun down, reaching up to stroke his fuzzy cheek. "My beautiful boy. If I had known they were playing with Ferals, I would never have let them in. I'm so sorry." 

"It's okay, ma," said Riley, squeezing her hand. "We'll get through this." 

 

"I know," said Peyton, taking careful aim at the feral Alkahest. "Hey! Remember me!?" And with that, she opened fire again, bullets this time rebounding off the chest of the twisted image of the Alkahest, a monster-turned-predator from the bottom of the multiverse. "Remember me!?" The hideous beast laughed and turned, leaving behind even its counterpart as it barreled across the room towards Peyton Smith, its purpose unmistakable. Oh, how it laughed, louder and deeper than any of them had heard from Fred's twisted counterpart as it barreled across the room. 

[Avenger Assembled]

WOUNDMAKER 

 

"Godsdamned thing," said Woundmaker, dropping his rifle and going for his knife as he faced down the Hound. "Not my project - not my problem!" he said, stabbing at the death-dog with a blow that would have buried the long hunting blade to its shaft in the dog's neck had it struck home. "There are more like you where I've been, you know," he taunted as gunfire and alien roars echoed all around them. "Do you think they'll like the taste of their own?" 

 

CANNIBAL ALKAHEST 

 

Without speaking, Woodsman fired a shot past the Alkahest's head - a sizzling bolt that struck the icy bonds that had been running up Nighthawk's legs. He sure as hell wasn't going to let Nighthawk be trapped out there on the killing floor, especially once it was clear that the Alkahest was coming their way. Run, save yourself - came the voice in his head that every Woodsman learned the first time they went into the Forest. But there was no running now, not when the monster of his nightmares had come crashing into this world like a nightmare into the waking reality. His world had put that thing there; and if he was going to die fighting it, that was what was going to happen. 

 

 

[Fox]

"You aren't dead yet, man," shouted Grim - though the voice came from somewhere behind cover, near-lost in the din and echoing space. His wound was a lot less funny without the endorphic rush of being reunited with his dogs, but he figured if he didn't move around much he'd probably heal up, or at least make it a while before bleeding too badly. "If you saw 'em, they weren't like her. Fang - sic 'im!"

 

The dog - Fang? - flickered like an unstable candle and lunged forward at Woundmaker's chest...but never landed, nothing but thick smoke and nightmares billowing against his torso and sliding around him to collect on the other side. The bite came not from in front but from behind, far-too-strong jaws snapping down on his leg like a bear trap. "BAD MAN."

[alderwitch]

Nighthawk's growl had been low, lost in the combat. Giving Riley a grateful look for the assist, she lept when her feet were finally freed. Not away - no - but to put herself in the Alkahest's rampaging path. She knew how much those fists could hurt and she certainly wasn't about to let it pound on Riley's mother. 

 

She landed near silently, more out of habit than intent and began to bounce and weave in a dizzying display under the Alkahest's nose. She danced lightly at the edge of where she knew the monster would be able to reach without putting on an extra burst of speed. With her blood pounding in her ears and the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood in the air, Nighthawk realized she trusted these people. She trusted Raina to make the hardest call between love and responsibility. She trusted Riley to do what he was born to, and to remember that this world was not that one. She trusted Matt would stay on his feet, even when by all rights he shouldn't. 

 

And Robin trusted Fred to make use of any opening she had. 

 

"Your not our Alkahest, but I imagine you still really enjoy punching the big target, right?" Robin said as she danced back another nimble step, all but encouraging the monster to grab her and bite. "Come get me."