ic Cost of Experience

[Electra]

"How would I know?" The monster turned towards Luke, and for a moment the face was his uncle's, then his childhood bully's, then a strange face that was familiar and not all at once. "All I have is what you give me, little cub." Its voice was half-soothing, almost songlike, but with that unearthly hiss underneath that sent a shiver down the spine of everyone who heard it. "You are the sum of your experiences. All I am is all you are." It turned to Tiamat, and its eyes were reptilian, its face suddenly longer, more fanged. "The past has a bite sharper than the serpent's tooth, hmm, Mistress Monster? The whelp has no idea yet of the true pain of memory." 

 

It turned its attention to Fleur, and suddenly it was a thing like a black hole, a being made of nothing, but with glowing white holes where eyes should be. When it spoke, its voice resonated like it came from nowhere and everywhere at once. "And memory is never a thing that goes peacefully."

 

The monster raised a hand, and suddenly Fleur was flying, swept off her feet and whipped backwards so hard that instead of flying into the trees she flew through them, so hard that she couldn't call out or scream or draw a breath before blackness closed in. She was all the way across the park before she even slowed down, her body colliding with the concrete sign at the front entrance with an impact that crushed both. 

[Kaede Kimura]

Muirne froze watching Fleur get cast across the park. This was serious, and both Tiamat and Fleur had told them to stay back if the enemies were too dangerous. Was she going to let the monster get away with this? The thought flew through her mind without provocation and she shivered as it felt like the darkness had talked to her. Regardless, she couldn't stand by and let something like that go unopposed, especially with Luke looking to be next in the firing line.

 

The shadows flooding her had the sensation of burying yourself in ice but magnified greatly. Still it only drew a quiet hiss of pain before she fought through the pain and felt her limbs lengthen into great shadowy tendrils, the power flooding into her spear alongside the rest of her. She carefully modulated the amount of shadows she allowed into herself to prevent a full transformation before she stood from the bushes, her eyes glowing slightly with the same baleful green light that they did in her shadowbeast form.

 

She stood from her hiding place, small shadowy tendrils writhing invisibly in the night. “You should have left when you had the chance, but I suppose you wanted to to go violently." Her shadowy armed hurled forwards, driving the phased spear towards the creature's chest but she could tell it didn't connect well. She realised with some amount of horror that while she could feel Luke and the others she couldn't feel the creature ahead of her, or Fleur further on despite being able to see them both. It wasn't alive, and neither was she. Her arm quickly retracted as she glared at the monster, something deep inside her chanting Kill! Kill! Kill!

Edited March 21, 2021 by Kaede Kimura

[Nerdzul]

Woah. Woah. Woah. Luke looked with awe at Tiamat's transformation, sure maybe the monster had goaded the ancient dragon into it, but it was still a majestic sight.

 

Damn that was creepy as hell. That voice definitely sent a shiver down his spine didn't it? "Then I'm gonna give you nothing." He remarked angrily. He turned to face Tiamat for a moment, doubt in his eyes when the creature spoke nonsense about the bite of the past or something. Whatever.

 

Then, the creature tossed away Fleur without breaking a sweat, a freckin’ hero from the Freedom Legue so easily tossed aside like a ragdoll. That definitely was something. He gulped, visibly, but there was no way he would let that display of strength get to him.

 

He inhaled, his inner furnace burning with flames, ready to bathe the shapeshifting horror in dragonfire, but then, he saw her. Tendrils of darkness darting out of the shadows, to tear the beast apart. The monster emerged unscathed, but that wasn’t the worst. Muirne was now in the line of fire. 

 

“I’ll show you what bites.” He darted through the devastated playfield, claws bared, unfortunately, he couldn’t strike through, in fact, the monster was too slippery, or perhaps, the boy’s impetus too misguided and he failed to land a single blow.

[Electra]

The monster stepped aside from Nightscale's attack with an absent deftness that had the young dragon missing it entirely. Its attention was focused beyond him, on the defiant young woman with the arms of living darkness. "You dare, shadow-child?" it hissed, sounding more angry than amused for the very first time. "Sharper than the serpent's tooth, indeed! Perhaps you need reminding of your lessons." 

 

The creature seemed to grow all at once, suddenly much larger and broader, over seven feet tall and half again as broad as it had been. Rich clothing covered its body, and its face was suddenly male, a face that would've been handsome if not for the ruinous scar running along his chin, and the terrible red white eye with a white slit for a pupil. He made a sharp gesture with one hand, and suddenly pain exploded through Muirne, a pain she'd felt before.... 

 

To the watchers' eyes, Shadowborne staggered at the motion with blood blossoming on her skin, but the effect was far less pronounced and much less deadly than whatever it had done to Fleur. 

[Fox]

Tiamat's head craned to follow Fleur's near-dismissive destruction with a look of incredulity that did not belong on a dragon's face; by the time she got her senses back properly the fighting had already started, and she took a moment to watch with great ruby eyes narrowed. She could take a hit better than Fleur de Joie could - she could take a hit better than just about anyone on the League - but she'd recognized the person dealing the blow and that was...a problem.

 

"It is what we give it," she growled, one great claw scratching at the ground as her desire to tear the thing in half fought with memories of tyrants and heroes and dragons alike....

 

And then she left. Great leathery wings snapped open and propelled her backwards, toward Fleur, and away from the...person. "A new plan," she announced. "You are not abandoned, but this is your fight now. Demonstrate greatness, and remind this creature how we handle such violence in our city. I will check on Fleur."

 

Her landing was less than graceful, great talons digging trenches into the ground as she slid to a halt next to broken concrete. The latter she tried to gently pull away, hoping it wasn't as bad as it had looked.

[Electra]

The monster's grin at Tiamat's words was wide enough to literally split its face, breaking the illusion of Dougal to return to its original shadowy, sharp-toothed form. It was still much larger than it had been, nearly ten feet tall now and looming over the teens. "You will always be abandoned by those you trust," he confided in the two remaining. "But I will always be there." 

 

The concrete slab that marked the park's entrance was rubble from the hit it had taken, with Fleur half-buried in the debris. Tiamat managed to move enough to free her, turning her over to face the light of the street light. Broken bones shifted under skin that hadn't even had time to bruise, more broken bones than whole under skin that was already starting to cool. Stesha's still-open eyes looked oddly surprised, even filmed over and fixed. It was exactly as bad as it had looked. 

[Kaede Kimura]

Muirne watched in horror as the monster turned towards her, saying familiar lines in a familiar voice. No. Not him... She froze in place even as Dougal turned to face her. “No... It's not him, it's not him, it can't be him!" Her denials turned to a pained shriek as she felt the pain of his magic again, her mind taking her back to that day that was both so long ago and so recent where she fought him in his tower.

 

KILL IT!

 

The voice shrieked in her head even as Tiamat flew to Fleur's body corpse and Muirne could feel her control slipping. She had to get away, but she had to KILL THE ONE WHO WORE DOUGAL'S FACE! Muirne felt rage and hate and fear bubbling within her while the shadows writhed, the small tendrils that made her shadowy aura reaching for the monster.

 

The rage won out, and Muirne let loose a cry that carried all of her hate, her shield arm stretching forwards to drag her through the trees towards the monster, the slightly dimensionally shifted spear flickering back to reality but at the same time darkened to the point of being pitch black, small pieces reaching out to cast shadows and consume the light around it. She swung the spear forwards into the creature's chest, her scream of rage continuing into the night.

[Nerdzul]

Luke glanced toward Tiamat, sort of understanding what the elder meant. Plus, realizing that Fleur for sure was gonna need attention, even heroes from the Freedom League could get hurt after all. "Sure. Go. We can take this." Well, hopefully, that thing had somehow managed to shrug off everything that Muirne had tossed to it, like it wasn't even there. There was no way that his fists were going to be enough, even with the essence of his monstrous side empowering them.

 

Maybe he could try to lock it into a grapple, but than again, a shapeshifter could likely break free with ease, not unlike he had seen Shift do, besides, he wasn't sure that he wanted to stay in contact with that creature more than what was strictly needed.

 

Speaking of changing shape, the monster shifted again, to the form of a man, if it could be called as such, that he could not recognize, although admittedly, there was something familiar about him, in the depths of Luke's subconscious at least, something that he couldn't really pinpoint for now. 

 

"What the hell are you?" He asked. Not really expecting a response that would be of any use.

 

He winced, as the creature unleashed a torrent of dark magic toward Muirne. That was enough. As Tiamat had done before, Luke shred his human façade, golden flames burned from his chest, enveloping his features as his body shifted in size, obsidian scales melting over his flesh, his claws sinking on the ground as he the dragon steadied its grips, roaring angrily ready to pounce on the creature.

[Electra]

The creature hissed at Shadowborne's attack, the shadows of the spear seeming to writhe for a moment as they did battle with the stuff of the thing's own essence. It still managed to shrug off the damage, but not without some sort of cost. "You will pay for your insolence, shadow-child," it promised. 

 

It swung around to face Luke, watching his transformation with amused interest on that ever-shifting face. "The angry cub, always tearing at his tethers, even though he scores his own flesh! Hurts himself more than his enemies, hurts the ones he claims to love more than himself. So many lessons to beat into that hard, hard head." Suddenly the creature was changing again, a hard-faced, potbellied man of middle age, wearing the uniform of a prison guard. He sneered at Luke, even more imposing now that he was nearly twelve feet tall. "Sometimes a bad seed just won't learn," he claimed, slapping his baton against his open palm with a noise like a shot. "Sometimes a kid's just a waste of time." He swung the baton in a wide, hard arc, and even though Luke was no longer small, even though he was no longer even human, somehow the blow hurt every ounce as much as it had the first time he'd felt it, a pain that sent liquid fire through his shoulder and bells ringing in his head. 

 

"Come now, Mistress Monster!" the thing called to Tiamat, voice carrying across the park. "Are your claws really so dulled from this soft world? Will you let the whelps die for you?" 

[Fox]

Tiamat seethed, head snaking around to glare at the creature from the far end of Fleur's trail. There was fire leaking from between her teeth, but she wouldn't be baited that easily. Not yet.

 

Still, she took off, wings flattening grass and scattering dust as she started back toward the fight. "This is Tiamat to all points, if this thing is working," she growled; she'd hated the League communicator as soon as she's gotten it, always assuming it would get broken or lost, itching under the scales of her head. She still hated it, but at least it was useful for once. "Fleur de Joie is down in Memorial Park. Something here is dragging old memories out to hurt us. Get the knight here to take Fleur home, but do not engage; this creature does not need the help. We are...working on it."

[Kaede Kimura]

Muirne snarled incoherently as the creature attacked Nightscale, the shadows running through her making the sound deeper and more guttural. She doubted that it was particularly intimidating coming from her tiny self, but she didn't care. She just wanted to KILL IT. She stabbed forwards with her spear, watching her spear sail past the creature with annoyance rage. She pushed herself further, feeling the shadows rush out from within.

 

And then she lost control...

 

Aoife exceeded any of Muirne's screams of rage and hate with her own, even while Muirne's thoughts swirled in fear. She ignored Muirne, swinging her claws into the creature. She felt her claws skitter off the creature without effect. What will it take to kill him? She heard Muirne ask in her head, frustrated at the lack of effect from all the attacks. Aoife ignored her as she glared up at the creature. "KILL YOU!"

[Electra]

"Oh no," the creature hissed back at Shadowborne. Even if she hadn't hurt it much, her shadow attacks had obviously shaken it from its posture of amused condescension. Its voice now dripped not with laughter, but with rage. "You first, insolent child. May you die frozen, alone, and as forgotten as you have been for all these years already, with no one to even care." Its face was Dougal's again, and he was preparing a spell, he was preparing the spell, and there was nothing Muirne could do but watch it happening, too fast and too strong to stop...

[Fox]

Tiamat had never been one to take her own advice, and she sure wasn't going to start now.

 

Already pushing her wings as hard as she could to rejoin the fight, she didn't land between the creature and Shadowborne so much as impact, several tons of myth and legend dropping out of the sky to form a defiant wall between it and any would-be victims.

 

"How does it feel," she rumbled, already knowing what might come, "to be nothing but a pitiful imitation of your betters?"

[Electra]

The monster stuttered, there was no other word for it, Dougal sputtering out into the shadowy, shifting mass. With no easy path to its original target, the monster's rage grew... and so did it. "Perhaps you can answer that yourself!" it snapped, shadow suddenly becoming huge and amorphous, then solidifying into great blue wings, a long sinuous body and a head full of malicious teeth. The blue dragon made Tiamat look almost small by comparison, which was a hell of a feat in itself.

 

It opened its mouth as though planning to take a bite out of her, but instead roared out a huge red pulse of energy that hit the real dragon with the speed and strength of a freight train. The air filled with the smell of burning flesh as Tiamat was thrown into the air, narrowly missing Shadowborne as she was thrown back into the trees. The monster curved its huge long neck to smile down at the remaining teenagers. 

[EternalPhoenix]

Terrifica

 

Let it never be said that Terrifica couldn’t take instruction. Especially when matters were urgent. Fortunately, she was already in Freedom after dinner and a movie with her family. She had designs on a drug smuggling ring, but this absolutely took precedence. Fleur being down was borderline impossible on a normal day. This could be very ugly. Without hesitation, she swung across multiple lanes of traffic (having been on the Terrifi-cycle already) and headed for the park. Her communicator was under the cowl, and not quite as fancy, but it works for things like this. “This is Terrifica. I’m en route, but it’s going to take a couple of minutes. I’m just a little across town. Should I be worried about the city?” Left unspoken was just how tough they both knew Fleur was, and Terrifica’s worry about leaving her children motherless. “What’s happening?”

[Nerdzul]

The creature's words somehow managed to get past his defenses, sure he there was the physical pain, but it wasn't the thing that mattered. For a moment, despite the powerful muscles, the armor of scales, fangs and burning flames in his guts, Luke went back to being just a kid, one that felt that he was alone against the world. He could feel that same sense of powerlessness from his early days in Juvie. A lost cause. A bad seed. And was he wrong? After all what did he do first when he got his powers? He turned into the same kind of monsters that he despised. Weak. Alone. He felt warmth raising to his ears, the fires of anger burning. He roared his frustration to the sky.

 

Just. He wasn't truly alone wasn't him? Not now, not then. At the time he just couldn't see it.

 

Watching a fellow dragon being so easily swatted like a fly, one older and stronger than he was certainly did send a shiver down his spine. He was not going to back down though. Especially with the monster still directing its attention toward Muirne. He gritted his fangs, trying to find the right time to strike.

 

"Let me show how hard that head is." He remarked, headbutting the creature to throw it out of balance enough for his claws to strike trough, sinking in the ephemeral, yet strangely solid flesh of the horror. He tried to keep it within his grasp, to hold the monster still for Shadowborne to finish it off, but alas it slipped away, eluding him like a bad dream fades with the coming of the sun.

Edited April 4, 2021 by Nerdzul

[Thevshi]

Velocity

 

Just after Teriffica responded, Tiamat's communicator crackled to life once more.

"I will be there in a moment."

 

Almost as soon as the voice came over the communicator there was a faint *BOOM* that echoed across the park. A yellow blur came into view at the edge of the park a short distance from the combatants as Velocity skidded to a halt, her brunette ponytail swishing to one side.

 

It took the Freedom League speedster only a fraction of a second to taken in the entire scene at the park. Focusing on the trail of destruction that pointed toward where Fluer lay face up near the remains of the park’s concrete sign.

 

Velocity became a yellow blur once more and another streak of yellow snaked through the destruction and the speedster appeared beside Fluer.

[Kaede Kimura]

Aoife snarled at the memory monster as it spoke but it came across empty. She and Muirne both recognized what the Creature-with-the-face-of-Dougal was doing, and she could tell that she wouldn't be able to get clear before it/he finished the incantation. The green lights of her eyes winked out as she closed them, knowing that this time she would probably be frozen forever.

 

I'm sorry everyone...

 

I tried...

 

But with an earth-shaking crash, Tiamat came crashing between her and the monster. After a few traded barbs the dragon was cast aside like a broken toy by a petulant child. Aoife silently thanked Tiamat for her sacrifice. She could see the dragon was still alive, and would make sure to thank her later. For now she would use her renewed lease on existence, however temporary it may be, to hurt the monster. As Nightscale tried to pin the creature she leaned closer, her voice a sibilant hiss "What's wrong Licettere¹? Are you afraid of the dark?" 

With that, she lanced her claws forth and into the creature, feeling the satisfaction of them sinking into it's flesh followed by the invigorating warmth as her thirsting shadows regenerated her equally to the harm she had done.

 

¹ hypocrite, pretender

[Electra]

It was easy for Velocity to follow the trail of destruction to its end, but for all her vaunted speed it was clear she was already too late. Fleur de Joie's empty eyes stared at the dark sky, her body obviously broken and crushed despite Tiamat freeing her from the pile of concrete. Even the yellow dandelions braided into her hair were withered and dead. Whatever had happened to her had probably been instant, too quick for her even to flee or call the plants to her defense. 

 

Across the park, the massive shadowy beast screamed with rage as the teenagers harried it, both of them scoring blows against it one after the other! Shadowborne's vampiric draw seemed to pull some of the very substance out of it, leaving it just a bit smaller, a bit less dark. The injuries, combined with Velocity's sudden arrival, seemed to take the cockiness out of it. It pulled away, glaring at them from a thousand shifting faces. "This isn't over!" it hissed. "You cannot fight the past!" A sudden wash of darkness and it was gone, leaving nothing but a faint musty smell like old bones in its wake. 

[Kaede Kimura]

Aoife froze as the monster just... fled. She had been expecting the creature to return to the attempts at killing them, but instead this new individual showed up and it simply left. Was this new individual that significant of a threat? Or was their appearance a herald of something more threatening? They seemed preoccupied with Fleur's corpse, so they should take some time to recouperate. Quickly she turned to Luke, "Are you alright Nightscale?"

[Nerdzul]

“For now the present is kicking your ass isn’t it?” Luke gave the monster a cocky grin, one filled with a row of fangs. Although admittedly he wasn’t that confident on the fact that they were actually winning, but whatever.

He nodded at Muirne. Still somewhat short on breath. “Yeah… Are you?” His gaze sought to meet her own, he knew that something happened when Muirne changed, different from when he did the same, he wondered if it was her staring back at him or something else. He smiled, as if to silently say that he was there if she needed him (although admittedly he wasn’t exactly sure on how how reassuring he looked as a giant scaled monster).

 

At least they were both standing, though, the same could not be told about the two veteran heroes. He let the monster go, the dragon melting away to reveal the boy, unwilling to let his massive form hurt the unconscious heroes, if only  by mistake. Then he rushed at them. Tiamat seemed fine, well still breathing. Unfortunately there was not much he could do about her, for now, at least. It wasn’t the same for Fleur though. Damn!

 

“Come on, please, I really don’t want to have to fill that paperwork you know?” He joked, but his voice revealed the cracks underneath the shell of teenage bravado. Was she dead? Could be right? There must be something they could do. He turned to face Velocity, a glimmer of hope that maybe the veteran hero could actually do something.
 

[Fox]

"Probably not literal paperwork, but we'll probably have some questions for you later, if that's alright."

 

Gaian Knight had shown up loaded for bear, sword at his hip and two great stone fists dragging through the air behind him - but with the fight apparently over he let them collapse back into floating rubble as the platform he was riding drifted down to solid ground. "I think we have a lot of catching up to do, but whatever that was, they took out two of the League's heavy hitters and you're still on your feet. Good job."

 

He paused, then, running a hand back through short brown hair as he surveyed the damage, and the dragon. She was breathing steady. That was good. "Tiamat's going to be impossible to deal with, now," he said, though strain and concern sapped all the humor out of the joke. That floating rubble, now useless, formed itself into a series of pillars and dropped down as an improvised fence around Tiamat's prone body; it wouldn't do to let anyone near her without an invitation. "Whatever they did to her, a bruised ego's going to be the worst of it. And Fleur, is she - I mean, she isn't--"

 

He could feel that damage, the shape of it in the earth, all the way out to to the concrete. He could guess what that'd do to a person. "....hell," he said, and meant it. "I can get her back to Sanctuary, at least. She might...she might still be okay, eventually."

[Thevshi]

Velocity

 

Velocity took a deep sigh as she looked down on Stesha's battered body. But overall the speedster's demeanor did not look overly distraught or upset about her teammate’s apparent death.

 

"This is Velocity, I have secured Fluer's body." She spoke into her communicator. "Lock onto my signal so we can get her transported back to Sanctuary."

 

It was at that point she spotted Gaian Knight had arrived over by the two teenage heroes that had apparently been fighting against whatever that dragon like creature when the speedster first arrived. In a flash of yellow, Velocity was back over near her fellow Freedom League member and the two teens.

"It is as bad as you think Knight." She stated as she looked over at the two teens with a small, but reassuring smile. "But Fluer has survived such injuries before, I believe it takes a couple of days before she is revived, but we should get her to Sanctuary as soon as possible to get things started."

[EternalPhoenix]

Terrifica

 

“That would be good. Fleur can come back.” Terrifica was beside Velocity, crouching over Fleur. Her motorcycle was a dozen feet back on the grass. She had a visor on. It was quite fancy. “These injuries are something else. Gravity on that scale…well, I don’t know how…” She trailed off as she surveyed the entire area as she activated her communicator. “Now this doesn’t make sense. There was only one enemy, correct? Because I’m reading at least three other energy sources. This was gravitic, but I’m also reading entropic, high level thermal, and magical. Along with enough physical power to stomp a hole in the earth over there.” It was, well, baffling. Those two children should not be relatively unharmed. No, wait. There were…possibilities. “With readings like this I would expect more than one enemy, and for those two to be incapacitated at best. With no insult towards their ablities intended, of course.”

[KnightDisciple]

When the initial signal had gone out, Carson Keefe had been grading papers in his apartment. He didn't do it very often, so he wasn't quite as efficient as he could have been. He'd listened to the signal from Tiamat. His eyes had widened, and even as he stood, his form was cloaked in a glow and then clad in his armor. He restrained himself long enough to run to the balcony, throw open the door, and fly at sub-sonic speeds into the air. He got far enough away that he knew he wouldn't break any windows.

 

Velocity and Gaian Knight beat him to the park, the former by virtue of her speed, the latter by virtue of having a clearer head. Gabriel was a calm man, the "diplomat" of the League for reasons beyond just his supernatural ability to work with people. His fellow heroes rarely saw his temper flare up. So Velocity and Gaian Knight, at least, ought to know that he was in a mood when they saw him land ready for battle and heard the rumble of a barely-restrained sonic boom come down from on high. The angelic man's armor gleamed, his spear shifted slightly in his hand, and his eyes seemed to glow with a terrible fury. When he spoke, his voice was not the gentle, comforting sound most who'd work with him heard every day; it was a slightly echoing rumble that promised the wrath of God upon his foe.

 

"Where is-"

 

He looked then, to where Velocity held Fleur's body, and GK stood close as well. His hand flicked, and the spear disappeared. He moved, half-run and half-flight, to the side of one of his closest friends. For a moment, his face showed anguish. Then he sighed and closed his eyes; he seemed to calm and center himself. He reopened his eyes and looked at the others.

"We need to keep her away from the people or from her daughter, until she's had time to...heal. She needs good earth, too. Gaian Knight should transport her, us, to Sanctuary, and can help keep this...discrete."

 

He closed his eyes again and took a deep breath, before he looked Velocity and then Gaian Knight in the eyes in turn.

 

"I will talk to Amaryllis about this once we have Stesha...resting...safely."