One of These is Not Like the Other (IC)

[Gizmo]

Jack of all Blades' energy awareness flared as Dark Star's malevolent doppelganger made his appearance. Where the cosmic hero's gravitational powers registered as an aura the swordsman could only liken to the music of the spheres, his vicious double radiated the foul stench of smashing snowglobes. Though his nose wrinkled and his mind filled with screaming white noise, the swashbuckler's mouth, seemingly of its own volition, was already doing what it did best.

"Jeez, all that mojo and you couldn't hire better writers? I mean, even if you allow that stilted, melodramatic verbal diarrhea as playing to genre conventions, you used 'foolish' and 'fools'." Jack shook his head with exaggerated disappointment. Inwardly, he knew that the best he could offer at the moment was to keep the villain's attention away from the others' last minute preparations. "'Cause that makes me feel like you just don't care enough to bring your 'A' material. Which hurts my feelings, man. There are so many synonyms you could have used! Watch, I'll show you: you're a... blockhead, a buffoon, a clod, a cretin, a dimwit, a dolt, a dunce, a dunderhead, a halfwit, an idiot, an ignoramus, an imbecile." Hopping and flipping from place to place, the acrobat ticked the insults off on his free hand. "I'm not even halfway through the alphabet yet! I'll bet somebody's feeling petty silly, amirite?"

[alderwitch]

While the men taunted their enemy, Taylor phased and went running through the desk and to the back corner of the room and the curio cabinet. She threw the doors open wide and yanked out a chained book, the heavy padlock marked with twisting runes. Pricking her finger on the spike that replaced where a normal keyhole would have been, the runes shifted and the chain fell off.

Taylor curved her body around the tome protectively, with it cradled open in her arms as she started to read in a low sibilant language in the background.

[Cyroa]

Dark Star laughed coldly, heartily amused. "Well, you're certainly right. He is pathetic. With his pathetic 'goodness' and curiosity, he was easily distracted while my former prison sucked him in. Once I siphon and absorb him, my powers will be unstoppable. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it," he said half to himself.

He chuckled at Ace. "Well, as he doesn't fear the vacuum of space that's only being held off by my will, perhaps he is trying to get you all killed." He looked at Avenger a long moment. "You know," he said looking at Avenger, "you're not bad. Or maybe you are… Maybe the Other wrong about you? Care to switch sides? I don't particularly care about this 'vampire' disease thing you have. But if you require blood, I can provide you oceans of it. You can have an entire planet to rule as you choose. Make it in whatever image you like. I'll even irradiate everything you dislike from orbit. It would be easy." He shrugged. "But if you persist in this foolishness, no, I have no intention on entering to fight you. Please. I'm an ascended being of power. You're...not. Either way, you have until the asteroid arrives. Kill that annoying wretch,†he said looking at Jack of Blades, “and I’ll consider stopping it.†Over his shoulder a rapidly moving white-ish was getting much closer. "You didn't think I opened the wormhole just to talk did you," he asked rhetorically, chuckling to himself.

[Gizmo]

A tight backflip brought Jack of all Blades to a crouch atop one on the library's bookshelves. Vampire? Man, I was totally guessing silicon-based alien. Go figure. Cupping his free hand over his mouth, the swordsman made a harsh, echoing breathing sound. "Jack," he called to Avenger in an artificially deep tone, "he is your father." Dropping his hand to reveal an expression of mock anguish, he continued in a strained upper register, "No... no... That's not true! That's impossible!" The swashbuckler quickly resumed his first impression. "Search your feelings, you know it to be unbelievably corny."

Returning to his regular voice, he grinned at the cosmic murderer infuriatingly. "You get points for 'wretch', but I gotta figure you threw 'foolishness' in there just to annoy me. That's just petty, Twinkle Twinkle."

[Avenger Assembled]

Avenger waved his hand at the portal, feeling the prickles go up on the back of his neck as he turned his back on the evil Dark Star across the dimensions. "Feh. I might have known you were as cowardly as your Other. You can't even do genocide with your own hands, you have to do it with rocks from the sky!" He looked up at Jack of Blades, his lip curling, and moved his lips to murmur "Get behind the portal." "If it weren't for the poor girl you accidentally killed while shooting at my wife, I'd think you couldn't kill anything at all!" He spun on his heels, pointed at Evil Dark Star, and declared, "Why don't you come in here and say that to my face?!"

[Cyroa]

Dark Star looked at and through the heroes for a long moment. "Or," he said suddenly, "we'll see how resistant you are to micrometeorites first!" Suddenly, passing through him him and then through the portal, dozens of tiny meteorite whistled into the room. The deadly spread banged about the room, leaving the heroes to dodge frantically.

[Gizmo]

Jack of all Blades somersaulted forward off of the top of the book shelf as the air filled with tiny stone projectiles. The swordsman was gratified to find that his recent obsessive training had apparently paid off, as he avoided the meteorites with relative ease. "See, this is the trouble with you - uff - bulletproof types," he called as he came out of a back flip to twist through the air in a spiral of sword and greatcoat. "You get so used to - ha - bouncing attacks off your cosmic abs, you forget that - wupp - us 'little guys' know how to to just not get hit." Though he made no move to acknowledge that he'd received Avenger's signal, the acrobat's theatrics brought him behind the portal as suggested.

[alderwitch]

Taylor flinched at the whine of projectiles, one ear on the battle. She continued to hiss the chant out through her teeth as she crouched down, trying to make herself as small a target as possible. It went against the grain to huddle in a crouch on the floor in a fight but they were desperately trying to buy her time and Taylor wasn't about to let that go to waste.

One knee on the ground, Taylor balanced the book on her other thigh, grabbing jars out of the base of the cabinet blind. When her fingers closed on a thick candle, she pulled it out and set in on the ground between her and the cabinet.

[angrydurf]

Ace lightly stepped aside as the projectiles shot into the library, "Alright maybe you were right Avenger, Our Dark Star is way more of a threat, I mean throwing rocks? Seriously?" He taunted keeping a careful eye on the wormhole.

As he dodged he maneuvered himself to the side hoping to use the gravtic disturbance of the wormhole itself to better disguise his position.

[Cyroa]

Dark Star floated forward, stopping past the open portal itself. "The Other thinks so highly of you yet you are clearly as deceitful as some believe. Nonetheless, you are very annoying. And I tire of your yammering," he said coldly. Suddenly, Avenger was blasted by a beam of energy that came from off to one side.

[angrydurf]

Ace caught the glimmer of the blast coalescing just an instant before it fired and jumped at the vampire with a shout, "Avenger get down!" as he gripped Avengers collar and pulled him out of the way twisting as he did to avoid the blast himself. He rolled back to his feat with practiced ease.

[Gizmo]

Jack of all Blades wasn't terribly surprised to find that their foe's portal was invisible from the rear which, he reflected, said an awful lot about his life experiences in general. Fortunately his energy awareness gave him a general idea of its location; unfortunately, it gave the villain the advantage of what amounted to a wall at his back. ...but not a very tall wall, the swashbuckler reflected slyly. While Dark Star's diabolical double focused on removing the 'un' from Avenger's undead condition, Jack coiled his legs under him and soared up and over the inky black doorway. Really don't want to know what happens if I undershoot this.

Either luck or skill was with the acrobat as he momentarily found himself flying over the cosmic horror's head. "Guess if I want to keep your attention," Jack quipped as the startled doppelganger looked up, "I'll have to make a bigger impression!" So saying he buried his rapier of dimensional magic to the hilt right between the energy being's eyes.

[Cyroa]

This Dark Star was much like theirs, he had never lost sight of the energy blade wielding hero. And while this Dark Star was far more hardened to the frivolities of the social arena, he was still caught off guard. But like their Dark Star, this one was made from some very durable stuff. The blade entered his head, and a grunt emerged from Dark Star but he was not nearly as incapacitated as the heroes would have liked. In fact, he looked quite angry considering he had no facial features.

[Gizmo]

Jack of all Blades' arc took him over the villainous Dark Star to land softy in front of him, pulling his flickering dimensional blade smoothly from the energy being's head as he went. Looking up, he expected to see their foe clutching his face in agony; the swordsman was stunned to find him instead shrugging off the attack with a featureless scowl. Well, nertz, Jack thought weakly as he braced himself for the inevitable retaliation.

Outwardly, however, his confident demeanor remained unbroken. His eyes flicked to Ace and Avenger as he gestured to Darker Star with his free thumb and smirked. "Heh. Stabbed him in the face."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Chernobog, attend me! Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, send your children to my aid!" called Avenger unexpectedly. "Take the eyes and ears of my enemy so he might feed the Great Beast of Night!" Who said vampires didn't know anything about sorcery? At Avenger's words, twisted black shapes erupted from the walls and ceiling, each entangling themselves around the malevolent Dark Star, sinking into his head, his midsection, every part of his body.

[Cyroa]

Dark Star growled in frustration at the blanket blinding to his senses. But he was not quite ready to quite. Not yet. "You pathetic worms are beginning to annoy me!" He gestured, changing the gravity of the room to send everyone slamming upwards towards the ceiling. He didn't have to know where they where for that one...in fact everything in the room was affected; people, furniture, Stesha's corpse, everything.

[Gizmo]

Though Jack of all Blades' mind took a moment to understand what was going on as the direction of gravity's pull suddenly reversed, his body reacted immediately. Spinning in the air, he landed firmly with both feet on the ceiling, coiling his legs above him. Launching downward he swiped quickly back and forth with his blade. "How'd you know I always wanted to go to space camp as a kid?"

[alderwitch]

Taylor's inner ear immediately protested at the gravitic shift. Normally, she functioned just fine in zero-g but normally she wasn't conducting a difficult ritual while encumbered by her pregnancy. She scrabbled frantically, making a couple quick swipes to grab a floating bottle. Her fingers just closed around the thick glass but with gravity turned into a pretzel, she couldn't huck it at the ground to finish the ritual.

Stesha's body floated by and grimly Taylor kicked towards it and reached for its limp hand. Taylor wasn't normally one for grandstanding but she whistled loud and sharp at the villian wrecking her library.

She brought the handing holding the vial down on the thick and jagged piece of wood that had pierced her former friend's heart with every ounce of her strength, ignoring the pain of the shards that sliced her hand as it shattered. Freed, the scrap of summoned starlight in the small vial exploded outward in a wave of force as it encountered the gravity powers of the evil Dark Star and reacted violently.

Gritting her teeth, Taylor closed her hand around the fragment, wrestling it with iron will to their purpose. With such powerful forces at play, a wrong move risked tearing everything assunder. With aching concentration, she slowly raised her hand high in the air, the light clutched in her fingers pulsing softly. She only hoped that it worked.

[Avenger Assembled]

Battered by the wildly fluctuating gravity, Avenger stood unmarred save for his dramatically ripping clothes, a figure of power and might defending his domicile from a terrible intruder. "I summon the Crimson Chains of Kasharak! Bind my enemy's soul for my amusement!" He tore open the top piece of his costume, revealing his pale, muscular torso beneath as fountains of blood-red light came pouring from the walls, gushing and swirling around the evil Dark Star.

[Cyroa]

Phantom’s magic crashed against Dark Star’s cosmic power with a flash. The reversed gravity suddenly ended; things crashing back to the floor. The wormhole floating behind him flickered, becoming unstable as the vortex began to loose stability. Dark Star’s face blinked in surprise, if such a thing could be said for his blank features as their powers collided. The mythical crimson chains swirled around the energy being while he stood immobile...For the moment.

[angrydurf]

The shift in gravity didn't even ruffle Aces clothes thanks to the Gravimetric nullifier strapped to his belt. As Phantoms ritual snapped into effect he couldn't help but be thankful he wasn't going to have to face the dopplganger down with the others caught in his gravtic web. None of that showed on the cocky immortals face however as he laughed at the beings attempts to free itself from the bonds of magic, "Say what you want about our Dark Star, He knows better than to attack a hero in their own house. This your first time out on your own or what?"

He didn't wait for an answer as he swung a vicious left hook at the villainous entity's head.

[Cyroa]

Dark Star just growled in annoyance and frustration as Ace's punch landed. The energy being seemed surprised that the punch actually connected and hurt too. "Far from it fleshling. All you're doing is delaying the inevitable. And letting others die by wasting time here of course," he said with an evil sneer and cold humor.

[Gizmo]

"Right, 'cause not delaying our horrible deaths sounds like such a good plan," Jack of all Blades quipped as gravity reasserted itself in the proper direction and he landed lightly on the floor. "Besides, weren't you planning of killing everybody anyway? You've made it clear you're 'v'ry, v'ry ev'l'," the swashbuckler added, throwing in a comical faux accent for good measure. His dimensional blade flashed forward, piercing the cosmic entity under the left side of his jaw and exiting out the right side of the top of his head. Jack swirled it around a bit as he withdrew it from the energy being, just for good measure. "This is your brain. This is your brain on energy sword," he announced.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Foolish man." Shirtless, his pale chest magnificently muscled like something from a cheesy romance novel cover, Avenger faced Dark Star fearlessly, gesturing in the air to catch the spaceman's attention. "You tamper with beings far beyond your puny comprehension! Surrender now, and I shall spare your mortal life!"

[Cyroa]

The blows continued to land, surprising and alarming the energy being. This collection of pesky solids seemed almost immune to everything he did. Plus, they all seemed able to hurt him! This was most unusual and extremely worrying to him. Perhaps he had overstepped himself here and a strategic retreat was called for…

Not that he was thinking that clearly of course. He was still attempting to shrug off those crimson ‘things’, causing him to have trouble seeing or focusing on anything. Even his cosmic senses, able to penetrate anything he had ever encountered, were unable to see anything at the moment. Plus he was reeling from multiple hits, more than he usually ever felt. All together, he was rather close to panicking really. When he felt his very nature being counteracted, being ‘drained’ somehow, he was from ‘close’ to ‘complete’. He was having trouble holding himself together awith his rising panic nd when the foreign touch on his formidable mind occurred, he lost it.

“No, no, no, no, no! You can’t defeat me! I am eterna…†There was a FWUMP and a whoosh as the energy being suddenly imploded, releasing energy and briefly sucking everything forward for a half a second. Just as suddenly as he had arrived, there was nothing that remained of him except the ruin, wreckage and destruction that he left behind.