Giant Dragon Bees! [IC]

[Electra]

Erin continued running and leaping, Freedom City passing by at a phenomenal rate as the buildings became shorter and more spread out. "Giant flowers?" she asked incredulously, the words almost stolen by the wind. "We don't have any of those, do we? We're just going to have to beat them up. Get ready!" With those optimistic words, she launched into another giant leap, taking them beyond the confines of Freedom City.

[Gizmo]

Bouncing up and down as Wander made one prodigious leap after another, Jack scoffed at the pursuing insects. "Yeah, well, I hear your queen prefers army ants!" He turned back to Erin. "Too mean? I'm really not clear whether we're talking about their girlfriend or mom or what at this point." Bellowing back to the bees, he shook his fist emphatically. "And like you'd even know what to do with a flower if you found one!" Jack shrugged as best he could from his awkward position. "The sooner we get back to punching and stabbing the better; I'm rapidly beginning to question the life choices that led me here."

[Electra]

"Well, there's always grad school," Erin quipped, even as she set down in the middle of a tree-edged cornfield outside the city. There didn't seem to be a whole lot of damage they could do here, except maybe create a few acres of popcorn. Now that they were out of the city, Erin wasn't quite sure what to do with the massive bugs. They were intelligent, so killing them would be wrong, but letting giant bees rampage around and set fire to things also seemed bad. "Do you know if the Beekeeper's still in jail?" she asked Jack.

[Gizmo]

"I dunno, I figured they stuck him in a loony bin somewhere," Jack replied as he hopped down from the deceptively lean teenager's shoulder, brushing himself off in an attempt to reclaim some shred of dignity. "Turning Freedom Hall into a bee hive isn't so much a crime as a desperate cry for help, y'know?" As the bees quickly closed the distance between them and the cornfield, the fencer clucked his tongue in annoyance. "...you're going to have to throw me at them again, aren't you?"

[Electra]

The bees were circling now, maybe having a strategy session of their own. "I don't think so," Erin said. "That was when we had to get their attention and get them away from the park. Now they're pissed at us, and I hope they think we're invulnerable to fire. They'll have to come down here if they want to get us, and I bet they will. We have the advantage on the ground, they're so big they'll have a hard time maneuvering this low. Give them one more good razzing and we'll see what they do."

[Electra]

The bees were circling now, maybe having a strategy session of their own. "I don't think so," Erin said. "That was when we had to get their attention and get them away from the park. Now they're pissed at us, and I hope they think we're invulnerable to fire. They'll have to come down here if they want to get us, and I bet they will. We have the advantage on the ground, they're so big they'll have a hard time maneuvering this low. Give them one more good razzing and we'll see what they do."

[Gizmo]

"Right." The swashbuckler cracked his neck loudly and set himself in an anchored stance. "Been saving this one." Taking a deep breath, Jack placed the fingers of one hand lightly against his expanded chest and stretched the other arm out grandly in an exaggerated version of an operatic pose before belting out:

• "I'm... squishin' up my baby bumble bee
  Won't my Mommy be so proud of me
  I'm squishin' up my baby bumble bee -
  EW! What a mess!"

[Avenger Assembled]

"THAT'Z IT!" squealed Henr-bee in a voice like a furious prop plane. "I'M GOING TO BEET YOU TILL HONEY ZQUIRTZ OUT YOUR EARZ!"

There was a quick interchange in the air of: "UH, HENR-BEE, I DON'T THINK THAT'Z-" "YOU ZHUT UP! YOU WANT ZOME TOO!" With his bee allies intimidated to his side, Henr-bee swooped down to attack Jack of all Blades! Buzzing wildly, they circled the heroic duo on the ground, looking for an opening. Despite Jack's incredible speed and skill, it was increasingly obvious that the bees were going to hit him: they were incredibly fast despite their bulk, and obviously used to working together. Laughing in terribeel triumph, suddenly Henr-bee saw an opening and swarmed in for the kill, his mouth-parts, each the size of a man's arm, clacking menacingly...

[Electra]

Wander dove between Jack and the attacking trio of bees, shoving the swordsman behind her and raising an arm to protect her face from the... whatever it was it was trying to bite her with. "Henr-bee" gave her a solid chomp that engulfed most of her arm, but he wasn't strong enough to actually break the skin. Hurt like hell, though.

Pulling her arm away, Erin shook it to bring the feeling back to it. When it felt better, she turned a quick series of flips to confused that giant multifaceted eye, then twirled her stick around several times and smacked the bee right in its massive, fuzzy face.

[Gizmo]

"Oooh," Jack laughed through a wince as the most aggressive of the three bees went down hard, "you just got faced!" Firing his grapple, the fencer snared the gargantuan insect he'd been riding earlier and immediately retracted the cable to propel himself with startling speed and grace into the air. At the apex of the arc there was a blinding flash of a whirling blade, and by the time Jack landed lightly on the other side, Curl-Bee was already toppling out of the air, unconscious.

[Avenger Assembled]

Beatrizz gave a terrible shriek as the others fell. "I...I ZURRENDER!" She cried. "JUZT DON'T ZTING THEM ANYMORE! WE ARE THE ONLY FIRE-BEETHERZ LEFT! PLEAZE!" The giant bee-monster's pleas were like a screaming jet engine set on vibrate. She landed suddenly, hard enough to tear up the ground beneath her fuzzy body, and rolled over on her back in an oddly dog-like gesture of submission. It was hard to read an insect's face, but something in the giant bee's tone was frantically clear. "WE WILL GO AWAY AND NOT BOTHER YOU! IZ THERE A PLAZE WITH NO PEOPLE?"

[Electra]

Startled by the sudden motion, Erin nearly hit the last bee reflexively before checking herself. Now that the fighting was over, she was suddenly out of her depth. She looked over at Jack and shrugged. "I don't know," she murmured, sotto voce. "What are we supposed to do with these guys? I don't know any places with giant flowers and no people." For a moment she thought of her own world, which was full of plants and no people whatsoever, but she wouldn't send her worst enemy there, much less some hapless giant bees.

[Gizmo]

The fencer rubbed the back of his neck, chagrined. "Jeez, I feel kinda bad, now," he admitted. "I mean, strictly speaking, we attacked them, y'know?" Sighing, he considered their options. It didn't seem fair to imprison the bees, but they were too dangerous to be left to their own devices. "I dunno, maybe Dok A knows about an island or something? Um... I know a couple aliens, maybe I could call in a favour and try finding someplace off-world?"

[Electra]

"Yeah, that sounds like it would probably work." Erin decided. She could call Hellion and try to get him to find some place for the bees, but she was still trying to decide if things were weird with him, so for now she was perfectly glad to pass the responsibility off to an adult. "But you saw how they were acting," she added. "That one basically said he was going to clobber people till he got a giant flower. That's not exactly a peaceful attitude."

[Gizmo]

Jack shrugged, a small smirk creeping across his face. "To be fair, I kinda have that effect on people. It's a gift. Besides, we're not exactly pacifists ourselves, amirite?" The young man scratched at the faint stubble on his chin distractedly. "Oh, hey, I bet Ace Danger's visited like, The Land of Giant Things With Lots of Legs or something, could check with him. Or Fleur, she's like a plant expert or something, so maybe she knows about some big flowers." He cracked his knuckles then spread his hands. "I think we can make this work!"

[Electra]

The names were more or less familiar to Erin, but she didn't know any of them personally, so she just shrugged acquiescence. Now that the fight was over, it was time for talking, and she usually left that to her more gifted teammates. Especially talking to someone like Jack of all Blades, where it sometimes seemed like talking was most of what he did. "You want me to keep an eye on the bees while you get things arranged?" she asked.

[Gizmo]

Yeah, sure," Jack nodded, hoping the comlink Colt had insisted he wire into the collar of his greatcoat had enough range to reach back to the city. "Gimme a shout if you need a hand."

A few minutes later, he ambled back over to the teenager and massive insects. "So I guess they already had to set something up for all the other giant bees after they dealt with Bee-Keeper. Sprouts'll be over in a bit to make with the moving." He turned to the one who'd been identifies as Beeatrizz. "You and your boys gonna spazz out on us again, or we cool?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Beatrizz had gotten up from her submissive crouch, but it was only to check on the boys. "IT'Z ZO TOUGH BEEING YOUNG AND ZINGLE YOU KNOW," she muttered in a voice loud and droning enough to make the grass all around her gently sussurate. She patted Henr-bee lightly on the back. "YOU JUZT WANT TO FIT IN WITH THE GUYZ, EVEN WHEN THEY ARE DOING CRAZY THINGZ, AND HENR-BEE IZ ZO ARTICULATE WHEN HE'Z ZOBERRRR...." She shook a head larger than Erik's whole body. "WE WERE GOING TO BEE MARRRRIED, BUT I MIZTOOK HIZ ANGER FOR PAZZION. BETTER TO JUZT BEE FRIENDZ."

[Electra]

"Bees get married?" Erin murmured, raising an eyebrow. "I thought like only one bee in the hive even got to have sex or something like that." Still, she wasn't going to talk to the sixty-foot bee about her sex life, so she let that one go. With the situation apparently well in hand, she collapsed her bat and put it away, then checked over the singe marks on her uniform. Not too bad structurally, but definitely burned black in places. "This was a new uniform, too," she muttered. Belatedly, she thought to look to the swordsman for injuries. "How about you, you okay?"

[Gizmo]

"Ouch." Jack winced despite himself. "Damn, chica, promise me you're not going to put it to him like that. 'Just friends', jeez. Who says that?" The swordsman was increasingly aware of the absurdity of the conversation and situation as a whole, but had finally decided to just go with it. He was talking with a gigantic, fire-breathing bumblebee about her relationship woes. These things happen. "Hey, it's the twenty first century, kid. Bee ladies are doin' it for themselves." he noted to Erin. "I'm good."

[Avenger Assembled]

"IT'Z TOUGHER THAN YOU THINK WHEN YOU ARE A ZOZIAL INZECT," said the giant bee, waving a gigantic foreleg at herself and her friends. "ZE URGE FOR ZE COLONY IZ VERY ZTRONG, EZPECIALLY IN THE BOYZ. ZEY WANT A COLONY WHERE ZEY DON'T HAVE TO WORK, AND THEY ZAY IT'Z TRADITIONAL VALUEZ! BUT WHEN I ZAY "BUT WHAT ABOUT YOUR BRAINZ?" ZEY GET ALL BOTHERED AND ZEY I ZHOULDN'T BRING UP ZE BAD OLD DAYZ."

"BEEATRIZ!" A battered Curl-Bee wiggled his feelers. "I...I HEARD EVERYTHING? IZ IT TRUE?"

"YES, IT'S TRUE," spat the giant bee, whirling suddenly on her fellow giant bee-monster. "AND YOU CAN FORGET ABOUT JUZTIFYING IT TO ME OR ZEZE PINK APEZ! IF IT WAZ ZO GREAT IN THE OLD DAYZ, WHY DID THE MAZTER CHAZE UZ AWAY? YOU WERE THERE, YOU REMEMBEER!"

"I...I DO..." He looked away, ashamed. "BUT HOW CAN WE LIVE OTHERWIZE? WE HAVE OUR NATURE AND WE MUZT LIVE UP TO IT! WOULD YOU HAVE UZ GIVE UP FLOWERZ NEXT?"

[Electra]

"Listen," Erin told the bees, hopelessly out of her depth. "You're not the only ones, there's a bunch of other giant bees that got gathered up in a fight a couple weeks ago, I guess." She looked to Jack for confirmation. "They found someplace for those bees to go, and I guess you're going to go there too. Maybe it's nice, and you'll like it. Better than trying to beat people up for giant flowers and getting chased out of the city, right?"

[Gizmo]

"Kid's gotta point," Jack confirmed, spreading his hands and turning to Curl-Bee. "Which also pretty much means you don't get to play the 'last of our kind, owe to our people' card, big guy. If you're smart enough to string together the words 'it's in my nature', you're too smart to really use that as an excuse." Wincing through a sigh, he rubbed that back of his head. "Give you an example. You may have gathered I've got kind of a knack for really ticking people off. You could probably say it's in my nature, right, but that doesn't make it cool. I still gotta own up to it. I already had to apologize to the kid there earlier, and I more or less owe you three one, too. Shoulda tried talking in the first place. So, y'know. Sorry."

[Avenger Assembled]

"ITZ OKAY. I WAZ GOING TO ZET THINGZ ON FIRE TILL WE GOT ZOME FLOWERZ." Curl-bee shook his massive head, smoke puffing from his mouth. "MAYBE WE WERE ALL MIZTAKEN. BUT WHAT ABOUT HENR-BEE? WHAT'Z GOING TO HAPPEN WHEN HE WAKEZ UP?"

"HE'LL EITHER LIVE WITH UZ, OR HE'LL FIGHT." Beatrizz patted him on the foreleg with a limb as large as Erik or Erin's entire bodies. "WE CAN'T LIVE FOR HIM. WE HAVE TO LIVE FOR OURSELVZ." She waved up at the stars overhead. "JUZT IMAGINE IT, CURL-BEE! A WORLD WITH NO PINK APEZ! NO TOWERZ OF ZTEEL! A WORLD WITH A HIVE ZTRETCHING OFF TO THE ZKY!"

"...IT DOEZ SOUND BEEUTIFUL," agreed Curl-Bee. "I'M ZORRY," he added to Jack and Wander. "IT WAZ WRONG TO WANT TO HURT PEOPLE FOR FLOWERZ."

[Electra]

"It's okay," Erin told the giant bee. "You just want someplace that you can live and be safe and have enough to eat. Everybody wants that, you just, you know, went about it the wrong way. But things will be better now, and you won't have to worry about fighting anymore." She tugged on the ends of her own hair, looking around as though expecting the promised backup to suddenly appear. "Anyway, that one, um, Henry-bee, he'll be okay in a few minutes. I just knocked him out, no permanent harm done or anything."