ic The Black Rainbow [IC]

[trollthumper]

Cannonade looked up at the swaying T. Rex - even if it was fully possessing his wits, he still put his odds on Wander. "Got it," he said. He split off from the fray, tearing at full speed through the halls of the museum with the aim of closing with the Nazis.

He arrived on the scene just as Midnight's blow laid out one of the uniformed fairies. His compatriot, however, was still up and dancing like a trained bozer, his eyes fixed on Cannonade. "Aye," he said, "this one looks like a challenge. Why don't we go a few rounds, and see --"

"Can it, Legolas." Cannonade was across the room in a flash, arm extended. He clotheslined the Nazi at speeds approaching a car, then used the momentum to get the target into a headlock. "I save my challenges for people who deserve it. You're just another piece of trash, no matter how fancy you dress yourself up."

[April]

The hooded and fox-masked heroine relaxed her stance slightly, a subtle shift in posture, now that Cannonade had the peculiar Nazi in a bind.  She cast a quick sidelong glance at her tall friend and shrugged slightly, her psychic blade unraveling and fading away, though Midnight knew the petite psychic well enough to recognize that she was still poised to strike quickly; despite her outward appearance her weapon was always a mere thought away.

 

--It goes well,-- Renarde replied, a hint of a smile on her thoughts.  --Officially,-- she continued conversationally, --I moved into a Penthouse in Pyramid Plaza.  But yeah, I spend most of my time at the hotel.--

 

"So," the telepath said, turning her outward attention back on the Nazi fae.  "Do you surrender and explain, or do we beat you unconscious and I rip what I want to know from your mind anyway?"

[trollthumper]

The giant looked La Renarde Bleue right in the eyes, even as he struggled to escape Cannonade's grasp. He laughed, and it wasn't a pleasant sound. "Oh, miss," he said, "as if you're the worst I've handled. I've kicked sidhe between the legs and weathered their wrath. Go ahead." The man took in a deep breath and pushed against Cannonade's grip, knocking the hero aside and bursting free "Do your worst. Show me what you've got."

"Man. You really just asked for it, didn't ya."

[April]

Blink and you miss her.

One moment the woman the Furion's called Sage the Fleet was standing in front the the Fae Nazi and in one fluid motion she was behind him, her signature weapon--a long and slender guardless sword thoughtform--snapping into existence. Before the giant could react, La Renarde Bleue slammed the blade into his back, a length of the telepathic blade poking through his chest as she skewered him. The vulpine masked heroine released the weapon skewering the leprechaun which rapidly unraveled into mist as she spun, a second weapon forming in her other hand while the first dissipated, and slashed through the creature's neck.

Holding her weapon in her left hand, the silent heroine opened her right hand, palm up, as if to ask "Well?"

[trollthumper]

Judging from the initial reaction, an icepick must have lodged its way into the fairy fascist's skull at relativistic speeds. He went ramrod straight, almost frozen like a statue, before staggering forward a few seconds later, clutching at the sides of his head. A terrible roar escaped his lips, echoing down the halls of the museum to the point that Wander could hear it clearly. But in time, the roar of pain started to shift... into laughter, cruel and robust. The leprechaun was stumbling, but he was still upright.

"Now that's how you do it!" he shouted.

[Avenger Assembled]

Mark snapped his fingers and the air whoomped, the magical artifacts around the museum rippling slightly as a wave of insubstantial force rushed over the entire complex. Though luckily Mark's eruption of power didn't damage the artifacts, their antagonists seemed much more changed, the tyranosaurus abruptly collapsing inward into a green-skinned human shape without even a cascade of bones, while suddenly the leprechauns seemed to wilt like so many Irish daisies left out in a Freedom City summer heat wave. "I'm sorry," he said almost apologetically to Wander before jogging over to help with the main fight. "These guys are real jerks, and I was getting a little tired of their stupid fake T-Rex, who wasn't even an animated skeleton!" Edge took the time to make a rude face at the fallen shapeshifter (in more ways than one), trusting Wander to deal with him faster than the thought could happen. 

[Electra]

Distracted by the fight she was already involved in, Erin nearly tumbled over the balcony after the "T-Rex" she'd been about to jump on suddenly turned into a puny human. Superlative reflexes let her turn the fall into an attack, coming down feet-first on the center of the shapeshifter's back and neatly slamming him to the ground. "No worries," she told Mark's retreating form, "there's still plenty to do." Slinging the shapeshifter up over her shoulder like a sack of flour, she jogged after the reality warper to go find the others. "I just hope we don't have to account to anybody for a missing dinosaur skeleton." 

[trollthumper]

The remaining thief was backed into a corner, surrounded on all sides by Cannonade, Midnight, and La Renarde Bleue. He was examining his options, and none of them looked good - especially when he saw Edge and Wander tearing up the hall, with his unconscious ally hauled over his shoulder.

"Ah," he spat. "Last time I trust a pooka's competence."

"You know," said Cannonade, "you could just give up right now. Save yourself a... well, okay, you've already got a lot of trouble. But at least that way, you ain't gonna compound it."

The man smiled. "Well," he said, scanning the room, "I think I know my limits." His eyes landed on the case next to him, and the smile grew wider. "And I ain't even reached them yet."

He lunged forward, his fist going through the glass. Before anyone could stop him, he had his hand around the golden statue inside. There was a flash of kaleidoscopic light, and the man was gone, leaving just his unconscious compatriots.

"Well, what the hell was that?" said Cannonade.

[April]

"Let's find out," Fox said, squatting down next to the unconscious fae burglar and indicating to Wander where she could deposit its human accomplice. The mindwalker took her time as she peeled back the layers of defense surrounding each mind; her subjects being unconscious made the task easier though not by much, the telepath estimating that the procedure would still have been relatively trivial.

Into their minds she dived.

The fox masked heroine talked as she probed. "The shapeshifter," she told the Leaguers, "Was just a distraction. Not important." Sitting back on her heels, La Renarde Bleue glanced up at the others as she continued, "Both are certainly fae; the thoughts are slippery, hard to hold on to." Looking up at Midnight she added, "I could use some help sorting the memories from this one out," she gestured at the one she and Midnight fought, "if you're willing?"

[Gizmo]

Tapping a pair of fingers to the side of his mask over his temple, Midnight nodded silently, taking a slow breath as Eve expanded their psychic link and overlapped their consciousnesses. The black clad detective framed the unusual sensation as applying added processing power to the task, although his temporary access to his petite companion's knowledge of the human psyche informed him that was a simplistic analogy at best.

Renarde Bleue was also right about the thoughts she'd siphoned from their fallen foe being tough to pin down. It took Midnight a moment to understand them as beliefs more than memories, recognizing the results of a slippery slope of rationalization and compromise. Eve felt a strong streak of disdain from the principled young man but also a glimmer of recognition and understanding. "Hnh. Nazis briefly bankrolled IRA in the War. Funds, materiel, looking for allies against Britain. Fell through." Stepping over to the unconscious leprechaun, he bent down to examine the thug. "Irish fae made some further deal. Gave up something precious, golden. Want it back."

[Avenger Assembled]

Edge looked appalled, briefly covering his mouth with his hands as if Midnight had just said something awful. And he had. "Oh man, they sold their souls to Nazis? That's awful." He scratched his head. "Well...can we find out what it is and see if we can give it back to them?" he hazarded. He looked at the team, realizing how that sounded. "I'm not one to pay back a bunch of thieves, especially not ones wearing swastikas, but undoing something the Nazis did is in our job description." His smile hardened. "Of course, if it turns out they gave up something that belongs to somebody else now, I say we cross over there and give them a lesson about why it was a bad idea to make deals with Nazis in the first place."

 

He bent down and studied the unconscious leprechaun. "Could you figure out how they got here?" he asked the blue-clad acrobat and Midnight, treating them almost as a unit for this conversation. "I figure if there's a door, we can lock it...or kick it down and beat up whoever's on the other side, depending. "

[trollthumper]

Now that the heat of battle was over with, Cannonade was still trying to wrap his head around the core concept. "So," he said, "fairies. Fairies that are Irish... and Nazis. Who made a deal to help out the Reich, and are just showing up again now, for some reason." He shook his head. "Y'know, sometimes I have to wonder if World War I was this weird behind the scenes, and no one was paying attention." He turned his attention back towards the unconscious fae. "But, yeah. Where the hell did these guys come from? And why the big show, if they were able to just sneak in so easy the other times?"

"They knew you were looking."

Cannonade and the others turned to see a man dressed in medieval regalia step forward. He had the same general features as the unconscious fae, but where they were beefy and thick, he was whip-thin. "They knew they were being pursued from two ends, so they assumed that a grandiose distraction would be the best way to get out without drawing any attention. Obviously, it did not work as well as they had intended. I would pity the poor pooka they strong-armed into this, but if he able to fall for such perfidy so easily, I am not sure he deserves it."

"And who would you be?"

"I'd be the other end of the pursuit."

[trollthumper]

It was clear that the man with the sword was looking for someone to ask for an answer. And after a few seconds, it was just as clear that no one was taking the bait. "My name is Dralion," he said. "These individuals you encountered made a deal some time ago."

"You can't be more specific?"

"We don't need your specifics."

Fairies weren't Cannonade's specialties, but the way this one was acting made him glad he didn't have to deal with them often. "Okay, so whenever your specifics say," he said. "Think we can both agree they made a deal with some bastards."

"That wasn't the matter," he said. "The matter was that they did not honor the deal. The power they pledged away to the men of iron was dedicated to them 'until the cause is completed.' Any fool could see that the cause would never be completed, at least by their hands, and that the contract was moribund on its face. When they realized what had happened, the leprechauns demanded the gold back. The men of iron refused. And when the leprechauns got violent, I, as an enforcer of oaths, had to step in to ensure that justice was served."

"Well, we got real weird ideas of how that goes."

[Electra]

"What is the justice you're planning on enforcing, Draniel?" Wander asked, leaning her bat lightly on the unconscious shapeshifter she'd dropped on the floor with the others. Her pose was nearly casual, except for the way she balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to spring. "Because I'm pretty sure that here in the human world, justice would say that anybody who gave assistance to the Nazis while they were murdering millions of people and trying to take over Europe absolutely deserved to lose whatever it was they gave to the cause and never get it back. And if they gave anything really useful to the Nazis, they probably deserve punishment beyond that, too. It doesn't matter what their contract with the Third Reich was, the Third Reich doesn't own anything anymore. It doesn't even exist. Your guy just stole an artifact from the people of Freedom City." 

[April]

"We have our own justice to uphold," the fox-masked woman said, looking at Dralion. "While I have some appreciation of the gravitas an oath carries in Avalon you will understand if we have no desire to see the Leprechauns rewarded for their assistance of the 'Men of Iron', however feeble and foolish that assistance was."

 

"So this is what you will do," La Renarde Bleue said, stepping past the two figures on the ground and approaching the Fae swordsman.  "You will stop wasting our time with your presence and step aside or you will aid us and see the justice of two worlds upheld."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I think the ladies have the right idea," said Edge with a nod, his cape swishing behind him as he took a step back - his powers were ranged, the sort that made it sensible for him to stay out of a melee, unlike most of the rest of his team. Even if he did really want to punch people sometimes. "If your people have some kind of magical geas thing or whatever, we can find you wizards who can help you with that. Heck, I can just make you gold if that's what they need so badly." His eyes narrowed behind his mask. "That's if they're dying out here or something. This isn't a team that's going to help people who teamed up with the Nazis so they could take over a country other people lived in. We mostly beat them up." 

[trollthumper]

Dralion looked at the heroes. "I do not think you understand," he said, as if he was reciting a gravitational constant. "I do not seek to validate the leprechauns for the folly. They made an oath. A foolish oath, but an oath nonetheless. Since the terms of said oath are extremely unlikely to be fulfilled, they broke it on their own end. I am not here to help them get their ill-deserved gold back. I am here to make sure they don't make more of a mess than they already did."

"You couldn't have said that earlier?" said Cannonade.

"I did. If you didn't choose to listen --"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. So the leprechauns are getting their gold back. I can see they're breaking their word, which explains why you're pissed off --"

"I am rather calm, given everything."

"That explains a lot. Now, you said this gold was their 'power.' What, they've got the ability to make lots of gold? They can devalue the market in a single bound?"

"No. I know some of our ways and customs have reached your ears, at least as thin little tales for children. Tell me, what happens when a mortal finds a leprechaun's gold and returns it to him?"

"I don't know, he loses out on a reliable investment?"

"He gets a wish."

It took a second for Cannonade to realize the weight of that sentiment. But then, he had a steady reminder of its weight standing behind him.

"A leprechaun usually keeps his reserves separate - a foolish policy for most, but one that keeps his opponent for taking him for everything in a duel. But if he takes them back into his form... he has the power to play with the world as he wishes."

[Gizmo]

Midnight finally paused his inspection of the downed leprechaun long enough to react to Dralion's presence with a flat sound could have been a snort or a rumbling growl. The black clad hero smoothly rose to his feet without bothering to take an aggressive or defensive stance, calmly replacing a few tools into the organized confines of his belt. "Wary of unexpected allies in museums," he intoned without a hint of emotion, telepathically sharing the context of their encounter with Hades' vanguard with Renarde in a short burst of memories. "Weary of talk. Need to be stopped." In a single, contained gesture he indicated the unconscious fae and straightened his fedora. "How?"

[Electra]

Erin looked equal parts annoyed and confused by the non-explanation from the faerie. "So you're saying that leprechauns are allowed to find their own gold and grant wishes to themselves when they do? That's gotta be the stupidest folk tale ever," she blurted out, shaking her head. "Why isn't the whole world just as they want it, if they can do that over and over again?" 

 

She looked to Midnight with some relief. "You're right, that's the important part. Dralion, you got anything that will let us track down where they are, or where they're going?" 

[trollthumper]

"Yes, I do," said Dralion. He drew what looked like a silver astrolabe from his pocket, adjusting it. "I've been using this to track them here. I may need to adjust for the changed environment, but with a minute or two..." He let the statement drop off, tweaking the apparatus in search of some arcane signal. "And to answer your other question," said Dralion, "they are allowed to do so the same way that one of yours would be allowed to go on a killing spree. It can be done, but there are certain laws and codes that the various kinds of Avalon live by. The leprechauns have sworn to touch their power only briefly, and in service to another."

 

"Yeah, don't mean to critique how you guys do it over there," Cannonade said, "but that sounds like a real crap law."

 

"It's there for practicality as well. You've seen it yourself. Leprechauns are boisterous and unrestrained at the best of times, with much fervor and will surging inside them. Now, if a leprechaun is already filled to the brim on what power he affords himself, imagine what happens when he touches that power for too long. It's a matter of tossing ember after ember into a barn of dried hay, until --"

 

"Yeah, I get it." Cannonade shook his head. Christ, nuclear leprechauns. You think you know what to expect when you wake up in the morning..." 

 

The astrolabe leapt out of Dralion's hands, and slowly began to hum. "I've found him," he said, "and his missing cohort. They're in a place by water, touched by passion and elements of the strange --"

 

"Yeah, gotta be Riverside. Let's go."

 

Edge was able to whisk the group into the midsts of Riverside - which had gone through some changes. Riverside had had its share of cobblestone streets before, but now it seemed that was all there were. The buildings had been shorn down to two stories at most, and become somewhat more antique. And in the distance, the whinnying of horses could be heard.

 

"I'll say this for the guy. He works quick."

[trollthumper]

Cannonade and the others strode into the weird throwback that had parked itself right in the midst of Riverside. The closer they got to it, the stranger it got. In the foreground were short, simple buildings, the type one might have imagined occupied the outskirts of Dublin in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But as the street wove on, the buildings grew more antique, going from city halls to great halls. And the group swore that, in the distance, was a castle, flickering in and out of view like an image on a TV with bad reception. The people on the street didn't seem to notice, with most of the citizens dressed in a variety of styles that ranged from flat caps and tweed vests to medieval warrior garb. One element remained consistent, though -- the guards poised on street corners, in a strange, regimental uniform that spoke to a thousand-year empire. Propaganda posters lined the walls, somehow combining knot work and the stark relief of fascist imagery. 

 

"God," said Cannonade, "it's like if fascists took over Busch Gardens." 

 

"As I said, this one and his cohorts clung to a very... romanticized vision of the country," Dralion said. "A quite distorted one, too, that only got more distorted as this way of iron got into their heads." He pointed up to the castle, which was not only wavering in and out of existence, but kept changing with each new iteration. "And those distortions are making it hard for them to nail down this world of theirs. Once that power overwhelms them utterly, all this will likely collapse. Messily."

[Avenger Assembled]

"You know what? I'm not interested in exploring whatever twisted world these people have made for themselves. Let's get in there and kick their butts. As far as I'm concerned, they sold their soul to the Devil and now they're sore because the place smells like sulfur. Grab on, everybody." Normally Mark wasn't quite so dogmatic, but these were Nazis and really powerful, earth-shakingly powerful Nazis to boot. He reached over and took Cannonade's hand, waiting until everyone had grabbed on before suddenly they were elsewhere - in this case, directly before the gate of that flickering castle, the air briefly crackling with a surge of wild magical energy like  a massive lightning strike. "Hey!" Mark yelled. "I'm here to fumigate!" 

[Gizmo]

Midnight grunted a flat approval of Mark's business like attitude, even if he enjoyed the teleportation no more than normal. "Direct, good. Subtle, also good. Renarde? Back door." With that the fedora wearing vigilante simply wasn't there any more, gone in the moment it took to turn from the massive gates.

The castle itself was a shifting, chaotic mishmash of architecture that altered itself from moment to moment. The tower Midnight had attached his grappling line too abruptly vanished, leaving him to somersault through the air and catch a precarious grip on an on outcropping on stone masonry. Hefting himself back into the air, he landed atop the back of a crouching gargoyle statue before leaping over to a rooftop a diving into a narrow window just before the way behind him disappeared. --In.--

[trollthumper]

Through the back chamber, Midnight found himself in a medieval castle that just wouldn't stand still. While the immediate chamber he was in seemed to be staying fairly still, the hallways reaching off of it seemed to stretch like taffy, the walls and decor shifting every time he blinked. Even the features that stood still seemed to be in constant conflict - walls with Celtic knotwork and grand tapestries merged with harsh weaponry and the stark, angled murals of a fascist castle. 

 

"It's going to come, right? After all this time?"

 

Midnight followed the hallway to a door that led to... nothing. What looked like an alcove to a longer hallway cut off into thin air, leading instead to the higher reaches of a great hall. Down below, at the far end of the hall, stood two leprechauns, both in full fascist regalia. One of them was the one from the museum - he had a slightly unhealthy glow to him, the kind of sheen that comes with a man burning with a two-day fever, but he was still mostly together. The other, however, was slumped into a throne, his fingers twitching and his eyes mad, looking a little like Caligula towards the end. 

 

"We're already there. Everything we ever dreamed of - a free nation, like the dreams of old, made strong and hearty..."

 

"Yes, yes, but only here, only now." The man in the chair forced himself to his feet with some terrible energy, jerking like a marionette. "It has to go forever, there and back, last until the sun dies --"

 

His mad ramblings were cut off when the other members of the Liberty League suddenly appeared in the middle of the great hall. "Wow," said Cannonade. "How much time did you spend putting this together? Five seconds? Three?"

 

"Oathbreakers!" cried out Dralion, raising his sword. "You can run to the ends of the earth, but never truly flee! I am here to return you to the depths of Avalon to serve sentence - and if you seek mercy, what little I had has bled dry."

 

"Or, that. That works, too." 

 

The two leprechauns stepped forward to meet the group. Power radiated off of them in wild, horrible whorls, their every step turning the floor from tile to concrete to marble to back again. "No," said the more cracked of the two. "We've needed this for so long. It's ours, and ours forever. Your chains will never hold us, boy. Ours is the free land that shall last a thousand years!" The air burned around them.

 

"You? I give you five seconds."

[Avenger Assembled]

"This is, without a doubt, the worst magical invasion I have ever been part of!" Edge shouted over the sound of the leprechauns' taunts. "You people...do you even know what Ireland is like? It's full of nice Catholic and Protestant people! They have enough problems, they don't want to live under the rule of cereal mascots from Erde with terrible fashion sense! Much less of the rest of the world!" He jabbed a finger against his palm, then slammed a fist. "And you know what, I read history sometimes, and things weren't even that different in 1940! You're not even misguided. You wanted to put chains on the world then, just like you want to do now! Well, you're about to get justice from BOTH worlds, so watch out! Liberty League, let's show them what we're made of!" He was making a spectacle of himself on purpose, as his friends well knew, drawing attention to the big and the loud so the fast and the strong could do their work.