ic So Great A Cause

[Avenger Assembled]

"Argh! Wretched creature, you will pay for this!" This was black blood leaking out of a long wound in her side, spilling down the torn layer of her dress and onto the sterile floor of the floating spaceship. She lashed out with that spilled blood in inky, shadowy tendrils that wrapped themselves around Jack without ever quite finding purchase. Evidently aware of how much danger she was in, she retreated a moment later, the door sliding open behind her to reveal a silent Steve still watching the fight - and then the door slammed shut again an instant before Jack could step through. And from the distant sounds his keen hearing could just make out, his antagonist had gone so far as to hit an alarm somewhere. 

 

Inside the room, Steve spoke to Magriette, who was desperately hitting panels on the wall, no doubt trying to contact her Master. His voice scratchy from the damage done to his throat, he said, "You should surrender now. He will only cut through and punish you further in his anger." He began to pull on the chains that held him in place, nodding in grim satisfaction as the ancient steel began to bend beneath his grip, links slowly stretching as Magriette gave a gratifying gasp. 

[Gizmo]

To punctuate Steve's words the tip of the obsidian black blade thrust through the Preserver forged metal of the door separating them from the incensed swordsman, a hand's width of jagged, solidified shadow carving it like a bread knife through a stale roll. The metal creaked and cracked in protest as though being frozen to unthinkably low temperatures as it gave way, a long arcing chasm left in the sword's wake that dribbled slightly with the dark blood it had drawn from its prey. Within a few moments it had already drawn a line from a point at shoulder height up and over and back down toward the floor; there was no doubt that if Magriette could not make good on her escape in the next few second she would lose her chance entirely.

[Ecalsneerg]

Geckoman hurled a few smoke bombs from his belt to the left of one of the dinosaur's eyes, detonating them in mid-air with low charges to let small clouds of smoke irritate and distract the already irritated dinosaurs. "Look, big guy! Look! Fireworks! Look! Look!"

 

His other hand was tugging on the reins, urging his mount onwards. "Move, Roary!" 'Roary' the dinosaur bellowed and surged forward at its distracted kinsman, hurling his bodily mass into it with ferocity and force, its every movement making the ground thunder and the air shake. Geckoman could only cling for dear life as he realised he'd just decided to stand on top of what would be two colliding masses, made up of tons of claw, teeth, scale and metal. "Ahahahahahaha!" he laughed manically. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Geckoman's dinosaur was being better-ridden, or maybe had more inner fire, than its enemy - because soon the other T-Rex went crashing to the ground with a bestial roar and the sound of cracking steel plates! Chris could feel the naked hunger of the beast he rode; its desire to turn and feed on the creature it had just disabled (its rider having flown off who knew where), but in response to both his commands and the implants in its flesh, the creature jerked away and stayed in the fight. 

 

The last dinorider opposing them seemed to focus not on Geckoman, but on Echo (who had left a T-Rex without a rider after pummeling the the latter into unconsciousness), firing a spatter of bullets at her feet that didn't quite make an impact. The quickly-revolving gatling guns mounted on either side of his dinosaur would have made him almost unstoppable against a conventional army of the 1850s, but they just weren't fast enough to stop the rapidly-moving speedster. 

 

The fight in the guard tents seemed to be running down - they still couldn't make out the brothers amid the dust and confusion, but the occasional rat-a-tat-tat of impossibly fast revolver fire and the occasional _boom_ of what might have been a mini-cannon told them that Etienne and his brother were still very much alive and well. 

[R. Bluefish]

"Oh, you're just going to shoot and run?" Echo crouched in the saddle, eyes fixed on the fleeing rider. "Now that's just rude." She leaped into the air, vanishing in mid-trajectory and reappearing above the rider. Hanging in midair, she paused time for just long enough to think of another quip, then settled on one and allowed time to resume its normal rate. She dropped straight towards him, bringing her legs around, and slammed her boot into the back of his head. "I still had something I wanted to ask you aboot!" The blow sent him flying from the saddle, landing in an unconscious heap on the dusty ground. She landed nimbly next to him and took the opportunity to reflect on her quip. She shook her head morosely. "Ugh. Terrible."

[Avenger Assembled]

By the time Jack finished cutting through the door, the Darkness had vanished in a swirling cloud of shadows - leaving Steve alone in a room where red and black bloodstains on the wall and floor told a grim story. As he pulled his legs free of the last chains that had bound him in place, Steve looked as though a wire brush had been applied to his scarred brown skin, reddish black blood visible in multiple places across his torso from what looked to be countless small, shallow cuts. "What an unpleasant woman," he hissed, before dropping to one knee with a loud BOOM. He gestured for Jack to lean close, not to lean on him but to whisper in his ear. 

 

"She will be warning her Master. Her Master is one capable of cosmic understanding - and with the technology to know that an Omegadrone is not like other men." The truth was he had seen little of the latter once the interrogation had begun. 

[Gizmo]

"Save your energy, hermano. You're too damn heavy for me to lug around, remember?" Jack told the cyborg with a weak attempt at joviality, his expression tight as he looked over his friend's injuries. Where Steve was capable at times of a bottomless well of ice cold rage he knew the swordsman's fury ran hot and could only be tamped down for so long before exploding into action; that his concern over getting Steve to safety and treatment outweighed his desire to hunt down the shadow witch said something indeed. "Pretty much figured the high tech thing out already, anyway. The ship we're in looks a bit like the Gorgon so we're probably talking about something related to the Preservers. Plus there's the robot dinosaurs; those were maybe also a tip off." The forced smirk slipped from his face as he crouched nearby his tortured teammate, his voice dropping down to only a little louder than the former drone's pained whisper. "...Steve, I need you to stand up, man. Can you do that?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"I can...stand," said Steve, slowly pulling himself to his feet at Erik's words, leaving behind a few drops of blackish red blood as he moved along behind Erik. He didn't bother bragging that his torturer had gotten nothing from him, instead he silently ran after Erik as they made their way out of the spaceship. Magriette had summoned a few thugs to try and slow them down, but the leather-and-cloth-clad men were no match for Erik even when that worthy was distracted by the scenery and worries about his friend. The two men ran until they reached the entrance - where they found company waiting for them. 

 

Two armored dinosaurs flanked the Master, Magriette, and that white-clad fellow in the mask whose name Steve had never actually heard. He, Magriette, and the Master were all flying, an ominous sight indeed in this low-technology-looking place, white and black phantoms floating to either side of the Master, who as they watched removed a silver-gleaming mask from his belt before affixing it to his face. "A shame, Stephen! I would have enjoyed learning from you and your friends the secrets of the future. but now your corpses will have to tell the tale." He laughed. "What, is this one man and his fellow outlaws all you have, Stephen? Where is your army?"

[Gizmo]

For a moment Jack looked up at the laughing man with a scowl and a glare that could have cut almost as deeply as his sword then, abruptly, his expression split into a grin. Quietly, barely loud enough for Steve to hear beside him, he let out a soft chuckle. "I know it's the wrong time and the wrong dimension, but I hope you're watching this, Bill."

 

Tilting his chin upward he raised his voice to address Mastermind. "Hey there, Chromedome. Don't think we've been properly introduced yet and I really want you to know later just who it was who crammed that mask where the high noon sun don't shine." He gestured to his own chest, then to the injured man beside him. "I'm the Jack of all Blades. This is my friend Caradoc, who you made the big mistake of treating pretty poorly." He tapped his fingers to the brimmed hat atop his head, raising his voice over the growing rumble coming from the direction of the mines. "This is my thematically appropriate hat, which I stole from one of your mooks. And that--" he continued, pointing behind the group facing them down, having to shout to be heard, "--would be the big damn cavalry!"

[Ecalsneerg]

The reason Jack was shouting to be heard was over the earthquake moving up behind him. The sound of multiple thundering, charging, angry giant lizards. Geckoman rode atop Roary, Echo behind him in the saddle. He leaned over his shoulder. "Most important rule. Always make a good entrance. Ride a dinosaur. Or failing that, motorcycle pyrotechnics." 

 

The herd of T Rexes kept charging over the plane. Geckoman was no longer sure if he was leading them, or being chased by them. But as he saw Erik and Steve in the mouth of that spaceship, he smiled widely. Who even cared? "Rooooooooar!" he yelled, the dinosaurs echoing him as they barrelled across the old West to pull those two idiots' asses out of the fire, and out of the spaceship.

[Avenger Assembled]

Steve would remember the charge, the glorious battle with the mighty primordial creatures later. He would feel pity for the beasts, resurrected from a dead world and transformed into cybernetic killing machines, and rage at the overlord who had wrought such terrible changes. But in the streets of dread Nihilor, such feelings in battle were a lethal distraction. Instead, even as the stampede of rampaging beasts tore through the desert flats, he pulled at Erik's arm and shouted over the sound of animals roars and grunts of pain, "My pike. He has my pike!" As armor flowed over his skin in the transformation to Caradoc, the horror of an Omegadrone's transformation turned beautiful by the holographic markers given him by Gina Evans, Steve knew his own pride was nothing before getting that weapon out of the hands of the man who had been so interested in an Omegadrone's secrets. Secrets that would doom this world if they became known. 

 

Suddenly one of the rampaging dinosaurs crashed into the side of the spaceship, driving Erik and Steve off the rampart as the whole structure shook, alarms blaring as the doors began to close from some onboard safety feature. There was nowhere to go but into battle now!

[Avenger Assembled]

In the space of a few seconds, though, everything changed. 

 

First came the explosion - a deafening roar as the nearby mountains that held the mines erupted in a tremendous avalanche of rock and debris! Echo's stolen radio (certainly an anachronism in this era, no doubt produced by "The Master" and his technology) crackled to life with a "THOSE CRAZY FRENCHIES-" before vanishing in a wash of static and the sound of falling rocks. The Batallie brothers must have rescued their families and fired the fossil mine - taking down most of the mountain with it! 

 

In the moment all were distracted by the explosion, Caradoc leaped into the air, his jetpack roaring beneath him, as armored man took flight amid the wild melee of dinosaur flesh! He targeted Mastermind - striking not for the man but for what he wore, grabbing the closed pike the immortal held at his belt and ripping it free. That earned him a blast back to Earth, a hard blow that abruptly smashed him against the impervium gangplank with a GONG sound. He struggled to his feet, snapping open the blade. 

 

And then the sky ripped open above them, bright and cold, and the Preserver-built time vortex washed over them all - sending home each and every time-displaced soul in Moab, Utah, circa 1855 ; and one gigantic armored T-Rex.

(Continued in So Great a Cause 2015 - in the West End!)