2012-08-21 - TechnoMagic Raid Boss

7PM. The sun's just starting to think about setting, rush hour is over, and dinner's been eaten by many a household. That's when the reports come in: There's a giant rock thing towering above an apartment building on the outskirts of Lower Manhattan.When our heroes arrive, the creature is clearly visible, a humanoid-esque stone looking creature that rises a full fifty some odd feet off the roof of the building. The creature's head floats above an over large boulder that is its torso. The 'head' is just large enough for two cyan glowing eyes that smoke faintly. Two smaller boulders are its shoulders, while two monoliths are its arms. It has what can only be described at genie-bracers around the 'wrists'. These bracers are a dull pewter against the granite of the elemental. Cyan runes glow upon the bracers and they flicker in and out of existence. Gradually smaller boulders form a tornado-like lower body to a host of smaller boulders upon the roof of the building. These shift and move, grinding and tumbling about themselves as the creature moves. The rock gravel of the rooftop churning with the beast.The creature waits, occasionally turning this way and that. ((Visual: http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/9/93/Earth_elemental.jpg ))
Giant rock thing? J'onn is the member of the Justice League who happens to be closest to the scene...staking out a mark. Ah well. He can catch the mark later. John Jones, private detective, vanishes into an alleyway. A few moments later, J'onn J'onzz, Manhunter from Mars, rockets into the sky above the city, rising to a vantage point from which he can assess...the giant stone golem wearing genie bracers. Hrm. Sadly? J'onn knows relatively little about Earth mythology. And thus, he doesn't really recognize the bracers as such, although he does notice them. Next question. Does it have a mind?
There are times when a threat is far more than a simple threat. When it's dangerous to more than just a handful of people. Phyla doesn't generally have the luxury of being able to stop -every- threat, to every sentient being. But there's a difference between threatening -a- sentient life, and threatening sentient -life- on the whole. With a vision received, she was in the storage locker Dru was letting her store stuff in... and after that, she yanked her cloak off the peg it was hanging on and rushed out the door. By the time the others are arriving, she's travelled across town in a golden glowing blur and is decelerating. She's not up for witty banter right now, but is simply trying to analyze the thing's energy signature. She can't pick up magic however, so that's an issue.
The day had been going so well for Tanya, too. She'd finished work on a classic 'Sixty-Nine Chevelle, and was on her way to deliver it to the customer. One of the things that made Mack and Co. popular was this very service. She was humming to herself, fingers tapping the steering wheel--when that appears."...holy shit," she murmurs, and for the first time in a while, even the voices in her head are completely silent. She stares wide-eyed at the thing, watching the threads of magic spool around and through it. It looks like an Earth elemental, but not like one she's heard of before, not with those bracers. Watch it be something completely different. She hurries to pull over into an available parking spot, keeping her eyes on the--whatever-it-is.
The rock creature has no mind. It tumbles back and forth atop the building, mindless gaze looking here and there as its boulder head swivels about slowly. It's like thinking at a brick wall.The thing's energy signature is an odd thing. It radiates almost electronic, as if there's an undercoating of bits and bytes and 1s and 0s to it. There might even be a 2 in there somewhere. Just don't tell Bender.The elemental also reads magical, an odd astral ripple covering it, anchoring it to this realm from another.The elemental pauses when it reaches the edge of the roof, and it stands there a moment, head turning this way and that.
Martian Manhunter frowns. No mind...or at least no mind that he can read. He drops out of the sky to catch himself in the being's field of vision, ready to fend off an attack, but watching its reaction to him for now. It might be a machine, it might even be some kind of animal, but he's not going to assume it's completely non-sentient without this one test, even if he can't read its mind.
She was intending much the same thing as J'onn, but Phyla hesitates now. Also, she saw the green skinned guy she met a while back racing in to confront the creature. So she drifts over directly above the Manhunter and allocates one of her fourteen gems to monitor the thing's energy signature just in case there's any fluctuations from here out. Of course, she hasn't gone so far as to erect any energy construct things other than the sword that grows in her hand. No, she doesn't beat her fists together and declare 'form blazing sword!' because that'd be silly. It's just gone and then there the next moment.
After locking the car up and stowing the keys in the pocket of her uniform, Tanya looks up at the elemental. That's what she's going to consider it for now; it fits as well as anything else would."I don't think that's a real Earth elemental.""Why not? It's got all the magical earmarks.""Hey, look, it's the green man. I still think he's a robot. And an interesting-looking woman."Well, she's somewhat familiar with the Manhunter, so what the heck. Her hands and eyes both start glowing bright pink, and there's a faint outline of a star visible through the uniform at her right knee, and she lifts into the air, heading for the Martian Manhunter and Phyla-Vell.
The creature looks right at J'onn. It's head rolls once, turning upside down, holding a moment, then righting itself. Phyla and Tanya's arrival earns even less 'attention'. The creature turns its back to the heroes and begins to trundle back across the roof. It pauses half-way across repeating that stop, looking about, head-rolls-over motion from earlier. Only this time there's a whimper as it nears some lines of laundry that's been hung out to dry. A poor earlier house-gramma is cowering against the brick roof access shed, too terrified to much more than try to hide behind her empty laundry basket.
Okay. So far, the creature has not shown itself to be hostile, but J'onn is taking no chances. In quick motion, he flits across the rooftop to first place himself between golem and little old lady, and then moving to scoop her up. "Do not be alarmed...please allow me to take you to safety." He isn't sure the rock creature is actually a threat, but he's not about to leave her in its path.
Well, some folks are more decisive than others. At least for a reason or two. Quasar eyes Tanya as the other woman floats up. She nods to the woman and whooshes ahead where she comes to a landing before the creature. It's not much of an impact. She just alights down on the rooftop and points her sword towards the creature. "You will return to wherever it is you came from. This is your only warning. Fail to heed my instructions, and you will be destroyed." Okay, she seems sure that the creature is a threat. Who knows....
Even given the situation, there's a small smirk on Tanya's face as she soars through the air, twisting to alter direction to take her to the creature and the heroes. The thing--while "real" in one sense of the term, isn't by another. "It's a fake," she calls out, to both Martian Manhunter and Phyla-Vell. The woman seems like she's there to help, too, so what the hell."That rune is for Gorvath the Unbringer. On an /Earth elemental/. Hmph.""We should almost be insulted, I should think.""It's not a real elemental!" She goes to land on the same rooftop, glancing at the others but keeping most of her attention on the would-be demon. She's not about to approach it just yet in case it's all too real in that other sense of the term, but still.
The moment J'onn draws within striking distance of the creature, its eyes flick from cyan to red. The boulders of its body twisting so that its front is facing the green one. One large monolith arm lifts over its head to downward strike at J'onn. That is, until Phyla arrives and taunts the creature. It keeps the same downward motion of its arm, but its body twists so that the strike that was aimed at J'onn is now aimed for Phyla. Despite what Tanya says, the pebbles its kicking up as it moves about, fly out with real enough speed and impact now again again readily enough. While these pebbles don't do any real damage, they do sting.
For right now, J'onn focuses on getting the grandmother out of there. He's trusting Phyla to keep its attention until he has set her down in the street, by the building entrance. "Be careful. I am going to go deal with that thing." Then he's up again, flying towards the golem. Clearly, they're going to have to fight it after all. Ah well.
To start with... Phyla isn't stupid tough, but pebbles striking her won't really stop her from fighting. As the fist comes her way, she shakes her head and swings her sword to interpose with the fist. She's got no idea how potent the thing is, and she hasn't put full power into her sword, or made armor or anything. So when she strikes the incoming arm/fist, it powers past the sword and strikes her forcefully. For one moment, she's totally invisible because the entire fist is bigger than her whole body. When the fist moves away, there's a hole in the ceiling and she's two floors down, having pounded through both floors where she lies, semi-stunned.
...well, then. "I meant it's not /authentic/?" says Tanya, looking a bit sheepish. Oh, well. They can deal with that part later. If it can hit, it can /be/ hit, and that means..."Are we finally going to use it?""I think so!""We haven't used it in so long..."Once more, her hands and eyes glow, a thrumming neon pink. As well, a tribal-ish wing design on her right hip. This one takes a moment to charge up, however, so she has to hope she won't be a target, while the light coming from her hands grows, if slowly.
The rock creature stands still as Phyla disappears into the building, not seeming to react to much of anything else for the moment.
Okay. It's only reacting to people who come within a certain distance. J'onn stops short of what he thinks is the key distance, studying the creature once more. And then he notices what Tanya's doing. Okay. He's not sure what it is, but the best thing to do? He charges in, and PAST the creature, to get it to look at him instead of her.
<<Not real? My Half Breed Butt!>> exclaims Phyla in her native tongue. Yeah, that's not a language folks would really know but J'onn may pick up her frustration. She shakes off her punch drunk stunned status and says, <<Okay, let's try that again.>> And she resummons her sword, forces a helmet and a heavy shield to appear on her head and left arm respectively... but she hasn't come up out of the hole yet. She was focused on prepping.
A moment more, Tanya stands there, the magical energy building and building--then she brings her wrists together, palms pointed up at the creature's chest, and fires an amorphous blob of mystical energy upward at the creature. It should go right through the thing's chest. Either way, she collapses back against a wall, panting, crouched over with her hands on her knees. May not have been the best thing to do, but once started, she can't just stop it. All of that energy has to go /some/where.
The creature does, indeed, react when J'onn flies in and gets in its 'face'. Once more with the over-head bash maneuver, only for a Tanya's magical beam to slice through the center boulder, shattering off a human-head-sized chunk out of the middle. It's not a very porous rock. Get it? Cuz it's holey?The strike draws the creature's attention in a heartbeat, and it spins to face the magician. It brings its arm down to point at her. From all around it, gravel, stones, and rocks fly out -- shot gun style -- at Tanya Li.
Okay...maybe they could have avoided fighting it, but it's definitely on now. J'onn fires at the creature himself, with his eye beams...aiming to at least slow it down. Hrm. Okay. It's animated rock, so probably has no vitals to speak of...as hard to deal with as a Martian in that regard.
Meawhile, Quasar notices the buildup of energy from the creature.. not to mention the emission of J'onn's energy. However, she gets an image of Tanya being pummeled and launches herself skyward to appear right before Tanya with her shield out front of her. This time, the shield is strong enough to hold, though there are small cracks here and there. "Are you alright?" she asks back over her shoulder in English as she stands there holding off the shotgun spray.
"...oh crap," Tanya mutters under her breath, turning to grab the edge of the wall with the roof access door and throw herself to the side. She barely manages to cover her head and is trying to curl herself into a protective fetal position before the rocks hit her. This is the problem with her magic working off charge-times.
Eye beams knock away one of the tumbling rocks that is the 'legs'. It slows slightly, but remains focused upon Tanya for the moment.Quasar to the rescue! The shot gun of rocks splatter over her shield, sending shrapnel in all directions. With its ammo spent and now three things pinging on its aggro-table, the creature lets out a bellow that's two parts roar and three parts earthquake. The rocks at its 'feet' pulse with a ripple-wave that sends them tsunami-like in a perfect circle from itself.
Okay. It's out of ammo...that's a good thing. Quasar is shielding the magic user, also a good thing. Which allows J'onn to get off another shot, this time aimed at center of mass, to try and knock the thing over now its off balance. He'll worry about how it got here/where it came from later...for now, he's just trying to stop the thing.
Okay, different things hold the attention of different heroes. Quasar's bands pulse her mentally and she cocks her head as if listening to a mental voice. With Manhunter around that shouldn't be too surprising.. but it's not him she's listening to. She drops the shield and the sword (but the helmet stays put, imagine that!) but she points her hands at the rocks at the feet of the golem/elemental and instructs said bands to suck the power away from them... to sponge it up in hopes of weakening the attack as it approaches.
...she's not a pin-cushion. Wow. Tanya peeks her head up to see the woman standing in the way of the attack. "Wow, umm, thanks," she says, then lets out a breath as she gets to her feet. Okay, maybe she should actually /think/ about the situation."The bracelets.""What about th--oohhh.""Yes, look at how they radiate. They must be the key.""The robot can help! He can fly and shoot lasers!""The gauntlets!" Tanya shouts, cupping her hands around her mouth to be audible to both Phyla-Vell and the Martian Manhunter. "The gauntlets are the key to the thing!" Probably. Hopefully. Either way, she stays behind Phyla-Vell. The woman proved strong enough to stand up to the first attack, after all.
The rock creature seems to roar in pain as J'onn's second blast, more fully concentrated on its center boulder, sheers off more rock. Cracks radiate from the impact sight. It turns to face the Martian, and bends down to pick up one of the rocks that is its 'feet'. This it flings at J'onn.As Phyla sucks the EM energy from the ground at the creature's feet, the wave does indeed flicker and subside in a series of pixelated code. Very Matrix. At it's feet, where it too the boulder to throw at J'onn, there's a break into the code that's creating this monster, like looking into the wire frame polygons of the start of the 3D rendering for a very high-end video game. Already a new 'skin' of rock is starting to coat the wire frame, reforming the rock it took.
Did the thing just flicker? J'onn can't be sure...and thus, he says nothing for right now, although he thinks it flickered. Instead? He catches what Tanya said and fires off a third shot...this time at the creature's right bracer, trying to break it. (The fact that this might make things worse would *totally* not occur to him, as he knows nothing about genies other than that stupid old TV show).
While the alien woman continues to drain and suppress the electromagnetic energy, Tanya watches the flickering and tries to think of an idea. The only one she can think of is doing what nearly made her pay dearly, before--but this is the first time she's gone against something like this, so she has nothing to really draw on, experience-wise. While the Manhunter focuses on the creature's right bracer, she looks at the third, and again, hands and eyes glow, and again the faint outline of the wing-like design can be faintly seen on her hip. She's readying another bolt, teeth gritting as she tries and keep that focus.
Boulder flung at J'onn impacts his shoulder, shattering over his denser than human build.As Phyla drains at the EM radiation at its feet, the creature spins once in place, J'onn's attack missing until it stops once more. All around it, six tiny versions of itself appear out of the gravel and rocks of the roof top. They each spin into being. They flicker in time to the larger creature does, the flicker more obvious in them. The larger one collects another boulder to fling at J'onn.The right bracer begins to glow, the runes glittering angrily.
Martian Manhunter narrows his eyes, continuing the focus on the bracer. It might not be working, but he's not going to give up quite yet. And he doesn't really care if he takes the thing's arm with it, given it's clearly not any kind of intelligent construct.
So busy trying to focus on drawing the mystical energies for her magic bolt, Tanya doesn't immediately notice the six mini-mes spin into existence. She waits for a moment, watching that bracer, and when it's open, she brings her hands up, wrists touching, palms pointed at that left bracer and lets that energy go. She doesn't see if it hits or not; she sinks almost immediately to her knees as the glows fade, head bowed, breathing harshly, eyes half-closed.
Phyla draining the EM energies from the creature's base while J'onn and Tanya do double duty on the creature's bracers. J'onn's shatters, his eye beams taking half of the thing's arm with it, just as Tanya's magic bolt slices cleanly through the other. The rock it was holding over its head seems to hang there for a heartbeat before gravity grabs it and yanks it downward. It smashes down into the creature's head, the cracked and beaten center boulder, and down into the exposed matrix-code at its feet. In an electronic screech, the rock elemental shatters like a ceramic doll being Thor-flung across the room (ANOTHER!). The mini-mes likewise shatter. The whole of the creature seems to explode outward in a non-lethal shower of roof-top gravel and rocks.
Martian Manhunter touches down on the rooftop. "Hrm. Somebody was controlling that thing, I am sure of it, but I was unable to detect them." He turns to Tanya. "Are you alright?" He does remember her from the other day. Does he look slightly tired? A little...burning that bracer took a fair bit of energy.
Holy crap. The thing went down. Tanya sits back on her heels, managing a smile as she looks up, covering her face from the shower of rock-bits. She moves to a sitting position, leaning back against the wall with her knees raised so she can rest her forearms on them. As the Martian Manhunter approaches her, that smile widens. "I'm--I'm fine, ish," she says, looking up at him. "That--was one hell of a whatever-it-was. And you fight that kind of thing often, huh?" She remembers that he joined a group of people who do this kind of thing, but for her, it was her first big take-down, so there's a bit of respect for the guy who can do this kind of thing often.
"Not *often*, but I have had some practice." He actually stretches a bit. "Although I am not entirely convinced it was completely real." He did see that flicker, after all. An advanced hologram? Perhaps.
"I'm thinking you're right," says Tanya thoughtfully, wagging a finger a bit. "I'm thinking techno-magic, myself. Someone who just understood /enough/ what they were doing to cause trouble. Those runes on it? They were chosen at random; they had to be.""Gorvath the Unbringer.""Shelot the Warper.""Forn the Gatekeeper.""Yeah, those," says Tanya, reaching up to rub her face.
Martian Manhunter frowns. "Perhaps somebody who learned his or her magic from video games." He moves to sit on the edge of the roof, carefully...more of the roof, of course, than himself. "I will have to talk to Zatanna about it...she's our expert on magic and related matters."
That makes Tanya perk up. "Zatanna? I--I think I know that name. Wasn't she a--a stage magician or something? So she's an actual honest-to-goodness mage, too?" She doesn't know many actual, for-real hand-wavers, so she's always interesting to hear about, and hopefully meet, more.
Martian Manhunter nods. "And a stage magician. And a friend," he adds, after a moment. He likes Zatanna. Even if her dinner party DID get interrupted by a demon attack. "She might have insights in how to track down the perpetrator before he hurts anyone. Himself included."
Using the wall to help, Tanya gets to her feet and dusts herself off. For a moment, the tiredness is forgotten. "That would be a good idea, yeah. And hey, you think you can ask if I could meet her?" she asks, trying to sound nonchalant--but she's really rather hopeful. Someone else who knows about magic, a powerful someone, too, from the sound of it, of course she'd like to meet this woman.
Martian Manhunter nods. "I can ask. Obviously, I make no promises." He can't speak for Zatanna, of course. But he will ask, and see if she is willing to meet this young woman...and maybe hand out a tip or two.
"Hey, that'd be awesome. Thank you," says Tanya, going over to the green man and holding out her hand. "Thanks for tonight, too. I know I'd've been turned into paste if you and--hey, where'd she go?" It occurs to her only then that the other woman had disappeared.
"I am not sure...but nothing bad happened to her. I would have noticed that." Calm confidence, there, belief in himself and what he is speaking of. He does pay attention to things, after all.
"You know, I believe that," says Tanya with a grin. She's seen this guy in action, after all, so can believe him. "Oh, hey, thinking on the golem-stone-guy-thingy--my suggestion is that the creator is/was somewhere nearby. That's an awful lot of magic to be throwing around, but if he's as inexperienced as I think he is, if he only knew enough to get by, he probably wouldn't be skilled enough to make the creature here from, like, Metropolis or something. He's probably long gone by /now/, but--yeah." More food for thought, really, especially if he gets the chance to talk with this Zatanna about it.
Martian Manhunter nods. "And I must be gone myself, now I have established that you were not seriously harmed." He rises to his feet, gracefully. "Take care." And then he's lifting into the air.
"Alright. Thank you again," says Tanya, lifting a hand in goodbye. After he leaves, she takes the fire escape down, dropping the last floor to the sidewalk. She's actually rather pleased with herself; first real demon-thing taken on! And (thanks mostly to the other two, and she damned well knows it) the thing was defeated! She almost flexes--until she sees the pock-marked Chevelle. The windshield cracked from stray rocks. A few are even still embedded into the paint. "Shit!" she exclaims. And she even facepalms.
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