2012-07-08 To Kill a God, Round 2

It's fairly rare for Robin to be out and about during the day-time, but with the cloudy day, heavy with the threat of rain, it provides the perfect chance for Robin to get some practice in. At least thats what he was told. Pretty sure this was just an excuse to get him out of the cave, the Teen Wonder moves across the rooftops of downtown Gotham, moving from shadow to shadow with speed and grace. His mind is on his work at the moment, leaping the gaps between buildings, rolling and diving, and trying to avoid using his equipment as much as possible.
The attack in Metropolis has the Thunder God concerned, even if on the surface he's playing it cool as a spring shower. After seeing the good doctor home, as his mucking with the weathr brings stormy clouds to Meotrpolis, Thor has gone up to hover among the weight of the rain and the faint flickers of lightning, waiting for Midgard to call him again. That's when he feels a tug. There's a piece out of place. He looks down: Robin.
In an instant Thor is diving toward the boy wonder, moved by a sense beyond himself. This boy he must take with him. He is needed. Midgard demands it. Moving with a super grace, the Lord of Storms drops from the sky and reaches down to catch that fluttering black cape as it flits between shadows.
It's one of the things you just don't expect in Gotham, and one of the reasons the Bat-family is so effective. Attacks from the sky. Already on the roof, Robin isn't looking up. He leaps another gap, springing at near his top speed, cape fluttering high into the air, only to go taut midway through the jump as Thor grabs it. "Ooomph." says the Teen Wonder, as he's wanked backwards by his shoulders and starts to fall, hanging over nothing.
Falls? Not in the hands of a god. Thor flies away from Gotham and out toward the bay. He has what he came for, as Midgard nudged him. "You may not be comfortable, mortal, but this needs be done," he rumbles down to the bat-sidekick below him, eyes not even leaving the sky beyond as he carries Robin away.
Robin looks up and scowls. "You again!" he shouts up at the god, struggling as he suspended by his own cape. This is embarrasing. Maybe Edna Mode is on to something after all. 'Think!' the boy mentally yells at himself, assessing the situation. 'Unhook the cape? No. You'll be too fast for the grapple line when you get back low enough.'. The boy growls up at Thor. "YOU PUT ME DOWN THIS INSTANT YOU OVERGROWN VIKING RENFAIR REJECT!"
"Nay, Robin. I shall not let you go. We are far too high and there is much water below," replies the Asgardian, never slowing as they sweep out over the bay toward the ouskirts of North Metropolis. A moment passes and then, almost as if it is an after thought, Thor glances down and asks, "Are thou comfortable?"
Realizing that they are no longer over Gotham the boy blinks a moment, calculation speed and distance, placing where they are. As Metroplois appears in the distance he growls again. "I'll give you comfortable." he mutters, reaching into his belt and pulling out a small disk. He takes a moment to judge the wind, then tosses a slim disk up ahead of the flying Thor, so that hopefully he'll fly right into it. The disk will stick and send a strong electric shock through its target. Robin braces himself, hoping the muscle-bound oaf will release him.
A nice open field somewhere between Delaware and Maryland begins to sweep out below them; Metropolis naught but a haze on the horizon now. The slim disk is spotted and so Thor moves to slow himself, right hand coming up to try to deflect it away when...
KABOOM
Thor does drop the Teen Wonder as the explosion blinds him for the moment, rings his ears, and knocks him backwards several yards. The god is quick to shake his head to clear it, looking about frantically for the dropped songbird.
Ready for the drop, Robin spins his body into a tight dive, shedding altitude rapidly as he speeds towards the ground like a human missile. His cape flutters rapidly behind him, before the lad reaches back and grabs both ends of his cape, and flips a hidden switch. '3 more seconds...2....1...NOW!' he mentally counts, and then flares his cape, special electronics in the cloth causing it to go rigid and letting the boy glide like the bird he is named for.
Ah! Th boy doth fly. Thor grins at the sight, then plummets after him, gaining quickly. "You won't get away, mortal," he says, deep voice making the otherwise friendly phrase sound far more omnious.
The Teen Wonder has no intention of running away. He glances back over his shoulder, gliding towards the ground as he watchs Thor gain on him from behind. 'Wait for it....' he plans, watching Thors trajectory. He thumbs the switch on his glide cape, and suddenly plummeting again, instead of the smooth arc he was in before. Another disc spins out into the god's flightpath, this time exploding into a cloud of knockout gas before it reaches him fully.
Robin twists his body again, and reactivates the cape once more, mere meters from the ground. With a hard landing, that leads into a graceful roll, and then a not so graceful roll, and then into a crash the boy lands.
Flying at Robin's side, Thor is unprepared for the second disc, until it hits him and obscurs his vision with the gas. A faint sputter and Thor drops himself to the ground, landing in a cloud of dust and dry grass. A faint tremor ripples from the shallow crator his nearly seven hundred pound frame creates when he 'lands'. One blonde strain out of place, Thor straightens and levels his stormy-colored gaze upon Robin. "Thou wants to play?"
Robin flips from his back to his feet with ease and scowls at the thunder god. "This is all still a game to you?" he says, the anger heavy in his voice. "Go back to whatever hell you come from. Earth doesn't need children like you making everything more of a mess." While he speaks, the boy pulls thats slim rod from his belt and with a twirl extends his bo staff and locks it open.
Yes..the 17 year old boy just called the thousands of years old god a child. And from his stance, he fully intends to give the god a spanking.
"The safety of Midgard is far from a game, mortal," retorts Thor, eyes narrowing. He watches that bo staff twirl to life, hears it click into place. He spies the boy's stance, reads the inherent challenge contained there in. Thor tightens his grib upon Mjolnir's haft.
"But Her cries have faded for now. We have time, if thou truly wishes to test your might against me," Thor levels his Challenge Accepted at Robin.
Round Two: FIGHT.
The boy waits, staff held ready, all the recent training from Batman ringing through his head. Good thing Robin went to his mentor after their last encounter, and Batman made sure Robin knew how to hurt someone bigger and stronger. Slowly moving the staff tip back and forth, to lure the god into a false pattern the boy starts to circle, getting to know the terrain as best as possible. A grass field, open for the most part with a line of trees on one side and a creek on the other. Not the best place to tango with divinity, but one plays the hands dealt, not the hand wished for. "Bring it, boy." he challanges the god.
A rolling laughter comes from Thor at the word 'boy'. Truly, it could be considered an apt description of the prince. Afterall, he is unmarried. Trained all his life for battle, against the very best that Asgard has to offer, and tempered against all manner of giants and dwarves and elves, Thor fakes being lured as he closes the distance.
"We dance," Thor replies, eager and pleased to have the space and the time to truly trade blows with this mortal hero.
So much for tempting an ill fated charge. As Thor starts to close, Robin charges, throwing the staff up into the air before him as he pulls an explosive batarang from his belt and throws it low at the gods feet with a quick flick of his wrist. As the staff comes down, the teen kicks it at the god's face, hoping for it to cross the god just above waist level as the boy himself drops into a slide to pass through the much larger man's legs.
The explosive batarang is dodged by Thor merely lifting his feet and hovering. The staff suddenly in his face gets Thor to react. He brings Mjolnir before him, hooking the lip of the hammer on top of the staff in order to sweep the wee stick down and to the side. The intention is to disarm them both, even the odds for them both. The results, however...
'Gotcha', Robin thinks, as the larger man parries the staff, instead of knocking it aside. With a grace born of years of training, the teen twists midslide and leaps, planting both feet into the god's back and grabbing both ends of the staff from behind. He kicks upward, pulling the staff with all the might his 17 year old mortal frame can muster, hoping to catch Thor under the chin with the staff as he backflips off the man's back and lands, twirling the staff and readying for the next attack.
This was NOT what Thor had expected. It has been some time since he fought and sparred against an opponent slimmer and quicker than he. The upper pull on the staff had Thor not pull back against it, the force he had begun to put into the downward parry sweep halting and being forced upward.
It's a bad choice for the Thunder God, not it is not the staff that impacts the bottom of his chin, but Mjolnir itself. The clck of teeth against teeth is audible as Robin flips away and ready-twirls for the next attack.
Thor turns to face the mortal, eyes flashing with lightning bolts. A drop of red forms on the god's lower lip and rolls down his chin, ignored by the Asgardian. Yes. The god bleeds.
A large hand comes up and wipes at the droplet. Thor glances down at the red liquid upon his fingers, a brow quirking. Then he smirks, and... Tauren stomps. The ground about him suddenly jerks, as a bed sheet would when sudenly flicked up to smooth out wrinkles. The concussive shockwave ripples from Thor's feet, racing out in a thirty foot radius.
'What the f....' the boy thinks, as the ground ripples away from beneath him. The boy backflips again, planting a single hand before returning to his feet as most of the wave passes beneath him, but he doesn't land so well on the now uneven ground. 'That's gonna hurt tomorrow....'.
Robin straightens, stretching his right ankle for a heartbeat before resuming his fighting stance. He digs his toe into the ground a moment, and the boy speaks to the god. "So it does bleed." he says, the taunting grin on the boys face not reaching his eyes.
Remember that dug in toe? Robin hooks it behind a dirt rock in the now loosend soil, and kicks it up at the god's face. Let's see if he can blind fight.
Dirt clod, meet Mjolnir. Thor brings the hammer up to bat the dirt clump away... and ends up creating a fine cloud of top soil in the air. Thor grumps to himself as the screen is created, and so he's already pulling air gusts to clear the area.
Prolly won't be fast enough though...
The boy is gone when the cloud clears. No wait...there is his cloak, the yellow piping on its edge giving it away as he looks to be hiding in the grass.
What grass? Thor, grinning, shoves the grass where that cloak is with a mighty hurricane gust of hot summer wind from a non-existant cloud.
The mighty wind lifts the cloak up to reveal.... a batarang, just resting on the top of a bush.
Robin steps up from behind clump of wildflowers on the other side of the god and charges again. He fires his grapple line past the god, so that it sticks into a tree, and leaps, pulling the wind button on the grapple gun at the same time. The boy tries to land a double kick, with the added force of the 500lb pull on the grapple line, to knock the god onto the waiting batarang trap.
There's a... what the hell is this thing anyway? Thor, head tilted in confusion, a faint noncomprehending frown on his face, actually starts a half step TWOARD said trap. Robin's drop kick finished the job and down Thor goes.
-BOOM-
As cool at it looked, that /hurt/. What? You try drop kicking a brickwall while sliding down a zip cord, and see how you do. From years of training in how to fall, Robin manages to land in a way that doesn't break anything. He lays there a moment, faced away from the explosion as it goes off. With enough explosive in that particular batarang to peel open a solid steel bank vault, Robin groans at the shockwave, and just lies there a moment.
Thor had caught himself, like a push up, just before his chest plate impacted the explosive. So bad. The explosion goes off, and the shockwaves sends the Asgardian up and over that away, sending him tumbling and rolling in an uncontrolled pile of hair, cloak, and grass to a less than graceful stop against the trunk of a tree. Dirt and grass coats him. The beautiful runes along his armor are scuffed from the force of the C4, and Mjolnir lays in the grass a mere ten feet front of Robin.
Thor brings a hand to his head and groans softly. The winds die down in an instant, gently ruffling the stalks of grass playfully.
Only 17 years old, once again this marvel of a mortal has put a god into the dirt. Robin pushes himself to his feet, with a groan, and turns to face the god once more, his staff held in ready position once more until he notices the hammer a mere 10 feet away. Hurt, sore, and with an ankle thats gonna protest the slightest movement for a week, the boy moves to the hammer and stoops, trying to pick it up and toss it to land at Thor's feet.
Blue-gray eyes spot the stooping figure in black and red. Thor frowns lightly, hand reaching out to catch Mjolnir as he summons the weapon at the near same instant Robin's hand closes around the handle. The transition is smooth, giving the appearance that the mortal may have indeed hefted the mighty relic; what is certain is that Mjolnir read the boy and judged his heart.
Robin readies his staff, doing his best to hide the screaming of his muscles, and keep it from his face and voice. "Why?" he asks. "At least tell me why we are fighting."
Thor's hand settles over the weapon's haft, and Mjolnir reveals the sensations behind the judgement: the boy sought to keep the fight even, honorable, fair; the boy sought not the power of Mjolnir; the boy is as unyielding as thou art, Donar.
Thor pushes himself to his feet, body likewise complaining at the motion, complaining at the heat and force of the explosion. Unlike Robin, however, Thor feels no need to hide the sensation from himself when he replies.
"Midgard has need of you, little champion. Thou art a mighty opponent indeed, and it shall be mine honor to weild Mjolnir at your side. But as for this day, thou struck the first blow. I countered in as much a fashion as I was struck, withholding only that which I knew would kill thy mortal shell, and summon the Valkyrja to escourt your soul into the halls of Valhalla and mine Father's side," explains the Asgardian to the mortal. He lowers the weapon at his side, out of ready position. His stance calms to at-rest and waiting.
"There is nothing needed in this fight, save to whet ourselves upon each other, for truly I say unto thee: Thou art a warrior fit of Asgard and the protection of this fair and beautiful realm of Midgard, who hath thusly summoned me to collect you."
Robin stares blankly, not fully comprehending what was just said. "You need to understand, Thor Odinson, that here on Earth, taking someone agianst their will it considered an assult upon that person. You had no right to grab me, and I every right to defend myself."
'Midgard is the norse mythology's name for Earth, right...so 'Earth' has need of me?' When Thor relaxes with the hammer, Robin lowers the staff in response. Still ready, just...not threatening to bend it again agianst the god's head.
"So this is just practice to you?" he asks, putting the last of Thor's meaning together.
In his hand, Mjolnir glimmers once, the runes pulsing and drawing the god's attention for a heartbeat. "Truly," he whispers of the artifact, gaze lifting back to Robin, and staring at him as if for the first time.
The boy before him, and truly Thor knows now that Robin is but a Boy, is a wonder to the Storm Lord. Thor's head tilts faintly, eyes glimmering faintly with the silver lining of a cloud. "Aye, verily. All such battles, whether fought twinx friend or foe, are naught but practice for the final of all wars: Ragnorok," supplies Thor while he moves to clip the hammer to his belt. Weapon put away, Thor offers his hand now, palm turned sideways as a warrior would.
With a twist, the staff collapses back in on itself, and returns to a 12 inch rod that Robin returns to its place on his belt. He is hesitant, still not sure what just happened to suddenly change the man's demeanor, but he takes the profferred arm, reaching forward to clasp Thor by the wrist. "Why did you grab me anyway? Surely there are others on this planet that would provide more of a challange to you."
Thor returns the clasp, bringing his other arm to place above the boy's elbow. "Midgard deemed it so. She demanded I fly to you, demanded we fly... elsewhere," he started only to pause and glance around, unhappy that the feeling driving him has once more faded. "I needs must take you... but..." Where?
Robin looks confused. "You...talk to the Earth?" he asks, and then pulls his arm away. "And the Earth is telling you we have an upcoming battle somewhere and you suddenly decide its a good idea to just snatch me from home and not give me a chance to restock my weapons, and then think its jolly fun to fight in a field, making me use even more of my arsenal fighting you?"
The boy turns and looks at the god. "What in the 9 hells where you thinking?"
Steppping a half step back, Thor purses his lips. "Hmm... I had not thought... of course. My apologies. Thou art mortal...." Pulling his hammer from his hip once more, the god holds out his left hand to Robin, eyes serious, "Then come. I shall alight you to thine armory, that thou might rearm yourself for the trials soon upon us."
The boy smirks at the god, pulling his arm up and playing with his watch a moment. "Welcome to the 21st century, ye olde timer." Robin answers. "My armory will be here in 15 minutes."
Thor's head once more tilts, like a curious little hawk he is. "My thanks for your welcome," he states with all due seriousness even if he has no idea what he was welcomed to... Perhaps this field it named 'Twenty-first Century'. An odd name for a field.... He seems to half shrug, then reclips his hammer to his belt.
"Would that I had the armor of Asgard at my disposal..."
Robin lowers his arm and limps over to the tree and takes a seat. He pulls a small kit out, and from it extracts a predosed automatic injector, which he sticks into the flesh above his ankle. The boy hisses a little, the puts the equipment back away. "Oh...can't just fly home and get it?"
Thor moves over to plop onto the grass at Robin's feet. "Nay, Little Champion. Asgard doth lie beyond the Bifröst, and I am not so fleet of soul to move tween the realms so easily. Miðgarðr hath summoned me, and thus in Miðgarðr I remain until She is doen with me."
"You are a strange, strange, man Thor. I don't understand half of what your saying. Next time you need my help...ask. I don't lightly deny help when it is needed." Robin says, putting way the medical kit and leaning back.
Thor laughs at that. It's a bright sound, the feel of a gentle rumble of thunder on the horizon. "Aye, Little Champion. I shall manifest before thee and request your aid when Miðgarðr shoves me to do so," agrees the prince, leaning back on his hands in the grass. The sound of the blades rustling in the gentle wind seeming to draw his attention. A gentle smile drifts across the Storm Lord's face as his shoulders relax and the cut on his lip continues to fade slowly.
Minutes later, a low whine can be heard for a few heartbeats before a sleek red jet appears, and hovers down to the ground. "My armory arrives." the boy says, sliding back to his feet and moving towards the jet. "Where is this trouble?"
The whine draws a frown to Thor's face, and the warrior stands, hand reaching for his hammer only for Thor to relax as Robin 'introduces' the fling metal beast. He walks at Robin's side, staring in open wonder at the jet. "I know not. Miðgarðr hath ceased her cries. Perhaps she merely needed us to speak at length to ensure thta when the time comes we shall fight together as opposed to against."
A compartment on the side of the jet opens as Robin approaches, revealing a host of various weapons inside. Bataranges, throwing stars, and gas grendes, oh my! The boy starts pulling varios things out, replacing those he's used, adding a few more gas and explosive charges then he would normally carry, and a new cloak, which he pulls over his shoulders smoothly. "Do you know how to use our communications equipment?"
"Nay. Mine goddess, Sif, keeps hold of the device I believe is named a cellphone, whose images doth confound and awe mine mind. I understand the manner in which it works, and the usefulness of said item.... It's working, however... I have yet to puzzle out," admits the Asgardian as he eyes the arsenal.
The boy nods and pulls out what looks like a over large pill, about an inch in length. Robin holds it out to Thor, explaining as he does so. "Here then. This is an emergecy locator beacon. If you ever need me, right away, break it. It will transmit a signal to me that I will be able to track anywhere in the world."
Thor takes the item, holding it delicately between thumb and forefinger as Robin explains. "Aye," nods the god, reaching up to tuck the item into a small space in his armor usually reserved for gems or coins or the like.
A now fully rearmed and recloaked Robin thumbs a switch on his belt and the compartment closes, and the cockpit opens. "Break it when you know more and have need of me." the bay says, moving to get into the plane.
About to respond, Thor gasps suddenly, eyes immediately turning toward the south west. "Champion," he calls out, right hand lifting, fingers open, to stay the Bat-Sidekick.
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