12315/Shadows Aren't the Darkest Shadows

Shadows Aren't the Darkest Shadows
Date of Scene:	06 August 2022
Location:	Midtown - New Troy
Synopsis:	A shadow demon secretly trailed Pantheon from the Rock of Eternity. Balm, Pantheon, Red She-Hulk, Red Sonja, and Robin were on hand to dispense with the creature. And Robin only almost died. From Pantheon's lighting.
Cast of Characters:	Freddy Freeman, Mary Jane Watson, Damian Wayne, Betty Ross, Phoebe Beacon

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Freddy Freeman has posed:
It's Friday night in Metropolis. The weather is seasonably pleasant and many residents and visitors to Metropolis have flocked to the busy New Troy borough to bar hop, people watch, eat, and just otherwise Not Be At Home. And then there is Freddy Freeman, a scrawny, crippled teenager making his way down a sidewalk. He moves with the assistance of a metallic crutch that clamps at his left elbow. His assisted gait makes a signature walk-thunk-walk-thunk-walk-thunk noise. He has just had Something Big happen to him and he can't get his mind off of it, so he is outside in the fresh summer air clearing his head. He's a bit far from home, but in a pinch our boy can travel really, really...REAAAAAAALLY fast, so it's all good.

Walk-thunk-walk-thunk-walk-thunk-walk-thunk-walk-thunk. A faint, distracted smile, a wistful sigh.

But a kind of chill passes through the air and several of the street lamps flicker. It's quick and minor, so really nobody seems to take very much notice of it. A man pulls his girlfriend a little closer against the chill. Two sorority sisters, already three quarters drunk, look up at a flickering light and break into nervous laughter. It's difficult to explain the mounting sense of unease, like the proverbial calm before the storm, that is spreading through this otherwise idyllic, urban summer night.

Walk-thunk-walk-thunk-walk-thunk-walk-thunk-walk-thunk.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
She was here on business. It had been a courier run to the local field office. The types of things where you didn't know what you were taking, you just went in expecting trouble, dropped something off you had no idea what was, who would pick it up, or anything. So after drpoping off a small little rock under anotehr rock in a park and wondering strongly if she was being hazed or tested.. Mary Jane Watson would be jogging along back towards the bus station to take her trip back to New York. Her mind shifting over to teh books on tape she would listen to..

Right as the hair on the back of her end would stick up. Fro another day, another age, another lifetime. Mary Jane Watson has lived in New York long enough to know something isn't right.

REd Sonja has lived long enough to know exactly that something isn't right. Still not sure quite what is going on, Mary Jane shifts her posture, heading on a parallel course to where things -feel- off as the temperature seems to drop. Slung over her back is a very large duffel bag which was clanking.

Freddy Freeman has posed:
The sound of squealing car tires. Someone laying on their horn. A popping sound as a streetlamp very near to where Mary Jane is standing burns out suddenly. A cat screaming. Individually, none of these things mean very much. But when taken in aggregate, and combined with the indefinable sense of something being not quite right, people take notice. An evolutionary blink of an eye ago, humans huddled in groups against the night, fearing the darkness for what it might hide. Those circuits are still in all of our brains.

"C'mon, Ashley, let's...let's go home," the aforementioned man who pulled his girlfriend close murmurs.

And just when the situation was threatening to calm back down to something resembling normal, there is a loud hissing sound, not unlike the sudden release of steam. Every source of light -- street lamps, cell phone screens, signs, smart watches, anything -- suddenly shatters in an area approximately thirty feet in diameter. There are screams as a patch of darkness some ten to twelve feet in height, bearing a shifting, sickening face, and appendages that resemble arms coalesces in the midst of the darkness. It is composed of the stuff that darkness calls dark! It is the stuff that is formed when shadows themselves fear the darkness!

About a hundred and fifty yards up the street, a city bus careens out of control, turning sharply to avoid the suddenly accumulating cars. And of course, that man and his girlfriend, Ashley, are unavoidably in its path. Freddy, a deepening frown on his face, who was looking over at the shadow creature, suddenly catches sight of the bus and the man and his girl. There is /no/ time for him to find a private place to transform. This is the moment that all heroes with secret identities fear. He must decide now if he is going to risk discovery or watch two people die whom he could easily save.

For platinum-hearted Freddy, the decision is no decision at all. All he can do now is hope against hope that the gods who protect fools and children will look out for him. Gritting his teeth with the pain that moving fast causes him, Freddy takes several steps and leaps in the direction of the disaster waiting to happen.

All of the night air rings out with the name of names, that secret and magical code word that unleashes the power of the immortal elders: SHAZAM! Lightning strikes in very defiance of this shadow creature, momentarily lighting up the darkness with shock and awe! Pantheon quickly wraps the two civilians in his unthinkably strong arms and turns his body so the bus strike his back. That massive pile of sliding metal budges the godling not even a single inch. Pantheon opens his eyes again and looks at the panicked couple. "It's okay, folks. You're safe now. It's alright now. If you'll excuse me, I think something needs my attention."

He turns to face the shadow demon. "Great," he murmurs. "Billy's gonna kill me."

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Mary Jane Watson can only look and tense over at teh sudden -shift- in reality and existence. Mary Jane, that is, can onlyy look and tense. Red Sonja, however.. Red Sonja can grin ferally over at it. She moves to snap off the duffel bag, unslinging from it a large bastard sword that she goes to carry over in one hand. She's going to charge over towards the shadow demon, taking a moment over to acknowledge Pantheon. First priority..

Keep the thing occupied so the civilians can be evacuated and limit collateral damage. That is somewhat beyond her immedaite ability to help with the evacuation.. But she can certainly help keep the thing distracted over.

A knife is picked up and out of somehwere and then is lfung over towards an eye of the thing. Even if the blade does nothing, hopefully having it ricochet right off the eyestalk where the pupil was would at least -annoy- it. Hand that held up the knife is then going to smoothly draw out a standard issue SHIELD needler gun, which she goes to fire several barbed darts targeted if she could over at the same area.

Roaring out a challenge, "Come, abomination! It has been too long since Sonja has slain one of your miserable kind! Let us remedy this!" Calling out a war cry to try and get the thing to come after her!

Damian Wayne has posed:
     Robin had been on patrol, well not really patrol. More like he needed an escape from Titans Tower and decided to go for a ride in the city. Luckily Metropolis was the kind of city that was long accustomed to seeing heroes in costume during the daylight hours.

  That was until the skies had opened up for a brief moment and a single lightning bolt crashed down. Already Robin had a feeling something was up. So, with screeching tires and as fast as his motorcycle could take him, Damian headed that way, luckily only a block or two.

  The Redbird slid into a stop behind the two others already on scene, hopping off the motorcycle. "Pantheon!" He called, alerting his comrade to his presence, though he had no idea who Red Sonja was, she carries a sword and looks overall bad-ass, so she's good. He unsheathed his ninjato, luckily there wouldn't be a need to hold back in a fight with a demon.

Freddy Freeman has posed:
The couple that Pantheon just saved grab each other's hands and they beat feet up the sidewalk in the opposite direction of all this mayhem. They don't even stop to thank their benefactor. But rest easy, gentle reader, because Pantheon understands and is just glad they're okay. Trying to make sense of all of this, Pantheon begins to jog in the direction of the melee. He can, of course, move much faster but he needs a moment to figure out what the hell is going on here!

As Red Sonja's knife slices through the demon, it does, in fact, meet something solid. It seems that this creature is not composed of shadow but merely can manipulate and control darkness. The monstrosity turns to face Sonja. It bellows out a loud roar that extends the thirty-foot diameter circle of darkness to twice its original size, causing even more street lamps and cell phones and signs and other miscellaneous sources of light to all explode simultaneously like some deadly fireworks show. The demon extends its arms in Sonja's direction and what appears to be shadowy tendrils engulf her body. The pain is...elemental, it's primal, it's molecular. It's like Red Sonja's nerves have never felt pain before ever in her life. Black, veiny marks spread like lightning over her skin as the demon starts to drain her very life essence!

That's when Pantheon acts! "Robin, stand clear!" he calls out as he showers the demon with dancing electricity from his hands like a pure-hearted Emperor Palpatine! This causes the demon to cease its attack on Red Sonja. But still those black, veiny marks remain on her skin! It's difficult for the young hero to fully control his lightning attack, and one of the bolts dances wide and strikes Robin in the chest, knocking him back a dozen or more feet!

"NO!" Pantheon yells and releases the lightning, ceasing that attack on the demon.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
There's a howl over from Red Sonja at the contact. She and pain and brutality are old friends. Giving and receiving. This particular combination is unique. Primal. Agonizing. She would scream over in agony as her arm goes numb. She goes to stagger a bit, arm haging limp at her side. "For that, wretched beast.."

The sword is rapidly switched over to the other hand as the veiny things would continue over on her arm. If need be she'll lop it off later.

"Today you DIE!" Sword in hand still functioning, she goes to charge over at the demon! She goes to nimbly leap up and over to land over on the nearest lamppost where the thing had blasted out. This has her up in the air by a solid five or so meters. Sword raised overhead, Red Sonja goes to leap through the air, blade arcing with intent to just tyr and slash the thing down the middle! Presuming she does hit it, the blade might even slash through cleanly through the solid mass. Or at least hopefully take a big chunk out of it with Red Sonja's momentum over and mass behind it!

Damian Wayne has posed:
     "For what?!" He called back, only before he caught a stray bolt of electricity to the chest. Robin's lithe form is easily flung by the power of a god's lightning. Crashing back down to ground, Damian's cape tearing, his sword clangs as it finds its resting place on the pavement, and a decent sized burn mark on his chest. The teen doesn't quite move for the seconds after he lands, the shock of it all taking him a moment to come back to.

  The vital sign monitors back in Gotham read a flatline, shorted out by the electricity running through Damian's undersuit. Even some smoke rose from the red ringed cloth tunic.

Betty Ross has posed:
    It's probably inevitable that the lightning will draw attention from farther away. For example, the dark haired woman who was making her way down the street opposite the direction MJ was heading, intending to meet up with her. Because new recruits get all the Fed Ex quests when it comes to SHIELD.

    The blast of lightning on a clear day certainly causes her to pick up the pace, sprinting as she bobs and weaves around other civilians leaving the area. "'Scuse me, pardon me, whoa there, just a moment..." See, if this was New York she wouldn't bother with the apologies, but Metropolis is a nicer town.

    Skidding to a stop as she rounds the corner and sees Pantheon displaying ULTIMATE POWAAAAH! as Robin and MJ assault the huge beast, she tsks a bit, looking down at her outfit. "Well...good thing I wore the full uniform today.' she mutters, then shakes her head, before she jus bursts upwards, growing rapidly into a towering red=skinned amazon with black hair marked by a red streak. Her uniform top shreds, as do her pants, but underneath she's wearing a high-tech black leotard that looks fairly heavy armored and leathery that apparently grows to fit with her. Though she has to shed the remains of her shoes as well.

    That done, she promptly turns....and disappears into a nearby alley.

    There's a creak of metal, then she returns, holding a mostly empty dumpster over her head as she starts a charge towards the critter, drawing the mass of metal back as she grins wolfishly. "Batter up!" she says, mostly to warn the two nearest to the demon before she attempts to clobber the hell out of it. Though Damien seems to have been knocked clear for the moment. And smoking. She'll have to check on that in juuuust a second.

    And of course the dumpster may possibly dump rotting trash on the demon, which only adds to the attack, she feels.

Freddy Freeman has posed:
As the injured Red Sonja boldly soldiers on, her blade strikes true and sheers off one of the demon's entire arms! Pantheon is a herald of the gods, and the gods favor bold, decisive action! HOWEVER...the arm strikes the sidewalk with a sickening thud and a perplexing swirl of un-light. It suddenly transforms into a long, writhing shadow snake that immediately arcs out and wraps itself around Red Sonja's neck, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing as it attempts to cut off her air and snap her neck!

It seems that the demon has had Just About Enough of Red Sonja and her annoying blades and unshakeable bravery. While she is distracted by the choking snake, the now one-armed creature turns toward her to finish off this puny mortal, to snuff out the fragile, foolish little life form in front it, TO EXERCISE ITS INFERNAL RIGHT TO WREAK HAVOC UPON.... *SPLORCH* The demon is plowed over by a really pissed-off red warrior amazon wielding a...excuse me?...dumpster! The demon is crushed between a stalled-out truck and the dumpster, smashing it flat! But more light is sucked from the surrounding area as the creature flows like liquid down under the truck and out the other side where it reforms! With two arms again!

Pantheon, of course, is mortified that he may have killed Robin! Not only would that be horrifying, but it would also likely seriously hamper his chances at being accepted into the Titans. Calling upon the speed of Mercury, the godling moves to Robin's side faster than the human eye can follow. One moment he's standing on the sidewalk, and the very next moment he is kneeling at Robin's side. "Ohshitohshitohshitohshit, did I just kill Robin? Robin, Robin, can you hear me, man?" Here we see the teenager that is inside this warrior godling's body going into panic mode.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Red Sonja goes to snap her hand up and over towards the thing on her neck, hissing. Even as it goes to start choking her she goes to snap up her arm over to try and struggle with it, even as it goes to choke her out and starts to crush her larynx.

Other hand, the one still covered in the deadened veins up to the elbow that's on her list of things to hack off if it keeps on going over to reach down to forcibly yank out another blade from her boot. This is snapped up and over to the smokey strangler, slashing it. Enough to let her heave for air as she would transfer the blade to her better wrist, going to hack it off entirely and throw it away. Staggering, going to retrieve the sword she would evaluate Robin.

"I can try and get him conscious. You focus your energies on that thing." Her arm is dead and she was nearly choked out. She needs a few moments to recover. And Pantheon's energies are best set on the Shadow Demon. Presuming she can, she's going to run over towards Robin to start to check him over.

Damian Wayne has posed:
     Robin's white eyelets had closed for the moments he was coming back-to. But surely he opened his eyes back up, his mask reinitializing right before he gasps for air when he is conscious again. "Holy shit!" He was mostly fine, slowly getting back up to his feet. "Go kill that fucker." He encourages the others, holding at his chest, just cause you're not dead doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like a beeyotch. Little did he realize that the lack of communication from the suit's monitors had The Batcave calling up an alarm, thinking something grave had happened to him.

Betty Ross has posed:
Were this Betty Ross doing the fighting, she'd be much more analytical and hands off.

    Red, on the other hand, prefers the 'hit 'em till they fall down and make a satisfying thunk when they hit the floor' school of fighting. Thus, she's mildly peeved when the demon not only shrugs off the hit, but reforms with its arm back. "Huh. How many splats ya got in ya, squishy?" she says, almost immediately kicking out to send the truck in front of the demon flying towards, then flipping the dumpster top down and trying to slam it over what's left of the truck and the demon to see if she can contain it. If nothing else, she's trying to keep its attention on her while the others help Robin and/or line up their next attack on tall dark and spooky.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Robin's signal went down on the Bat Computer. It sent an alert out, and when the alert went out, someone answered it.

    The fastest way between Gotham and Metropolis was easy. The portalling involved a bit of math to get close -- which is why the rose-gold portal dumps her out on top of a building, gray hood pulled forward, blue lit emitted from the domino beneath, and immediately she could feel that heaviness in the area, making the hair on the back of her neck rise up as she breathes out.

    Her eyes search the battle field, getting a read on everyone around, the medic in her registerring everyone in before she breathes out. She comes to the edge of the building, trying to find that demonic mass in all the chaos as she brings her left hand up, summoning her staff to her side as the magician with that Spark of Light in her channels more. Why?

    She's come hear for HEALZ and Demon Fightin' -- and she's got both barrels primed and ready as she jumps down towards the battle!

Freddy Freeman has posed:
The reformed shadow demon lets out a chilling, unearthly roar that pains the ear and shatters out several dozen windows in the vicinity. The street is all but completely abandoned of bystanders, especially given that there are no nearby functioning sources of light. Its just dozens of stalled, abandoned cars, a couple score shattered out windows, a shadow demon that somehow escaped its prison on the Rock of Eternity, and some women and men -- heroes! -- who have answered the call.

Demons, especially lower-level demons like this one, are not particularly patient and calculated. The creature leaps over the truck and lands next to Red She-Hulk. It rains rapid, punishing blow after blow after blow on her, sending a cloud of dust and debris up into the air from the sheer force of it. This thing has, quite simply, had enough.

Pantheon looks up to see the newcomer, Phoebe Beacon, dropping down into the fray. He takes a moment to knit his brow as he wonders if she is Friend or Foe. Freddy Freeman is a comic book and superhero nutjob, and its not often that he is taken by surprise like this. Trusting in his intuition, tempered by the literal wisdom of Solomon, Pantheon chooses Friend! He momentarily rests a grateful hand on Red Sonja's shoulder. "Please take good care of him!" Then he turns to face the creature that is pounding Red She-Hulk. He scowls as he clenches his fist. We've heard from several of the gods that make up the Pantheon, but not from Hercules. Not yet. "Hey..uh...jerk face!" he calls out. Yeah, he'll regret that lame insult later, but the Freddy inside Pantheon is a bit shaken right now, so maybe cut him a little slack? "Now it's my turn!"

Pantheon flies at the beast, smashing it in its...chest?...maybe?...it's sort of hard to tell! He knocks the creature off of Red She-Hulk and gives it a tase of its own medicine, pounding fist after fist after fist into the downed monster. By the time he is done, he has literally pounded the creature into the blacktop of the street. Ouch. But...it doesn't seem to have affected it very much, as though brute force alone is not going to solve this problem.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
All right, the thing can be at least slowed by convenitional things. REd Sonja watches at Robin, "Good, you're still alive. Get back into the fight, boy." He's breathing and seemingly capable of independent locomotion. That means that he can fight. She doesn't bother on anything else as she goes to pick up the large sword she had come in with. She goes to assess the battlefield. Things of darkness..

"Spawn of light." She would muse over then while going to look about. From Mary Jane's knowledge she goes to start top ull information to her consciousness on power cablings, insulatory materials.. And fluorescents. On the street, the city of tomorrow has a series of bright neon bulbs out. Red Sonja goes to start rubbing towards some of them, going to take up her blade to start yanking dwon materials.

Damian Wayne has posed:
     Tutting his tongue, Damian approaches his sword, and bends down to grab at it. Though he did see a familiar face start to join the fray, attempting to talk on his comms were of little use, the electronics had fried.

  Only then did he realize that there was a high probability that other parts of his suit were also afflicted. Robin took the sword in one hand, and his grapple gun in the other, running towards Pantheon and the beast on the ground. He needed some of those demonbane batarangs, but there was only so much you can carry normally on a utility belt. "Magic must defeat magic!" He calls out, obviously this wasn't just some mutant creature escaped from...wait. "BALM, LIGHT!" He called, to the other member of the Bat Fam.

Betty Ross has posed:
    Red is not expecting the demon to not only vault the truck as it goes flying, but slam into her before she can get her next swing in, the dumpster going flying as it comes at her hard, dark fists slamming into her as she goes defensive, bringing up her arms to protect her face as the ground cracks under her feet as she's driven down into the ground, forced back as her feet dig through the asphalt in long furrows. "Mother puss bucket...." she grits, before Pantheon whips past and slams into the creature, sending it flying as he begins beating it into the ground. "Whew. Thanks..." she calls, looking around herself, then over at Damien at his call, not realizing who he's addressing immediately. But sounds good to her. "Don't think this is gonna go down with just brute force, yeah! Maybe fire?" She walks over to one of the wrecked vehicles, leaning down, then tries to wrench out the gas tank. "Got some burnables here!"

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Balm skids as she hears Damian call out -- well, makes sense. Magic defeating magic.

    She brings her left hand with her staff up, and brings her right hand to her throat.

    It'll be worth the pain, she tells herself, as she forces her body to work the way it's supposed to.

    Vi per venas fluit hoc mihi lumen ad urendum daemonium! her voice echoes dully, distantly, like an iron bell, raspy and pained,

    But beneath her a magic circle alights, burning with a rose-gold fir eand her staff suddenly brightens to GROSSLY INCANDESCENT levels, lighting up the area around them with brilliance on command!

Freddy Freeman has posed:
*WHOOOOOOOOOOOSH* The entire area is suddenly bathed in arcane light! It's not unlike being in a dark room and someone unexpectedly turns on the light switch. It's just everywhere all at once. And the shadow demon shrieks hideously! It's a long, mournful, pained, keening wail. It distracts the monster enough that Pantheon wraps his arms and legs around the beast, restraining it in almost a wrestling hold. With this sudden rush of light, you can now see the monster's true form beneath its shadow sheath. It's a scrawny, bedraggled, twisted thing, like a fluffy cat that had all its fur shaved off.

The beast extends one arm-tendril-thing in Phoebe's direction and engulfs her in the same dark tendrils that it engulfed Red Sonja with. And as with Sonja, the pain is literally inhuman as the beast sucks life force from Phoebe. The two are locked in a battle of will and stamina! Phoebe's light is shredding the creature, and the shadow demon's otherworldly magic is regenerating itself off of Phoebe's stolen life force. At the same time that the beast shrivels, dark, shadowy vein-like shapes crawl up Phoebe's skin!

Pantheon looks up to Red She-Hulk as she wields a truck's gas tank absolutely full of gasoline. At that very moment, Red Sonja finds a thick, live electrical line! The gods do, in fact, favor the bold! "DO IT!" Pantheon yells to Red She-Hulk as he struggles to restrain the writhing, thrashing demon. "LIGHT THIS THING UP!" He seems utterly unconcerned about the fact that he, too, will be set ablaze. "Everyone stand back!" Pantheon looks to see who might be too near the creature and his gaze falls on Robin. There is...something odd about that moment. He wrinkles his brow and peers at the Titan with some sort of odd expression, like something just confused Pantheon. But there is no more time to interrogate that moment because the monster realizes what's happening and is struggling to escape Pantheon's grasp.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    The demon is going to have a hard time trying to suck the life force from Phoebe.

    Phoebe keeps the light going. Her head tilts back slightly, feeling the demon try to absorb her life force -- but here's the thing.

    Phoebe is Light. She gives a hiss as it tries to feet off her, and she begins to push light into it, her voice fading into nothing as she twists her head, her lips parting in a silent yell where before her voice had been rasping and full of power.

    She drops her staff, and as the shadow demon regenerates itself, so does Phoebe regenerate, the rose-gold patterns of her veins drawing along her dark skin, lighting through her shirt and tac pants.

    She brings her hands down, wrapping around the tendrils and trying to sware her stance. THe light glimmers from beneath her hood as the circle below her changes -- Egyptian heiroglyphics alter in a ring around her, and a lazily spinning eight-pointed star lights up brilliantly on the ground below her as she begins to try and bind the creature, to hold it in place as Pantheon grasps it.

Damian Wayne has posed:
     Damian turned his head to Red Sonja as she started to pull the gas tank. The magic light glowing bright all around, even now his light olive skintone could be seen in the hole in his armor. But the gas tank and the livewire were the keys here "Douse it, and let's send this thing back to hell." Robin's face had twisted into a scowl, he wanted this thing to die, he'd already seen too many supernatural things hurt too many people, no kid gloves anymore for Damian.

Betty Ross has posed:
    Red She-Hulk blinks at the blast of light, having to hold a hand up to shield her eyes for a moment as the demon shrieks in pain and is revealed, though the follow up shadow tentacle seems to be...bad. But she has to let the others handle that - they have the sharp tentacle chopping swords, after all.

    She nods sharply at Pantheon at his shouted words. Well, she's gonna assume that he's fireproof. Or heals fast. Or something.

    She reeeeeally hopes he's fireproof.

    "MJ! On three! One...two...THREE!"

    It's actually hard to throw something like a gas tank so it doesn't immediately come apart in midair with superhuman strength. Luckily, in this case it's what Red's going for, aiming for it to break apart and the gas continues in a more or less coherent mass before it hits the demon and Pantheon, drenching both. Hopefully right when Sonja can make use of the electrical line. She's fairly sure at least some of the gas was misted into an aerosol when she threw it, making it much more volatile.

    She's probably in the blast radius too, so this is gonna sting a bit.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Well, that's always good to hear. Red Sonja goes to scramble forwards with a large chunk of a building's main power cable over at hand, and her eyes eover on anything else that can be used to set it aflame. Then the order comes over from Betty Ross.
    IT's not Mary Jane that answers, but Red Sonja. She lets out a cackle of glee, goes tow rap the cables over around her blade, along with eveyrthing else as she moves to then launch it HARD as she goes to hurl the full power of the electric cables carved over the edge of her sword and flings it -roughly- over right to where things are going to get flung. Then dives for cover.

Freddy Freeman has posed:
The initial fireball sucks much of the oxygen out of the air as it fuels itself into a spectacular pyrotechnic display, shedding light that rivals the brilliant arcane illumination provided by Phoebe Beacon. The dark tendrils that were assaulting the spellcaster immediately cease and from somewhere inside that raging fireball the creature begins to /truly/ scream. It is going back to hell, as Damian wishes, and it's going back there having failed. Its suffering at the hands of its masters will be legendary!

As the fireball goes from unimaginably hot and bright down to merely insufferably hot and bright, somewhere in the midst of it the shadow demon stops screaming.

It is dead. At least insofar as its physical form is concerned.

A shape begins to form in the flames now! Here comes Pantheon, strolling out of the fire like he was out for a Sunday stroll. He looks around at his ad hoc teammates with a pleased grin on his face. "We made a mess!" he says with a half-grin cocked on his face. He gestures playfully at Red She-Hulk and says, "I say we pin it all on her and go for some burgers." His gleaming, playful eyes obviously indicate he's teasing. He continues forward toward Robin. "Hey, sorry for almost killing you." He gives the Titan a playful punch in the arm.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Balm, hood still up, comes out brushing herself off, reeking of gasoline and fire and sulfur and brimstone. Yeech. She's going to need a shower before she calls it a night. She looks around to the assembled other heroes, the blue lenses of her domino resting on each a moment, before she turns to rest them on Robin, looks him up and down, and then signs:

    <Will you live?>

    And there's maybe a little wry grin on her face on that question, and then also motions to everyone, followed with a questioning look back to Robin.

Damian Wayne has posed:
     Robin raised his cape to shield his face from the fireball and the heat. It was effective enough. He approaches Balm and checks up on her. "Yes. Nice job there." He comments to the new addition to the family before his shoulder is punched.

  That punch...Pantheon must not know his own strength. But momma didn't raise a featherweight, while he does sidestep just a couple inches, Robin looks up at the blue Marvel and raises an eyebrow. "It could have been a lot worse." He mentions, though winning against the demon just now was a win, and Damian had been caught being much more of an ass for someone making a mistake in the field before. "Two words, target practice." He mentions, raising his index finger to make a point.

  "Fucking demons." is the last that Robin says for now, looking back at the flames.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Going to now stand up and over Red Sonjag oes to snap her working arm down over to the one that is black, skinned, and throbbing over as if trying to tear off chunks of it. Then she's looking over the melee to move forwards to retrieve her sword that had been flung up over into it. Moving to with her functional arm pick up the blade and then take it over to inspect it. Arm still hanging limp, she goes to take off a slashed off part of her shirt that was somewhat ashen from the flame that had gone around andg oes to work to start shining the blade and isnpecting it for damage.
    "Come, there might be something left of it. We can find it and go kill it if there is." A rather upbeat one!

Betty Ross has posed:
    The fiery blast envelops Red She-Hulk, leaving her....well, a bit soot covered, with poofed hair, and her outer clothing on fire. She curses a bit under her breath, ripping off what's left of her shirt and pants to leave her barefoot in her unitard outfit, which, while revealing a generous amount of red muscles and curves, covers all the important bits at least. "Oh sure. Blame the Hulk." she grouses, snorting at Pantheon, though she's a bit relieved he's not on fire in a painful way. And fairly sure he's joking. "I've been blamed for worse."

    She runs her fingers through her hair in a vague attempt to tame it into something reasonable. "Man, Jen was not kidding about this being hard on the wardrobe..." she comments as she walks over to MJ, then eyes her. Or, well, Sonja. "I think it's dead. Very, very dead. Small shadow chunks of briquettes." she notes dryly.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Phoebe gives a wry look to Damian, and then gives a sign:

    <Good. Would hate to lose you to a little demon like that. I've pulled bigger things out of coke machines.>

Damian Wayne has posed:
     Damian looks back to Balm, his eyelets wide with shock.

  "HEY!" He shouts before signing. <It was a lightning bolt, not that demon.> He then makes the OK symbol with his hand, but at waist height, fingers pointing down, thumb and index finger circle pointed to Phoebe. A sharp 45 degree push forward and down towards the ground. <Asshole.>