13984/Mindless Ones in Bludhaven

Mindless Ones in Bludhaven
Date of Scene:	27 January 2023
Location:	The Narrows - Miagani Island
Synopsis:	Rampaging Mindless Ones are met in the middle of the worst part of Gotham by Nettie and Meggan's Dark Dimension Busters! Proper teamup name to be determined.
Cast of Characters:	Mary Jane Watson, Nettie Crowe, Meggan Puceanu

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Mary Jane Watson has posed:
The Narrows is the worst part of Gotham. Even the Bat-Family tread carefully when entering. The worst part of what might be the worst city in the United States. Among the most dangerous, brutal, and terrifying places that the city streets could imagine. Here is where there are monsters.
    And tonight, the very real thing. From a glowing purple portal fizzling into existence, a breach overwriting reality that starts to ooze out some sort of.. Thick goop and pods that start to separate. Teh heavy pods, almost looking like Clayface, but a dark grey in coloration would ooze around the ground. Then they would start to grow, forming humanoid peas.
    Someone on the streets would yell, "Get the ##!@* out of town $##*#!'s Putty Patrollers!" Various taunts would fill the air.
    That would start to fade as several nine foot tall humanoid constructs, featureless but for each having a single, glowing uni-optic across the center of the masses that would be thier heads, each striding forwards in a stomp.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    Nettie Crowe ordinarily gives Gotham a wide berth. Mostly out of respect for its night time guardians, but also because an old associate lived here once upon a time... and it was a bit anxiety-ridden guilt that made her stay away in case he came back. However, tonight she had felt Something on the wind, something in the water -- and that was precisely why the old Crowe made her way towards the Narrows, on her broomstick.

    And from the moment she spotted the portals, it was a short curse of the profane sort and then an uttered word of magic before her own features are disguised, gone away are the faded denom and her winter jacket, replaced by a neat gray uniform akin to a very severe looking nurse in the 40's on the Allied front, minus the apron.

    Strings get in the way, you know.

    And in lieu of the normal nurse's hat, a witche's hat with a kilted over peak and a wide brim sits neatly on her hair, in gray, her features turning ashen as she takes her wand from her sleeve.

    From over her shoulder a crow sails down, calling out in a Pirate's brogue:

    "AYE LADS! Run, we've got this!"

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
There's some yelling from within the Narrows. Even in the face of monsters, no one likes to run and admit they're in over htier heads. Machine gun fire bursts out. That is promptly ignored by the mushy, massive Mindless Ones that seem to for all they do absorb the bullets into thier own alien mass. As more bullets fly through the air over into the center torso of one of them, it pauses a moment. Then it goes to adjust it's head, the single optic going to glow..

And from it a blast of energy shoots out, hitting the two story condemned building where the firing had been coming from. ALmost instantly turning it to ash.
    Nettie's words are much, much more heeded now.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    Yelling in the Narrows is a normal thing for Gotham, but these creatures were not. Nettie bites down on her lower lip as she narrows her eyes, casting about for a better idea than what she was about to do.

    "Well, tha's a brand new thing, isnnit?" she murmurs to herself, and then she dives on her broom, lowering an ancient pair of leather flight goggles and then comes close, skimming over the top of the glowing-eyed one and Akira-style slides in the air, over their heads, raising her wand as she casts her spell and causes a massive, brilliant white fireball to light up the night, aiming to take the head off the offending clay monster!

    "Oi you bunch of formless goo's! Op 'ere's where ye should be lookin'!" she barks!

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The Narrows may be terrible, but they're a sight better than the stews of a goblin market on the backside of Camden. What's worse, the gang-ridden slums of Gotham or New Jersey? Buzzfeed probably regularly runs polls on it.

It's not much of a choice for Meggan to be here, rather a matter of happenstance. Sometimes life gives her no choice in the matter. Holding a bag full of mirror bits traded for two pairs of gloves, one stripey scarf, and one ginger stripey cat salt shaker, she stumbles out of what looks like a doorway. Except the doorway only exists in legends and imagination.

Her scuffed up trainers have seen better days, worn thin enough a toe's probably chilly through a gap along the seams. Scraping attention from wherever it ways takes a while. Rattling gunfire is awfully close. In the Narrows, you learn to duck before asking questions or you get hit by shrapnel, which she does. The first bit goes clean through her shoulder, and the skin mends even as the blood wells up to ruin a perfectly nice, plain shirt. "Bloody. Ow!" Force of habit to hiss, smacking a hand over the wound. Not the one with the precious bag.

Or a hell of a fireball bursting in air. That she has warning for, a shrill jangling to sharp eyes. Smart to duck faster, then.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
The fireball goes to boost through teh air, slamming over into one of the Mindless Ones. It's shambling would shift over towards Nettie as her plume hot fireball would impact over into it. The smoke would fade, revealing the charred form of it.. But with very little seeming damage over to the other-dimensional matter that made it up. I'ts optic brand would glow, going to fire it's large Disintegrator Beam at her!
    Scouring red light streaking past her, missing considerably. But if she were a cat and it hit it would definitely be taking more than just one Life away!
    One of the Mindless Ones goes to shift over towards Meggan. Maybe it could sense her. Maybe it couldn't. Maybe it was targetting her. Or heading after something in her direction. It would go to start to take steps in her path.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    Stretching as she makes a face of concern as the fireball doesn't bake the clay item, Nettie halts her slide, and immediately raises up high, trailing behind her the crackle of magical energy from her besom kicking into gear.

    "Well that's going to leave a mark though." she mutters to herself, and then something smacks her on the side of the head. Her eyes go wide, and there is a litanny of awful words dropping from her lips as she arcs up into the sky, upside-down, and then calls with as much 'boom' as she can summon up from her short self:

    "CORVAX - TO THE LADY!"

    Before she brings up her wand again, this time summoning shards of sharpened ice to rain down upon the clay putties!

    Corvax, the pirate crow, gives a caw and wheels about, coming up to perch above Meggan on a street light.

    "Beggin' your pardon, Missus Cee, but it's gettin' a bit rough. out there, might wanna look out for those --"

    And a laser beam almost hits the crow, his tail feathers getting singed as he gives a croak and flaps off!

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The white-haired Englishwoman carries some lasting traces of the Otherworld around her, a few withered sprouts poking up in hopes that they might find a nonexistent sun. Even here, the weeds fear to poke their heads up too far. Her braids swing from the shockwave shouldered by the buildings, either from a fireball or a disintegrator beam. The source really doesn't much matter.

Tying the precious bag of mirror bits is more important than protecting her own skin as she slinks along the wall, and suddenly, there's a crow on the scene.

A jaunty crow with a fine beak like a Souser. Lucky for him, finding his target becomes a lot easier when she flits out from the oily shadows.

Plenty enough time to find her, but possibly for a Mindless One to lumber after her. The great monstrosity is much harder for her to spot than a sentient familiar, one being loaded with emotions to feast on. "You're best to run," she warns, though amends it if she spots Corvax. "Or fly. Everyone's got their tailfeathers in a bundle." Eyes gone silver as the full moon might make her alarmingly unlike her usual golden self, but it's winter.

Winter, the season of deception and malice. Or just bleaching out like you do. Like possibly convincing the cement and concrete, broken as it is, to come up and tangle around really big feet -- the Mindless One's.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
The cement goes up and over towards the MIndless One's foot. If it had the capacity for surprise at the sudden grip of the ground over on it, it might show it. Instead, it simply goes to trundle along, tearing the ground struggling to grasp it along on it's foot. It's domed head woulds wivel around, like a turret, and move to glow as it would launch another blistering array of it's disintegration beam over at Meggan! She would have time to dodge or put up a barrier, but the grips on it's foot was just slowing it rather than stopping!
    The one that had taken a shot at Nettie goes to stalk over towards a nearby condemned building. WIthin it was the sensation of magic. Dark, dark magic with just a spicy hint of chaos to give a lovely aftertaste. Whatever it was there, they were clearly after. Nettie is for the moment ignored.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    Some people like their magic spicy. Nettie has a love affair with spicy forbidden magics.

    It's burned her once or twice, but it definitely felt like this was going to be something bigger than what she would normally handle.

    "Not fire, not ice, good lord what does this thing *Take to Stop*?" Nettie murmurs, and she brings her wand up again, this time she attempts to Take Control of one of the clay monstrosities, focusing on the one approaching the buildig.

    The chant she uses is long, Olde English, full of thorns and briars and grasping vines, the stuff of insect-controlling fungi and grasping, claw-like hooks as she tries to wrestle control of the mindless from where she sits above them.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Fire nor ice, then earth and vine. Meggan might puzzle over the witch's question were she to hear it and not vibrating to a different key altogether when the shambling figure unleashes the optic blast in her direction. The other one, prior to this, loosed a beam in another direction at a distance. This one tries to make it personal and she launches diagonally off the side, gravity more of a passive suggestion than actually troublesome for her. That puts her on a building, likely shot at by the occupant, not the wisest move. They might be forgiven.

"You." One word. One, because saying anything more is a waste.

The air flash freezes around her to a chill on par with the crater of Olympus Mons or a nice ice cave at the bottom of the Antarctic ice sheet. The arcane seals on her crack in a go, all of them. If her bare heel could be seen, the scarred circle slashed by a double barred line would be an obvious brand on the glowing skin. Her superficially human form emanates more light than Broadway all at once, the leylines around the Narrows fractured and suddenly yanked straight into the radiant madhouse that sparkles around her in a frenetic aura. And to be clear, it's a psychedelic darkwave techno party in its Berlin period, stained by the bloodshed and the waves that wrecked this part of Gotham in the first place.

All of which she decides to throw as unfiltered, furious mana straight at the Mindless One, coming down like a guillotine, with not even a sound.

Winter is the silent killer, and Meggan? She's psychotic.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
And Nettie goes to chant. Calling up words of power and commands. It works. It's not a direct counter to what those brained things are told to do. So her spell is able to redirect them.. And control them. Two of the Mindless Ones suddenly go still. They halt. Mid-stride towards the building, their target. They go stock still as they wait for more orders to come.
    And Meggan feels anger. Righteous anger. Loathing. Tha tburns so bright. Fury that shines in contrast to a saint's righteous rage. And that rage causes everything to go suddenly still for a moment as she goes to charge in! Her shockwave goes to rend right -through- two of them. And possibly through a nearby building as well. The two Mindless Ones hit over by the wave totally disintegrate from it, turning to whatever biomass or whatever thier form of origin was. S hredded.
    Two more of them swivel towards her, one going to unleash a massive blast from it's optic at her. And one goes to turn towards Nettie.. Aware of what she was doing. Advancing.. Fist raised. Her own two golems commanded and silent.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    Oh, now it's getting fun.

    Nettie gives a wry grin, and she cracks her knuckles.

    "All right, Duckies, let's play!" she gives a whoop, and holds out her hands, tugging at strings like a puppetmaster as she pulls her control around the two clay-based nonlifeforms.

    And Nettie might not be a partial artist, but her new toys come out swinging, throwing punches and head-butts, trying to wreck their former cohorts.

    Meanwhile, above them, Nettie is having a friggin' ball, laughing with the utmost glee.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
And the old witch is getting to play whack a mole! Somehow going to bring up it's heavy fists, even as it's other two brethren would go to smash over at it's dome again and again. It would smash back at them. But each blow would weaken it more, each bludgeon over from Nettie's new acquisitions bludgeoning it a bit more. Until it's shell of a head was lfipping up and seeming to be ready to be separated from it's humanoid frame..

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Meggan floats off the ground with her extremely long hair trailing behind her in a kinetic river of energy, perfectly appealing to cats or familiars hungry for a jolt of fresh mana, possibly a tripping hazard to the usual thug. She pulls up the unformed power as a conduit through herself and the trippy Berlin light show keeps on strobing around her.

Her propensity to sneak up and brain a Mindless One would be great and all, except she can't exactly sneak without a blinding light to hide in. So instead, she brings down another handful of shimmery raw magic. It's like being in the Halls of the Mountain King and every organ pipe a different note. Down-punch, up-stab, down-punch, up-stab. The vertical bursts at least acknowledge her reckless attacks could harm buildings, and typically buildings aren't malevolent servants that spent a very long time trying to torment people.

#empathsbondedtohellproblems, people.

She's quite single-minded about rebounding dangerous amounts of energy up and down, but at least that clears the battlefield for Nettie to manouevre more safely.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    There's a very calm voice calling from overhead:

    "Oi! Meggan, poppet, please mind your bolts, I canna move fast enough to dodge them at the moment." Nettie chides from above as she begins to methodically seize and destroy the clay mindless in their tracks, while trying to set a good example for these young whippersnappers.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Ther'es a KLONK over as the head of the Mindless One that Nettie had been deploying her own pair over would fly off, rolling over several time son the ground, the burning red optic sizzling out to nothingness, the body collapsing over intow hatever elemental biomass that it had been in the ifrst place.
    And this doesn't seem to be cathartic for Meggan. But the energy lashes she's doing about are effective. Very, very effective. She's quickly able to reduce the non-Nettie-netted Mindless ones over to free floating atoms.
    That sizzling portal is still there.. As is the sense of magic emanating of a wisp of demonic sulfur and a whimsy of chaos tinting it for flavor.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The sharpened flash of those unnaturally dark eyes, a full-moon silver rim eclipsed by her pupils, are a little better than mad. But destruction feels pretty good, watching obliterated Mindless Ones cease to be. One can even feel productive in the midst of ranged blasting, which is probably why she never gets to play actual RPGs like Diablo.

Because you know John always gets to win, right?

"Hmph!" A bright note amidst the burning chaos sees her hovering off someone's crooked balcony, not quite threatening to collapse it. But forcing the blackout curtains shut, since someone would also like their retinas in the morning.

"Something stinks that way," she points.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "Aye, that'd be the garbage collection, still on strike." Nettie remarks. She hated Gotham on a good day, and she breathes out, turning to the portal.

    "Think you can close that off so nothing else comes through?" Nettie asks, lenses of her flight goggles darkening as she reaches up to correct them.

    She's going to hurt so much come morning.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Wait, garbage collection actually come sin Gotham? There's that flicker of the portal, which can be closed readily enough. Apparently not too deep a tear. Which left the question of whether those things had been called -by- someone or -for- someone. Which meant two very different things.
    Just that faint whisps from the surprisingly intact building of whatever had been within it in the first place that ad started all this ruckus.
    And somehow, no one in the Narrows is blinking.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The portal over that way stinks as much as the garbage, and its presence is a foul tumour that needs to be removed. Which causes the glowing woman to dampen the disco party down a fraction, sucking in breath she doesn't need to taste it.

Her head tilt is slightly avian, eyes bleeding sparkles where the trails of grief and pain blend together in some form. Everything burns too bright to Meggan in this way, the closer form she has to her mother's side.

"I..." Words need some practice. She works her jaw, following Nettie, threading the ideas together. "I can try. Bit of a mess."

Mess on her part or mess on theirs, both points lead to the same conclusion. A ball of mana forms, bobbling in her hand. "You need to eat?"

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "Aye ain't that the truth, both of us are rather messes, but you're a slight stronger than this old lady, Meggan." Nettie states as she comes cautiously closer, the 'witch' shadow fading off, and dressed again in jeans and a wool jacket.

    "I don't need to eat, poppet." Nettie gives a grin. "I subside on the meaner stuff in life. You know."

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
The glowing portal is something that sets existenceon edge, is.. Not quite as blighted an eyesore as the rest of New Jersey. It might even spruceup some of the local property values. Before someone steals teh tires off it.

The portal is closable with a minimum of effort and nothing more is trying to smash it's way through onto this plane of existence. There are a set of very large, beaten off Mindless One heads that some of the local kids are moving to start to play with.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The horribly dark stain on reality looks like Grimace turned evil to Meggan and so she approaches a bit cautiously toward the building. Mostly, she needs time to properly dial down some of the sensory inputs, constructing some of the walls that defend the mind. Things shown to be dark and corrupted instinctively make her flinch.

But for Nettie the sight of watching her cut down a portal with her fingers making classic snip-snip gestures could be anticlimactic or a bit reassuring. However, the gestures work well to focus the handiwork of cutting away bits and bobs that don't belong there.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    And Nettie is satisfied with that, mindful of a Winter-mode fae. She breathes out a quiet sound, keeping her distance lest her own dark magics that keep her bound in her flesh and bones affect Meggan any more than she wants.

    "Good on you, Meggan. Can you find your way home from here, or would you like Corvax to accompany you to your door before he flies back to New York with me?"