15761/When Pigs Fly

When Pigs Fly
Date of Scene:	01 September 2023
Location:	Athens, Greece
Synopsis:	The End of the Three Part Bridle Microplot. Pigs fly. Athens gets Bacon-Bitted, Shazam claims the Bridle of Athena for Team Good Guys, Audra learns that Science can out-perform necromancy, Joshua experiences his second existential crisis of the day, and James 'Bucky' Barnes bumps into an Old Friend.
Cast of Characters:	Nettie Crowe, Joshua Foley, Audra Meridian, Billy Batson, James Barnes

---

Nettie Crowe has posed:
PREVIOUSLY:

    Nettie looked over the cliffside, her face unreadable as she examined the rocks, the waves at a distance, for any sign that Estelle Badillo hadn't made it. She felt along the pathways of magic and Death that she knew so well for any sign, a glimmer that the kindly one with the darkest wings had visited here.

    There was no such sign.

    She tossed her still-lit cigarette off the side of the cliff, watching the winds take it as the cherry snuffed itself out long before it hit the water. "I don't think the bridle left so early as those ancient Greek's deaths." she stated. "Patience said when Estelle fell into the sea, she had that bridle in hand. We need to find where it went. Short of Athena herself showing her face and telling us there it might be... pull seismic records. Temperature records."

    "We could have cities at risk."

CURRENTLY, ATHENS, GREECE - DUSK

    There had been small batches of seismic activity north of the Aegean city on the ocean, but nothing too out of the ordinary -- other than the frequency. Little three, three point five ratings on the Richter Scale. Not even enough to cancel lunch in a lot of cases, just the Earth acting up.

    Nettie, however, didn't trust the science this once. She had a Bad Feeling about This.

    So she was down in a cafe, with a bowl of couscous in front of her that her crow was picking at, a variety of Greek baked goods and snacks spread out on the table for the attending watchers at this post to snack on, while she watches what looks like a black mirror, with a mummified snake head tacked to the top of it.

    Some people are staring, but mostly they just mutter that Americans are *weird*.

    "How long as it been since the last seismic event to the North of us?" she questions. She asked that question five minutes or so ago. The answer then had been twenty minutes.

Joshua Foley has posed:
Joshua, Nettie's new pet (correction: employee) is sitting at the table with Nettie. "Could it be Mole People? I heard about them once." he asks as he reaches for one of the snacks. Now that he has had a chance to clean up and be presentable, he doesn't quite look like the same kid that the witch fished from a dumpster next to Katz's deli.

Though he does eye the mirror, sitting a fair distance away from it. Probably worries that the thing runs off human blood or will suck him into some other dimension filled with snake people or the like.

Audra Meridian has posed:
Some scientists are too willing to write off anything that 'isn't drastic enough' and brush it aside. Not look past the numbers and think they have other problems to worry about.

Fortunately Audra wasn't one of those. She didn't understand magic, but she's had enough experience dealing with it by now to grasp it as part of the world and that it did things that didn't always play by the standard rules. All the more reason for a certain lightning powered hero to ask her to come help with monitoring the situation.

Plus her credentials as a meteorologist did get her access to more of the local information feeds even if the local scientific field didn't think it was anything drastic. So there she sat, various feeds playing on the computer tablet held in one hand, a half eaten pastry in the other. At the question from Net she glances down, and shakes her head. "No major changes. Same with the local temperature ranges. A little here, a little there, but nothing to set off any big alarms."

She paused to take another bite, and shrugged. "I think it just means nothing has tripped the darn thing yet, wherever it is. If it wasn't in the region, there would be little to no fluxations at all."

Billy Batson has posed:
Shazam was outside the cafe, feeling a storm gather and ignoring the onlookers. For once people were keeping their distance. He was not jovial.

A caped figure dressed in a purple version of Shazam"s uniform floats down to him. She administers an arm punch that is audible for a quarter mile before grabbing Shazam in a hug. Shazam returns it after a moment.

Shazam affects annoyance and says, "You read that letter I left for you early didn"t you?"

The littlest Shazam shakes her head.

"No. I"m here to help you."

"Okay, Darla. You can help. But you have to promise to do what I say, even if it"s very hard."

"I"m" wait what" Uhm, ok!"

"Go home and listen to Mary and Freddy. If this gets out of hand, the sibs are the second wave, the reserves."

"You mean we figure out what you did wrong and bail your ass out"

"I wouldn"t put it that way but" yeah. Mary and Freddy will figure something out."

Darla flies up to hug Shazam around the neck. "You just stay alive for us to bail you out! And when you get back, we"re going to beat the crap out of you!"

"Not on your best days. I will take you to Japan for a Toki Doki bag after all this is over."

"Done and done. See you soon." Darla nods to him, seems to want to say something, and suddenly streaks off.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "No, last time I heard about mole people, they'd kidnapped a college group involved in a birch basket museum outing and some team from Gotham City rescued them." Nettie replies to Josh offhandedly as she narrows her eyes at the mirror, and then reaches for a piece of baklava, feeling about for it with a gloved hand. She gives a smile to Shazam and Champion's interactions, and she breathes out a moment to shake her head. She was both a younger sibling and an older sibling once. She knows the way that goes.

    It's true, about the mole people. +scene 14610 and +scene 14691, True Believers.

    Another rumble occurs to the north, bit higher grade and closer to the city, this one was enough to make the local alerts trigger. People are warned about the activity. There's a little alert that comes up in Greek.

    ... then glitches and becomes Ancient Greek. Which is odd, since phones shouldn't be able to produce those letters.

    Then the water fountains begin to grumble and tremble as the water receedes and rattles in the basins.

    The sky to the North darkens and rumbles angrily as from all around, the echoing squealing of hogs rings out, high pitched, roaring hogs, mixed with the screaming of a thousand dead men, their souls dragged from the realm of the dead.

    There is the mighty flapping of wings as if thousands of great birds of flight had taken to the sky before they began to dot the underside of the thunderclouds.

    ... boars. Wild boars with razor tusks and gray-brown wings squealing in fright, animated constructs. Each bears two heads, squealing and screaming in flight before they begin to descend, cloven hooves pointed down and ready to

    "-- she figured out how to get around the wards of the city?!" Nettie questions in disbeleif, and she turns to Josh.

    "You're on crowd control, Joshua. If the situation becomes too hot, you are to take my besom and fly to safety. Corvax can get you back to New York in a jiff. Corvax?"

    "Aye, with the boy Nettie!" the crow squawks, hopping up and upsetting the bowl of couscous as he goes to perch on the handy dandy broomstick, which Nettie then hands to Josh.

    "Broom. Take care of the boy."

    The broom then lifts of its own accord, and seems to float next to Joshua like a weirdly shaped... floating dog.

    "Shazam, Audra, look for a three-headed one, that's bound to be our spellcaster!" Nettie barks out, and looks around.

    "... I need a crossroad."

Joshua Foley has posed:
Joshua listens with rapt attention, taking a bite from the pastry and peers at his golden hand. "I don't know how much longer this will last. It happens every time I heal someone or myself." The hint of self-loathing is present as he feels the tremble. To his credit, he doesn't go diving under the table in fear.

With Nettie giving orders, Josh gets to his feet and ask what a besom is -- but the broom's arrival tells him otherwise. His eyes widen and he probably just freaked out a little. This is all still very new and very hard to get used to.

"Corvax, what's a besom?" he asks the crow, before he shakes his head. He'll find out later. Instead, he waves to the cops. "English! Do you speak it? Send everyone ---" He makes a grand gesture away from the charging creatures. "South! That way!" he grabs his phone. "SIRI! What's the Greek for South??"

Beep: The Greek word for South is Notos. Also, would you like this recipe for baklava I found?

"No!" He waves his arms and points. "NOTOS! NOTOS!" Come on people, go south!"

Billy Batson has posed:
Shazam looks up at the sky and listens. As he rises an old man grasps his hand and cries, Xenia Zeus, De Zeus!" Shazam looks at the people looking at him and says, "God be with you all. The Thunderer sees. This will not go unchallenged. Go home and trust to whatever gods you worship. Then he blurs out the door and ex;lodes into the sky, the nearest bicephalic boars do not know what hits them as he fights with fists and lightning. That's only the opening. Audra can see the lightning behind his eyes as his costume turns white.

Audra Meridian has posed:
Audra Meridian is the older sibling in her family, so she can empathize with Shazam being concerned but also wanting to support the younger sibling's desire to be useful. Fortunately for her, Misty has stayed in college like a good girl, looking to improve the world by possibly being a teacher some day.

But any comments to be made are cut off by the alarm abruptly bleeping from Audra's tablet. Followed by the language glitch. To which Audra points at it. "Hah! Let's see them explain that one while looking down your noses at magic's existance!... But we better get on the move." She calms down, shoving the rest of the pastry in her mouth, and pulling her goggles into place as the tablet is shoved into it's slot of her pack and she darts outside to join Shazam.

"For all the times I've heard an old person utter 'when pigs fly'..." she mutters. "Guess its time for makin' some Greek bacon!" Still not as good on the witty remarks, but she's working on it. The veniers from her pack deploy and she launchs into the air to get a better view of the siege. "Three heads, three heads... all I'm seeing are two and two and well I guess the best way to find them is draw them out by cutting down the numbers."

Audra charges up her gauntlets, and then slams them together like a thunderous clap! Which is exactly what it is, releasing both a thunderous boom and a shockwave of pressurized electrified air to blast into the swarm of airborne boars.

James Barnes has posed:
    There are reasons the Winter Soldier is in Greece right now. Classified reasons. Classified reasons that have been resolved, thanks to his efficient work, so he finds himself with free time before his scheduled return trip home.

    He should've gotten an earlier flight. Because giant flying two-headed boars are not in his wheelhouse even the slightest bit. Usually he sticks to fairly mundane foes... though admittedly there was that one guy, you might know about him, with the Red Skull? Still, that at the most might be considered scientific mysticism, and not just straight out supernatural.

    Yet here he is. Strolling down the street in time to see Shazam followed by Windrose taking off into the sky. Bucky recognizes them in that way that someone who can't turn off the intake receptors of his brain recognizes someone, catalogued out of habit, rather than being a superheroic follower of any sort. But they're both grouped solidly under the good-guy heading, so at least there are people here attending to the problem.

    In the meantime, until any boars make landfall, Bucky helps to guide people out of the way, occasionally hauling a civilain up off the ground from where they've fallen or turn people in the right direction. He heard someone yelling about going south, after all.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "Aye, Windrose -- guess it's time to pay off all those bets, eh?" Nettie asks before she ducks a pork wing!

    The crow is echoing Josh's direction, and flapping his wings loudly before he adds

    "You're ridin' on it, lad! Broom, Zoom!" the crow calls out, his pirate's voice ringing out over the crowd as the Besom lifts Josh into the air, giving him not only a boost in the air to catch attention, but is also scaring a good amount of people away to the South for good measure.

    Nettie, meanwhile, is yelling at a GPS on her phone and attempting to lift a dropped motorcycle, since her main mode of 'get somewhere quickly' is currently occupied by her familiar and her latest kidnapee ... err... recruit.

    "This... was so much easier... in the forties!" she snaps, and kicks the poor motorcycle. It's not its fault you haven't lifted weights in fifty years.

    The Thunderer may see, the Welcomer protects, though admittedly this is his daughter's protectorate, but Shazam is making an excellent representative for Zeus today. The fists and lightning strike boards, making them squeal and go 'poof' from the punches.

    The thunderous booms of the shockwave sends the boards into confusion, some of them flapping around before six heads all turn to Audra, and squeal in displeasure as they try to rush her!

Audra Meridian has posed:
Okay the magic duoboar constructs are a little tougher than your typical pig. Via process of elimination Windrose realizes she's going to have to step it up a few notches to make a bigger dent and lure out the master swine. "Well, I got their attention at least." Which means they're not harassing fleeing civilians. We take what wins we can get, even if they're just a small bit of a bigger problem. So she switches gears, and settings on her gauntlets, opening the ducts and turning the thermal regulation in the opposite direction. "Okay, so maybe not bacon. How about..."

When the six headed trio turn to rush at her Audra puts up her arms and fires, unleashing a torret of freezing windstreams. "Winter ham!"

Things with wings tend to not like the cold. Maybe a some frostbite can cancel their flights. Or at the least boars aren't exactly made to be aerodynamic, a harsher wind blast than the thunderclap will hopefully do a better job of sending them reeling and squealing.

Joshua Foley has posed:
There's a yelp as Josh is yanked up into the air by the broom. Besom. WHATEVER! As he is airborne, he continues to try to direct people south. "Notos! Notos!" he continues to call out, before he turns his attention to looking for stragglers. "We have help!" he calls out to Corvas, pointing to where James is doing his part.

But as he scans the ground below, he notices a child that has gotten seperated from her parents. "...crap. Corvas, we're going down!" he tries to urge the broom to go down and pick up the child. As soon as they're on the ground, he reaches down to pick up the girl and sets her on the broom. "Hold on tight..." She probably doesn't understand.

And it doesn't matter as one of the boars comes barreling in, catching the group broadside and sending Josh tumbling! "Go!" he yells and groans as he pushes himself to his feet, facing towards the boar that hit him. Has anyone ever been isekai'd by a boar? He'll have to look into that, because he's pretty sure he's about to die.

The boar charges and gores into Josh, causing him to scream out in pain as his hands grab a grasp anything he can on thee creature. "Nonono..." his hands tighten. He can't heal himself faster than the boar is wounding him. He needs to do something... anything.

Pain. Cause it pain. Josh's hands dig into the flesh. He will hurt it. Maybe he can gouge out it's eyes, maybe... His skin shifts. From caucassian, dark and darker... soon he is almost a Vantablack color, his clothes maintaining their colors, his eyes a brilliant blue. But every inch of visible skin is black as night.

The boar squeals and bucks and tries to pull away as it shrivels, as if turning as black as Josh is. And then it falls. Dead. Completely dead.

Joshua sits on the ground, heaving breaths as he stares at the dead boar. Then his hands. Black. Gold is healing. Black is death.

He rolls to his side and pukes out all of the pastries that Nettie fed him earlier.

Billy Batson has posed:
Holy and invincible, Sudden crash and endless spiral,

Driving, unbreakable, booming, omnivorous,

Irresistibly sharp smoking shafts of the gale,

Swooping down with fearful flashes,

Your celestial thunder?s rolling shine is mirrored,

In the eyes of men and routing beasts.

<<Billy lad, you realize you have the company of not one but two titan haired beauties who use lightning>> Zeus inquires.

Billy thinks, .o O (Yeah and?" Zeus mutters, <<Lucky bastard is what you are.>> Shazam grins as he fires lighting at a squadron ot the constructs. Where the heck is the spell caster? He looks around again.

James Barnes has posed:
    Help is indeed here, for whatever value of it Bucky can offer. More than once he bodily hauls someone towards the right direction, just picks them up and turns them like they weigh nothing, then gives them a push. He even says something in Greek, which his vocabulary is limited in but enough to give simple commands. Like "Go" and "Run".

    He sees a woman struggling with a motorcycle, which is an excellent idea in his book, so he strides over and hauls it off the ground for her. It's only when he sets it right that he gets a better look at the woman and grounds out a "You!" that his friends would recognize as surprised, but mostly it just sounds surly.

    Because that's his natural state.

    He stares at the Grey Witch for a second or two before he hands over the bike's handles to her, indicating with a nod for her to get on. "I'm going to assume you're trying to solve this," he says, indicating the boars overhead.

    A beat passes, before he adds, "What can I do?"

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "Squ-REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" comes the screaming of a large, angry, dual-headed pig as it falls from the sky, its squinting eyes narrowed in rage at Windrose as its mouths open wide, wanting to take a bite out of Crime0fighter, and then the cold strikes. The wings are stripped of their feathers. It loses its ability to steer and crashes into a building, bricks and undead flying pig parts exploding into the street around Audra -- some of the pigs who had just seen their compatriot just get his ham smoked, figuratively speaking, appear to reconsider their forced non-choices in the afterlife, but are compelled to start trying to overwhelm the mistress of Meteorology.

    Zeus would probably high five Shazam if he had the chance, because there are a lot of powerful dangerous women that he hangs around with, and even some that like him. Not like the pigs though.

    A crowd begin to form around him, trying to take double-headed bites out of his shins and calves before lightning in a dangerous dark red cracks through the air, followed by maniacal laughter as the ground trumbles beneath the terrible legs of something... big.

    Nettie looks up, and it takes half a beat before she gives a smile. "Sergeant Barnes!" she greets him with absolute surprise and delight in her voice, and then an eyenarrow "Are you wearing eyelin-- nevermind -- explainations later -- you drive. I'll gun," she takes out a wand, and looks up to Bucky.

    "And then find a lad and a crow and a broomstick and send them my way, and we'll meet for a pint later I need the biggest crossroad in Athens, can you get me there?"

    "Justice League Dark Memebers --" Nettie raises her hand to her ear "That laughter means she's close. I can't sense her. She's using something to cloud the area from any clairvoyance or sensing. You see a three-headed pig with a bridle and a SPanish lady riding -- go whole hog." she states.

    Corvax, meanwhile, flits down to Joshua. Thank goodness it's not Anish Kupoor. Or someone birding on behalf of that guy.

    "Joshua -- Joshua you're all right. Pukin's all right, get it out, lad, and get yourself *up*. We're not done, and Nettie's not losing you *today*." he states encouragingly.

    The Broom, meanwhile, is holding the girl with no issue, and even gives a little bounce as it questions what now.

    Another pig comes squealing from the sky towards the small group of panicking people.

Joshua Foley has posed:
"Don't touch me!" Joshua almost shrieks at the crow. It's fear. Unadulterated fear. He doesn't want to hurt the crow. Or Nettie. Or anyone else. He heaves several breaths, clearing his lungs and manages to get to his feet, his whole body shuddering. That black color is not going away.

Focus. Focus. Joshua finally manages to nod his head slowly. "Okay. I'm okay." He's totally not okay. With another boar heading in their direction, Jacob has no desire to fight. Only to get away.

With that in mind, he moves to get back on the broom, sitting far enough away from the child so that he's not touching her. Because he's scared touching her would hurt her. "Let's get her to the police then find Miss Nettie."

Shakily, he adds. "Sorry."

Billy Batson has posed:
A white blur, lit with lightning suddenly is there, between the boar and the panicked people. The pig splashes on Shazam's immovable body. Drawing the sorcerer out isn't working. He sees Audra doing well and flies out in an ever widening spiral, searching.

Audra Meridian has posed:
See? Just because these enemies are magic doesn't mean Audra can't use science. Or improvise science in this case. It's what ACTION SCIENTISTS do.

Still, there's this little thing about numbers, and getting a lot of them in one place is more of a problem than just calculus (no one likes calculus either). Audra knocks a winged biboar away, but several more swarm in and try to body her about in the air. Her suit can take getting knocked back and forth, but not for a long period. Especially if a tusk catches anything important to its operation.

But there's a certain importance to things and she still takes a moment to respond to Nettie. "Okay, this might sound silly, but *grunt* she's probably planned for magic scanning. Try searching for something other *mmf* than her arcane presence.." A boar gets one of it's two heads right up in her face trying to get at her neck with it's tusks, only for her to plant a gauntleted palm against it's forehead and push it back. "Do you mind?! I'm trying to have a conversation here!" She clenches her fingers, and electricity erupts from the conduction network in her suit, channeled into the gauntlet, and into the boar's noggin. Sparks snapping at the other head. And erupting from it to arc in several other directions, violent flashes from the released chain lightning living up to it's name as it forks about to fry any other winged swine too close to her.

James Barnes has posed:
    "Nettie Crowe," says Sergeant Barnes in reply, his face implacable. There will be time later to discuss particulars, like the whos and the whats and the whys, but for now he does as bid.

    In this instance, the Winter Soldier takes over, and he knows how to drive.

    It's several miles per hour (or, given their surroundings, kilometers) beyond what is a safe driving speed for anyone but someone with souped up reflexes, and yet he manages to steer past falling debris from the overhead boar battle just as easily as he does fleeing civilians, which is to say he makes it look effortless. With Nettie on the back he trusts her to take any offensive measures necessary so he focuses on defensive driving.

    Having completed his mission in Athens, Bucky still has a fairly good map of the city memorized, so he knows where Nettie needs to be. In fact he gets her there in what is no doubt record time, given that there's likely aren't any police all that concerned with what he's doing versus what madness is happening in the sky. So he comes to an abrupt stop, swinging the bike around so that Nettie can climb off right in the center of the crossroads. "I'll take you up on that pint," he says, "Later." Then off he zooms.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    The crow puts his own little body between Joshua and the kid. "Nothin' to apologize for, lad. You've had a rough day, but trust Nettie, she'll set it right. You're not gonna hurt me none. I'm already dead!" The crow states quietly, and the broom lifts, flying above the throngs of people to where they're gathering in, of course, an old Orthodox church. The wee one reaches out and is accepted by presumably a family member -- who tearfully covers them with All The Kisses and thanks Joshua, although a little hesitantly, and someone very old calls out 'GREY-WITCH!'

    There's cheering for Joshua, who defended the wee one as the Broom turns, and darts back through the sky in search of its owner, who is being dropped off at a very convenient city square with a nice, large fountain.

    "Oh you know how it is -- failed mission. Dead Nazis. Almost took out the city of Boston once. We'll have to catch up. Have a shop on the East Village now in New York. You should stop by." Nettie states with as much gentle explaination as one can give, clinging to the back of someone's jacket as they speed through debris while someone launches magical fireballs nad ice bolt at giant two-headed flying pigs attacking the city of Athens. But you know, as one does.

     The pigs around Windrose are fried, frozen, both, it's an electryfing display of animal husbandry and management as they begin to dust all around her as well!

    "Keep it up Duckies -- I'm just about ready."

    -- the pig that was careeninng down splashing against Shazam's body, and then Shazam moving on. There seemed to be no end to this rain of bacon bits until --

    The clouds part. And there is a massive, twenty foot tall boar with three heads, looking pained. On his middle head, a golden bridle gleams, stretched over the snout and cutting into his skin -- it was meant for the Greatest among Horses, after all, and not the forced-reborn form of his giant of a brother.

    And on his back, Estelle Badilla rides, a fresh batch of mummified snakes at her belt, standing astride the pig as she sends her plethora of porcine minions against the assembled heroes.

    And Nettie, far below, reaches into her jacket and pulls out that mummified snakes head, and whispers, summoning as the water, stilled by the lack of water coming from the fountain's fishy heads, begins to tremble and turn pitch colored.

Joshua Foley has posed:
"I'm not, I mean, I'm not the Grey Witch." Joshua is confused, his black skin crinkled in confusion. "...is Miss Nettie the Grey Witch?" he asks Corvax, just before the broom yanks them back into the sky and they dart through the sky as he looks down from above.

Arriving at the crossroads, Joshua hops off the broom, freeing it up so Nettie can use it. "Miss Nettie, there's noone left in the city but us!" And then he adds as he spies James. "And some guy on a motorcycle!"

Because he's helpful.

James Barnes has posed:
    The kid with the broom (and another kid... and a crow) appear before Bucky has to take off looking for them, so all he does is offer a quick salute to the Greywitch before he's off, engine revving as he drives back into the madness.

Audra Meridian has posed:
Looks like Shazam and Windrose's plan to just thrash the minion horde until the final boss gets mad enough to do it themself worked in the end.

Not without giving Audra a pause for a moment. "That is a -really- big pig, yes," she replies to Shazam. She laces her fingers together and stretchs her arms out to crack her knuckles, making a few small sparks in the process.

"Time to make it and it's mistress wallow in their misery!" Because pigs wallow. Look I'm starting to use up my material at this point, don't harsh the mood.

That said, Audra did at least somewhat prepare for this moment, and it's part of why she didn't loose the lightning until she really had to in defense of herself. Expend too much charge and she wouldn't be able to do what she was planning for.

Which is to channel as much of that ionized energy into a very large spheroid and hurtle it into the fight. Save not for a direct impact. Rather it's aimed a little high, for the thunderball to explode right in front of the beast in both a blinding flash and deafening crack of thunder, like the world's biggest flashbang.

Because three sets of heads means three sets of eyes and three sets of ears. Four if you want to count the bitch riding it's back. The point is, if she can disorient the monster Shazam has a better opening to get in close, and Nettie has more time to cook up her crossroad shenanigans.

Billy Batson has posed:
Shazam says, "Finally... that is a big pig!" He flies at the mount and attempts to wrest the bridle from its snout. Of course this leaves him open to being gored or bitten by all three head. Blood splashes the white of his uniform. He yanks on the bridle one-handed and punches a head. "This is nothing after fighting the Juggernaut! What else you got?" Muscles that caught the Statue of Liberty strain. Finally, he attempts a headbutt on the bridled head! "For Philadelphia and Queens!"

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "Aye. That was the moniker she went by during the Great War -- occasionally still does." Corvax answers back.

    With no one left in the city aside their lonesomes, Nettie is working. Her eyes are closed. her hands outspread.

    She asks for Aid from the most likely of places.

    Hogs start falling out of the sky. They turn to dust and feathers as they crumble.

    They turn to burnt ashes and the stuff of sneezes.

    And as the Mighty Shazam wrestles the bridle of Athena from the head of KHYRSOS, the brother of PEgasus, and then the woman screams.

    Because when te mighty Hero wrestles the item from the head of the beast, the boar is no longer enslaved. He roars, tossing his heads, kicking up his feet and -- shrinking. BRistles fall away, raining on the streets below.

    The whole of the form of his shape seems to disintegrate, slowly falling to pieces and ashing before it hits the streets.

    And finally, just the form of a man remains -- a giant of a man, but a man none the less, who gives a nod and a smile to his 'cousin' -- and then vanishes, back to the dust of which his body was interred in.

    And around the others the pigs all fall to bacon bits.

    A hand splits the sky, as if it was a curtain, and grasps at Estelle, who screams in pain and then -- like the handa nd the tear in the sky -- vanishes into aether.

    Hecatate doesn't like when you use her good graces to stir shit up with her family, after all.

Joshua Foley has posed:
Joshua, who had watched all this in wide-eyed wonder, takes a couple of steps and falls on his ass. This is all way out of his paygrade and just... yeah, he's seen some strange stuff.

But there's cyborg and mutant weird stuff...

...then there's straight out of GOD OF WAR weird. This is the latter. Way so much the latter. It'd probably drive some people stark raving mad. Instead, he makes his way back to his feet and looks around. "...I'll take a pint." he manages. They are in Europe, after all!

Audra Meridian has posed:
Just for the sake of caution Audra hovers a bit farther back from the bacon breakin apart. But otherwise just watches the show, because there is no show like angry deities.

Especially Greek ones. Anyone that knows at least a bit of mythology knows that, for as wise and affluent as they could be, each and every one of them was also capable of being a beast of spiteful divine intervention.

To the point where Estelle is grabbed by a mighty hand and dragged back into whatever ethreal otherplace those ancient entities now inhabit.

"Now that was a heck of a Deus Ex Machina." Audra remarks as she drifts back to the ground. "We all might want a pint or two after that."

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "Too right. Day you've had, let's get you all absolutely drunk. Matter of fact, let's get everyone drunk. Call up the rest of the Justice League Dark, we're going day drinking in Mexico." Nettie states, unsteadily, and then falls to her butt.

    "Ooch. That hurt, but had to tattle on that one." she states, and then she l ooks to Josh. Looks him up and down.

    "... A Goth period. I like it!"

    ... and then keels over.

    The crow flits on over, and siiighs.

    "Overspent again, you old bird."