17095/Lights Out In The Bronx

Lights Out In The Bronx
Date of Scene:	21 February 2024
Location:	The Bronx
Synopsis:	The heroes save the Bronx.
Cast of Characters:	Ben Grimm, Mary Jane Watson, Jack Nolan
Tinyplot:	The Queen in Blue

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Ben Grimm has posed:
The moon is high and the stars are in alignment. The hollow feeling in the hearts of men that reminds them of their mortal coil is inflicted on them in physical perpetuity as the hand of night itself blots out stars, moon, streetlights, TV's and video games. The sueprnatural darkness descends on the bronx from anywhere and everywhere; and screams echo in the night as the mysterious shadowmen discussed on the internet begin to grab people and pull them into the dark space between the worlds. A few places hear counter screams as fire, torches or other sources of light are brought to bear to drive back the attackers, but for the most part their is fear, dark dank animal fear, and Ben Grimm is in the middle of it, waring special glasses that let him see in the gloom, from time to time passing them to a first responder or person trying to get out. He wants to help everyone but right now, he is trying to stop people from being pulled into the void.

He feels futile, like the little dutch boy with his finger in the dike, not even sure where to start, but he has a small sensor he follows trying to orient a center to it all...knowing that this is the center of some master plan. Thanks to the hacking of Jane Roe and the info provided via the hero network by flatline, he has some clue about it, but still no real idea on what is happening beoyond konwing it is very bad.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
There are always monsters awake at night preying along it. Far too many to ever recall all of. From those ancient things which have petrified children from places of safety. Aliens, ghouls, goblins.. Whatever they are, wherever they are from, they always spread darkness and terror. Many ways to achieve the same goal in the end.
    On this night, Mary Jane is on the prowl for such things. Perhaps she might be after the Shadowmen. Perhpas she might be after another monster and this is all too engagingly a bloody detour. But strapped over two her back are a massive pair of heavy blades. On ewith the lighter hook of an Asgardian style weapon, the other an ancient basterd sword with barbs and hooks along it.

Jack Nolan has posed:
From deep inside of one of the clouds of darkness, there's an unearthly roar, but different from the creatures. Then a flash of light, accompanied by a loud report to go with it, the flashbang grenade revealing the saurian form of Jack Nolan for a moment. He was not supposed to be working tonight. Under his left arm, being clutched like a football, is a small Asian American woman. He'd been eating dinner at his favorite restaurant when the windows had all been blown inward by shadow creatures.

But now in the moment he was bringing her over to the waiting arms of a firefighter in one of the spots that had been set up as a refuge, with large floodlights keeping the creatures at bay. He takes a knee next to one of the flood lights for a moment to try and catch his breath. It was a hell of a fight just to get out, and the night was just starting.

Ben Grimm has posed:
Though she cannot see them in the darkness, there are several men grabbing at people near Mary Jane, and the blades practically sing for their flesh. There is something that almost demands the impact of steel in their unnatural extraplaner forms and should she heed the call they bleed and vanish into the spectral ether as she moves it in spindle and weave of fighting form. The flashbang shows their unnatural form, a strange belt and goggles that likely let them see in this darkness as Jack unleashes his forms on them. Thing grabs a pair with his hands as one of them goes blind from the flashbang, and he thorws it to Jack as he does. He spots Sonya two blocks away and shouts with a loud booming voice, "This way!" He doesnt have a plan, jsut a hunch that they need to find a way to the center of this all, with a sensor he knows how to work but barely understands sows some kind of centralization to the mass of chaos all around him.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Her blades sing of death, dismemberment, and diablerie. They serenade Mary Jane, they speak to the spark of Sonja within her. As the two consciousnesses in one mind are held apart by a thin webline on either end. On this night of terror, Sonja is but a few steps away from dominance over their shared consciousness.
    "What ill befouls the night?" She goes to follow the instructions of the Thing, slashing out with a blade in passing at one.

Jack Nolan has posed:
Jack grabs the goggles out of the air after Ben tosses them to him, putting them on over his head and turning them on. They were close enough to NVGs that he could figure them out. He gets up to his feet after a moment, snatching one of those big Maglights off the ground and follows after Ben. Sometimes a plan just slows things down. Pun intended. He lowers his shoulder and slams into one of the creatures after blasting it with the light, knocking it down and trying to help Ben to clear a path to whatever goal he's headed for.

Ben Grimm has posed:
Ben Grimm says, "So its a long and weird story, and I clearly dont know the half of it. I've pieced bits and pieces together from randos on the internet, and here's what I know. Guys are cultusts from another world, trying to summon something bad into ours, and they want people to do it; thriving somehow off Pychic damage, so the more of them we send back to the void, the better. NOrmally, I'm not about hurting people but these guys are literally trying to summon something from beyond understanding....just...if it moves....feel free to light up its world. Steel, Iron and light seem to be a proem for them."

As Mary Jane attacks, they cut a swath around her, instead trying to grab others nearby. The entire borough is covered in the black and as a few move past the whirling blades of death the maglights from Jack cause them to shriek and back away."

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Mary Jane Watson would shrug, "Then the telling of it can wait for another time. This is the time for screaming." The cultists are ones that speak to the edge of Sonja's consciousness. Normally Mary Jane is a focus for restraint. Normally the one that holds back Sonja's eternal bloodlust. But here?
    In a night broken by suffering, screaming, and those that would sacrifice themselves to the murderous benevolence of another? Now there are only but a few steps left separating Sonja from complete dominance. As the attackers surround her, Sonja seems poised to take those few final steps of triumph.
    Slashing, skewering, blades flashing.

Jack Nolan has posed:
Cultists from another world? Jack swears the more time he spends away from SHIELD the weirder things he runs into. Still, the stone saurian nods in response to the quick run down of the situation they have found themselves in, "Light's been working great." He pulls a rather large knife from a sheath on his belt, "This should handle the rest I think, lets keep pushing!"

The ones that are shrieking and pulling away from him, Jack pursues, bringing his knife to bear as he tries to slash into them while the light weakens them. Might be enough to make them disperse, at least!

Ben Grimm has posed:
They are the elite of the elite on their world. If they were in a regular hand to hand fight, they would be a draconian challenge, but the trip between worlds and the equipment that they wear has tapped into powers not meant for them....now? Now the irony is that the shadow men are mere shadows of their former selves, but as the group increasingly gets toward whatever the hell it is that Ben's sensor is point toward their quality increases..its subtle, but Mary Jane has to work a bit harder, swing a bit faster...Ben has a million watt flashlight he has activated and is wielding light a light saber but there is nothing for him to clobber...literal shadows and it frustrates him to no end. He takes a bit of a longer way around as he hears screams in alleys and shadows, trying to stop the jerks doing this even though he knows deep in his heart of hearts that the source of this must be addressed before the tide can be stemmed.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
In this world, where do they rank? In a realm of those that have fought for milleina, of warriors that had skewered their way through the galaxy? Sonja is not one of those. She is merely a killer par excellence.

"Burn them out!" She goes to move to head over towards a vehicle, intnet on smashing her hand from it and grabbing th efuel tank out of it even as her blades would slash through nothingness, metal failing to penetrate living darkness.

Jack Nolan has posed:
Jack still has a few flashbang grenades he had managed to loot from a police car during his frantic fight from the Chinese restaurant. He uses them to clear some of those shadow filled alleys, trying to break up the shadows where ever he can to get the civilians freed from their grasp. He's not far behind Ben as they push through into the middle. Using that overpowered flashlight to clear a way through is going to make it at least easier than with just his mag light. When they pass civilians he waves them towards the few safe areas that have been established in their wake, "Go, run!"

Ben Grimm has posed:
While she might have said it to the air, the people around her panick less, and begin fighting shadows with fire....at first isnt very effective but as she and they work, it begins to turn the tide and they flee the area but word begins to spread. As Jack assaults with his flash grenades and works with Ben, the crowd listens and runs...

There is a bit of a light in the sky, a sliver of blue, Praesodynium Blue, there is a haunting palor to it, and the shadow men begin to dance, in and out of solid objects, shouting an alien gutteral chant that chills to the bone.

Ben does not stop, and burns the freaks with flashlight and at one point is handed a baseball bat with napalm on it as he is FINALLY able to say, "It's CLOBBERING TIME" as he wades into the morass of shadow, a miasma of evil as they form a ring around a pitch black darkness....

No cavalry has come, no dark militia from the Empire of America, the darker possible path...

But it is trut, the best of the best on their world doesnt hold a candle to this one, and even with only three true repesentatives of the elite....nimbly weaving as needles of light in a tapestry of cacaophony and darkness. The creepy ghosty tings in the darkness harkens to matters of solstice delight in an unholy baucanalia.....

And now, shimmers of blue begin to fall from the sky, bathing buildings in an odd light, putting out fires, a few people hit by it and healed, a few shadow men hit by it now and again and set ablaze....most are still cheering but a few begin to wonder if there may have been a miscalculation here.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Fire.. Fire.. Burning. In the days of yore where she would charge across from a ship of the line to another, a flask of alchemist's fire hurled into the depths. The seas consuming all in liquid frenzy. Monsters snapping out to consume all.
    Ben's challenge and power is met with Sonja's mania and her macabre glee as those bindings which hold her back snap. As she has a rare period where her berserker state consumes all.
    Flames surround her. Blades dance for her. She is fury. She is frenzy. She is a creature of near feral madness.

Jack Nolan has posed:
For his part, Jack is carving through the ones he can with the steel blade, the large central pitch blackness being the main focus, trying to push through to it after Ben charges in with the flaming bat. He's more than happy to pick off any that somehow manages to survive the full on Thing assault. When the blue light starts to come down from the sky, at first he's worried it's even more hostility, but when the shadow men start to burn, he takes advantage to try and redirect as many of them into that blue light as he can. That should really drive them off.

Ben Grimm has posed:
the blue bolts from the heavens are more than willing to work with Jack and some of them go out of their way, almost as if intelligent shadow ghost blue gummy worms of dealth, even going around corners but not quite "seeing" the men until Jack points it out. Ben tries to do it but isnt quite as good at it. Sonia holds her own as sh cleaves through them, the more elite of them throwing shadow constructs, knives and axes and even a few guns but the projectiles are cut asunder with steel, a weakness they had not prepared for since the stars are in alignment and the shadow world is closer ot the real world and the closer it gets to the time of apogee as the blue moon in the sky becomes an eye and then an impossibly large planet sized face...its only visible in the unnatural darkness, but the shadowmen (mostly) are celebrating thinking their immortality and power are at hand while many regular people stop and stare, wondering what is going on.....

The woman isfrowning....and looks mostly human. But with blue skin and blue eyes.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Blades cut at her. Weapons rend her. Sonja acts as if she is not hurt. She is in a frenzy. She is berserk. She will fight until her limbs are scattered about the ground. Then she will pick up an arm and use it as a flail while she would bleed out.

Two blades focus. One of Hyborean steel, shattered and reforged over in a casing of secondary adamantium. The other the blade of a fallen Valkyrie, a Shieldmaiden. Neither blade empowered, but each impressive. And now they are united in one purpose.

"Come, let the darkness consume you! AND NEVER SPIT YOU OUT!" She gives in to her frenzy. There is her and the targets. Hope that you're out of the path between them as she's well past the point of coherency to not attack an ally.

Jack Nolan has posed:
Jack did not expect to be working along side sentient magic fire tonight, but he's not going to question it. It's not worth trying to figure it out in the moment, that's what debriefs are for. So he moved through with the blue flames, directing them into the shadow folks here and there. There's a woman there that seems to be in the center of it. That's gotta be their goal then. He directs those flames forward, aiming it towards that blue skinned woman, "Get 'er!"

Ben Grimm has posed:
Ben Grimm is as confused as Jack but at thispoint he doesnt care. Anything and everything that helps them works, and the fire also seems to have synched in to Sonya and the fire slams into the men more and more....the shadow area begins to burn at the edges as people are pulled back from the void where the men attempted to sacrifice them....not one lost though some gravely wounded by their shadow knives and claws. There is a paplable ring of fire as Jack and Mary form the edges of an eye with Ben in the middle of a bizarre phantom lighthouse that splits an inner ring in the shadow to sunders. Where did that come from? The landscape in the eye of the shadow storm begins to flicker and melt, reality itself fighting their presence as an absess upon her flesh though the crawling freaking reverse sanity of the entire experience begins to work its way into the minds of those present; a waking nightmare, sanity is entirely optional at the moment as clearly Sonya has the right feel for it. Ben is somehow oddly calm and unaffected, his zen nature keeping him in tune with hot reality and the daylight world...he keeps weilding his flashlight while he moves forward with Jack and MAry.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Sonja has died. What there si now is but a fragment of a soul, if not even a spark left in stasis in a weapon of a meaningless fate. Now there is a forgotten memory, a shell of someone of some reknown (or not) that had culled her way through an era mostly (and best left) forgotten. Now Sonja simply slashes. There is no higher purpose to it. No higher tactic. No higher strategy. No higher coordination.

To her allies, to civilians, to any risks of enhanced collateral damage.. She does not care. If a slash takes out someone.. Then it is their own fault. Sonja is in a full berserk fury. They will die or she will die.

Perhpas both.

Jack Nolan has posed:
They're not done yet but they can see the finish line, at least that's what Jack figures when he sees the phantom lighthouse shattering through the shadows, "We've almost got them!" He roars out, his combat knife flashing along with the flashlight, practically turning himself into a blender of light and steel.

Keep pushing forward, if they slow down and lose the initiative, they may still get overwhelmed. He lets out a roar before he drives forward into another group, fighting on instinct more than anything else at this point.

Ben Grimm has posed:
The group of heroes maange to get into the center, they see a ring of changers, elders of shadow and the true leader of the cult. The lesser shadow men have now fled into the void, true fear and their own sanity stretched to the lmit they cannot handle the light anymore. The regular citiens of the Bronx clutch their hands to their heads and untinl they are out of teh ever shrinking storm of shadow writhe on the ground in madness and pain.

Ben picks up a large pickup truck (pickup a pickup) and tosses it right into the elders, smashing some of them into pulp...haunting ippes of an impossible medly and hypergeometry written by drunken ferrets trying to be mimes, it is impossible and now almost everyone but the heres are writhing in pain as the Queen opens her mouth and speaks words which cannot be remembered and should not be remembered but the men of shadow receivie no balm, for the consort of the King in Yellow is the gift of ignorance, the gift of sanity, of a viel from the relentless size of space and time and mankind's insgificance in it...

The light stops and she is gone but for a few precious moment the shadowmen are prone and stunned, ripe for the pickings for the three; one for rage, one for reason and one for faith are spared the madness that has flattened everyone else.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
It's less a gropu of heroes and more a gropu of heroes and one monster that may be worse in some ways than the shadows from another realm that they're fighting against. Sonja is not so much a force of nature as she is ferality. There is no higher purpose here.

Not justice, not revenge, not vengeance. Not protection. Not heroism. Just bloody fury. She has no targets. Her blade scythes at any in arc. Hope that it's not the heroes or the ones they would protect. Sonja's outfit is shredded.

Just bits of ceramic plating over her chest and her hips almost melted to her skin in a metallic embrace in an image of things from days tens of millenia ago.

She is from a forgotten realm when civilization was nonexistant, when the gods abandoned the Earth, and the worst era of human history was left unmourned Sonja is not a woman of sanity.

She is from an era of barbarism. One must be sane, one must be civilized, one must be SOFT to acknowledge said insignificance.

Such things do not matter to Sonja.

They all bleed on the ends of her blades.

Jack Nolan has posed:
The roar Jack lets out as the light around him feels like it's engulfing him. It doesn't hurt, but it feels a way he hasn't felt since the time he mutated. A very unique kind of sensation. And then the light is gone, and the shadow men are done. Perfect prey. He leaps upon one of them and rips into it with his clawed hands, moving rapidly between the ones he can get his hands on, his senses eventually returning to him after the surge of instinct and adrenaline dissipates enough. He appears to have been chewing on a shadow man.

Ben Grimm has posed:
Somewhere, in the universe, there is a cookbook for this, but no one is cooking except cooking with gas, as Ben kicks a few men into low orbit, sending them into the sunlight where they burst into flame, as do those in the ever shrinking shroud over the bronx. The sun begins to rise as the night has past, and the moon begins to set, the whole night passing in the span of a few hours for those under the shroud, for those closer to the center, it only seemed more like 30 before the entire night passes...MAry cuts into them, and they fall before her, a Picasso painting of darknned shadow blood sprayed as flame send them back to the shadow realm and shrieking in pain. There are dozens of these men and by the time they recover enough to rise and counter attack, more than half their number have been removed from the field..only for the shdoud to lift and the sun rise, the stars leaving alignment.....

The shroud is lifted, the sun has risen, and the men are almost as if they had never been there to begin with.

Ben immediately gets to work, trying to clear flaming cars and obstacles from ambulances and fire trucks that have arrived with police not far behind.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Finally Mary Jane is able to wrench control back of thier shared consciousness from Sonja. or less wrenched and more exhausted. As there is nothing left to slaughter. And she is at best left tearing apart the corpses strewn about. Sonja would heave a few final times before Mary Jane takes over.. And the heaving of another sort consumes the redhead as she staggers away.

Jack Nolan has posed:
There's rarely ever been a time that Jack has been so happy to see a sunrise. With the rising sun comes the final disappearance of the shadows. He does his best to assist Ben with clearing the debris until he is eventually too exhausted to keep going, taking a seat on a flipped over car and taking a rest. Hopefully nobody needs to clear this one for a bit, it'll be much harder to move.