4411/(SoS) Something This Way Crumbles

(SoS) Something This Way Crumbles
Date of Scene:	15 December 2020
Location:	Northern Reaches of India, Near Tibet, in the Himalayas
Synopsis:	A slumbering giant rises and a rag tag group of mystics react to stop it and discover something much more invasive.
Cast of Characters:	Stephen Strange, Shannon Davis, Takako Kyozan, Zatanna Zatara, Sara Pezzini, Ruth Aldine, Diana Prince

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Stephen Strange has posed:
    Since the Dragon rose up out of the ocean not more than a month ago, the world of magic has been more and more vivacious, reaching out into the waking world in ways it never has before. These are unprecidented times. Demons rising in Westchester. Dragons in Long Island. Now suddenly, warning signs have been ushering those with the sensitivities towards it, and even some without to get to the highest mountain range in the world.

    A layline has gone inactive on the otherside of the world, what once was a wellspring of mystical energies and natural vibes that even the layman could tap into via their own psyches has grown, stale, dry, sterile.

    As the world becomes devoid of magics that have been in place for milennia, the world will react back.

    The weather is calm, but still cold, there's not a cloud in the sky between the mountains currently and blue peaceful skies cap the world in a sereneness that is uncomfortable, and a great thundering begins to rise up from the earth, and fill the world as though it truly were in a dome as a piece of a mountain separates itself from its cliffside slumber and a literal titan rises from the ground and roars a rising yawn of anger.

    Back in New York, the Sorcerer Supreme moves with haste to gather those that would fight with and for him to save his mystic ancestral home where the doctor became a wizard. Stephen swoops by anyone and everyone he thinks has a chance to help in this battle with or without warning and suddenly an Earthly host is in the frigid mountains, the proper gear supplied by the wizard without a single question and they stand looking over the side of a mountain towards the enormous rocky foe.

Shannon Davis has posed:
Shannon Davis is, perhaps, more excited than she has ever been in her life. Simply staring at the thing makes her brain gush with adrenaline and a sense of dread that makes her incredibly eager. This is the kind of stuff she was hoping for when she decided to be a hero, even if it might end with her squished, it really did not matter. The fact she had a chance to actually help out with this made things even better.

She strokes her chin thoughtfully, eyeing the beast. "So! Uh. This is when we're supposed to work out some plans, yeah? If we can get a really big piece of rock and one of you can do something to hold it down in place I can charge it up with energy and shoot it really hard." She does not seem to mind the suddeness of the situation, all it took was a look at the thing and she knew in her heart she wanted to bring it down. Everything else did not matter. Why was it here? What was it? Where even were they? Meaningless questions. Only one had a purpose: How would they take it out?

Takako Kyozan has posed:
Takako's relationship with the dark whispers in the back of her mind can be described as adversarial, most of the time she tries to straight up ignore them. Sometimes though they get really insistent and those times usually involve a largescale threat that will ultimately threaten their own wellbeing as well. Combined with a message from Strange confirming that the contested territories around the Himalayas are about to become a different kind of hot zone, it is enough to send Takako into action.

Under the auspices of her UNODA position Takako arranges a flight to the region, ostensibly under the guise of backchannel talks for yet another attempt to reduce tensions between two nuclear powers with a nasty border dispute and their fingers on the proverbial trigger.

Once there however, it isn't terribly difficult to slip away between during some generously arranged gaps in the itinerary and link up with Strange high in the mountains overlooking their rocky foe.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"Ekat su ot eht sayalamih!"

From the lounge of the Hall of Justice, where Zatana Zatarra and her good friend the Amazon Princess Diana of Themyscira are having some relaxing holiday-themed Starbucks eggnog lattes (they sell them outside in the gift area!) and... gossiping about their love lives? Or whatever it is they do. Yet it seems they can never enjoy a quiet moment, and the Mistress of Magic soon speaks the words that whisk them to the location in question. Apparently, the rest of the League was a little busy, and maybe the pair of them intend to make a go of this themselves. Or just as likely, the woman is confident that her New York counterpart will do his bit in gathering up whatever layabout adventurers can be found.

As it stands, the two appear on a ledge overlooking the Titan's position from the far side of a small crevas. Somewhere in the process, Zatanna has also conjured up her 'work clothes': even in the frigid weather, she apparently won't give up on her stage ensemble, fishnets and all, although she's bizarrely added a scarf and bunny-themed earmuffs and traded her heels for Uggs. Her tophat has gained a red plaid ribbon with a little boquet of holly leaves. Very seasonal!

"Well isn't that a big one," she comments, looking across at the creature.

And right on schedule, there's Stephen, with a cavalry of sorts. "Ah, there you are Doctor."

Sara Pezzini has posed:
He warned her.

The sudden contrast between overcast New York and the high thin sunlight of the high mountains makes Sara blink. The flash entrance seems to be a Strange MO, saying she was getting used to it would be an exaggeration. What they face makes her take a step back in her newly acquired mountain boots.

The Witchblade pulses at the monstrous wall of unknown yawns and quakes the mountain. Boulders the size of houses ping down the slopes eclipsed by the size of what stretches into waking.

Balling her hands into fists, Pezzini reflects on Wizards and magic artifacts, longing for a simpler life for all of one second. "We have a plan?" she says loudly enough to be heard over the thunder.

Ruth Aldine has posed:
The first sentence always messes Ruth up. It was the day of the last exams and she had an essay to write. She knew what she was going to right due to the dreaming, but actually putting pen to paper..

.. the second to the last paragraph always messes her up. Though through the chiming of her phone, it lets her know that money had hit her bank account and it was time to go. Food. That was always her reason and excuse for leaving the manse, to seek out excitement and that same slice of pizza that she always but not today gets.

Is it today?
No, later.
Right now she has the pizza in her hand and she goes home.
But right now is where the shiny thing that opens into something else is there and the tail end of a cape flutters through..

"Huh." Ruth mutters to herself, forgetting what she left the manse for and travels into a world that was filled with a chill unlike New York but with the smell of something near purified. Ruth didn't catch the chill of the air right off, the disorienting nature of travel taking her off guard along with the crunch of different terrain underneath her chucks.

Diana Prince has posed:
Wearing a voluminous dark red scarf over her Amazon armor, Diana stands beside Zatanna after the two arrived at the desire emergency site. Her eyes scan over the horizon before she looks then to those that Stephen had gathered along with them.

"Stephen." She says to the Doctor. "What do we know of this creature? Its intent, its nature, anything at all?" She asks the Doctor before looking to Zatanna. "Sending it away would be easier than killing it, yes?" She's a bit naive to the ways of magic, but she's seen both of them accomplish quite a lot. To the others, Diana nods should they make eye contact. "We have quite a lot on our hands today, to say the very least. Stick together, work together as a team, and watch out for one another."

Her eyes go back tot he Titan. "No matter what is to come. Work as a team. We will prevail."

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen pauses to look at the crew gathered and it seems Diana and Shannon will be the most likely to be taking the lead. "I think we have time to make a plan." Stephen notes before glancing to Diana and lifting an eyebrow. She seems to remember he's not the type to go around killing things if he doesn't have to. Generally he'll fight to keep most anything alive. As is the doctor's nature.

    "I'm not sure." Stephen says simply, meaning no other Earthly wizard had experience with this thing before, or at least they didn't write it down for future generations to learn about. "But I do agree, away might be- DUCK!"

    As the wizard reveals his thoughts to the collective ether, a large boulder, a very very sizable house is released by the creature, seems it heard them, saw them, or maybe even sensed them, either way, there is an obscenely large rock soaring through the air towards the gaggle of heroes!

Shannon Davis has posed:
Shannon Davis crosses her arms as she sees the boulder coming. It's not that she's unafraid, her pupils are shrunk and her body is tense like a stone statue. Rather it's the sheer insane enjoyment she was feeling surpassed everything. She realizes her general lack of means to deal with such a huge attack, so she leaves that to someone else while strategizing. THe best she can do is shout out her plan while running and diving away.

"Oh great, it's providing us the boulder already! If one of you can like, put a spell on it or something that'll keep it from shooting off while I charge it with momentum that would be great. I can do something like a slingshot but a lot stronger." Her voice is just dripping with glee despite the danger of the situation, she's most definitely more interested in killing the thing than sending it away but murdering a giant rock monster is certainly not something she's well versed in. For now the best she can do is bide her time and try to hurl herself away from the rock's trajectory.

Takako Kyozan has posed:
As the creature hurtles towards them, Takako's winter outerwear begins to glow with a wispy white light of mystic energy and begins shifting into her more iconic morphic cloth uniform that she usually wears in a fight. Even so the cold doesn't seem to bother her too much.

The wispy white light of the mystic Tama energy then begins to spread over her entire body as well and she begins to grow and grow and grow, until her height is on par with the creature. Taking a large step forward she places herself between the incoming boulder and the others. It would seem the massive young woman intends to act as a sort of human wall. "Spread out, we're too much of an easy target grouped up like this, I'll try to hold while you... figure something out. Hopefully quickly!"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
At Diana's question, Zatanna again turns her gaze across toward the mountain creature with a curious expression, even bringing a hand up to her chin. "It's hard to say exactly. I could make some guesses. Prior to the rise of Buddhism in Tibet, the native people practiced a shamanistic tradition called Bon; its a typical animistic practice, where physical locations are venerated as living spirits or deities." As with her recent Egyptological woes, her job requires a great deal of familiarity with world religion!

"And mountains, obviously, figure pretty prominently in that. They had a lot of mountain gods. Although I couldn't say if this is precisely something of that sort. As the Doctor says, it's not exactly-" And she starts to look across at Stephen, to see if he wants to clarify anything himself-

-but this fruitful academic discussion to-be is interrupted by the arrival of a very large rock in their vicinity!

Zatanna gives a quick shout of "Ylf!" which might sound like a yelp of surprise. It is an action of haste, but is in fact another spell as well, propelling herself into the air so she is able to maneuver out of the path of the huge boulder, tuxedo tails fluttering in her wake. As she sails, she shouts, "Wols!" using her magic to rob it of some of its natural momenttum in flight, slowing the boulder without totally halting it - because it's kinda big!

"Di, catch! And try and uh, set it down. We can break this stuff, even probably hurt the spirit by damaging the rock, but this is a whole mountainside. We start breaking everything apart, we could trigger a massive avalanche and rockslide, wipe out everything downslope." And this same thought probably applies to the creature: "We need to figure out what woke it up, why it's here and what it wants, and put it back to sleep."

Sara Pezzini has posed:
"Hey!" Pezzini yells like she was screaming at a taxicab that swerved into her lane. The shadow of a large object obscures the sunlight; reflexively Sara ducks then raises her hand to shield them all.

The Witchblade blooms, looking like a scaly dragon unfolding into a metal umbrella, akin to the shields police use during riots. Without the blade giving her strength she could never hold it aloft, certainly not something that would cover them all if they wish it. She braces herself for impact as magic flowers in the air around them.

Ruth Aldine has posed:
The gathering was.. interesting. In fact, it was filled with people that she's never seen before. In fact, they spoke of things as a crew would, ones that had their crap together instead of flying by the seat of their pants. As Ruth listened to each of them, she slowly took a few steps back, intending to be out of the way, a silent observer, who was currently trembling with fingers clutching hard upon her jacket.

The call/cry for them to duck causes her to freeze in place, an invisible shield erecting around herself whilst the others work to stop what ever it was coming in their direction. Here, Ruth was vulnerable, she cannot see by piggy backing onto a person and the enviroment was too cold for her to focus. The ten second window she currently has to 'see' does absolutely nothing for what could be her potential survival.

"S..s..s..soorry.." Ruth chatters out. "..wh..wh..who are you.. peop-p-p-ple?"

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana's long dark hair flows in the winds rushing over their mountainous landscape. Her eyes on Stephen, she offers him a slight nod before she looks to zatanna who gets a little smirk from the Princess. But, dire situation is dire situation, and her stare returns to their foe just as the boulder is cast in their direction.

Splendid!

With others arming up, Diana lunges in to the sky as Zatanna casts her spell. The Amazonian's armored arms stretch out toward the rock as Zatanna slows its momentum-- at least in part --and she collides with it!

There comes a burst of smaller rocks, dust and rolling thunder before Diana is seen again along the edge of the rock, attempting to stop it in entirely and redirect it down toward the ground at the base of the mountain that they had all arrived on.

Their ultimate foe, at least for now, escapes the Amazons's focus as she primarily is concerned about the house-sized boulder!

Stephen Strange has posed:
    The rock is slowed before Diana can clutch it while Takako grows to be an enormous foe for the creature to take on. Stepping off the mountain to the valley the monster stands in though isn't easy and is awkward at best, with the giant taking several of the smaller rocks to her arm and shoulder. While not strong enough to break any giant bones, it doesn't feel going being hit by car sized rocks and smaller.

    Pieces rain past toward the gathering of heroes in the snow and Stephen turns, catching the sound of fear and with his arms around Ruth's waist, he falls backwards, landing in the snow while making sure they're beneath the rain barrier of the Witchblade. "I'm sorry little one." Stephen whispers as he weaves a spell to make sure Ruth has scarfs, and gloves, coat and boots anything she might need in the freezing temperatures. "We'll get you through this." Stephen says, wanting to usher the girl to someone safer, more able to protect her, but ... "I got you." He decides he's the best to save Ruth.

    "Diana, everyone else. Keep it busy." The Doctor orders and gives a nod to Zatanna as he stands back up and gets Ruth to her feet. "You stick with me." Trudging through the snow, Stephen passes Shannon, "Hit it if you can, but I don't think risking catching a rock that size is worth it, can you hit it with something else?"

    Stephen then puts a hand back around Ruth and they're suddenly up in the air near Zatanna, "Any ideas on tracking its motivations?" Stephen asks, with the mutant at his side he's a might bit distracted.

    The stone creature notices the swarming humans but mostly the same size giant that draws its ire. A 'mouth' cracks open and the sound of thunder as the rocks in its maw scrape together in an explosion of noise as it rears back a limb to swing a wild haymaker at the giant's face.

Shannon Davis has posed:
Shannon Davis slowly withdraws her head from a pile of snow, dusting herself off and checking herself for missing bodyparts. With a sigh of relief she nods. "Anything works, really. I really only need some way to hold it down and the time to charge it up. The longer I get to charge it the stronger the shot will be." She tells him with a shrug, demonstrating her example by making a snowball. She points it away and produces a loud THUNK noise, which causes the snowball to be launched at high speed.

She turns towards the creature, twitching visibly with anticipation. "It's gonna be so awesome, you'll see. Just get me anything. Also the closer I can be to it the better." She turns to peer over towards Diana with a soft grin. "I could even launch her if it comes to it." SHe says with a playful laugh.

Takako Kyozan has posed:
Takako grimaces as the rocks collide with her arm. Nobody likes getting hit by rocks, even small rocks thrown hard enough can hurt quite a bit. Focusing her Tama through her body further, she begins to glow with that wispy white energy again as she channels her power into not only being bigger but also of greater density, more durable, stronger, similar to the physiology of the 'gods' that walk Earth these days.

Stepping into the valley, true to her word, Takako moves to quickly engage the creature. Giant steps cross the valley and close the distance between her and the rock beast quickly. A highly trained close quarters combatant, Takako bends out of the way to evade the wild haymaker before following up with a strike of her own. Under most circumstances punching solid rock would probably be a bad idea, but with their enhanced durability her fists are not too far off from rocks themselves. Takako leads with a solid punch straight at the creature's center mass in an attempt to stagger it, following through with a grapple, gripping its arms with hers.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Zee doesn't really have any plan here, but told to keep the creature busy, or figure out its motivations? She can more or less attempt these two things together.

So as Diana manages to catch on to the boulder, she soars out further over the crevasse, terribly tiny and insignificant compared to the creature, or even Takako as she trudges out to do battle with it. While she may know a few tidbits of local lore, she does not in fact actually speak U-Tsang Tibetan, let alone its extinct predecessors, nor is she sure the creature actually does either. But spiritual dealings are common to magical life, and she is, first and foremost, a wizard of /words/, backwards, forewards, or however one really cares to arrange them: "Hceeps fo stirips; tel em eb dootsrednu!"

Nothing of Zatanna's voice actually changes, at least to the human ear. Yet to those more attuned, it takes on a certain echoing quality, reproduced at a volume beyond her size and across frequencies unheard, into realms unseen. "Venerable spirit, god of this mountain, what stirs you from slumber? Great are your steps, shaking the world beneath. The small people who live in your shadow will suffer. What causes such wakeful wrath?"

Sara Pezzini has posed:
A few rocks thud against the shield disappearing into snow not trampled down by the group. A mist of cold breath wreathes Sara's head as she rises to face the 'rock' monster.

The Blade unfolds silently into full armor, parka and snow pants replaced by silver armor frilled with cutting edges, wings unfurl along its back. One step, a second step, and she hovers a few feet over the ledge facing the creature. Pez, the flying detective, if only the other detectives could see her now.

"Doctor, what woke it? It's like a bear that's been poked during hibernation," she unwittingly echos Zatanna's questions with a Brooklyn accent and less poetry. It feels more like an animal surprised by a predator's approach than something inherently evil to her.

Ruth Aldine has posed:
Speaking of whirlwinds.. (which weren't really spoken of), the attempt to hide did not go well, and the thin layer of protection she casts upon herself was immediately felled. Lack of practice and concentration did it, but thankfully it was just in time for the magic man to cast his spell. Her temperature went from cold to warm in an unsettling fashion, all the while the blindfolded girl attempts to gain her bearings. "Sorry. What is that noise?"

It sounded like a monster, yes. But she didn't know what type. It seemed as if the others had it in hand, all the while she was being protected. Yeah.. bad idea to even come here.

But as Stephen flew them around, she did as best as she could to at least help. She concentrated, brows furrowing, drawing up the shield around her and Stephen both, and if Diana is in proximity, her as well.

Diana Prince has posed:
With the giant rock mostly under her control, Wonder Woman touches down on the valley below, holding the house-sized boulder up above her head. In preparation to settle it down on the ground, she is halted when she sees something ahead of her. A large black bear looking at her with giant eyes, he looks at Wonder Woman, looks up at the rock above his head, and finally just turns around and starts to run with his big bear butt bouncing up and down, kicking snow up in his wake.

Diana, greeting her teeth, holds the rock up above her head with bits and pieces raining down above her and around her legs, her feet apart wide with her armored boots digging in to the soft snow dusted ground!

She waits, she waits, until finally she drops the boulder down on to the ground with a heavy thud of moving earth all around it, and a wave of snow wafting out in all directions around it.

Up a hill in the complete opposite direction, the form of the fleeing black bear can be seen vanishing into a row of trees.

Turning then, Diana lunges back up toward the mountain side where she lands near the others. She spins around to stare at those who've moved off to fight the massive Titan creature. A nod is given to Shannon then. Diana reaches her arm out to her, her shimmering bracer encasing her forearm. "Toss me toward the fight, young one." Diana says to her.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    The sorcerer floats in midair not far from Zatanna, with a grip on Ruth, making sure not to drop the blind girl, and he answers her as best he can. "What appears to be a mountain side is standing up and creating a fuss." Stephen looks over his shoulder in the direction towards the flying detective and nods towards Sara and then to Zat, "I think you're both correct." When a crater of stone errupt from the creature from Takako's blow to the sternum and that will most certainly hurt the knuckles to punch a mountain. Dense or not, that can't feel good.

    The thing takes a step back and recoils from the blow before a fist comes back again and this time swings high and downwards towards Zatanna and Stephen, seems she got it's attention but it's not responding to her. Its maw opens once more and that thunderous creak of ancient stone scrapes to create a cry of rage. Its anger is obvious as well as its desire to cause these humanoids harm. "Either of you know how to placate a bear awoken prematurely? Because I certainly don't!" Stephen says, borrowing the metaphor Sara used prior.

Takako Kyozan has posed:
Takako shakes her hand in the air after the impact while mouthing an 'Ow' without quite vocalizing it. Her fist left a mark, but punching solid rock is still not exactly the most fun experience.

"Oh no you don't!" She shouts when the creature swings for Strange and Zatanna. She reaches for the mountain beast's arm attempting to restrain its reach and pivot closer to wrap this 'early woken bear' of a mountain god in a bear hug. "Whatever you're going to come up with, do it quickly. This thing is pretty rough!"

Shannon Davis has posed:
Shannon Davis doesn't quite have a much impressive power at first glance, as its initial launching speed only equates to a good baseball throw. However, the real power comes from its ability to continually apply an increasing momentum. "Alright, I need you to fly backwards at me to let the pressure build" She says while moving behind the woman and planting a hand on her lower back, then another just above.

"Ready? Go." As soon as the THUNK occurs she can feel the momentum being applied directly throughout her body. Every moment that passes that momentum builds by its initial amount, growing roughly by the force of a good professional pitch. "Once you feel there's enough force build up reverse the direction and fly out, it'll boost you super fast!" She grunts throughout with effort, her arms tensing as she overworks her power as much as it could go.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"Not in the mood to talk, I see."

Zatanna is again on evasive maneuvers, breaking the opposite direction from Strange so that the blow aimed at both of them finds instead the void between. Yet even the subsequent roaring of the creature is enough not only to threaten Zatanna's ears, but to blow her back somewhat, tumbling briefly end over end. Whether that is a natural result of sonic shockwaves in the air or a sympathetic blast of chill wind in place of true 'breath' is probably a distinction too fine for the moment!

And in all of that, somehow her hat stays on!

"I can't say I have a -general- answer," Zee retorts to Strange, once she's upright and not squashed. "I did feel a disturbance to the natural flow of energies here. Perhaps it's that. No more flow, and it's gone hungry, and so the bear rises early from its hibernation." She's sticking with his metaphor, why not! More grimly: "That means it might be headed for a snack next."

This thought process sees her flying up and backward, out of the creature's immediate reach - although boulders might still be a threat - and into a lofty position that gives her a greater visual vantage over the nearby mountainous expanse and surrounding region. For what she's looking for, she doesn't need a spoken spell: she can 'see' the flow of such things unaided, a gift of her ancient bloodline.

"Maybe we can find it, and fix the flow. If not, we're going to have to feed it ourselves."

Ruth Aldine has posed:
Anyone would have taken Strange's explanation as crazy talk; but she was a girl who had no eye-sockets in a school full of people who could cause mass destruction. Plus, if she could just find the nerve, she could actually reach into Stephen's mind to see..

"Yes. I can talk to it. Thank you." Ruth says rather blandly, unaware of the potential danger that awaits.

Her shields, while effective, only go so far. In fact, the only way anyone would know in this situation that they're slightly protected is the way the debris (small) bounces -at- them and pings away on impact.

Sara Pezzini has posed:
"Who poked it?" Pez yells more loudly than necessary after being deafened by the creature's roar."Because it wasn't us."

From her right gauntlet a blade forms, blue light licking the blade's length like a live flame. Wonder Woman is launched past her, smoking like a world class pitch. Without questioning the maneuver, she places herself in front of the doctor carrying Ruth.

Zatanna's words make sense, a hungry bear knows no limits. Flashing the blade in a blue arc, she moves behind Diana, threatening their adversary while the others try to communicate with it.

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana offers a light nod to Shannon's instructions before she's sent flying off toward the creature, and those fighting it.

Wonder Woman zips past Strange and Zatanna, while the massive form of Takaka is battling their foe's arm to keep it from hitting the two casters.

The Amazon lands against the creature's shoulder and reaches for her lasso at her hip. Drawing it from her harness, the length of divinely enchanted rope comes to life with a glowing golden light!

The lasso is sent twirling at rapid speed around her head and shoulders, before she reaches the creature's shoulder and lashes it out to try and wrap it around the closest section of the beast's body, before she hop, skips and jumps up in to the air to try and restrain the Titan!

Stephen Strange has posed:
    The bullet of wonderous women and intertia-kinetics causes something amazing to happen. There's a BANG from behind the group on the mountain where they started this conflict from. Diana speeds through the air looking like a blur, and while most people would have become a red and crunchy splat against the rock monster, Diana isn't so weak. She crashes into it, and instead of pushing it back, she pierces the creature and explodes out the back, a hole in the monster the size of a woman on the front and the exit wound much more gruesome were there blood to pour out of it. Diana's feet plant on the thing and she begins to wrap that magic rope around the thing, binding one arm to its side with a lot of help from Takako giving it a more sizable strought.

    When ... chitinous bugs begin pour out of the back wound, and a singular insectoid scurries through the hole in the front. It's a tight fit but they slowly start to crawl out of the wound and crawl across the back and front of the giant rock monster.

    Stephen swings back near Zatanna and then a look towards Sara, a glance down towards the top of Ruth's head. "I think our bear metaphor is falling apart." Stephen calls out with a frown as he slowly opens a third eye upon his forehead, closing his other two eyes in the air as he looks from Zatanna down towards the ground where the monster was, looking for that mystic food chain Zatanna had mentioned.

    The ley lines are still there, but less potent, almost dormant, or running low on magic within.

Shannon Davis has posed:
Shannon Davis was, in fact, having the best time of her life. Her expression had shifted into something animalistic and savage as she watched the woman burst through the giant colossus. She trembles with clamor, giggling madly to herself. "Holy SHIT! Did you guys SEE that?!" She turns, wildly flailing to the others. "Oh yeah, I guess you're probably more used to this kind of thing than I am." She adds with a chuckle.

Her fingers clench and curl repeatedly with anxiety, one hand is pointed outwards at the creature, eyes widened and fierce. "Someone get me something to launch and something to hold it down!" It was like a hunter finding the most exotic lion ever.

Takako Kyozan has posed:
Takako's eyes widen a bit, first at the Wonder Woman shaped bullet that she is /really/ glad didn't hit her as well, and then the chitinous insectoid creatures pouring out of the wound, "Oh god, gross gross gross gross!" Apparently she isn't very fond of bugs.

No longer wanting to hold on to this clearly infested rock beast, and oh god is that an insect coming towards her hand?! Takako tightens the grip of her hug around the creature's middle.

"Get clear!" She calls out as a warning before planting her feet firmly. She begins to glow with even more Tama energy as she attempts to summon the strength for a move straight out of professional wrestling. She then attempts to lift the huge rock creature up off the ground and over backwards slamming its head into the ground behind her in a massive suplex.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"Yeah sorry, nothing about bug monsters in the Bonpo myths," Zatanna laments. It's not only the metaphor that's wearing thin, but the practical applications of her already spotty collection of knowledge. "Fair odds those aren't supposed to be there, though. Looks like an infestation. Could be they're hungry too?"

She ponders this a bit. "Maybe we've got it backward. These things moved in, they're hollowing out the mountain, and THAT is why the lines are going dead? It wasn't feeding off the lines, but the other way around? This local mountain spirit, powering everything else around it, the center of the local spirit world."

Ultimately, though, she reaches a conclusion that may be unrelated to these ponderings, and a bit more practical: "I really don't think those things are good, either way. Lets see if getting rid of them calms it down at all. I figure if my panties were full of spiders, I might end up thrashing around a bit too- and I probably wouldn't much be in the mood for conservation until I got them out. C'mon, time to delouse the big guy."

And so, dropping from her high vantage beside Strange, Zatanna begins an 'attack run' toward the creature, albeit one a little less 'smash right into it' as Diana's. On her tangent flight path (perhaps complicated by Takako's wrestling!), she outstretches her hands, and invokes a far more simple spell: "EMALF!" Gouts of fire burst from her hands, directed into the gaping wound. Fire, she reckons, shouldn't do much to the rock, at least not at these temperatures. But the creepy-crawlies?

Sara Pezzini has posed:
Sara is not lightning fast in the air, but she is strong with the Witchblade's magic. When Diana quite literally blows a hole through the monster, she expects it to drop. Her eyes widen at what crawls from the wound. She hates bugs, irrationally, cockroaches can make the detective run out of her kitchen.

Face screwed into a mask of disgust, she flies toward the live mountain swinging the Blade at the one crawling on the side closest to them. A leg comes off and falls into the crevice below them. As it falls, Takako's massive strength lifts the monster, one more swipe lops another leg off the insect before it is out of reach. A wall of magic washes over her when Zatanna launches her attack. Regrouping, Sara joins the tide, sword swinging.

Ruth Aldine has posed:
No one really had to announce what was happening next; the loud bang means that someone took a hit, the lack of screams meant it wasn't the current team. The immediate sounds of buzzing and.. what was akin to chewing hits her ears and Ruth immediately shudders. "Gross.." She mutters, shoulders now starting to raise to try to drown out the sound, scarf being pulled up over her nose to hide her mouth.

There was nothing she could do but take on the ones that straggled and manage to miss the mighty fighters, using her ears in combat, attempting telekinetic pushes towards the more experienced fighters should they happen to get close.

Diana Prince has posed:
Covered in blood now.

It's happened before.

It'll probably happen again.

Diana is on the beast, having come out the other side, clutching it and pulling on it with almost all of her might, up to the point where the bugs come from. One hand on her lasso, the other goes behind her shoulder to wrap her half-gloved hands around the handle of her sword. The blade of Athena is pulled from the sheath on her back, as a line of large insects rushes the Amazon. She turns then, lasso in her left hand and sword in her right, and starts to rush the BUGS!

With sword chopping, lasso clothes-lining and the Amazon's powerful thighs carrying her across the Titan creature's injured body, Diana is a mess of flowing bloodied hair, sword swipes, and golden glowing lasso beheadings... all taking out the bugs.

She stops though, eventually, unraveling her lasso and leaping in to the air with the golden glowing rope trailing behind her!

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen stays back, for Ruth's sake and he frowns, with a deep gasp he flies backwards to be more or less above the mountain as the giantess PICKS UP the stone titan and over her head and back and drops the thing back into the earth with an explosive smash. Sand, dirt, rocks, snow, trees, wildlife, bugs, go everywhich way from the newest crater to dot the Earth.

    "Oh my god." Stephem mumbles fighting back the ringing of his ears at the loudness that just rocked the area. "You okay?" He asks Ruth, frowning before peeking into the debris and dust cloud with his third eye, scanning for everyone, Diana got away, but Sara and Zatanna... Are they?

Shannon Davis has posed:
Shannon Davis is promptly knocked over by a wall of snow and dust, now that was awesome, if only she had been the one to do it. Perhaps one day she would, right now she was dealing with picking herself back up after the impact. She gets up with a grunt, wiping the snow off her face and spitting out some pebbles. "Huh, maybe that took it out." She wasn't sure whether she wanted that to be true or not, though. For now she had to sit back and watch the result.

Takako Kyozan has posed:
Takako lays there for a moment breathing from the exertion. She is looking more ragged than before and the glow of the energy around her is not as bright. Once the moment of catching her breath has passed though as the cloud of dust and snow settles, she is quickly pushing herself back to her feet and turning to study the rock creature to see if there is any fight left in it knowing full well it might not be over yet. She keeps an eye out for the bugs as well, trying to step on any that she finds, but her main focus remains on the infested mountain creature. "Is everyone okay?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
It takes a few moments for the huge cloud of snow and dust to settle, obscuring everyone and everything else in the area. Eventually, a whorl of wind disperses some of it, revealing Zatanna hovering within, her own apparent shield pinging with the occasional impact of a falling stone. However, she doesn't look entirely thrilled.

"We're trying -not- to destroy the entire mountainside, remember?" she calls from above, casting a glance downslope of the impact. "And trying NOT to kill it? Never mind all of us? Can you maybe just hold on to it and not make things worse?"

Then she drops down, hovering over the Wonder Woman shaped hole.

"If it starts moving, try and keep it pinned. We need to see if we've gotten all the bugs out. Diana?" She has no doubt that the Princess is safe, since she's quite durable. "Maybe you can get a look inside first. I'll hang behind you, see if it needs another blast to clear them out." And then she wonders, in that same echoing voice as earlier. "Great spirit? Bones of the Earth, do you rot within? We can aid you, but you must cease your quaking struggles."

Sara Pezzini has posed:
The world turns white, not the safe white of sheets pulled over your head while snug in bed, but a cold white, raining with missiles as the world explodes under the weight of the monster's fall. Sputtering with snow and dirt in her mouth, Sara climbs upward instinctively, her metal wings carrying above the expanding cloud of debris. Zatanna's idea of bug patrol is far from thrilling, but she lowers herself down to one of its massive shoulders, ready to clear more of the insects if any are left.

Ruth Aldine has posed:
Perhaps Stephen moving back saved them from the mountainous suplex was a little bit of a saving grace. Ruth was running out of moxy, already in an unfamiliar place, unable to see, near sensory overload and trying her best. This was possibly her second ever fight she's been in, but.. this wasn't a darn fight to her. It was near world ending!

So when the mountain connects with it's base (ie, the ground it's smacked on), the shockwaved sound reverberated through her ears. Hearing already sensitive due to lack of eyesight, sent an untold ringing in her skull that took the mutant clean out. If everyone was okay? Ruth wasn't! Eardrums broken and out cold, she was.

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana is indeed doing just fine. She's in the sky, still covered in the creature's ichor when she sees the display of wanton destruction. Good intentions, or otherwise, the land is radically damaged, and the death toll for forest animals-- or who knows what else --will be difficult to track.

The Princess glances then to Zatanna when she hears the shouting, but is soon to soar through the sky to use her enhanced hearing to.... listen. She hears nothing in the way of immediate need for assistance from the crater created by the two very large combatants.

So with a directed gait to her motion, Diana lands near to where the exit wound was on the beast. Her armored boots carry her with heavy footfalls toward it before she kneels down on her left leg, her lasso coiled up around her entire left arm, and her sword held in her right now. She exhales, a look of dismay on her face.

"There are more." Diana says. "They are coming."

Taking several steps back on the beast's body, Diana readies her sword as more of the insects appear out of the wound...

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen holds onto Ruth with a deep frown, and realizes that yes, this girl is beyond her element and with that, he sees an option. "You'll be safe. I promise." And with that the cloak slips from his shoulders to hers, allowing the magic garb to protect the young mutant. Once off him, Stephen drops like a stone towards the new crater.

    As the dust settles, it's noticeable that the rock monster is squirming slowly, hurt, dying, but not yet dead, but the path is set for the creature as the thing writhes in its weakened death throws. Not thrashing about it's too far gone for that. The bugs are dazed, beyond drunkeness even for bugs they stumble and seem concussed.

    Stephen casts a spell before he lands, but he doesn't seem too concerned with the bugs as the others are, his third eye guiding him through the smoke towards the 'head' of the titan and he frowns deeply while placing his hand upon the stone, trying to ease it's pain with a touch of magic. The man's hand glows, the army of bugs between him and the others as he focuses on doing hte right thing, even at the risk of himself. "It's okay." The mage whispers.

    The bugs swarm towards the lasso and towards Zatanna, but the glow from Stephen's hand causes a swarm to break off from the hole as they slowly recover from the impact and skitter towards what seems like food.

Shannon Davis has posed:
Shannon Davis appears near the group with a heavy thud as she lands on the snow, groaning a bit and scrawling back to her feet. Insects were really not on her favorite things to fight list, so she was certainly hoping that whatever Strange was doing would make them chill out. Though, as weirded out by them as she was, the prospect of getting more action in was still very attractive. Now that she got a chance to look at the work that had been done up close she was just in awe. "Woooow. This thing is even more massive than I thought. Have you guys figured out what its deal is yet?"

Takako Kyozan has posed:
Takako kneels down next to the fallen mountain creature, seemingly ignoring Zatanna's lecture. She had expected it to have more fight in it than that, was it not some manner of god? But compounded with the bullet wound and internal infestation it seems the rocky giant had become weaker than she imagined.

Rather than holding it down, wounded as it is, Takako merely lays her hands upon and attempts to share her own Tama energy with it. It's not something that she has really ever done before, more instinct guided by the voice in the back of her mind, the whispers of another lost deity. The glow of white wispy Tama energy gathers in her hands as she focuses it and tries to share it with the creature, to give it back just enough vitality that it might pull through.

As she does this however, her own size begins to diminish slowly shrinking towards more humanlike proportions, while she has a great deal of Tama within her from the Leach Child 'Hiruko', it is still only a fragment of the god's power and still finite.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"Just like that. Guard the wound, get them as they emerge." Zatanna and Diana know each other too well for the instructions to be directed at her, but perhaps they are more general; she's not fought alongside some of the others, like the woman with the transforming weapon. "I'll try and flush them-"

Apparently, though, she has no need to make special effort to get the creatures to emerge. In the end, her prior analysis bears out, as the creatures swarm toward them: There's enough magic among this group, in one form or another, to offer quite a feast. "These you are /quite/ free to destroy. Whatever they are, they are something alien to the spiritual ecosystem here. An invasive species." Back to the earlier overwrought animal metaphors!

Whether it is required or not to 'ecnourage' the creatures out of their hole, Zatanna seems happy to make it a very unpleasant place to be! Hovering above, and now without the hassle of a thrashing target or allies moving in and out of the way, the magician thoroughly immolates the interior space. They can burn in their hole, or they can skitter out to meet Diana and Sara's blades.

"Stephen-" It's just a gentle warning that some are coming for him, spoken quietly against the sense of grief at the old spirit's suffering. "A local spirit," she tells Shannon. "Set upon by... whatever these are, and thrashing about in the pain of it. Diana, keep at least one relatively intact, if you would? We'll want to examine it."

Sara Pezzini has posed:
Magic.

The word blazes in Sara's mind's eye, courtesy of the Witchblade which whispers to her, "On guard, Sara. Here they come. We're food for their kind."

The Blade flames with the cold fire light which leaves after images on the retina as she swings. The first bug scuttling at her leaps for the sword impaling itself and falling into a mess of ichor at her feet. Another is right behind it, it sticks on the sword, the flames consuming it from within until it drops into irregular pieces and tumbles off the dying mountain's shoulder. Others skitter away from her avoiding the sword that will eat them from within.

Through the Blade she hears voices mourning for something old and magnificent leaving the world before its time.

Diana Prince has posed:
Guarding the wound, with Witchblade's assistance, Diana offers the woman a soft nod before they are beset upon by the magic-starved insects. She's ready for them, of course, even if she's caked in drying filth.

The first that leaps toward her is cut in to two pieces that split apart around her and go sloppily cartwheeling off in random directions! The next are met with slashes and thrusts that stab directly into the creatures!

But it's Ztanna's question that the Princess spares a moment to look over at the magician preparing her fiery encouragement, who gets a nod of her head, her normally voluminous hair now caked in various forms of drying grossness, she just nods her head.

Right as another spider comes her way, which is corralled by the Princess, then kicked hard up in to the air, following with a graceful sidekick that sends the creature tumbling away where it only gets crushed int to the side of a rock, and falls down in to a heap on the ground.

That one is still 'mostly' in good shape!

Stephen Strange has posed:
    The insects are mindless and easy to predict. It's not that they are even that hard to defeat or incapacitate, it's that their numbers are just so vast. It's incredible that they continue to pour out of the impromptu cave of Diana's missile and how they seek out the strongest of magics, though it seems no one is willing to let them have any of that magic, for fear of what might happen.

    Stephen is focused on calming the dying beast when Takako near by begins to feed it further energy and as Stephen gets called out by Zatanna, he drops his spell by breaking his concentration to call out to the giantess, "Watch out!" He says as bugs rush the woman, trying to heal the hollowed mountainous creature. Stephen wastes no time and rips a hole in space and time above Takako before dropping it down in a rush to move them away from the swarming bugs.

    Now trapped in a circle, seemingly alone, Stephen stands to his full height and steals a look past the man sized bugs towards Diana and Zatanna, Sara and Shanna, and the relocated Takako, groaning about "I hate bugs."

Shannon Davis has posed:
Shannon Davis watches the numbers pour out with widened eyes. They're a mix of alarm and excitement, as was usual with her. This was really turning out to be grand time for her, though now she did sorely wish she were better equipped.

The best weaponry she can muster are her weights, a pair of lead loops connected to rope attached to her waist. The means of attack is quite simple, she aims one at an incoming bug, a faint wobbling sound is emitted as she charges it up. Once she can no longer hold on to the thing she shoots it out at full power, hopefully making a hole in the creature in question. Then it's a matter of stepping on the rope and yanking it back, then repeating. "Hey so uh. I don't think we're making much headway like this. Maybe we need something big to squash them all together."

Takako Kyozan has posed:
Giantess is a relative term at this point as Takako continues to try and feed the mountain spirit divine Tama energy, her size dwindling as the energy that was keeping her huge is redirected into trying to help the mountain spirit survive it's bug infections and everything else that was inflicted upon it.

She chooses to place her faith in the others, who seem to be doing quite well, to keep the bugs at bay. "Thank you!" She calls to Strange when she is teleported out of the path of the oncoming bugs. Instead she chooses not to give up on helping what at this point seems to have been an innocent creature in the end and continues to try and channel it energy. Eventually, she is her regular size again, a bit wobbly on her feet and ultimately passes out from the strain of channeling so much Tama out of herself.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Zatanna continues with her burnination; she is rarely the directly violent or destructive sort, but there is a look of grim purposefulness in her expression. Revenge for the creature? Perhaps. Or respect for the threat something like this poses to the spiritual underpinnings of the world.

So she is thorough, and not overly restrained, dousing the interior with fire until the snap-crackle-pop of the frying thaumavorous arthropods finally stops. There are escapees above, to be sure, although these she trusts to the others. Diana alone she knows can match a small army, so a handful of giant bugs should not pose too great an effort. "We'll manage," she reassures Shannon. "I'm burning out the nest inside. Just help clean up the rest."

Inside. She can only wonder if there are more elsewhere.

Whenever she is finally done with her bugfry, Zatanna drifts over to the one that Diana has 'disabled', and with a nod to the Amazon raises a hand over it. "Evreserp ni eci," she intones, and soon a small block of ice has gathered to encase its remains. "Stephen, do you care to take it? We'll need to study it, and find out if there are more of these things. The collection at Shadowcrest is more artifacts than specimens." While the Sanctum? YEESH!

Sara Pezzini has posed:
Strange powers move around them propagated by Zatanna and Takako. Next to Diana, Sara fights on, slashing around her as the insects boil out of the wound. She hears, "Ugh, ugh, ugh," then realizes she's making the sounds as she mechanically mows downs bugs, standing in a puddle of ichor.

Sara barely hears Strange's call and wobbles in place with the sword upraised but nothing to strike. With a sigh and venomous look at Strange, she deflates, realizing how tired she become channeling the Blade's power.

"Thank you," she whispers then repeats it more loudly for the others in the circle to hear, especially Strange.

Diana Prince has posed:
Strange's efforts to help Takako are noticed by Diana, the wave that had gone in that direction is attended to her by next. After a lunging leap and a smashing crushing stomping of one bug, Diana starts to wade through those that are still gathered around that part of the felled Titan's body.

The more that they've learned about this creature, the more that her heart has begun to feel sorrow for it. But there's no time for that, and there may be more evidence yet to be found that would wash that sorrow away!

In there here and now, Diana rushes back toward where Zatanna is, her lasso's divinity making her a target, but Zatanna is a beacon of magical 'goodness' that these bugs are attracted too (unless it's the fishnets!)

Arriving via lunge, Diana's swords skewers through another bug before she lifts it upward and slives the shining blade up out of the carapace. "This better be the only nest inside the beast!" The Princess says to the Wizards...

Because the mountain spirit is huge, and the thought has certainly struck her mind by now too.

Sara gets a grateful expression when Diana has a moment to give it. "You are doing great, keep it up!" She encourages the Witchblade, quite curious to find out who this person is, but later!

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen lifts a foot to kick his first foe, then steps off of it and into the air but he doesn't fall back down, hovering just out of reach of the beasts as he summons a spell of light and holds it above his head, drawing the attentions of the beasts, dividing their forces, allowing the other heroes to really do their work as he relegates himself to a distraction.

    The creature, the old god, has stopped moving, and gone still, a new formation of the Himalaya's, restructured by the movements alone of this incredible and incredibly ancient beast. The waves of bugs are summarily cut down, smashed and incinerated by the women standing sentinel for the world when it is needed.

    Stephen lands next to Zatanna and the frozen insect and nods slowly, looking towards her and takes a deep breath. "I've got the room. I think research of this thing should take priority. The chances of this being a one time thing... Slim." Stephen says, looking around at those present and taking a deep breath.

    This is just a beginning.