7138/Invisible Aliens Ate My Lunch

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Invisible Aliens Ate My Lunch
Date of Scene: 30 July 2021
Location: Eastside - Queensland Park
Synopsis: And the alien car-nivore herd was sent to a safer world and the true meaning was the cars they ate along the way.
Cast of Characters: Pol Hevonen, Terry O'Neil, Kara Danvers




Pol Hevonen has posed:
Pol Hevonen, Sometime Centaur, Currently Not, has returned to the scene of the not-a-crime!

It seems his cousin's fraternity invited him to an Ultimate Frisbee game, which ... sure why not, it's summer, he's caught up on his summer classes and all that.

He sent a text to Terry suggesting they meet up to sync up about what happened after the remarkably unexciting events of his birthday.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
First rule of Myth club: Never go at it alone. Especially when cults were concerned. It's always a good idea to have a buddy come along- so Terry texts Kara.

<<Kara! Are you doing anything tonight? Saj wants to catch up>>

Saj, Pol, was the latest addition to the Titans menagerie after Vorpal, Beast Boy and Kian rescued him from becoming human... err... centaur sacrifice to a bunch of cultists. He had been stuck in the Centaur shape ever since that rescue, until... well, certain events.

The Cheshire Cat rabbit Holes to the agreed-upon point of rendezvous, dressed to stand out, as he always does when out as the cat.
5r

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara wasn't entirely sure whether what kind of house call this was. The cape kind or the low-key kind? In the end, she's opted for low-key with her costume concealed beneath just in case. She's even gone so far as to take public transport to get to the place, trudging down the path with hands shoved into the pockets of her jeans. Her hair is dark, chocolate brown wig she wears in her civilian guise, with a white headband drawing her hair back and away from her forehead. She presses her glasses up her nose with a thumb, looking towards the Ultimate Frisbee game as she steps up alongside her fellow Titans.

"Ah," she murmurs, the slight twang of her Kryptonian accent still present, "Sports. Let me guess ... this is ... golf."

Pol Hevonen has posed:
It being some days later than the 4th of July, Pol is remarkably not a centaur, despite the rumors, because (as he warned Terry) the hour he turned 20 (1am July 4th, 2021) his next constellation-marking activated, and Centaurus ... is Chiron. The old Centaur teacher's shade appeared to him, slapped him upside the head to return him to human form, and explained a few important things that might be upcoming in his life.

This is people running up and down a field marked off like a soccer game, but with football-style end-zones, and instead of a soccer ball they're stopping to fling a frisbee. Pol is a menace, of course, being easily two to three times the size of the puny normal people, who are running around him in goblin-esque swarms trying to keep the frisbee away from him.

Of course that's when one of the nearby parked cars starts making aggrieved 'someone is stealing from me' noises as the front driver's side disappears with a loud CRONCH and a chewing sound. There's ... nothing there.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Seeing Kara approach, the redhead waves her over. There is nothing strange at all here, since Terry O'Neil is now publicly known as Vorpal. A journalist from the planet hanging out with the Cheshire Cat isn't all that strange- because they're colleagues.

"Not quite. Ultimate Frisbee, which... is the kind of sport you invent when you go to college and have way too much booze. Or at least I theorize- I haven't done either."

Pointing at Pol, he grins, "It's kind of hilarious to see Pol sticking out like that. He's huge. No wonder he almost ate us out of roo--" he pauses, and glances at the car that just got crunched for no apparent reason. Then he glances at Kara. "Curioser and Curioser... investigation time?"

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara furrows her brow at the frisbee game, shaking her head and pursing her lips: "Yes, please." Anything to get away from the weird Earth sport.

"I still do not understand the point. Strength and dexterity can be more concisely proven in the combat arena. These discs and balls add so many arbitrary factors, do you not think?"

She shakes her head, accepting the situation. Her hand reaches up to tilt her glasses down, eyes focusing on the distance for a long moment.

"There is nothing, I do not thi -- ... wait."

Pol Hevonen has posed:
There is a shout of outrage from one of the spectators watching the game -- there are spectators because there are three simultaneous games going on in this spread-out park -- and that spectator yells "MY CAR!" in the same tone that an animated farmer might yell "My cabbages" in some theoretical television series. (Cas makes this observation to his visible twin Pol, who now notices that there is a second car being mutilated, also honking in panic, as something appears to be eating the roof of the car, turning it into a badly implemented convertible without benefit of a cover.

A watchful alien metahuman with solar-amplified abilities might notice the briefest burst of x-rays as space is twisted when a mouth opens into a very nearby time-offset.)

Pol bites the back of his left hand - not drawing blood that would be gross - and with a sudden flash of starlight he is armored up, the ink of the faux scale-mail tattoo sleeve that covers his left arm spreading out, writing itself into some kind of faintly glimmering magical armor over his entire body. He abandons the game, as do most of the other players (there's always one or two who don't get the message) and runs to the sidelines, where he has stashed an amateur version of an Archery Powerset. Donning in a quiver hanging at his hip, with a bow slung across his back. Terry may note that he's gotten a bit taller. Apparently had another growth spurt. He arrives next to Terry and the girl-next-door.

"This was supposed to be a casual meet-up," Pol says, "But there's something weird going on. What the ..."

Another two cars are being consumed. It's like Rapture. (You know, the Debbie Harry song.)

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Because the point is to have fun, not injure someone..." he thinks this over, "intentionally, anyways. But /that/ isn't something that should be happening... unless they've added a new variant to the rules."

Armored Pol's presence confirms the Cheshire's suspicions. "Any time two or more Titans are gathered together, it never ends up being a casual meet-up, Pol. You're going to have to get used to that..." and he glances over at Kara. "Looks like we're dealing with something invisible. Did you check the forecast to see if there were any dust storms incoming? One of them would be very convenient right about now..."

Kara Danvers has posed:
"Throwing discs is fun if you are an infant, maybe. Now mapping out Zrig-Shai's equations ... "

Kara trails off, turning her attention to Pol and once more settling into 'business mode.' Her eyes catch the sudden appearance of the snapping mouths and she frowns, squinting as she presses two fingers to her temple more out of habit than necessity.

"No dust storms. But that does not mean we cannot ... "

She pauses, not finishing her sentence as she stops walking and plants her feet in a squared stance. She inhales deeply, doing her best to look casual and not draw attention to herself, before exhaling and sending a shower of dust, gravel, trash, and dirt up into the air and in the direction of the ravaged cars.

Pol Hevonen has posed:
The car-nivores can't be seen except for that brief millisecond that they involve their mouth-parts with the interface, but they still have dimensionality and while they're slightly out of phase, moving mass quickly through them to induce gravitational eddies, also the weak and strong force, and focused electromagnetism, oh and a thaumion field, will all disrupt the phasing field that lets them stay unseen.

In other words, while they're blurry and squishy, solid or even liquid matter can make them become visible.

One of the Ultimate players -- apparently associated with the person whose car was first chomped -- flings a disc at the place where the car was being eaten. It bounces off of something. The trash and dust cone also impinges on the area, revealing about seven entities that resemble blobs of transparent energy with a single large "eye" and a huge mouth.

Pol frowns and draws his bow, stringing it in a smooth movement. He raises an arrow to ready it, trying to decide whether he can shoot them safely.

"#@J#$J#$ERJI#!@@#$$" one of them howls. It's probably not a language, as the rest of them howl in response. "#4389#($#_()#$T$((!!)"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry grins when Kara picks up on his suggestion, and as the entities are revealed, he blinks for a few seconds.

"Well, I'm positive they're not here for the Miss Universe pageant, that's for su--" and then they start howking, and he winces.

"And definitely for for the America's Got Talent tryouts. OKAY PEOPLE!" he bellows, "Out! Out! Titans on the scene. We'll take care of this!" will the students do as told? Who knows! He doesn't look at Kara, in order for his team-mate to be able to do her 'exit, stage left' so she can come in wearing her colors... or she might decide to intervene on the sly from the convenience of her civilian guise.

"I'll draw them away from people, you prepare to make them like pincushions, Saj. And if someone else comes around, well, we'll sure adjust to whatever tactics they want to employ!"

Materializing an enormous, glowing purple mallet, the Cheshire cat gleefully runs towards the group of entities, and then away from them after throwing a few construct anvils in their direction in a move that every MMO player knows as 'kiting'.

Kara Danvers has posed:
At the mention of Titans being on the scene, Kara lets out a small sigh and shakes her head. The last thing she needs is to be associated with them in this particular guise. As soon as Terry starts speaking, there's a rush of wind as the brunette disappears with a burst of speed faster than the eye can see. In that same second a figure in blue and red descends from the sky - Supergirl, though her costume appears to have changed to a full bodysuit (the cost of constant experimentation in that area).

Seeing them coated in dust, her eyes narrow for a moment and glint red before a burst of heat energy lances through the air in the direction of one of the blobby car-nivores.

Pol Hevonen has posed:
"Saj is the centaur," Pol says. "Call me Myth if you have to codename."

He lets fly with an arrow, one with a ball on the end. Given he's just under seven feet tall and his bow is scaled up to him, and has a ridiculous pull, and the arrow has a titanium nock, it flies like a missile rather than exploding into pieces like the wooden ones he tried with this bow. The arrow hits and bounces off the open eyeball of the first howling invisi-blob, and it howls more, closing the eye. At that, something appears from nowhere on the end of the parking lot, a thing that looks more like an unnecessarily extended scorpion with a humanlike torso and still-buglike head, standing about five feet tall and carrying a large crooked stick. It shouts in Expangesean (the pidgin trade-lang of the outward end of the Orion Arm) about ... something. Most likely "stop messing with my herd!"

Kiting would work were we working with wolves, but they're herd-beasties, of a sort, and oops. The one that just finished off a Miata has been disrupted by an intense superheated impalement of plasma-fied air. There's a sort of a "goosh" noise and it appears to disappear in on itself. An anvil stries one of them, causing a similar reaction, but the anvil is then eaten by another, which seems not to be bothered when the catastrophe is on the inside.

"UNDENABABGLE'P" the scorpiform herder yells, in a voice that sounds like a soprano gargling.

Myth (Pol) moves to cut off one of the other blobbies, which seems to have decided that the disruption is a good excuse to eat that Sonata over there. An arrow between the eye and the mouth is apparently painful as it stops moving and howls.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Kara Danvers, in the meantime, makes a run for it. Or, rather, the illusion that Terry has created to cover for his team-mate's secret transformation does. It is an extremely convincing illusion, and she vanishes into a Rabbit Hole that he pretends to open for her- all an illusion, but of /course/ Terry O'Neil would help a fellow Planeteer get to safety in the middle of a super-powered crisis, right?

"Alright, I'll make sure to call you that- we don't want any myth-conceptions..." he calls back, and waves to Supergirl as she appears into the scene. At this point, there is an informal pool in the Titans as to who will change their outfits more times by the end of the year. Kara might just win because Terry is decidedly /not/ wearing outfits during the summer- just a tank top and shorts because it's too damned hot to even make an effort.

"Is that a scorpion-man carrying a shepherd's crook?" the Cheshire cat stops for a second and stares. "This is getting weird. Even for me... Supergirl, do you understand what that dude is gargling about?"

It's not an assumption that aliens know all alien languages... it's an assumption that a Kryptonian might have a chance at knowing several other alien tongues. Maybe.

"I think we might be going about this all wrong. We need to avoid property damage, so maybe... this:"

All of the cars in the vicinity vanish. Or, rather, they have become invisible, thanks to his powers of illusion. In their place, a cluster of cars that /glow/ with all of the colors of the rainbow suddenly appear in the middle of the field, which no longer has players on it. The cars are packed in a tight little circle. Very inviting. Much Cars. So Bait.

"It's fencing time!" he says to his team-mates.

Kara Danvers has posed:
"Oh! That was another of the puns," Supergirl points out, glancing towards Terry with the broad smile one can wear when there's hardly ever any danger of getting hurt even in the more chaotic and dangerous situations, "Very good. kluv!"

"Sorry, I do not recognize his language. Let me try ... he may understand Kryptonian."


The blonde raises her voice, calling for peace: "nahnodh rrip w urvish!"

And now she's quietly hoping they don't turn out to be peaceful because she just lasered one into the next dimension.

Pol Hevonen has posed:
The blobherd flinches. Kryptonian is almost the same as the red-sun-language from another heavy world that hasn't been rendered detonable yet, and the inhabitants of that world were distinctly UNKIND to the blobherd and its little flock of psuedoshogs. It didn't have time to learn that language, fleeing across the continent as quickly as it could losing dozens of bloblings before arriving at the stepgate to the next systems.

The being frantically waves the shepherd's crook (which has teeth on one side) and ululates something at the remaining blobs, who ignore the commands, because something even tastier than aluminum frosted with purified hydrocarbon plastics has just appeared -- a thaumion structure! A feed-lot! They all twitch and jerk, appearing in new positions just before they depart their old one, in a sort of short-range jerky thingaportation.

"It's working!" Cas says, borrowing Pol's speech. "I can see them ... even the ones you stunned, they're about to ... uh oh."

The lead blob opens its maw and engulfs a sedan. There's a burbling noise, and the blob becomes slithy with satiation.

Kara Danvers has posed:
"lor" Kara adds, another Kryptonian call just to try and drive them away. But then when the sedan is gobbled up in one go, her eyes widen and she lets fly another burst of plasma energy in their direction.

"It looks like the stick-wielder is trying to make them leave, but they are not. Are they his pets? Tell him his pets are bad! These cars belong to people!"

Pol Hevonen has posed:
It's a squelchepede! as the blobs all converge on the illusions. Not unlike the one who ate the earlier anvil, as they consume the magical energies, they turn an interesting shade of Unstable Yellow, with Kirbydots appearing at their edges. The blobherd yells incoherently, unable to even put tongues to palate-oid mandibular process to form words, reverting to chirping, burbling, and flumphs.

Pol face-palms. Making a shoggatle salt lick isn't making them go away. Cas is yelling that they should've kept that coursebook on tekeli-li-ese but the thing was threatening to summon slugs in the night.

If looks could kill? Hers could, and Kara's death-glare at the blob who ate the illusion of the sedan ... makes it ripple, rather than collapsing its event horizon.

"Rabbit hole!" Pol yells, turning to fend off a stick attack from the outraged blobherd who has identified him as the Tallest therefore the likely cause of these woes. "Feed them a rabbit hole!"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"I have to admit, that's the first time I've heard THAT... but at this point, I'll try anything!"

Vorpal summons a Rabbit Hole and sents it towards the blob-oids at breakneck speed before Pol decides to think better about his suggestion. A movable rift in spacetime that connects two different points, coming in contact with these mysterious creatures? What could POSSIBLy go wrong, right?

"If this works, I'm buying you all dinner at Planet Herowood."

Pol Hevonen has posed:
"I'll take one of each thing," Pol tells Vorpal as the rippling intensifies, and spreads through the whole bubble-herd, and the blobherd abandons its stick attack to undulate at top speed into the middle of the herd. The stick then flashes in rhythmic patters of light, which echoes through the distortion, and with a brilliant flash that should have been blinding, but wasn't, the entire herd is gone, along with its scorpish caretaker.

There is a Master's Thesis in physics that could be written about how the dimensional manifold of the displacement-field intersecting the spatial interruption of a wormhole gate will destabilize the probabilistic function defining the location of the displacement field, and when there are a good fifteen of these, they will heterodyne together until they identify a fundamental frequency that defines a new location. Elsewhere. Generally more than 30 light-years elsewhere, and the presence of a guide-component might make it possible for the new location to be on a habitable planet, rather than in the middle of the closest black hole. But there is no way that anyone will believe that Pol, Cas, or both were thinking that this was the most likely outcome. They were though.
(It was not the most likely outcome. The chances were very good that it would, in fact, make a permanent spacetime gate to some hell-dimension.)

"I don't think the scorpion dude cared about other people very much. So. How do you do that thing with the eye lasers?" Pol asks Kara, because it looks like an amazing power and it would be really fun to learn.