7401/1000 Faces: En Garden!

1000 Faces: En Garden!
Date of Scene:	16 August 2021
Location:	Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, Brooklyn
Synopsis:	An attack in the Botanic Gardens transpires on a night when Haiti comes alight with terrible purpose. Svartalfheim delivers a vicious blow, taking out the Sorcerer Supreme and mobilizing mystic, Bat, and law enforcement forces... to what end? The stars fall from the sky. Terror awaits. The living breathe another hour.
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Hela, Cael Becker, Tetsuya Wakao, Morrigan MacIntyre, Tim Drake, Charlotte Gage-Radcliffe, Stephen Strange, John Constantine

---

Hela has posed:
The last Members' Summer Evening brings out New Yorkers in force to select spots in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. A last hurrah for the season is hot, humid, and flush with the cotton candy shades of a spectacular sunset, the deepening scarlet and bruised violet hues a stunning backdrop against large plane trees and oaks. Lights threaded through branches and bushes add a serene glow as the twilight deepens, music veering from danceworthy jazz to modern pop with a twist.

People gather on multicoloured blankets across the green lawns, flush up against gorgeously arranged flower beds and stately trees. Baskets and bags spill with crisp salads, bright pastas, sushi or sandwiches. Libations come by way of cocktails in recyclable plastic cups, crystal for the wealthy, wine coolers and fizzy hard seltzer the preferred poisons with champagne, cider, and wine on tap. The theme of picnic night is rather a broad example.

Gardeners and docents move among the long avenues to the water gardens, offering stories and anecdotes. Mostly it's a time to mingle. Several stand by the lily pond and point to floating motes glinting over the flat reflection pool. Fireflies in very-unfirefly shades of ice blue, coral-pink, and buttercream twirl in clusters, caught up in a dance that holds bystanders captivated. Several small glowing wisps alight on sleeves, shoulders, in styled hair to the delight of the few around there. They laugh aloud.

"Where did they come from?"

"No idea."

"But they're pretty! Maure---ee....gllk?" The gentleman stationed by the side of the reflection pool chooses the wrong moment to turn and gesture to one of his coworkers. Long enough for a silver blade to rip across his jugular in a crescent slash. Whatever laugh is heard is barely audible.

The gurgling drowns under several shrieks of terror.

Cael Becker has posed:
    Cael is not at the Garden. No, as part of the Organized Crime task force with the FBI, she'd been hearing rumors of a gang that was trying to sell drugs so some kids at some of the local kids, and she was currently at a Burger King nearby, nibbling at some fries - with some listening devices aimed at the parking lot. They were programmed to amplify the sounds of human voices, while scrubbing background noises, and she was currently getting incredibly bored as she listens to the converrsation of some nearby teens about who's sleeping with who, and what Suzy and Johnny were doing under the bleachers. God... Teenage hormones are //the worst//.
    The boredom quickly changes to surprise and concern as she starts picking up the sounds of faint screams from the device. How- who?
    She can't see any trouble. And the only thing in the range and direction of her equipment was the parking lot, and across the street... The Gardens.
    "Shit," she mutters - quickly getting to her feet and dashing out to the parking lot. The teens look up in puzzlement as a blonde haired woman in jeans and a leather jacket jumps onto a motorcycle and tears out of the parking lot, intent on finding a way of driving directly into the Botanical Garden. If she's wrong about this... she'll apologize later.

Tetsuya Wakao has posed:
Tetsuya is present in a simple, rather conservative outfit that's just slightly nicer than his usual worn one. It was a social event, after all, and he was there to take it in with some coworkers of a sort. They were all human, and while mostly in on it, he was just there seriously because one of them made sushi to die for whenever it comes to the state side of things.

And other traditional items, too. But seriously, sushi!

So, the nicely dressed secret ninja was seated and having a nice cup of sake with the sushi. At least until the trouble started. He looks up at the sounds coming from the fireflies and his eyes narrow a bit.

Sighing, he looks to the human coworkers of his, "That is unusual. I like it. We do not get that many colors in Japan."

Of course, then the screams have to start. And that has Tetsuya blinking before looking at his party, "Pack up and go, please. I think I am going to be needed shortly." He rises to his feet, walking towards where the shrieks of terror started as he begins to look around to see if there are any obvious culprits or other things going on. His eyes are not superhumanly sharp, but he can at least look for weapons, unusual figures, and the like.

Morrigan MacIntyre has posed:
Morrigan's here on behalf of Mount Sinai Board Members, because someone couldn't make it and she got the last minute call to cover if she could. There were appearances to keep. She didn't expect anything to go wrong, but she'd not really been on her guard given it was a social event. She wasn't wearing anything combat oriented given she'd taken the chance to get dressed up. She'd chosen white given the weather and oh boy was she feeling the humidity. It was ginger melting weather.

She'd just started speaking with someone she'd not seen in a few months when the screams started and over the floral smell there was the coppery scent of blood that started to float on the air. "They might need a doctor...or someone saw a spider." she states with a half smile. "Hopefully it's the latter and not the former." she adds as she ditches her glass and heads towards the screaming.

Tim Drake has posed:
    The briefing Red Robin had given Misfit went like this:

    "Perreault & Richelieu is an investment company founded in Paris in the late eighties. Their name has come up a few times in relation to black market importing of tech goods into Gotham, but none of the merchandise ever ends up exchanging hands. In the past two years they've moved into fairly low-profit real estate holdings; small-scale industrial and retail for the most part. They have offices in New York."

    And that is why the Outsiders jet--really, just a Batwing with a slightly different paint job--hovers amidst cloud cover just off the coast, stealth mode engaged. It's an opportunity for Misfit to gain some experience with reconnaissance work and Red Robin to hopefully catch a break on this case.

    With the autopilot engaged, Tim stands away from the pilot seat, at the holographic display between the seating in the back of the plane. Currently it has a 3D projection up of the investment firm's offices that he's motioning to, in the middle of an explanation of Misfit's mission, when the pilot console pings a warning that Red Robin also sees in the HUD of his mask.

    "...change of plans," he says as he returns to the plane's controls.

    The plane is a silent streak of motion over the bay, only glimpsed as the faintest shimmer of light refracting oddly. It gains altitude as it moves over the city, soon enough a smudge against the sky as the cargo hatch opens. "See you on the ground," Tim tells Charlie just before he leaps out, the grapple line in his hand slowing his momentum for several hundred feet before his grip relaxes and he lets his cape glide him the rest of the way down.

    

Charlotte Gage-Radcliffe has posed:
    Charlie takes notes as Red Robin talks. Thankfully this means just mental notes not on like a notepad during the briefing. She also sets a task to have it transcribe it all, so she can reference it if she has to in her HUD later. God detectiving is involves so many details and not as much dark vengeance as she would like. But everyone says it is important so here she is.

    A large part of her would rather be hitting adorable characters with cartoon mallets on her switch if she were totally truthful about it.

    "What.. change of .. wait..." she blinks and then looks after him as he just jumps out. "I swear..." she presses a couple of fingers to the bridge of her nose then snags her goggles and pulls them on before leaping out after Robin.

    There is no cape glider, grapple lines. Nothing. Just a slash of pinkish purple smoke and she is gone after falling about ten feet. A heartbeat later there is another slash on the ground below and Charlie lands with a soft thump on her feet. Anyone mystically attuned would feel the sharp snap of chaos magic.

    When Robin finishes gliding she notes. "Fancy to meet you here." as she is looking around for whatever trouble is afoot.

Stephen Strange has posed:
Normally, garden parties wouldn't be Stephen's thing.

It is not the fact that he doesn't appreciate a good garden party. Nor is it that he wouldn't be invited. Never mind the sorcerer gig....once upon a time Strange was the best surgeon in the city and state of New York, if not the country. So, that afforded a certain celebrity status. Enough to warrant him an invite.

It is just...other events may have taken his attention. Until fairly recently.

What was the change? Fireflies that aren't fireflies, for certain. There was a certain *feel* that was wrong. And, regardless of prior engagements, that certain feel, so close to home, prompted a visit from Strange.

Just...not Strange the surgeon.

A flash of blue, a swirl of red, and the Sorcerer Supreme steps into view. Chaos reigns, ahem, supreme as the patrons scream. Yet...that does little to shake Strange from his appointed rounds. Which...has him heading for the unfortunate gardener with the slit throat.

Hela has posed:
A long black metal fence hems in the Washington Avenue frontage of the Botanic Gardens. Making the leap in plain sight of handsome brick walk-ups might get quite a few security cameras observing the violation. Cael taking a wiser course is going to have to park on the sidewalk since all the streetside parking and miniscule lot -- by New York standards -- is already overflowing from members.

The gardener falls facedown into the pond, clutching his bloodied throat. Red tendrils spill among the sacred lotuses.

Strangers appearing in flashes of smoke or eruptions of fancy dress cloaks unnerves those already upset. They don't just scream. They throw their wine coolers at Charlie and blow past Strange.

Attendees near the Lily Pool (map: #12) scramble back from the lights that no longer float calmly in drunken firefly swirls. Floating motes split apart, groups of three and four beelining for select bystanders with no appreciable sense of who they pick. Barely audible harmonics accompany their direct, explosive movements. A woman in a black dress swings her purse wildly and hits someone in the side in her desperation. Another man swats at the lights, one coming up under his arm to carve a playful stroke down his cheekbone to open flesh to the teeth. One isn't interested in Morrigan. Two will be happy to puncture one of Cael's tires.

And there's more! A cloud of rainbow lights descends from a tree fronting the Shakespeare Garden. Down a broad set of steps in the box hedge-lined Magnolia Plaza (map: #13), fragrant blooms come worringly aglow. Petals move, and up float more lights. Jazz music resonates with minor key chimes.

Cael Becker has posed:
    Cael can hear the screams without her equipment now - which she's abandoned - so she pulls her bike to an abrupt stop, using it to help her leap up and over the fence. Let security get pissed at her - they have bigger things to worry about, and flashing a badge or two should get her out of trouble. The way her tires get slashed by the little dancing motes catches her attention enough to earn a brief, "What the shit?" before she leaps down to the other side - approaching the chaos at a jog, her hand going under her jacket to pull out a pistol.
    People are screaming and panicked. She can see less-capable individuals getting knocked aside. One woman goes down in the stampede, and Cael wades into the chaos, bracing herself against the tide and leaving the slender woman with enough space to hobble to her feet. "Everyone please evacuate in a calm and orderly manner! Please help your neighbors to get out safely!"

Tetsuya Wakao has posed:
Being nearer to the Magnolia Plaza, Tetsuya takes off that way opposite of the crowd. Whatever is causing this isn't doing so solo, and he notes that he's not about to be able to intercept all of them that easily. Seeing more of the lights coming, he stares a bit at the magical tint to them. "Huh... hostile kodama. Definitely hostile." Looking for a safe place to not be trampled, he heads for the nearest hedge and slides forward a bit on the grass. Once there, he looks around for something to distract the things and curses a bit in Japanese.

Sighing, he reaches into his coat which produces a slight bit of magic of it's own it seems before he tosses out something that he really hates to use, but against a literal freaking swarm of possibly dangerous things? Yeah, the ninja's using all the tricks he has at his disposal. A handful of small marbles are tossed out with force from the hedge after he checks to make sure there's not a lot of wind going on.

Said marbles? Blue smoke bombs. Distinctly blue, and... with some sort of scent to them? He's not aiming to catch others in the mess, but it's a stall move on the cloud of lights to avoid them attacking people hopefully. After all, they shouldn't be able to see through smoke hopefully!

Stephen Strange has posed:
Inspection does not take long. While it is certainly not standard police procedure to move the body before forensics has a go at looking at it, this is a situation where forensics would be utterly worthless. It is apparent what the cause of death is...and it is something one just does not simply write down on a death certificate. 'Death via knife-wielding will-o-the-wisp' just does not look official, no matter how it is written.

The sorcerer, at least, does not touch the body floating in the pool of water. Rather, with a twist of a wrist and a flick of a couple of fingers, the body levitates upward, the rotates 180 degrees, turning the poor gentleman face up and giving the good Doctor a good look of the incision point. "Single stroke through the jugular. Effortless...no ripping or tearing of the epidermis. Blackened along the edge...appearing necrotic." The body is placed to the side, close to the pond, but at least not within.

Those grey eyes shift to the floating orbs. It does not take much for him to note that these are certainly of a magical sort. Those eyes flitter to other sources as well. A glance to Morrigan, another to Tetsuya...and a third to Charlie. Hmm...interesting. But for another time.

First...time to determine the source of the murder spheres. Someone might have watched a little too much Phantasm lately.

Morrigan MacIntyre has posed:
Morrigan's feet carry her towards where everyone is streaming out. Whether it's in a hurry or not. She approaches the source of all of the commotion as the gardener lays with a particularly gruesome wound. And Strange is there, "Doctor." she nods in greeting as she joins him in looking over the body, "Whatever did that is insanely sharp...and I'm guessing not of this world." the Irish woman frowns at that.

She does look at the other magical energies that pop up, but she doesn't assume that anyone of them did it. And certainly not Strange. "I'll see what I can find." she states quietly.

Tim Drake has posed:
    "Oh no," Red Robin says, voice flat. "Not you again."

    Then he cracks a smile at Misfit, just a second or so spared, before he's on the move, arm snapping out to make a quick gesture towards the other Bat-clan in attendance. Flank. Her abilities are better suited to it, so Tim will take the head-on approach. Working against the flow of people who are running away from the sound of screams, he scans the gardens as best he can for signs of hostiles.

    "<<Keep your guard up. And if anyone asks, we're not from Gotham,>>" Red Robin says over the encrypted comm channel to Charlie.

    More or less, he's following the path to the lily pool. Not quite on the path itself, but doing his best not to tread on any of the plants. Still, priorities behing what they are, he'd rather get from point A to point B quickly and sacrifice a couple of flowers instead of dallying too long and hear another scream cut off abruptly.

    As he moves, he's starting to catch sight of multicolored lights in-between people running. Not party lights. Tim reaches up to tap the side of his domino mask, cycling from the visual light spectrum to IR. "<<I don't think those are lightning bugs.>>"

    Tim arrives at the lily pool in time to see one of those fluttering lights cut through a man's cheek, and Tim reacts on instinct. He moves on silent feet towards the man, attempting to grab at him, pull him away from the lights with one hand while the other covers the wound. Carefully. All he can do is try to curl his fingers under the man's jaw and hold it closed so the cut won't be accidentally deepened.

Charlotte Gage-Radcliffe has posed:
    To Red Robin <<No one is going to believe that>> and she is right, what with the theme and belts and ... yeah of course they aren't from Gotham

    Still she is distracted .... because while Charlie is used to a lot of reactions but people throwing glass bottles at her while screaming is not one of them, "Oh... come on" she protests as she smacks them away from her knocking them out of the air before they clock her in the head.

    She still gets splashed and will later have to deal with figuring out how to remove sticky alchohol from her gear. "Crackers..."

    Wait. What the hecks is going on here. She blinks looking around again, pausing to fish out a wipe and wipe her goggle quick because .. wine cooler. First she looks at Dr. STrange and his attire and studying of a murder victim like that. "Bright..." no she isn't talking about the intelligence she blinks looking away.

    She taps her goggles lightly and magnifies her vision through them a bit as she looks around tracking the flying musical lights. "This is really strange." which is a lot coming from Charlie. "They look like Tinks!" she explaims outloud before blinking and subvocalizing on comms <<Tinkerbelles RR, well if Tinks looked like little feral flying monsters...>>

    

Hela has posed:
Smoke bombs throw up a grey-blue haze in the Magnolia Terrace (map #13), filling the paths already starting to throng with picnickers trying to flee. People caught in the crossfire start to choke and sneeze. The smart pull their shirts to their faces in an attempt to run for the lake or pond. The less fortunate cough and gag, snot running from their noses, falling into one another as they try to move through the inky blue swirl that smells weirdly of brine. Glowing balls throw unnatural glimmers.

A lot like anglerfish but two thousand meters higher than said fishes ought to be. But what lovely TEETH you have, my dear! One of them manages to veer into a knot almost by luck. The hysterical screams and chaos only builds.

"Eduardo," cries a woman watching the gardener's body flip under a touch. She hits the ground, fainting dead away. Strange and Morrigan now have an unconscious lady to deal with. Three green globes perched on the conservatory's roof behind the Lily Pool Terrace spring down, lobbed with the expertise of Rafa Nadal striking the opposite baseline.

John Constantine has posed:
John Constantine is nearly never late to the party, but there's a first time for everything. Once again, the Laughing Magician is dragged along for the ride, not by Synchronicity this time, but by a map pinging 'something big' in the back room of his bar. Damned thing burst into flames with barely a chance for him or Chas to get a bead on the location. Sucks that.

When the House of Mystery drops him somewhere in the middle of the chaos, he goes in with eyes wide open, sighted and tuned to the mystical energies of the area. Not always the smartest of ideas, it's gotten him blinded off the bat going in a time or two, but more often than not it's given him fair enough warning of what he's walking into.

He has no interest in anyone that's fallen and likely dying, he'd rather focus on keeping everyone else alive and not by mundane ways, there are others present to handle that end of it.

Typical John, he takes about two point two to assess the situation and he's tossing around magic. Arms extended slightly, palms up, the words tumbling from his lips in barely a whisper and calling on some Gaelic someone or another for protection, he drops a barrier around the Lily Pool Terrace area, the intention to keep the danger lights away from squishy people.

Hey Stephen! Here's your back up!

Now, only after the only other that might be able to help him find the source of this is protected, along with those near him, does he take another two point two pause to assess a little more.

Cael Becker has posed:
    Okay - his is weird. This is just plain weird. "Fuck my life," Cael mutters under her breath. She catches another person who nearly goes down - a man with a weak leg, it seems. She shoves him towards a burly looking fellow. "Make sure he makes it out. THAT'S YOUR JOB," she asserts firmly.
    That taken care of - she puts away her pistol. She is not going to try shooting such tiny targets in the cause of the panicked fleeing crowd. Instead, she pulls out a collapsable baton, snapping it into position. It's like baseball, yeah? Just got to swing for the fences. Only this time the ball is trying to dodge.
    "I don't know what," swing, "you fucking things are," swing, "but get the hell out of my city!"
    That last one connects pretty good - and she watches it go sailing across the garden. "HA! That's what you get!"

Stephen Strange has posed:
"No, they are most certainly not lightning bugs."

The sentence comes unbidden, seemingly, as the Sorcerer Supreme speaks it. However, if anyone is paying attention, namely a certain crimson avian named individual, the sentence is directed towards a particular person. Perhaps two. Not that he is going to mention any names.

Still, it is sorta cute the way people try to hide from the mystical defender of the entire Earth realm.

Not even the unspoken opinions of the slightly mystical one sways Stephen. He doesn't care for niceties when in the middle of a battlefield, which this very much is, contrary to popular belief. And information is needed to combat the threat. Still, Stephen does take a moment to tend to the unconscious woman while another magical source makes itself, or rather himself, known.

And Stephen knows this source rather well.

"Decided to join the party, John?" There isn't even a glance upward as Stephen settles the fainted woman down into a rather secure place, with a ward in place just for safety's sake. "There are four concentrations. Here, the trees of the Magnolia Terrace, the Fragrance Garden, and over in the Shakespeare Garden. I am setting up what wards I can to protect the patrons here, but if we can impress upon the people that leaving is in their best interest, I would not be opposed to that."

Hela has posed:
Aww, look, Cael brought friends. A cloud of them, though spotting where the cloud goes is rather difficult in the deepening shadows. As she gets away from the parking lot and nearer to the central points of trouble, the air deepens. Purple ribbons ripple ahead of her. Bushes toss their leaves, the warm smells of marjoram and chamomile lifted in bruising force. Deep green and bruised purple shadows leak out from the Fragrance Garden (#14) down the broad steps from the Lily Pond Terrace. Bits of grass shiver. Mulch and leaves start lifting off the grounds when erratically twirling ribbons go flying past.

Except they aren't ribbons. A closer look reveals them to be dark rainbows, and when they hit mobile targets, they twist around the individual like the wind. Some get inverted and carried up screaming into the air. Others have their clothes turned inside out. One older fellow in a tweed suit looks fine except the inside layers of his body are on the outside, and the skin on the inside. More rain-bombs leap to the ground and vanish whatever they touch.

For the mystics, this is a dark chaotic magic born of the deepest perversion, inflected by such entropy that it scalds the surface of reality.

Morrigan MacIntyre has posed:
Morrigan's trying to figure out where to go first and then there's a woman fainting, "Ah shit." she hisses out as she moves to make sure the woman has a pulse and not crowd Strange while she's doing it. If she did that was an improvement on the situation. Then she straightens, her violet gaze drawn to where Tim is being chased by...the wee folk. She raises a hand, bringing up the violet energy that is so easy to mark as hers, "Hey!" she shouts as she casts a magical net around the ones chasing Tim. Pulling at it like unseen strings. "And you wonder why people think the wee ones are assholes. Just look at this!" she grumbles as she helps the two out that were being chased.

The the dark chaotic magic makes its presence known and there is a bit of a frown, "That's a problem and it's not from Earth." she points out to the other magical folks as she closes off the containment magic on the fairies, leaving them in a ball and letting them bounce of the sides like kids in a protective bubble.

Tim Drake has posed:
    The utility belt contains many useful things. And it probably comes as no surprise that, to someone with no powers, first aid supplies are considered useful. So out comes a vacuum-sealed bandage that Red Robin peels open and attaches onto the face of the man he's just rescued from, okay, NOT lightning bugs. "Copy," he says aloud to Doctor Strange, who Tim assumes to have some kind of expertise here.

    After all, he looks like one of the wizard characters Tim's played in D&D before.

    "<<Definitely not lightning bugs,>>" he reports to Misfit, and then acknowledges the clarification she gives in turn with another "<<Copy.>>" Because even though they've now clarified precisely what they're dealing with? It's not that Tim actually knows what to do with that knowledge. He glances over one shoulder to see several of what are apparently faeries after him, and he doubts that there's anything he can do about it.

    What he can do, though, is triage. So he gives the man he's dragging along an upwards push in a direction that looks mostly uninfested. Tim has no idea that it's a warded area, but ultimately he doesn't really need to sense that. Just see that the area is clear. "Run!" Red Robin tells him.

    He spins back around with his staff extending in one palm and a smoke grenade in another with very little plan beyond good old eff around and find out (even Tim's mental voice doesn't sound right when he swears). But the lights on his tail are caught in a purple net, and Red Robin pauses.

    "...Thanks," he calls out, mildly unsure but unwilling to stand there and dawdle. He keeps working to drag people to their feet and kindly harass them into one of the protected areas.

Tetsuya Wakao has posed:
With the sudden placement of smoke, Tetsuya can now act some. And then he sees the wards go up.

Going into the smoke cloud, Tetsuya starts to move in and tries to hit one of the lightning bugs while under the smokey cover. They're easy to see, after all, and he can also use the smoke cloud with a bit more smoke from it to change outfits to his Soryu gear where he can have added protection.

Of course, the problem is, do they cut on contact or are they something else? Tetsuya's going to find out by trying to slap the first one he finds rather hard. With the force of a swung baseball bat from the hand as he channels some of his ki magic.

This does mean he has to be careful, however, as he doesn't want to hit any civilians and he wants to push them away from the pixies as well. To get them out of the warded area so he can concentrate on the fight.

Hela has posed:
Three glowing orbs pouncing on the fainted woman scatter when Mo and Strange get too close, the latter insisting on staying put. He bubbles her when they try prodding at her with crescent scimitars and a nasty little dagger large enough to give dental nightmares. Shrilling in an angry bell-chime when they cannot get through, the three take the most expedient route. They attack him from behind: scalp, neck, shoulder. Flappy cloak, face the wrath of something that can ride your collar like a slide.

Meanwhile the unfortunate victims around Cael and anyone to the west side of the park discover how exciting summer picnics can be from twenty feet. Mind the sudden drop!

Two rainbows fork like a twig. Another woman disappears. Charlie and the mages have to feel that pull, a spatial hop that leaves her merged with a mature, splendid golden larch. Her shoulders protrude through one side of the trunk. Her feet and legs splay at obscene geometric angles further up. Inner organs are now unfortunately replaced by four feet of solid wood.

But can Charlie grab the second, a teenaged boy diving into a bush full of saw-toothed hand-sized maidens with killer smiles?

Charlotte Gage-Radcliffe has posed:
    Charlie is turning slowly taking it all in and not liking what she is seeing going on at all. "Ugn." she notes back to Red Robin and everyone not bothering to vocalize. Honestly she isn't sure how to deal with all of this.

    Oh hey. John is here. "Hey John... Tinkerbelles on an onslaught..." she says without her usual chipperness, just sort of confused sounding. Seems she knows the guy in the trenchcoat dropping wards or whatever he is up to.

    That wrenching feeling makes her wince and look at the results. That.. hits home viscerally bad for Misfit for reasons that aren't clear. Her face pale. "Bad faeries..." she murmurs. She preferred to think all faeries were good faeries. Though a deep part of her knows this isn't true.

    Distraction though she can maybe save someone, eyes flicking towards someone diving towards 'safety' and she steps vanishing in another slash of smoke and appearing to try to yank him away emerging from a mirror of the first slash of smoke. Another sharp slap of chaos magic with her movement.

Cael Becker has posed:
    "//Shit//!" Cael says forcefully as people are snatched and pulled up into the air. The sight of one man's body - corpse? - body being inverted like that will haunt her dreams for many nights to come. As the strange energy starts dropping people, however, she quicly shoves her wrist through the loop attacked to her baton, letting it dangle for the moment as she positions herself beneath a woman who's screaming, and falling directly for the hard-packed path, arms flailing and pinwheeling.
    Oh God this is going to hurt, oh God this is going to hurt, oh Go- THUD. Cael manages to catch her, falling into a crouch, and dropping her a bit roughly onto the floor. The woman was badly bruise, but alive. Cael felt about the same.
    Of course, this doesn't leave her much time to reposition for the second falling figure - who slams into Cael, and drives them both to the ground in a tangled heap.
    "Get up and run! Quickly!" she tells the man.
    Honestly, she feels like she should consider doing the same. What can she do against any of this madness?

John Constantine has posed:
"Bloody Hell," John mutters under his breath as he wades in thick of it. "I'm so fuckin' sick of this *shite*." Talking to oneself, isn't that a first sign of insanity? It is! But everyone already knows the man's insane.

He's not a ninja, not even close, but John can move quickly when he puts his mind to it. His hand shoots out, the one so recently burned by Set, to snag one of those rainbow damned things by the tail. He didn't need that hand did he? Or his flesh on the outside of his body, or to not be in a tree?

Even as he's reaching for the snatch, he's offering up a little prayer, a plea even, it might even border on begging... to Set himself for a return assist. Maybe that'll keep him out of trees and with his skin on the outside? "Take me to your fuckin' leader," he hisses once he's a hold of the thing. If he holds on long enough without, you know, dying and all, he'll attempt to follow it back, the trail, the magic, the stuff that makes it what it is, causes it to be. Where the hell did you come from little rainbow? What's making you tick?

Hela has posed:
The teenager screams, his face red and blotchy. He cannot outrun a rainbow, aubergine liquid rolling around his legs and burning into the fabric of his shorts and his legs. Chaos magic crashes sidelong through the rainbow and explosive bursts give off the smell of rotten fruit, overturned earth, and waterlogged peat. Grey mist turns weird colours barely distinguished to the human eye. To a magic eye, it's very different: black has a hundred shades, revealed inside facets of a diamond. Shards of broken ice, plasma spray, and dog crap go flying.

Charlie has herself a pantsless teenager still screaming in fear, unaware of what's actually happened. The chaos magic isn't responsible for him wetting himself.

Stephen Strange has posed:
Three miniature attackers try a sneak attack backstab on one sorcerer. To mixed results. For one, the Cloak does not take kindly to little pixies trying to poke holes into itself. The fabric flows upward and *flicks* at one of the glowing orbs, sending it careening towards the pond for a nice little bath. The action does throw Strange off-balance, which accidentally is a good thing, causing a second to miss the headshot, by scant inches.

However, the shoulder strike remains true...and spins Strange around like a top.

And damn, that was a hard hit. Though...it would seem that the target is made of sterner stuff. Gotta love being blessed by the Elder Gods.

"Foul creature of the Svartalfheim, flee Midgard before the might of the Vishanti find you and your master wanting." A hand flies up, arcane energies leaping from the fingertips to strike towards Strange's assailant. Even in doing so, Strange calls out to John, and whoever else will listen. "These are denizens of the Svartalfheim, most likely sent from Malekith himself, judging from the Black Bifrost. If we have any Asgardians that wish a fight....now would be a good time!"

Hela has posed:
Getting injured people away into the warded areas counts for not a little. If they can stagger, they can hide inside or huddle beside the corpse-stained Lily Pool Terrace. Help counts. A hand here, a shout there, hastens their stumbling feet. There at least the pixies don't seem to be descending too quickly or often, deflected off the invisible wall that refuses to let them past.

Cael herself can find protection there or join Tim and Morrigan with Tetsuya on the Magnolia Terrace among wide-limbed trees thick with some gleefully murderous, blue and coral varieties of the same evil Svartalheim slaughters.

Tim Drake has posed:
    In over his head seems a little bit like an understatement right now, but that could be said for a lot of situations Red Robin has found himself in over the years. Easiest thing to do is just to keep your head down (metaphorically; he's not running around unawares here) and deal with the controllables.

    That being the various blue and red spots of light flitting around, chasing after people Tim's already sent towards one of the apparent safe-zones.

    "<<You know that guy?>>" comes Red Robin's too-casual voice over comms to Misfit as he ducks away from one faerie that starts getting a smidge too close to his mug. Out of all the former Robins, Tim is assuredly not the one who can pull off a rugged facial scar.

    He whirls around and swings his staff like it's baseball season (wait, is it baseball season right now? whatever, he doesn't keep up with sports) and he's aiming for a homerun.

    The faerie is the ball in this analogy.

Morrigan MacIntyre has posed:
Morrigan gives a thumbsup to Tim, "Any time!" she calls cheerily to him. Then she's focusing back on the little folk that are packing the big magics and hits tonight. "Anyone got a pizza? Maybe that'll distract them." she muses to herself. The woman conjures her own little magical weapon to help with batting the little ones away. She felt a LITTLE bad given they were tiny.

But they were not from this plane and they were causing havoc!

She feels the arrow slam into her and there's a bit of a look down before there's a sudden stillness in the woman, looking like she's fighting something invisible as she lets out a shriek towards...something? Fae arrows were fun things. Said no one ever.

Tetsuya Wakao has posed:
Soryu, now in ninja gear and having swatted a pixie, looks up as the cloud of pixies are now coming after him. "Huh... so they are solid."

Then he hops backwards to get away from the pixies as they swarm at where he was. Doing another hop backwards as they keep following, Tetsuya is soon causing a chase of the pixies as he goes upwards and over the magnolia tree, away from the smoke cloud that is hiding people still in it.

With few options left, Tetsuya seems to consider before a bright idea comes to him. He tries something that might or might not work as he gets closer to the lake. Impossibly for a normal human, his hand reaches out to actually pull some of the water from it as he keeps moving at regular human speeds, now running before he twists and tries to literally soak some of the pixies chasing him before he takes off running again, avoiding people as best as he can and hoping these things can't fly faster than him!

You now have a ninja being chased by angry pixies, people. Enjoy.

Charlotte Gage-Radcliffe has posed:
    Charlie ushers the pantless teenager towards the protected area of the Lily Pool Terrace and then turns back to look around and see what else needs doing.

    <<Oh... yeah that is John Constantine. He is an expert of the occult, magician. He is the one who got me back in my own body during that body swapping demon incident a few months ago. Good guy even if he curses a lot.>>

    She does finally jog towards Strange and then leaps flashing with another slash of smoke as she blinks from one part of the garden over to him in an instant. Bringing a weighted fist into one of the strange bobbing lights hard. Popbang. Chaos. "Mister.. I have no idea what any of that is at all but Asgardian and I do not see Thor. What is plan B?" which is all addressed to the D&D Wizard looking Strange who just did Shocking Grasp as far as she can tell.

Hela has posed:
At the Magnolia Plaza (still a terrace)... Bat training probably does not include pixies. It should. Tim does a fine job playing batter-up, though they fire back volleys of arrows or slice at batons, fingers, and whatever they can. Naughty things work individually and in tandem with one another, veering hard left and up and around at speeds using their diminutive stature to advantage. Morrigan might be the most at risk from staring into space, but other than stealing some of her white shirt, they are pulled off by Tetsuya. Mostly.

<<Dinner!>> comes as the loudest collective cry in Svartalfar, and the slaughter hastens after him. Two coral ones still spin around the Reddest Robin, trying to make him trip or dizzy in their wild oscillations. They may be unable to escape, but they intend to make his life hell.

Headed for the Celebrity Path, John is forced on a trail that swings him around the piles of cherry trees and clipped, planted gardens unless he hikes upslope northwest to a lake. When and if he steps off the path, the flowering vines and pretty grasses come alive to try and mummify him. Turns out the range of the huldra in the Fragrance Garden isn't insignificant or much limited by sight. Follow the scent of his enterprise... err, trenchcoat. Cael might be well given to watch where she goes, or hurry.

Cael Becker has posed:
    As the man scrambles up and tries to flee, some of the plants reach up and try to wrap around him. "Shit. SHIT!" How is any of this even happening? Cael pulls a knife out of her boot - yes, people actually do that - and hastily slice the man free of the plants, shoving him back towards the path. "Stay on the path!" Like he needs that warning right now! She scrambles back to her feet as well, sometimes pushing, sometimes pulling the man along as they make it to the dubious safety of a concrete amphitheater, with benches around it, and a plinth with a carved plaque, showing a woman, her arm around a naked small boy, reaching out to touch some plants.
    "Okay. Okay. This officially," she takes a swing at a nearby wandering pixie - are those seriously pixies?! "sucks!"

John Constantine has posed:
He actually had his eyes closed there for a second, John opens them again when he's still right side in after the grab. "Bollocks!" he bellows when he's physically dragged along by the thing. Not sure if Set is why he's still alive or not, he does take a moment to offer up a rather humble, for him, thank you to the Egyptian Death God.

"Stephen! Better come up with a plan!" he calls out, because he's going to hold on as long as he damned well can, following that scene straight into the source. ...and he's no Thor. He stumbles along, hitting his knees a time or two when he gets tripped up by a sidewalk crack only to shove himself up and keep on going.

God of Thunder he's not, but he can sling lightning around like a boss, it's kind of related, right? Thunder, lightning... they go together. That'll be his plan, if no one has a better one.

Stephen Strange has posed:
Shocking Grasp. It would be amusing if Strange actually had played D&D at all.

As it is, he has not. And...it really doesn't matter at this point. Strange doesn't respond to Charlie. Not yet. He has his own little trip to go down...and it is not friendly. The hand goes to the shoulder, as eyes close tightly. It is apparent that there is a battle being waged, and it is internal. Strange...is trying to wrestle control of his senses. The strike must have produced a vision...something he will have to share with others later.

Finally, the eyes open, as Stephen shakes his head clear. "Okay. New plan. Don't get hit." Not much of a plan, to be sure...but after the trip he had, people are lucky he can think coherently. "Give me a moment to come up with something better. They need to be banished, if at all possible."

Is it possible? Only one way to find out...

Morrigan MacIntyre has posed:
Morrigan's seeing horrific things in her vision and that's why someone gets to run off with a bit of white silk. Her head snaps to the side as she tries to fight off whatever it was she saw and that causes her to snarl at the faeries, snapping her fangs at them if they come to close. She'd snack on a faerie if they were not careful (though that is probably like doing acid). She takes a swing at the lights that crowd her vision and a ball of violet energy flies through a group of the tiny bastards.

Her gaze is distracted further more by John's trench coat flapping in the breeze as he runs towards a...black spot? What the hell? "John what are you doing?!" she shouts.

Charlotte Gage-Radcliffe has posed:
    Charlie clears her throat and squints at the path that Cael and John seem to be racing along, upslope towards a goal. Honestly they are going somewhere.

    Charlie just hopes it isn't in a handbasket.

    "Uh.. well banish good.. not hit good...." she points in John's direction. "We should probably help Contantine.. I think that Stone thingee with the metal carving on it is probably important. Just a hunch... I also think they are going to need help."

    <<If I get dragged to Faerie tell Batman to have Zatanna help me since Constantine is probably stuck with me Robin..>>

    "I'm going to help Constantine" She steps away from Stephen and vanishes with a slash of that pinkish smoke. The bang of chaos magic is much closer to Strange this time. It is by no means a normal teleportation spell either. It is like the teenager just used chaos magic to convince reality she was never right by Strange but instead is up with Cael in the amphitheater. Which is.. ridiculous.

Tetsuya Wakao has posed:
Finding himself still being chased, and water not doing more than slowing a few down to cause some mid-air collisions as wet clothes come into play on the pixies, Tetsuya continues to sneak quickly around. It's not a good idea for a ninja to be seen, after all!

At one point he even vanishes into a silhouette seemingly before it's broken as pixies nearly get him again. The ninja bounding away in a burst of ki fueled speed as thousands of pixie hands try to grab his shirt, and a few arrows just barely miss him, too!

Glancing back, the ninja thinks he has enough and gives another bound to get ahead of them a good distance before turning. Taking a breath, he shouts one word. It's in Japanese, but the sudden blast of sound from it is obvious as is the rather loud, "YAMERO." that resounds throughout the path of it. Hopefully it will take out a majority of the deadly pixie cloud and make them think twice. Maybe! Hopefully? Well, the other problem is that doing it leaves him taking a breath afterwards. Which isn't a good thing if any survived that!

Hela has posed:
In the Fragrance Garden, more of those black rainbows come surging forth from the bushes. Plants tossed by the wild waves of force projected through them wither. Blackened leaves wither upon desiccated stems, branches hardened grey. Few large trees enclose the intimate space meant for people to walk and breathe in the herbs, the flowers, the sweet and spiced palette of smells that nature provides. The only one standing tall turns bone white, creaking, adopting what honestly looks straight out of the Hundred Acre Hell that Christopher Robin ran gibbering from until he reached the safe arms of Miskatonic Sanatorium for the Disturbed.

Huldra weaving their dark magic to produce those awful ribbons of dark iridescence send them out in unpredictable surges. It only gets worse with Charlie's wobbly explosions of chaos magic that detonate on impact, destabilising the wider magic. Black explosions rimed in that rotting leaf molder smell turn darker, the foul musk and scaled darkness filling the air. The sound of scales dragging slowly, slowly over the ground becomes almost deafening.

Something /tears/.

Tim Drake has posed:
    Smacking the tip of his staff against a faerie is more satisfying than Red Robin was expecting it to be. He's no Asgardian like Mr. Wizard is calling out for, but maybe in another universe Tim could've gone pro.

    Right. Like he would ever be the type of kid interested in sports.

    He bites back a quip about the Bat-pizza being in his other utility belt--this isn't his home turf, keep a low profile, no snark outside of Gotham--but he does shoot an amused smile in Morrigan's direction as he pivots, sweeps his cape out to clear the air immediately around himself of pixies.

    "<<Good to finally attach a name to a face,>>" he tells Misfit idly as he flips over the stairs leading towards the lily pools, snags a hand around the lampost at the bottom right and manages to propel himself fully over a flower bed and onto the grass.

    Which he has to push his shoulder down and tumble across before he's up to his feet again, but it's a smooth transition. He's just trying to get enough distance between himself and the two pixies after him. "You know, you're really clashing with my whole aesthetic," he says, because whoops, Tim can't help but be a little snarky.

    He swings his staff around again, and this time his thumb is on the switch that completes the internal circuit, electricity popping and crackling off the end as he swings hard towards left field.

    "<<Please don't get kidnapped, Oracle would be really upset with me! This is supposed to just be some fun, casual corporate espionage!>>"

Cael Becker has posed:
    "HOLY- Don't do that to me!" Cael shouts at Charlie, as the unknown figure explodes into existance beside her. "//Jesus//!"
    "HEY!" the man she'd rescued protests.
    Oh, God, he's one of them. "Stay down, sir," Cael instructs him, as she continues to swing at any non-human looking threat that comes their way. She's paying no attention whatsoever to the plaque behind her - it means nothing to her. No, she simply wanted to get away from the grasping plants, and the swarms of pixies or sprites or whatever the //shit// they are don't quite seem as terrible up here.
    "Do you have any idea how the hell we get everyone out of her?"

Hela has posed:
Things are settling down in the Magnolia Plaza, in part to Tetsuya sneaking behind the trees and using the twilit cover and partly because Tim has disturbing accuracy to worry about. The twirling pixies do their best to confound and cut up his outfit, inflicting what pokes and stabs they can with alarming strength. Crackles do not make the serpentine one happy; it convulses, light going coral-white-coral-black. Thud. Down it goes.

The others still sneaking up and chasing the ninja have a momentary reason to pause when he throws his voice. Literally kind of does. Being a flying creature has disadvantages when force topples them like bowling pins.

Morrigan's spell manages to hold around the area, though the wards may have a limited shelf life. So too John's at the Lily Pond Terrace when an oily prismatic gout comes crashing down with the force of the Horseshoe Falls at Niagara. Not much can be seen, distorting the air in vertical ripples. The sound is like a freight train, hissing louder, scraping fast and swift. The forest and the wider Botanic Park radiate that heaving rasp. A wrongness, blight spreading out across the battered lens that divides two worlds.

Or nine, if you listen to Fandral's drinking stories.

Add a dog in a fedora with some fire, and the sound can be summed up as 'this is bad.'

John Constantine has posed:
"Stephen!" Hurry the fuck up! John continues to let that ribbon he's got by the tail lead the way. He knows this place and has a pretty good idea of where he's being led, but he still doesn't let go. He runs along holding that ribbon like a little kite string attached to a very sturdy kite caught by a very strong wind.

"Come on you little fuckin' *bitch*, where we goin'?" Yes, he's talking to the thing, or maybe to whatever's behind it.

"Bloody *fucking* hell..." That's his response to the tearing the musk, the darkness, the all of it. He still doesn't let go. "Charlie!" Yeah, he knows her signature, remembers it. "Don't *do* that again!"

"STEPHEN! I hope that just means you didn't shower! That SMELL!"

In for a penny, in for a pound, John's NOT letting go of that thing. If it's into that void that it drags him, so be it. He just closes his eyes and whispers, "I love you, Meg, I'll be back." It may not be a Vow with a capitol V. But it is a *promise*.

Stephen Strange has posed:
Well....people keep wanting a wizard. Might as well put on a show.

And...try as Charlie might...but she just can't get rid of Strange that easily. Rather than use chaos magic, however, he just simply opens a portal, walks in to it...and out to the amphitheater. Charlie even earns a sideward glance as Strange makes the two step trip.

Then...there's the issue. Big gaping hole into the gardens. Yeah. That's not good at all. Some things just beg for action...and this black abyss is just begging to be filled.

Which...is not happening this evening.

"John? Where the hell are..." The sentence is not finished...as it is quite audible on where exactly John is. Barreling for said hole. "Oh, no. If anyone is going to jump into a black hole of uncertain doom, it is me. And that is not happening..."

With that, the hands lift up, as Strange turns his full attention to the gaping maw before him. Despite John's yelling (or perhaps because of it) the incantation is swift. No flowery flourishes or grandiose exclamations. Just down and dirty spellcasting.

And...the spell he is weaving is that of containment. Banishment. He said that the pixies need to go home. He is doing his damnest to make that happen. No neutrino streams crossed at the base hoping that the world doesn't implode....

Charlotte Gage-Radcliffe has posed:
    "Okay Constantine.. also Codenames remember!" she sounds back to John as he gets dragged towards her.

    Well if it is any consolation to Cael, Misfit definitely doesn't look like one of the glowing lights or Faeries. "I appreciate you not throwing a wine cooler at me or shooting me." her chipperness is back, it really is hard to keep it down.

    "Though uhm.. the way out was back down the path the other direction. Not up here with all these bad faeries and pixies and whatever they are. Sorry." she sounds sorry and yet somehow still chipper.

    She turns slowly around looking at the amphitheater and all that now. "HmmmMmm" like she is detectivating. "Oh." as Stephen appears out of his own portal. "Hi again, glad you can teleport too." she notes and she is glad. Backup is good. She needs adult supervision. John Constantine doesn't count. "The faeries are hiding in the bushes... let me show you."

    Charlie fishes around in a pouch in her utlity belt and palms nine small spheres. Which she starts twisting until they click and then winging them as hard as she can at various bushes scattered about with pretty darn good accuracy. "Darrrrk Vengeance!" there is even a little hssss. One must use your catchphrase. Those little spheres start to explode into flames as they hit and pop off. Bat grenades. Also who let her play with matches

     o/~ Disco inferno! ?Burn baby burn.. burn that mother down! o/~ she sings as she spins and chucks another one.

Tetsuya Wakao has posed:
Seeing something that looks vaguely like some sort of void off in the distance, Tetsuya glares at the pixies that he just sent tumbling and looks prepared to do so again.

Then he tries the peaceful thing, "Enough with the deadly game of tag!" He shouts at them in English, "If you can understand me, go back home or show me how to get you home! If not, I will shout again and destroy every one of you! Now what will it be?"

Tetsuya continues to channel his ki, but is starting to look winded. This has been going on for a while, and he doesn't even know if he has enough to shout all of them down again. Like seriously. There's a lot. And he's just one man in this case.

Morrigan MacIntyre has posed:
"Oh that is definitely no good." Morrigan states as she bats away a small swarm of pixies that were in the way with a wave of her arm and a pulse of magic. She then starts to run, just a little behind Strange, "What is the plan, Doc?!" she calls out to him. Neither John nor Stephen should jump in a hole really. That's a bad plan! The Irish woman is gathering all the energy that she can just in case they have to go toe to toe with a god...again.

She didn't like this, no. She doesn't stop the running though, "John, don't you jump into anything!" she calls.

Tim Drake has posed:
    At some point, Red Robin's baseball fantasy devolves into him just sprinting across the grass. "Not the face, please," he says, because apparently dashing like a cheetah towards the tree-line isn't winding him enough to keep him quiet. "Apparently I have a gig with GQ coming up!"

    Forgive him for making dumb in-jokes to himself when there's absolutely no one here that will appreciate them. He's not exactly got much else to do, though he does chuck a stun grenade over his shoulder at the other coral faerie still on his tail just before he throws himself into the brush.

    Somehow, he emerges out the other side without a scratch.

    The faeries have given his cape a sort of 'I bought these jeans pre-ripped and they were $100' kind of look but his armor is rated pretty well against blades, so aside for the occasional pixie-related nick he's just fine. Or at least, too focused on getting himself to the dot marked 'Misfit' on his HUD's mini-map to think about any minor pains he might be feeling right now. Adrenaline helps a lot too.

    "<<Misfit are you burning down this garden right now!>>" is what rushes out of Tim's mouth as he closes in.

Cael Becker has posed:
    "I reserve the right to fling a wine cooler later! When I get my hands on one." That's all they're good for, really. Still - quipping aside, Cael continues to concentrate on swatting away at the little airborne monsters that continue, from time to time, to assail her. God, she hates this. She hates all of this. Ever last bit of it.
    "Sir - stay the hell down!" she adds towards the man she'd dragged up here as he seems intent on climbing to his feet.
    More and more people appear, and the woman beside her is throwing - explosives? "Why the hell do you even have those?!" she asks - though there's something in Cael's voice that's more amused than alarmed by this fact. I mean, given everything that's going on? Charlie's little bombs are low on her list of concerns.

Hela has posed:
Blackness spills through the sky, deepening ripples fought back by a growing copper sparkle from the Sorcerer Supreme. Stephen bears the title for a reason and the sheer volume of magic he can pull up from the leyline running beneath Greenwich Village and all the way to the Rocky Mountains would destroy a lesser-prepared soul. It commands a cost out of him, the kind that makes a man's hair stand on end.

The botanic gardens lose more and more light. It is no mere act of the lights going out; they burn in the pavilions and the restaurant on site, but cast no adequate spark to hold the tide at bay. Charlie's bat-grenades and Tim's lightning-wreathed sticks form other atolls in the forest. When the explosives come down in the Fragrance Garden, primal screams rake up the spine to awaken memories of old from the lizardbrain. A portion of the mind that remains things that went bump in the night comes awake.

Hela has posed:
John reaches for the void. The instant he touches it, he turns to ash. His body comes undone in a breath. Cinders hang in concentric rings from the cast stone of contact.

Another ripple, and they're blown through the forest, splattering on anyone in their range.

Hela has posed:
Golden flames lick across Strange's wrists. The Cloak runs backward to the breeze or the explosion.

The Black Bifrost comes slamming down atop the Sorcerer Supreme in all its fantastic, unmitigated horror. Black-stained rainbows transform the waterfall rush from on high into a pillar slammed into a mortal man with an incandescent, near divine wrath. Cracks form around him, soot-streaked facets splintering in a spreading cobweb forty feet high and ten feet wide.

Creation gives with an almighty inrushing splintering.

Hela has posed:
The mortals alone so close have the means to see the bronze plaque shift.

An owl takes flight, shifting in bronze detail to a crone holding out her hands, then back to a mother hunched over her swollen belly. Bronze shapes shouldn't move.

Tarnish blighting the edges convulses, spread and beat back, crawling up the sides of the metal rectangle. A torrent caught in miniature remains confined to the frame.

The child in that image is gone. No infant in swaddling clothes. In its place is a wolf, particoloured, black on one side and white on the other. A leering grin widens, and it throws its head back.

The night shatters with a hysterical cackle.

Charlotte Gage-Radcliffe has posed:
    <<I mean yes I am burning this mother down. The bushes are full of evil tinkerbelles Red Robin. Fire. Bushes. Seemed like the obvious way to go with all of this. Am I wrong?>> of course Cael can hear her talking to herself. So can Strange for that matter. Honestly though she is probably maybe not talking to herself. Though she absolutely was singing to herself.

    She shudders as she feels that primal scream she flinches a bit and throws another grenade at a push lighting it up with the incendiary explosives. "UUGH!" no song just fire. Which is about when she sees John actually reach for the void, turn to ash, and his ashes get blown across her face and goggles.

    Like a god damned soggy black wine cooler.

    "John!!"

    Of course then the thing slams down around the Wizard and Charlie just gawks.

    Well, for all she can see right now, she has ashes on her goggles too. John's ashes.

    She wipes at her face with her sleeve twisting around to see the plaque as the night cackles. <<Uh.. Robin. Running is a good idea... I think>>

Tim Drake has posed:
    Note to self: refresh Charlie on fire safety procotols. But later, because priorities.

    As soon as Red Robin comes through the brush on the other side, he realizes it's much darker than it ought to be. Not that he's any kind of stranger to operating under cover of darkness, but this isn't... it's different. The night in Gotham feels, sometimes, like being wrapped up in a comfortable blanket. Familiar.

    This isn't that at all.

    He reaches out and finds Misfit more by feel than by sight, but he manages to clamp a hand around her arm. There's ash in his hair and on his shoulders, though Tim can only guess at its source given he's missed getting a glimpse of a body being unmade. Tim is still holding onto Charlie when the Black Bifrost slams down, and even as the rush of energy has his cape rippling and his free arm instinctively forced up to cover his face, he's pulling at her.

    In the middle of it all he might even be trying to speak, but his words are drowned out.

    And then it's over. Wasn't there a figure standing there before? Charlie says to run. He squeezes her bicep once and then nods, swiping ash from his face as he turns on his heel and throws himself back into the brush and beyond.

    Freak out later. Get the hell out of here first. Priorities.

Tetsuya Wakao has posed:
Tetsuya, finding himself without foes, is now leaning heavily over as he puts his hands on his knees. He looks around at all the destruction caused, then over at the Black Bifrost. Seeing someone or something near it, the ninja starts to stumble towards it and finally just leans on a bench.

Removing the porcelain mask to resting on his head has him looking very much at that Black Bifrost. It's not natural, he can tell, and he's watching for more of what might come out of it that he has to take care of now. that thing is... very, very dangerous. And his job is to protect Earth, not go to fight whatever that is that is probably so far beyond him it's insane.

Now the ninja was wondering what to do here, and what to do with some of the heroes that obviously helped with all this but are wanting questions and he's fairly sure he heard 'Constantine' who isn't around and... yep.

Tetsuya finally says, "I can't even have a picnic in this city."

Morrigan MacIntyre has posed:
Morrigan sees John turn to dust and there is a moment she wonders if that tricky fae concoction is still in her system, quite possibly! But this felt way too real. "John!" she shouts. And it's like the deep breath before the plunge before Strange gets hit with the dark bifrost. "Doc!" it's something that comes out worried, because the sorcerer supreme just got hit with it.

She couldn't worry about that entirely right now, it fell to her to make sure that things were sealed. And it was going to be something done reluctantly given they just lost John /and/ Stephen. The Irish woman plants her feet and starts to chant, bringing forth the violet energy that she works with, but this time the black tendrils return, but that's not a concern. The energy hits the bifrost and Strange's spell that was started starts to complete itself. It's not going to be a happy trip for people, but...the fate of the world came before other things.

Morrigan pours all the energy she can into breaking it down and at the end there is a halo that forms around her head as the bifrost is made from manifesting fully. The woman drops to her knees as the last of it starts to fade. That halo turns gold and before very long it starts to fade, slipping away in the wind.

She leans forward and plants her hands in the dirt as she tries to calm herself and try to figure out where to go from here.

Hela has posed:
The gods are silent, if they ever listened.

The night is still, the sounds of life slow to filter through the stalwart sentry larches and magnolias.

Dead pixies aren't long before they too turn to withered moss and fungus, poisonous of course. The huldra's corpses are twisted black in fire, limbs reaching out to terrorize children with tales of evil Hallowe'en trees.

The world is cracked, if ever it was whole.

Somewhere, sobbing blends into the wind. Fire burns among lovingly planted herbs and cottage perennials. Smoke spirals in a serpentine dance.

The mortals live. Human witnesses, conquering the savage darkness of Svartalfheim. Why and at what cost shall be yet guessed.

Overhead, a wide arc of the sky no longer shines with pinpoint stars. Even through the light pollution, they are not there.

A livid wound of the void hangs like a bleak smile. How true were those elfshot visions?

Cael Becker has posed:
    Cael will process this later over beers. No - whiskey. Tonight is a whiskey night. The strange little fae lights are gone. A man has turned to dust. Another has splintered and shattered. The man Cael had dragged up with her to 'safety' has run away - blithering - into the night. Something about Satan and the end times - she doesn't have time for this shit.
    "I can't- I just- What even-" Fuck. Figure it out later, Cael. What needs doing? "Ma'am, are you alright? Ma'- oh. You're Barnes' friend." Once Cael has assured herself that Mo is not in need of help, Agent Cael Becker moves on, providing first aid to those in need, or using a commanding voice to get those still panicking in the gardens to leave in an orderly fashion.
    This stuff should not be happening.