8984/Metropolisn't: The Anomaly Garden

Metropolisn't: The Anomaly Garden
Date of Scene:	07 December 2021
Location:	GPS error: location unclear.
Synopsis:	The heroes enter the Anomaly Garden to find a missing Navy base. Wonderland has truly come to Metropolis.
Cast of Characters:	Donna Troy, Garth, Nadia Pym-van Dyne, Gar Logan, Victor Stone, Kaida Connolly, Terry O'Neil, Kian, Gilgamesh, Caitlin Fairchild

---

Donna Troy has posed:
    The media has been having fun speculating on the cause of all the weirdness that has been occurring in Metropolis. There have been a great run of stories and they've been reveling in it, but the consensus today is that the Weirdness has simply gone /too far/ this time. This is not a curious story that makes for popular coverage, it's a national emergency.

    Several square miles of Metropolis have /gone/, replaced by a huge knot garden. Best estimates are that forty thousand people, military and civilian, are missing.

    Hobb Naval base in Bakerline is the second largest naval shipyard serving the Atlantic; the Navy is in uproar. Where yesterday there was a large military installation, there are now dense hedges stretching a hundred feet into the air. The hedges are just the visible manifestation of these barriers though -- attempts to burn, blast or drive through the hedges have failed miserably, and one Osprey VTOL craft and a pair of F-35 fighter jets have been lost attempting overflights and crashing into invisible barriers aligned to the hedges below. Cautious probing of the barriers has shown them to continue at least to 12,000 feet, and satellite imagery shows the hedges continue inside the perimeter in a complicated maze.

    On the river, billions of dollars of navy ships have turned into giant paper boats, and are slowly taking on water. An amphibious assault is in planning on the waterside entrance to the hedge maze by the Marines, but . On land, assault teams have already entered the maze through the north and east openings, but contact has been lost with both. Word has gone out to the Justice League and Titans requesting assistance.

    By the eastern entrance, Donna drops out of the sky leading a small group of Titans. Some distance away a police line keeps gawkers from getting too close. Ahead, the entrance to the knot garden seems peaceful. Metal gates are set into the hedge, swinging on their hinges where the assault team that entered earlier blew them off. Beyond another hedge-wall can be seen as the knot maze turns both left and right. From time to time tumbleweeds tumble past left-to-right. Satellite imagery downloaded to the team's T-Coms indicates that the weeds point the way -- a right turn at this entrance seems to be the direction to take to get to the center of the maze, and nobody seems to have a better plan yet than to attempt that.

    <<Some of us are just arriving at the eastern entrance," Donna announces over comms. "Anyone else on site? Vorp, you out there? You're our Wonderland expert and I refuse to believe this isn't Wonderland's fault, even if it's not your fault."

Garth has posed:
Garth flies in Donna's wake. He's clad in a shimmering scaled bodysuit, refracting the light prismatically from a base of seafoam and purple. His dark hair has grown long during his recent time in the sea and flows behind him as he flies.

<<I'll check in on the amphibious assault> he says, pointing towards the river and tilting his way towards it. <If there's any way to get there by river or by sea, I'll find it.> he says into the comms. He takes a moment to send out a telepathic call to nearby Marine life, seeing if there has been anything observed by creatures in the vicinity and if they know of any entrances that have been left unguarded below the waterline.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"We're off to the see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of.." Sings Nadia as she descends out of the sky flying towards the hedge maze. "Wait wrong story." It's an easy mistake to make for someone who didn't grow up around weird surrealist fiction. Not that Terry hasn't done his best to remedy that.

She lands outside of the Maze wearing her Waspette armor, buzzing bio-synthetic wings slowly coming to a stop and then retracting.

<<It's not Vorpal's fault Donna.>> Nadia interjects over the Comm. <<We're being invaded by Victorian England. I saw it in a sattelite feed that I definitely had legitimate access to. Some guy with a portal color coded similar to Vorpal's but more reddish, in a tophat.>> She seems confident in this assassment. <<There was another strange green portal too. But it didn't trigger the dimensional sensors like Vorpal and the other one do. I was going to write a report, but then all of this happened and we were mobilizing!>> There's probably some useful information somewhere in all of that.

Gar Logan has posed:
<<It's totally a Wonderland thing,>> Beast Boy remarks over the comms. <<And this is the worst one yet.>>

He's been flying up around the thing a little bit, but actually making contact with it in a way that seems safe is not something he's attempted yet. Given the imagery they're getting of it, both from outside it and above thanks to the satellite shots, getting to the center may not actually be all that difficult.

Dealing with whatever's waiting for them there, depending on what it is, may be a different story.

He lands near Donna, back in his usual appearance and costume, hands at his hips. <<They really need to chill with the fertilizer. So what are we doing?>>

Victor Stone has posed:
    <<The guy in the top hat might've been Jervis Tetch,>> Vic notes as he flies in alongside Nadia. They've been working this problem together, after all. <<Leader of Gotham's Wonderland Gang. But... it also might not. Hard to say. There's a bunch of magic getting thrown around, here, and I gotta admit I don't entirely understand it all.>>

    He lands near the others, rocket shoes coming to a stop. <<Into the maze, I'm guessing? Head for the center?>> He's not entirely happy. He still hasn't really figured out the method to the Wonderland madness, if there even is one.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
Arriving via 'Air Donna', Kaida is on Donna's shoulder and casually hops off when they arrive. Really, before they arrive. She actually is roughly a hundred feet up when she goes "Whee!" and leaps off, spinning in the air and then doing a superhero landing as she does and grins as she stands up, looking all cool in her own mind. With her scarf flickering out behind her, she generally would look a lot cooler if she weren't only six inches tall. She listens to the mini-com and then hmms.

<Sounds to me like a piece of Wonderland decided to invade. I mean, it kinda stands to reason that if ol' Vorp can do all kinds of weird glitter based magic, then the Madhatter has tea based magic.> She nods her head and looks around to see who else has arrived on the scene. She then pulls up the 'tiny' screen she carries. Honestly, it's tiny by most people's standards but for her it's a large tablet. She types into it and then puts her hand up to the com in her large ear.

<You here yet, Gil? I can't remember if you can fly or whatver. Just that you're tough and you can cook.> Apparently, Kaida had sent the man a message before they left. Why not turn a national emergency into a social call? It makes perfect sense, right? Then Kaida turns and smiles at Donna giving her a thumbs up.

"Don't worry, I called the legendary Gilgamesh to help us." She nods her head, "He wanted to meet the Titans and I figured with him being an ancient king and divine bull slayer or what have you, he could help out." She nods her head, "Hope you don't mind."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
<<I'm here,>> Vorpal says, staring at the western entrance with an expression that Vic has seen before, back at the tower when that funny ittle clock man appeared. The western entrance is interesting, to say the east, as the gates are not metal. They are a rather tasteful set of French barn doors. These, too, have been blasted open. <<Yes... this is not normal.>> The under-statement of the year.

He has left the Rabbit Hole open so that other members of the team can come with him. With a nervous glance back at those with him, Vorpal begins walking, realizing that his team-mates assume that he has the home-field advantage, which would be true, if his memories of Wonderland - his father's, in fact- weren't completely vague and fragmentary. So it could be said that his available data is spuriouser and spuriouser.

<<We're going in. Whatever you do, just remember that very little is as it seems. Except when it is.>> Extremely helpful there, O'Neil. Nadia's singing makes him jump a little, and he adds, "Let's not get our stories mixed up. One of them is bad enough."

This part of the maze has its winding paths- but there is something other than tumbleweeds that help point a feasible path: singing.

There's soft, gentle singing, like a small choir of delicate mezzos and sopranos harmonizing to words that are rather muffled and hard to hear through the greenery.

"I guess... we follow the music?" he says, looking at those coming with him, and he starts again, his ears picking the general direction and doing his best to guide them in it. Occasionally he has to back up and take a different road because of a dead end, but they do end up making some progress. Remarking on what Victor said, he sighs. "I was hoping it would be Jarvis Tetch..."

Kian has posed:
    One of the many advantages of telepathy is that Kian's kinfolk were under no illusions as to how completely not kidding he was when he told them to stay at the Tower, or if they needed to go flying, to stay above the island only.
    Also, he took Shiri's translator because it'll be nice for once to not have the worry of misunderstanding or being misunderstood in the field.  He also wasn't kidding when he told Donna she was only getting two of the three translators back.
    <<Let me guess, magic.  Everyone says it has rules like science, but I can't figure them out.  We really can't fly over this?  I mean, how high up can it go?>>  It might be a little weird hearing Kian sound fluent, but it's probably not as weird as a huge magical maze in the middle of Metropolis.

Gilgamesh has posed:
Clad in gold and black, Gilgamesh soars towards the scene of the strangeness. Now, he's dealt with some weirdness in his 52,000 years running around Earth but this particular incident might take the cake. He pauses in flight as he nears the eastern entrance and descends to the ground, waving at the folks already assembled, "Hey Kaida. Greetings everyone." His feet hit the ground solidly and he stands up straight, <<Is this thing on? Sounds like it is. This is Gilgamesh, just let me know where you need assistance. Over."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Gilgamesh?" Donna responds to Kaida, blinking slightly. She takes in the appearance of the ancient hero and gives a mental shrug. She of all people isn't going to question the appearance of someone out of myth too readily. Whether he is indeed the ancient king of Ur is a question that can wait for another time; he can fly at least. "Greetings," she says to him. "I'm Troia. The green guy is Beast Boy. The guy still in the air is Tempest."

    Tempest's investigation shows the Marines in place on an amphibious landing craft, a safe distance from the hedge by the river's edge. They are sending drones into the gap on that edge of the hedge maze, but don't show any signs of intending an immediate entry. His communication with the local sea-life provides him with a confusing cacophony of piscine complaints; it's hard to make out what the complaints are about because fish tend not to be very good at explaining things outside their normal experience, but it seems to be something to do with oysters and probably not worth worrying about.

    <<Okay, you taking the lead there Vic?>> Donna asks into the comms. <<We're going to try making our way into the middle of the maze from here. Keep in contact and see you in the middle. Last one to solve the maze buys the pizzas. Nadia, I'm pretty sure that Victorian England didn't have time travel, whatever H.G Wells said. Kian, unknown. We've been told that it's at least as high as helicopters can hover, but doesn't reach orbit.>>

    Donna takes one look back at the crowd, then adjusts her sword belt and unhooks her lasso, making herself ready, and marches towards the entrance to the maze. "Let's go everyone," she says.

    Crossing the threshhold into the hedge maze tingles slightly, and looking back the world beyond seems shrouded in mist; the people in the crowd are still visible, but only vaguely. The air inside smells fresher and less polluted than is normal for Metropolis, and the sound of birdsong can be heard everywhere. There's an eerie feeling, but nothing immediately seems threatening. The hedges are perfectly manicured, as if well cared for by invisible gardeners, but the ground below the heroes' feet is churned into a mud -- it looks as if many, many people have passed this way in recently. Donna gives a shrug, turns right, and marches onwards. "Eyes peeled and ears... whatever you do with ears," Donna says. "We have no idea what to expect in here, but it'll probably be dangerous. We're looking for any hint to what has happened to the navy base that's supposed to be here, or any of the people who have gone missing. Not sure what to do if we find them, evacuating forty thousand people is going to be tough, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

Gar Logan has posed:
As Beast Boy crosses into the entrance of the hedge maze and looks over his shoulder, he frowns at the shift in what he can see. "Uh, did things just start to look like we ended up in 'The Mist' back there?" he asks, to ensure it isn't just him. Then he looks down at the muddy path forward, and with him barefoot he makes a face. "I should really start thinking about boots to go with this," he says, plucking at part of his costume. To account for this, he hops up to Donna's shoulder as a meerkat and gestures dramatically ahead. "Lead the way! To the middle!"

Kaida Connolly has posed:
    Following after, Kaida walks in with her bare feet and hardly misses a beat. She rushes in and immediately her ears begin to swivel and move and that mouse nose begins to sniff. Mice are one of the best sniffers on Earth. Wanna find something? Find a mouse. Bloodhounds be damned! She is already traveling about and sniff sniff sniffing away. She doesn't get out of sight or travel to far away but she's zipping about the group sniffing at hedges and the ground and the air.
    "Don't worry, Gil! I know you're probably rusty! I'll show ya the ropes and such about how to get into the heroing business." She nods as she zips over to him and pats his ankle before racing past Donna and looking around.
    "I'll see if I can't smell anything or hear anything." She nods her head, "And you keep your ears on a swivel, obviously!" She swivels her ears about before wiggling them and giggling and then zipping ahead by about ten yards and peering around a corner.

Gilgamesh has posed:
"It's nice to meet you all," Gilgamesh says simply to the group. At least those he can speak with easily. He doesn't seem shy, at least.

As he steps into the hedge maze he shudders slightly, looking around at all angles before shrugging his shoulders. Kaida's friendly words get a grin from the immortal warrior, "Thank you, Kaida. I appreciate it." Still smiling he says, "It's good to be working with you." A brief pause, "All of you."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
The team eventually arrives at a wide clearing from which several forking paths radiate. One path has a sign that bears a symbol of squiggly likes that resemble water. Another path has a sign that bears a honeycomb, and a third path leads off from a sign that has the skull-and-crossbones image that one would associate with pirate flags, or poisonous liquids. The path from which the Titans came has a sign that bears open doors.

Right ahead of them, against one of the hedge walls, is an enormous door. This door is barred, however, by the presence of an even larger man, a veritable giant with a fearsome overbite sitting at a table that may be a little bit too small for him.Despite his enormous frame, however, the man appears to be gentle- or maybe that is an impression he is giving off because he is sobbing hysterically into his hands, a small sandwich of sliced ham and cheese all but forgotten on a dainty porcelain plate at the table.

The singing that lured them there can now be heard very clearly:

~Plait, sir, d'amour, n'est dure- qu'un meaux mort-~

The feminine voices come from an octet of lilies who, for some reason, appear to be standing straight up on their beds and singing plaintively to the man, as if to soothe him. But alas, all they seem to do is make him cry louder still.

Among the lilies there is a hyacinth, a rather imposing one who appears to be the speaker of the group. Upon noticing the arrival of the group, she turns her bright frame to them and calls out to them in anguish, with an almost ridiculously heavy French accent: "Ah! Ah! Poor monsieur! His pain- we cannot be good enough to bring back Madame- you must help!"

Victor Stone has posed:
    <<Terry's taking point, Donna, but I've got lead,>> Vic confirms. Just in case something /bad/ happens. He follows Terry into the maze, shifting his shoulders and glancing back as he steps past what used to be French barn doors. He frowns and shakes himself, turns back to keep following Terry.

    When they arrive in the clearing, Cyborg takes all of this in with a slow blink blink blink. He's seen a lot of weird things, it's just... really it's the 'Disney movie come to life' feel of all of this that's a little weird. But, when in Wonderland...

    "How can we help?" he asks the hyacinth. Simple, straightforward question. He'll let his companions do more poking around.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
After making her initial interjection report, Nadia has gone silent on the comms for the time being. She follows after Terry, Vic is in charge, this is all perfectly fine with her because she is quite busy marveling at all of the strange and magical sights around. "Janet has some mushrooms that make you see things like this, they're only hallucinations though... usually."

"I need to reread that book again don't I?" Nadia asks marveling at the clearing. "Oooh honeycomb! Maybe there are bees that way! Magic bees! Or look that way is poison! Or maybe pirates! Poison pirates?" She is left pondering that thought for a moment. The squiggly sign barely seems to register compared to the interest shown the other two.

And then she is looking at the giant blocking the door and frowns a bit, "He seems sad, something about love. Maybe we can make him happy again!" She inches forward, extending her wings to fly up closer to his face. "Monsieur, quel est le probleme?" Because the Red Room teaches French.

Kian has posed:
    Kian's feathers fluff out and re-settle as he enters the maze, and as soon as there's room he takes to the air.  He doesn't go too high, just enough for his sense of well-being.  And maybe he might see something up there that's not visible from the ground.  He may have read the Alice books that Terry gave him -- but that's a long way from either understanding or internalizing them.
    "We have enough strange things going on, Nadia, magic bees are not likely to help," he comments dryly, looking for a perch somewhere along the hedge wall.
    He doesn't expect to sense anything, but it's becoming a habit to try to pick up any strange energy signatures in the area.  And he kind of hopes his kinfolk are just having a nice flight, napping, eating, pretty much anything that isn't anywhere near the monitors.  He doesn't want to have to explain this.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna arches an eyebrow at Gar, and gives him an amused smirk. "Great, now I have muddy shoulders. Yeah, things looked weird when we crossed through. It's possible this place isn't entirely in the world we know. Not sure. We'll know more when Rae has finished casting a few spells. Don't worry, if she figures out a way to revert the spell she'll warn us to get out first."

    She crouches down, careful not to dislodge MeerGar, pressing her fingers into the soil and rubbing the dirt between her fingers. "Been a lot of people through here," she says. "And horses," she adds after studying the imprints. "Recently. "

    She stands again and continues walking - occasionally referring to her T-Com's screen to keep an eye on the route. They have been half expecting the pathways to change before them, but so far the map they have seems to correspond to what they are seeing on the ground. "Sa-nu nakba imru?" she asks Gilgamesh in a quiet aside as the walk the path together. Her grammar and pronunciation is weird, but Gilgamesh will recognize it as at least a passable attempt at the Babylonian form of Akkadian, and it's a language he may not have heard spoken for some time unless he has spent time with historians lately -- but it's easy enough to know what she's asking. She's asking him 'Are you He Who Saw the Deeps?' - a traditional formula for the Sumerian hero. It's a fair guess that she doesn't really know the language, but wants to find out if he does.

    As the group moves deeper into the maze, they slowly become aware of a faint, distant sound somewhere ahead -- a sound of raised voices, and of combat. Donna unslings her shield from her back and straps it to her arm as she walks.

    After a few more minutes, Donna comes to a halt and holds up a hand. "Kaida... do you smell anything?" she says at a whisper. "I think I hear horses not far ahead of us, but I think the riders are trying to keep quiet. Might be an ambush. Next left I think. Gar and Kaida scout while the rest of us stop before the turn?" She suggests. She crouches, and starts to move slowly and stealthily forwards.

    Some distance beyond the turn, son visible to any scouts who follow Donna's suggestion, are a group of eight horsemen -- but these are no normal horsemen. Rather they are bipedal horses, dressed in the full plate armor of a medieval knight, each armed with a sword and a lance. Their feet trot uneasily backwards and forwards as if not entirely under the control of their bodies, and the horsemen are lined up across the width of this maze-passage, clearly awaiting an enemy to turn the corner and face their charge.

Gar Logan has posed:
"You sure about that?" the green meerkat asks as far as Raven's spells go. He only had a very small amount of mud by the time he scaled Donna. And, he holds some of her hair for balance, making her his Pumbaa for the moment. At least she smells better.

"Yeah, and there's no sign of them, which ain't a good thing. Now what did you just say?" That follow-up comes after she's spoken to Gilgamesh, who he's looking at with a mix of curiosity and confusion. Maybe he's not up on the legends. Maybe the whole thing is just a lot to work out.

"Yeah. I'll go be a fly on the vine wall. I'll see what the buzz is all about." He's heard the sounds of combat of some kind, but there are questions as to what's causing it. Off he goes, for a look around as an even smaller thing than Kaida. The sight before him is enough that he mutters to himself, "Well, this sure isn't My Little Pony come to life. They seem weird to you?" He's looking mouse-wards.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
"Horses? Not quite though. Something off." Kaida sniffs at the air, she heard Donna whisper something at Gilgamesh but she doesn't understand it. The mouse girl is quite intelligent but languages her not her forte. She instead focuses on what is, and that is both scouting, fighting and biochemistry. Seeing as there are no biochemical interactions that require immediate study, she pulls her shield and her sword out and zips around the corner.

Generally speaking she is quite hard to spot. Even more generally speaking. When someone sees a small animal moving along a hedge, they ignore it for the most part. Acknowledge there's a mouse but not typically notice more about it than that. Of course, sometimes, that isn't true so she is prepared.

<<Uh, we have horse knights. Like, very literal horses on their hindlegs that are also knights.>> She states into her com quietly and eyes them carefully. Her blade, stylized to be somewhere in between East and West, a Katana's blade with a hilt that is more befitting a knight is turned back along her form, held above her head in a ready strike.

<<They appear ready to charge but also seem kinda off. Like they aren't in their right mind. I'm gonna try to get behind 'em if I can.>> She then looks up at Gar and looks ahead, "Almost as weird as your puns."

Gilgamesh has posed:
When greeted in the ancient tongue Gilgamesh replies in it, trying to keep it simple, "I am He who Saw the Deeps." He is quick to drop back into English for everyone's sake, laughing a bit, "I haven't heard that spoken in quite some time. You're a knowledgeable person." There's even a hint of pride in his tone.

The description Kaida gives gets Gil to raise an eyebrow in surprise before he proceeds somewhat further in to get a look for himself. There's a nod when he sees the horse knights and the ancient man flexes his finger before balling them up into fists.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Vorpal frowns, "Nadia, you are eating /what/ from Janet...?"

The giant glances at Nadia with large, watery eyes. He seems completely surprised at being addressed in a language he understand, and immediately launches into a brief, anguished explanation: "Ah! Que j'ai perdu Madame! Elle etait la," he gestures at the other side of the table, where the little plate and sandwich are located, and an empty chairm "Et d'un coupe, Zas! Je la perds! Et maintenant ma vie n'est que pain perdu! Ah! Ah!"

He descends into sobbing once more, hiding his face.

The helpful hyacynth, stemming from a compassionate place, answers Victor after the man's tirade, speaking in her thick French accent: "Madame is gone, you see, and he does not have enough for his pain... but that you could return her to us, it would do great things to his boheur." She sighs in solidarity with the brokenhearted man, wilting a fraction. The lilies do the same.

As far as strange energies are concerned, /everything/ in the area is sending off strange energy signatures. But Kian will sense that the two strongest signatures in this smorgasbord of crazy are coming from the giant man, and somewhere off into the path with the squiggly-line-sign.

"Where did Madame... go? Where can we find her?" Vic's sure this straightforward approach isn't going to work forever, but so long as it does, he'll keep at it.

"D'accord, s'il vous plait dites-nous. Ou est-elle allee?" Nadia asks the Giant. "Ne pleure pas! On va aller la chercher tout de suite!" She looks back to the others hopefully. "His love is missing! We need to find her for him! Or maybe he just wants to eat French Toast, I'm sure it is one of those things!"

Kian does his level best to ignore the 'normal' strange signals and focus on the two strong ones, the giant, and the path beyond the squiggly sign. His teammates seem to have the giant covered, so he flits over to the entrance to the 'squiggle-path'.

He does not enter it, not alone. He is supposed to be the level-headed one, isn't he? Instead, he just tries to see and sense what he can from that way.

He chuckles softly to himself, and brushes a hand lightly over the leafy wall. "You're taking care of the giant, I'm checking out the path... is this where your phrase 'hedge our bets' came from?"

The giant is too shaken by sobbing to answer, but the hyacynth helpfully says, "What is needed, is enough to complete his pain... she went ou?" she shakes her head and shrugs- which is quite a feat for a flower, "We did not see. Our beds are soft, we were asleep. But we heard a flutter, like... des ailes." She gestures with a sepal towards the path marked by the squiggly lines, "Maybe she's by the swimming pooool. Monsieur can't go there..." and they are, after all, rooted to the spot.

Down that path, past the sign, it becomes evident why the giant can't get there. There is a door, but it is tiny by his size. It will barely let Vic through. Vorpal walks over to Kian and nods at the door, "I think your instincts were right... we might need to..." he gestures towards the door. And frowns. Kian should be able to fit, with his wings folded. Vic will need to crouch. "And the only reason I am not smacking you for that pun is because all of this is both too strange... and too /familiar/, and I am starting to get spooked."

Victor Stone has posed:
    Vic /braces/ at Kian's pun, but... "Well, at least it didn't turn into a casino," he mutters, and then heads over to peer down the path at the door. "Swimming pool it is then."

    As they head for that door, he says, "We've got this, Terry. Even if it's... weird, and spooky, we've got this." Whether or not he's /completely/ confident, he's /projecting/ confidence. Keeping spirits up.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia laughs out loud at Kian's pun as she flies back from talking with the Giant. "I love it." But then she glances around suspiciously at the Hedge for signs of a Casino, because that's just the way things seem to go lately.

"It must be hard for the Giant." Nadia muses as they approach the door. "Too big for cramped surroundings, I know that feeling... Don't worry I can get us through any doors no matter how small!" The way she says that might not be terribly reassuring. In a place like this? That could be very small indeed. Without a hint of fear, she continues on through the door in search of the missing lover or possible French Toast.

Garth has posed:
Garth regards the horsemen with a slight frown and raises his hands, casting shimmering, transluscent bubble shields to put up to fend off any potential charge. He isn't familiar enough with surface legends and mythology necessarily to fully grasp the mechanics of what's going on here. So he does the simple th ing that makes the most sense - he moves to protect his friends and teammates and prepares to take out anything that threatens them. The rest will sort itself out in time.

Kian has posed:
    "It wasn't instincts, Terry.  I sensed an unusual... a *more* unusual energy signature that way.  The giant has one too.  everything else is a more normal kind of weird.  I'd have said something, but I was trying to figure it out."
     Kian takes one look at the door, and his feathers bristle.  "Too small.  I'll wait out here.  I already know exploding a bigger opening will be a bad idea, so I'll wait out here."
    He adds, after a brief reflection, "Unless it opens out immediately and isn't a tunnel.  Then it's okay."
    He blinks twice at Nadia.  "...or you could do something like that, yes."  He and Terry have experienced that before, at least; he doesn't know if she's shrunk Vic yet.

Donna Troy has posed:
    The horsemen look tired and seem nervous, but they remain in close formation. As Gar and Kaida watch, they recognize something familiar in the way they're moving. Kaida's diagnosis that they aren't in their right minds may be unfair -- the way they move is very similar to the way a rider on a horse might move when trying to get the horse to stand still for a long period of time, an idle shuffling of feet -- as if the heads of the horses are riding on the feet of horses, rather than the two halves being a singular being.

    Around the corner, Donna gives a nod to Gilgamesh, acknowledging that if he is not who he says he is, at least he has done his research. "I am named for the city where my aunt died in battle," she responds. She had named herself 'Troia' earlier. Obviously she's telling him she isn't entirely phased by the idea that ancient heroes might still be around. However before she has time to continue, Gil has opted to face the horsemen.

    As soon as Gilgamesh turns to corner, fists balled, two of the horsemen lurch forwards as if to charge, but pull up short after just a few paces. "Sir!" calls out one of the horsemen. "You are in great danger! There are soldiers all around who will show you no pity. They are implacable and move with great alacrity. We advise you, hide!"

    Donna curses quietly to herself in Themysciran, and speaks to Gar through the comm: <<Stay hidden for now Gar, you're in an ideal position for a surprise attack on the flanks if it's needed. She gestures to Garth to join Gilgamesh, and does so herself, stepping out around the corner to stand beside him, her lasso held at the ready. "Who are you," she calls out. "And are you responsible for this maze?"

    Kaida is the first to notice the new group -- low to the ground, she feels the vibration of the charge before they round a corner some hundred feet ahead. These must be the soldiers the horsemen were talking about.

    If anyone had hoped that reference to soldiers indicated the lost assault team might still be in the area, they are quickly disabused of the notion by the appearance of these soldiers. They are considerably more rectangular than the type of soldier the US Army normally employs, and also a lot thinner. They have metallic helmets, and are armed with spears, but the thing that really stands out about them is that their torsos appear to be playing cards.

    The onrushing horde seems to have no end as they pour around the corner in a dense pack (the normal formation of battle for playing card soldiers, as everyone knows), but the horsemen seem to have no fear. "To arms!" the lead horseman cries. "Wheel! Prepare for a charge!" His force attempts to follow orders, but as it turns out, maneuvering is a difficult task for these horsemen, who seem to insist on taking one step sideways for every two steps forwards that they move. In a very short number of seconds, the horsemen have lost their line and are in a hopeless tangle. "Flee!" the leader calls out to Gilgamesh and the Titans. "We cannot hope to hold them long, but we will do our best to protect your retreat!"

     The onrushing horde has their eyes fixed firmly on the horsemen, and barely before she knows what happens, Kaida finds herself surrounded by booted feet pounding past her, none of the playing card soldiers paying any heed to the small mouse.

    Rather than attempting to get past the tangle of horsemen, Donna takes to the air and flies above them. "STOP!" she yells down at the charging card soldiers. "Drop your spears and surrender!"

Kaida Connolly has posed:
    It's a surprise to be sure for Kaida to find out that the horse peoples are not the enemy. She kinda figured they were but it seems that the playing cards are the enemy. Makes sense in a way. She does remember the story. Just, well, she expected they'd only find enemies.
    The playing card soliders make a huge mistake, however. They ignored Kaida and while Donna might be calling out for surrender, Kaida is already setting to work. She zips out between feet and starts to stabbing. Her sword stabbing into a foot and then another foot and another. She's not trying to do major harm but one can find it insanely difficult to do anything with what equates to a hole made by stepping on a nail driven through any part of your foot.
    "Hi!" Stab. "Hello!" Stab. "What's up?" Stab. She keeps greeting every soldier she meets with a tip of her blade.

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan maintains a low profile, especially after Donna's advice to keep himself in reserve for the right moment. As the horsemen - another idea he could make use of at some point - give them a warning and talk of buying time for them to get away, he says quietly enough so as to not be heard by anyone except those on the comms, <<Yeah, running away? They don't know us very good and, uh, guys? There are playing card soldiers coming in. Lots of them. I'm waiting for the right spot.>>

Said 'right spot' comes when they in fact don't surrender, and instead go on the attack again. With him behind them now, he lunges out as a tiger and swipes at a group of them. A few are made short work of, shredded, while others are at just such an angle that the strike misses. "That's..different!" he calls out, bounding around to get at them again from a better spot while ducking spear thrusts. There must be a more efficient way of doing this.

Garth has posed:
Garth takes to the air in his own right, his lavender eyes blazing with power as he summons his sorcerous might around him. Since aiming at them isn't the easiest, he chooses an attack which won't require much direction - chain lightning. He unleashes a pair of undulating arcs of electric power, each of them striking one of the rectangular soldiers and leaping from figure to figure, the metallic armor proving a perfect conduit as it spreads among them.

Tempest raises his hands as the lightning sinks in and then crushes them into fists, causing a dozen soldiers on either side of him to collide together in a magnetically crushed shattering of bodies.

Gilgamesh has posed:
The Horsemen seem to be allies so Gil takes a second to study them, listening to their words closely before the greater threat appears. The beings with the cards for torso seem as though they mean business. Luckily, Gilgamesh is present and the first thing he does is call out the card people as he moves to step in front of the horses, "Lets see what you've got..." Then he cuts loose with his fists, moving in rapidly to try to take out as many of the card folks as he can. The first group is mauled by a tiger. The second is blasted with lightning. There seem to be others, however, and those are the ones Gil targets. For a big guy he's surprisingly elegant, lashing out with blows strong enough to send grown men flying. The superior numbers of the enemy don't even begin to give him pause as he wades in.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Thanks Vic," Terry says, exhaling. "I'll... I'll be ok. After you," he gestures.

Beyond the door, there is a long corridor whose floor is covered in crackling leaves, and upon rounding a corner at the end, the team arrives at a large area where the scent of chlorine is overpowering. A very large watering hole has been dug out in the otherwise grassy area, and it has been divided into six lanes by stringing lily-pads from end to end. Each one of those lanes is occupied by a chicken, sporting tiny swimming goggles and swimming caps covering their crests. The creatures are swimming avidly up and down the lanes, clucking noisily and making a racket. Except for lane number five, which sports a trail of bubbles, and no visible chicken.

To the side, there are some deck chairs, and on one of them there is a rather tired-looking rooster, dozing off next to a large bucket, full of eggs.

Well," Terry mutters, "Either this bit isn't as weird as I thought it'd be, or I'm getting used to this."

Vic crouches to go through the door and down the corridor, regardless of being shrunk. When they get to the end, he frowns. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket...?" Vic tries out. He looks over the tableau. "Maybe Madame's in number 5." He flips his cybernetic senses to infrared, scanning the water, but someone else--someone smaller!--might better be able to fly over the pool and check.

No sooner has Kian expressed his inability to enter the tunnel then Nadia is pointing one of her arm gauntlets at him and after a quick burst of light, he finds himself at half of his previous size, if that.

"We can fit through any door!"She actually turns herself into a pixie as well, since it is easier to react to any surprises while zipping around on her wings.When they come upon the pool and the chickens, she just peers for a moment before she starts snickering at lane five that has only bubbles.

"It's cinq, so he sank!" There is a momentary pause before she gets on the T-Comm. <<Uh, Donna? Are you there? The weird puns have gone multi-lingual, they're using French now!>>

And that is going to be small enough to work -- although Kian doesn't linger in the tunnel, taking to the air again as soon as it opens out. He immediately starts looking for whatever it was he sensed in here -- it could be the chickens, the eggs, the water... anything. "Ugh, smells like bleach in here," he says sourly, "like a concentrate of the pool on the roof. I'm looking for whatever it was I sensed... let's find it and get back to fresher air."

"French?" Vorpal frowns, "Oh great. And here I thought taking Spanish in school would be more useful..." the Cheshire cat grumbles and crosses his eyes. Victor's scan reveals a very important thing, though, which Nadia can corroborate by flying over heard. Number five has, indeed, sank. It is actually at the bottom, struggling with an egg that is easily twice its size. The little bird is trying to push the enormous egg to the surface, but having very little luck in acomplishing it, the size of the egg making it a sisyphean task. At least they can tell it isn't a bad egg, because it's not floating. This close to the swimming poules, Kian can sense that the energy signature he had detected is coming from beneath the water.

Victor Stone has posed:
    "It's under the water," Vic supplies as he stands by the edge of the pool. "Number five's egg is about twice as big as the others, so it... sank, yeah." He grins at Nadia. "Puns. Okay. Puns in different /languages/, but puns. I can get behind that. Or in front of it? Whichever one isn't going to pun me into a corner."

    He peers down into the water. "Nadia, can you get the egg? I don't think we want wet fur or feathers."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia regrets her earlier amusement of the pun on cinq and sank when she flies over the pool and the poor struggling smaller chicken's plight is revealed. Without a moment's hesitation she flies down into the water, the mask of her suit shifting to full environmental as she goes.

Plunging into the depths of the pool, she folds her wings and swims to where the struggling chicken is. Looking at the egg, it is indeed quite big and at first she struggles to move it, until a solution presents itself that she really should have thought of sooner than she actually did.

Returning to her normal size, Nadia bends down and extricates both chicken and egg from the pool. Which came first? That conundrum has been neatly sidestepped by lifting them out at the same time!

Kian has posed:
    "We do *not* want wet feathers," Kian says with feeling.  "I don't know if it's the chicken or the egg.  I guess get them both and I'll check whichever one comes first?"
    That one wasn't deliberate.
    "It's the egg," he announces after a moment's concentration.  "I don't know if it's the egg itself, or something in it, or... I don't know.  I guess bring it to the giant and assume he knows what to do with it?"
    He flutters down to a landing.  "I pity the poor bird that laid that.  Either that, or I don't want to meet a hungry one of whatever laid it."  He glances back to the tunnel entrance.  "Well, let's get cra... I should phrase that differently.  English is *dangerous*."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Outside the garden, those who didn't have the advantage of flight or rabbit hole to get there fast are still planning their own interventions, or just arriving on scene. One such is Caitlin, who is recognized and ushered through the police line by a police captain who is familiar with the Titans. "Some of your lot already went in here," he tells Caitlin. "About ten minutes ago. Apparently another group went in one of the other entrances about the same time."

    Sure enough, Caitlin's T-Com shows the track the Titans have taken into the maze, following a pre-prepared route through the maze derived from satellite imagery of the hedges. It looks like the group had made it about half a mile in, but has come to a relative halt -- for the last few minutes the four Titan traces in that group, of Donna, Kaida, Garth and Gar, have been moving rapidly backwards and forwards in a relatively small area.

    This is because those Titans are in battle, along with Gilgamesh who has accompanied them. The eight horsemen have only managed to get themselves increasingly tangled in their attempt to turn to meet the charge of the card soldiers -- their insistence on suddenly veering off ninety degrees from where they had intended to go makes the maneuver particularly tricky for them to do, and if it hadn't been for the arrival of the superheroic allies, they would have been swamped by the card soldier army already.

    With her demand for a surrender ignored, Donna is quick to enter the fray. With her shield held forwards she makes a flying charge into the massed rank of spears, shield turning spear points aside as she crashes through their formation. Garth also takes the aerial route, blasting card soldiers with Atlantean magic. Tiger-form Gar and Gilgamesh charge the formation from front and flank, rapidly meeting somewhere in the middle as the carve an opening in the ranks.

    Garth's magic is both spectacular and effective. Gar, Gil and Donna playing the role of heavy assault troops wreak havoc, but find battling the card soldiers strangely tricky -- they have an annoying tendency to turn side-on to their attackers and their almost 2-dimensional bodies make them particularly tricky to actually hit.

    Perhaps the most effective of all is Kaida, who fights unseen at ankle-height, leaving a path of card soldiers hopping on one foot in her wake. They don't seem to have even noticed the source of this attack yet -- not a single one has looked down and seen the mouse-shaped blur stabbing through boot after boot.

    For the others though, the battle is tiring work -- the sheer numbers of the card soldiers seems never-ending, and though they are individually no match for any of the Titans, they are well drilled in using their spears in massed walls of sharp metal to hold their opponents at a distance and force them to get in their blows where they can.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
The hedge maze slows Caitlin down. She can outrun almost anyone except Barry on foot, but the fliers have so much more maneuverability and so much less mass to deal with. Attempts to force into the hedges prove to be beyond even her strength.

So, fast turns, movements, following her drone as it darts ahead to signal her the fastest path towards her allies.

Bare minutes later she arrives in the clearing in time to see the card warriors battering against the line of Titans and their allies.

"AL-LA-LE!" Caitlin cries out, and the Amazon battle cry carries like an air raid siren. She slams the head of her battle-maul on the ground and the impact makes the earth shake underfoot.

Caitlin's armed for bear-- the two-handed maul in her hands, the heavy Amazonian combat armor that is her birthright, and a very target-rich environment in front of her.

She breaks into a sprint with such raw acceleration that cracked paving stones stack up behind her, holding the hammer in her wake for balance.

"Break!" she shouts-- and with perfect timing, she charges right through the space Donna had been occupying just as the Princess feints beautifully and jukes to the side. One card soldier is trampled underfoot and she sets her feet in place and spins like a shot thrower, hammer whipping through the air in blurring arcs nearly three meters to a side and taking out clusters of enemies too foolish or too slow to avoid her tremendous reach.

"Titans!" Caitlin's voice adds a rallying cry as she buys the front line a few precious moments to breath and reset before the next wave hits them.

Garth has posed:
Garth is using his ability to fly and his ranged magick to try and keep space for his teammates, striking whenever someone seems overwhelmed and using chain lightning and telekinesis to sweep away groups of enemies at a time, armor clattering and chittering with the shock of electricity as he strikes.

He gives a soaring salute to Caitlin as he flies overhead, helping to keep a few enemies off of Gar and Gilgamesh alike, his own bodysuited form mostly out of range except for a few weak thrown attacks. He keeps his lavender eyes alert, just in case some new surprise pops out.

Gar Logan has posed:
Beast Boy continues to claw and bite at the card soldiers, but he's having to exert more effort than usual given their tendency to turn to one side just in time, in some cases. That means a lot of whiffing, a lot of coming up empty.

Given that he was a meerkat earlier, he changes instead to a warthog this time and goes charging through a pack of cards, whooping it up with a war cry as he ducks his head and tosses it forward into a number of them. "AAAAHHHHH!!!!" It's still not having the effect he was hoping for.

Next, it's a hawk, flying overhead and diving in for attacks led by talons. It cuts through a few of them, but as usual he passes by a few others with either a glancing blow or none at all.

Then he hears a different war cry. Landing atop one of the helmets the soldiers lost, he quickly takes to the air again. "Is that who I think it is? Our ace in the hole? Time to go all in. You card dudes are about to go bust. I mean, we're dealing a royal flush here now. You should fold while you still can."

Someone ought to just finish it before he keeps going.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
"Honestly!" Kaida says to no one in particular as she stabs another foot and then races into another tight spot and idly pulls a pack around, reaching in and pulling out a peanut. She stuffs it into her mouth and then races out and hits another foot before she races into another spot under a branch of a hedge and pulls out another peanut.

"Dis i' hungy werk!" She states even as she finishes another peanut and then finally races up a playing card, jumps to the top of a horse person and then slumps slightly, shield in one arm, sword in the other.

"I am runnin' out of steam here! I can only stab so many feets!" She waves at a passing hawk she assumes is Gar before spinning into the air and literaly slicing down a card person's side as she falls and shakes her head. She lands just in time to hear the battle cry of Caitlin and then laughs out loud and jumps straight up out of hte crowd and roughly twenty feet above it to see Cait and laughs.

"Awesome! Cait is here!" She then blinks as she falls and looks to Gar, "And Gar is punning." As she falls she idly starts to sing as she joins Cait in the stabbings.

"You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have, the facts of life..."

Gilgamesh has posed:
Gilgamesh fights quietly, moving from one card person to the next as he lashes out with his fists in an attempt to bring them down. As some fall the Eternal breaks his silence, "These people are very annoying." One turns sideways to dodge a blow from him, "Where are they all coming from?" He grabs for one of spears that's being used to menace him, attempting to gain control of the weapon so that he can lash out with it's staff in order to deal with more of the spearmen at one time.

With the spear twirling in one hand the mighty king advances towards the thickest concentration of card people, utilizing his martial skill and super strength to do as much damage as possible. His head turns to look towards the woman with the hammer, "I'm Gilgamesh. Nice to see someone who appreciates the finer things."

Donna Troy has posed:
    The sheer length of Caitlin's war hammer provides a problem the card-soldiers are not well equipped to deal with -- their trick of turning sideways is great for avoiding more directed attacks, but not much use when the whole space around you is suddenly occupied by fast moving Themysciran steel. Donna takes her cue from the success of Caitlin's charge, switching to her lasso which she reels out to a length of ten feet and swings about her like a heavy whip, or a very long flail. The two Amazons create large areas of space the Card soldiers are unwilling to go.

    And then there's Garth, using blasts of his magic to drive the card soldiers away from those safe areas, and Kaida to hamstring any of the card soldiers that try to find space at the edge of the formation. Space is running out for them, and they start to find themselves getting crowded into tight packs, where they don't have room to turn their ultra-thin sides to attackers, or space to move the points of their spears into position. This makes for happy hunting grounds for Gilgamesh and Gar to bring superior strength to bear. The light-weight card soldiers are tossed this way and that by Gilgamesh's mighty fists, and when he grabs a spear from one and uses it to sweep through the ranks cards fall quickly to his swings.

    But Gar's words seem most effective of all, spreading fear and discontent through the ranks. Soon the words "Should we fold? Should we fold?" are being whispered through the ranks.

    The battle continues only a few more minutes before two playing card soldiers waiting at the rear raise trumpets to their lips and blow a retreat. Quickly the card soliders pick themselves up and turn tail to run, singing a marching song as they go:

"We're the bravest playing cards /
We're the fiercest of the guards /
We're the soldiers who best hunt in packs! /
But these Titans have got us beat /
So we now sound our retreat /
It's time for us to turn our backs! /
Runnn two three four/
Runnn two three four /
RRUNNNNN!

    Soon the battle field is empty of enemies. Dozens of cards lie scattered and unmoving across the ground, and the horsement /still/ haven't managed to get themselves back into formation. Several of them lie on the floor, unhurt by the enemy, but tripped by the tangle they have made of themselves. They look somewhat embarrassed.

    "Jolly good show!" calls an English-sounding voice from back where the Titans had come. There they see a knight in white armor, mounted on a white horse come trotting towards them. "I say, jolly good show!" he says again. "Well done friends, well done. That'll teach the reds to hire mercenary guards to help them, I... awk!"

    The old knight's congratulations are interrupted as he falls clumsily from his horse, perhaps something to do with the fact that the horse's legs are wrapped around with metal plates held together by rope, making it very hard for the poor beast to walk properly. The long-suffering steed stops by his fallen rider and crops the grass peacefully.

    The White Knight sits up and raises his visor, revealing an old face with a long white beard. "Confound it! That steed just doesn't seem to be able to trot properly. Where was I? Oh yes. Well done to you all, and my thanks for helping my men. They seem to have done a rather poor job of it themselves." He arches one bushy eyebrow towards the horse-men, who mill around sheepishly.

    "Anyway," he says, turning back to the Titans. "Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but you chaps probably shouldn't be here. The board is quite crowded enough as it is, and it's most terribly dangerous here. What's more, you look quite out of place! But maybe we can find a use for you. How do you move?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
With the last blows delivered, Caitlin drops her hammerhead on the ground and puts one hand on her thigh, leaning against the handle for balance while she catches her breath. It only takes a few seconds and she stands up, removing her helmet and hanging it from a hook on her belt. Her ponytail falls loose from where it was pushed up into a warrior's knot at the base of her neck.

"Well, Gar is punning, so it can't be all bad," she tells the others, and grins at them all. One, two, three-- counting heads, accounting for Kaida, and she digs a calorie ration bar out of her backpack to offer to the mouse.

Garth she knows and gives his arm a squeeze when he joins them; she looks askance at Gilgamesh but the polite deference from the other Titans prompts her to offer the same, along with a polite nod and a surprisingly gentle handshake. "I'm Caitlin Fairchild," she tells him.

She joins the others in watching the old man fall off the horse. Caitlin winces-- that's a long way down no matter how hale one is. But he seems all right, at least enough that she defers to Donna to do The Thing where it involves making new friends.

Garth has posed:
Garth returns Caitlin's embrace as he comes back down from the sky, tucking some of his long, dark hair back behind his ears. "Let's face it, he's going to be punning in brightest day or blackest night," he says.

He regards the old night with a cocked head. Having spent most of his formative years in the regions of Atlantis, he isn't much familiar with Wonderland and his ilk, but just presumes this is another part of the diverse and strange part of the surface world. Why not? The Amazons have their own island!

"I think the intrusion started on our end and we Titans came as a bit of pushback. Get your chocolate out of our peanut butter and we'll get our peanut butter out of your chocolate."

Gar Logan has posed:
"And I will again!" the Gar-hawk calls out, returning to normal by the time the pack of card soldiers is in retreat and the old guy in his own set of armor, seemingly the leader of the haphazard horsemen, turns up and..tumbles. "Oof."

Crossing his arms, he frowns at the man. "In case you missed it, your big hedge maze showed up in /our/ city. If anyone shouldn't be here it's you, and we're the ones saving your bacon. How do we move? Any way we..wait a minute."

He turns back to the horsemen. "You guys. Come over here." He motions closer to where he stands.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
"I move as I please, where I please!" Kaida declares as she walks back with her sword and shield in hand. Doing a little dance as she moves, humming dancing queen as she does only to pause and grin. She throws her shield and sword upward in a triumphant grip before racing over to her feet and then she slows and comes to a stop.

"Cait...lin-" She gasps and chokes and falls to her knees at Cait's foot. She shimmies toward her, crawling and falling over so her ears rest against Cait's foot. She raises up one hand, gasping as she reaches toward Cait.

"So many enemies. I'm..." She coughs once more and her head slumps to the side, "...hungry!" And then she wheezes out. She goes still, eyes closed for a moment before one eye opens and she points to Cait.

"Caitlin Fairchild meet Legendary Warrior King Person Gilgamesh." And then she points a finger over toward Gilgamesh, "Gil, meet legendary large cook and Amazonian badass person who swings a hammer and creates snacky shakes, Caitlin Fairchild." ANd then her eye closes, her arms falls and she gasps out one more breath.

Gilgamesh has posed:
"Nice to meet you, Ms Fairchild," Gilgamesh tells Caitlin with a smile as he shakes her hand, glancing over at Kaida and chuckling softly. "I'm something of a cook myself. We can trade recipes after this if you want."

Then he focuses on the knight in white, moving forward to offer him and the horse a hand getting untangled, "Can I help you out? It won't take very long."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Useful man to have in a brawl," Donna adds to Kaida's introduction. "And speaks Akkadian, never know when that will come in handy." She may not be entirely convinced Gilgamesh is the real deal yet, but it's a way of letting Caitlin know that there may be something to the claim.

    The White Knight stares up at Garth with a look of profound puzzlement. "Peanut butter? But my good fellow, there is no such thing. You are letting your imagination run away with you. Think about it. Can you milk a peanut? Of course not. They are far too small! Your fingers could not get at their udders. If you can't milk a peanut, you cannot make peanut butter. Therefore there is no danger of us getting chocolate in our peanut butter, and your concerns are unfounded. My logic is incontrovertible. Nevertheless, peanut butter does sound rather delicious. Maybe some arrangement of tweezers... when I am less busy, I shall give it some thought."

    Donna helps the knight to his feet, replying "We move wherever we're needed. And whatever have you done to your poor horse?"

    The knight gives her a grateful smile as he's helped up, and stretches his old bones before clambering back up onto the horse. "Wherever you're needed? Why that's a most useful talent. Most useful. You're all queens then? You must have made it to the other side! Now that will shake things up for sure."

    "Uh... not exactly," Donna replies. "Though my mom's a queen. So. Your horse. His legs. Uh..."

    "A princess then. Hmm. I've never been clear how one of those would move, I must confess. As for the horse... Ah, you like the leg protectors?" the White Knight replies, beaming happily. "My own invention, one I am most proud of! It's a little awkward for the poor beast, I must acknowledge, but at least this way there is no danger of his ankles being bitten by sharks. It has been a most effective preventative! Why, he has not suffered a single shark bite since we got here."

    "Sharks," Donna repeats flatly. "Okay."

    Two of the horse-men look over towards Gar when he addresses them, and then look at each other and shrug their shoulders. Both of them step forwards and walk towards him a couple of paces, but then both turn, one a sharp right and the other a sharp left. They step straight into each other, colliding with some force, and collapse to the ground.

    The White Knight watches them with a sigh, then shrugs his shoulders to Gar. "As you might imagine, I am no more fond of these accursed hedges than you are! My men are not best equipped to dealing with this sort of terrain. It's too enclosed, you see. The worst of it is our best tactician is The Bishop and he can't go more than twenty feet without crashing into the hedge on one side or the other. His wits have been quite addled by the collisions, and he no longer knows which way is up. We're quite at sixes and sevens at the moment, in all honesty." He turns to Gilgamesh with a nod of his head. "So yes, we certainly could use some help. But if you're truly a king, we should probably keep you away from the battle, yes? Pity we don't have any castles you can hide behind. All these straight lines around here, a few castles would be just the ticket!"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin scoops Kaida up off the ground and puts her in the helmet on her hip. There's no real padding in there but at least Kaida won't get stepped on. "Don't die on us. You do know Gar can turn into a cat, right?" she mumbles a little teasingly. The snackbar is broken in half; she leaves one with Kaida and offers the other morsel to Gilgamesh, a polite smile on her face.

She wanders over with the others to look at the horses, and her brow furrows while she examines them. Caitlin's experience with horses is pretty minimal compared to Donna but she can clearly see that the armor is hindering the animals. "We should probably get this armor off," she suggests. "I don't think it's doing their knees any good."

Caitlin makes a point of catching Donna's eye at an opportune moment, and mouths 'Chess?' silently with an elevated brow.

Gar Logan has posed:
"Um, you absolutely can mix peanut butter with chocolate, but that's a talk for another time. Check it out," Gar says, gesturing toward the horsemen as they prove something that was just nudging at the back of his thoughts all along, something he can finally focus on during this break in the fighting. "They're moving like Knights on a big chessboard. And yeah, your Bishop dude can only move diagonally. Good for you that we're all basically Queens."

After a long pause, he clears his throat. "What I just said, it doesn't get back to Vorpal, got it? Not. A. Word. Anyway, we're not bound by any chess rules. Who do you need busted up next?"

He's placing himself closer to the others, peering toward Kaida, then the White Knight, then the rest with him.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
For most, Kaida is pretty darn easy to pick up. For Cait, it'd be like picking up a feather. As she is lifted, however, she peeks open an eye before she is set down into the helmet and pops up to stare out of it up at Cait, "Pfft? A cat?! I lived on the streets for years before I met any of you and let me tell you! Cats told stories about me!" She laughs and leans on the edge only to let out a happy little sound when given food and she falls into the helmet to quidckly consume it. She then pops back out a moment later and sighs.

"I'll take about twenty more of those, thanks!" She declares and then looks over at Gar with a grin before listening in on the other stuff happening before she considers.

"Honestly, this has been some hungry work! Always under foot, zipping about and stabbing toes! My heart is like a drumroll for a joke that has yet to be told! Anyway, while this conversation about chess, horses, that man's ineptitude when it comes to peanut butter, and the like has simply been riveting, we really need to be moving toward the center of this maze!"

Gilgamesh has posed:
"Thank you," Gil says as he accepts the treat, chomping down on it and making an 'mmm' noise. He seems pleased.

"I'll be okay," the Eternal says to the knight. "I'm not that kind of king, anyway. Don't need to worry about castling with me." A smile shows up on his face, "I'm ready to get going when everyone's all set. We can get to the bottom of this mystery if we apply ourselves."

Donna Troy has posed:
    The White Knight's attention is drawn away from the conversation when he notices Kaida, and watches her being put into Caitlin's helmet as he remounts his horse. "Madam," he says, addressing the mouse. "You look uncomfortable in that helmet. Would you prefer a teapot? I didn't happen to bring one with me I'm afraid, but we could probably find some way to improvise. Perhaps a helmet with a spout..."

    When Caitlin suggests the horse be freed of its leg bindings, he pulls on the reigns with an expression of alarm, moving the horse out of the Amazon's reach. "What?" he demands. "Take the armor off? Are you as mad as you are tall? It may be doing the beast's knees little good, but considerably more good that a shark bite would do. Have you ever /tried/ to ride a three-legged horse? It's quite im... ARG!"

    With a clattering of armor, the White Knight falls off his horse again.

    This time, Donna doesn't offer him a hand up, and just sighs instead. "This is pointless," she says to the others. "I suggest we just keep going on to the center of the maze and forget about them."

    "The center of the maze!" The White Knight says from his prone position. "But princesses, queens and kings or not, you'll find that hard indeed! There is a field just before the center of the maze where the Red have their full army arrayed! If you go there you'll be charged from every angle! The red castles will charge you in an implacable line! You will find nowhere on the field safe from one of their bishops! The red knights will attack you from unexpected positions -- and the pawns! So /many/ pawns!

    Donna gives a shrug of her shoulders to Caitlin. "Chess. I prefer /pettia/ anyway. We shouldn't engage with these lunatics. If there is anything that knowing Terry has taught me, it's that embracing this nonsense just encourages them." She gives a nod of her head to Gilgamesh. "We're set. Let's go and solve any mysteries we come across by applying our fists to them."

    She pulls out her T-Com, checks the route finder, and points down the pathway in the direction the card soldiers had fled, then starts walking. "Let's go."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin gives the horse an apologetic look and gently rakes her fingertips over its neck soothingly. Another protein bar is dug out; half again for Kaida, half for the horsey this time. Is the little knapsack on her back full of nothing but provisions? It's possible.

"This is as bad as Echon," she reminds Donna. "And we had Terry -with- us that time. I am a strong believer in not engaging in nonsense. #sciencegirl," she says, and pumps a fist in the air.

Caitlin offers Kaida a hand to transition to her shoulder, then re-pins her braid and pulls the helmet back in place. The heavy hammer's lifted and swung onto her shoulder in a ready state.

She looks at the other Titans, points at Donna, herself, then the others in turn. "Off-tank, main tank-- Gar you're the rogue, Kaida does mobility control, Garth's our mage."

Fistbumps are exchanged and she falls into step with Donna like it's something they've rehearsed a hundred times.

"Oh, and um, your Majesty," she hesitates, talking to Gilgamesh. "Sorry. If you want to keep up front with me an' Donna, that's usually where the most action happens in a fight," she suggests. "Ideally, anyway."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan remarks, "We've been through worse than this. Basically, a version of hell. There's nothing we can't take."

Looking at the White Knight, who can't stay ahorse - and by that we mean on a horse, because the horse/men/ are still over there walking into each other - he just rubs the side of his face before giving Caitlin Gar eyes, which are almost as good as puppy eyes.

"So we have Warriors, a Wizard, uh..I guess I have to figure out what Kaida would be, but Elf needs food badly!" He gestures to himself with both thumbs and a wide grin.

After he gets a snack of his own from Cait, he gets back on the path toward the middle. "In case anyone hasn't figured it out by now, this is some /real/ Wonderland stuff going on now. It's probably gonna get even more weird."

Kaida Connolly has posed:
Taking the snack, she puts it her mouth, leaps the hand and then scampers up Cait's arm with ease to land on her shoulder and considers the roles, swallowing a rather large portion of the bar.

"Ok, I'll let you tank this time but I call next!" She then consumes the remainder of her snackbar with super speed before hopping up to her feet on Kaida's shoulder and pointing her sword at Gar she then points it ahead, taking on her best action hero accent.

"I'm their worst nightmare." She nods her head and then looks back at the knight and ahead. She bounces from foot to foot before looking to Cait.

"My heart is like going off like crazy! Did you hear? He said there's just tons of them! He also said I should be in a teapot, which is clearly STRANGE AS I AM NOT A DORMOUSE!" She shakes her head and looks ahead, "We should get going before the other Titans get there first and we miss all the fun."

Gilgamesh has posed:
Gilgamesh falls in when the group starts walking through the hedge maze. His head swivels from side to side, studying the surroundings and the other people. When Caitlin suggests he stay at the front he nods to her, "I'll stay up front with you two unless things start collapsing inwards or we get hit from the flank. And don't worry about the majesty thing, please. Gil or Gilgamesh is fine. I haven't been a king in a few millenia."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "I say, now just wait a minute!" the White Knight calls after the heroes as they make their way deeper into the maze. "Wait for me! Wait for me!" He clambers back on his horse, and soon there are hoof-steps cantering along behind the team, and catching up on them. "You're taking a left turn! That's the wrong way. The right way is to the right! Everyone knows that. My logic is ARG!" *clatter crash*.

    Donna doesn't look back. Caitlin said it. This is as bad as the planet Echon, and she demonstrated that the best way out of *that* type of mess is to go full Fairchild. "Quite right," she says to Kaida with a grin. "You're no Dormouse, thankfully. They tend to fall asleep a lot, and there's not much chance you'd fall asleep when we've got a war to fight. You're no dormouse, you're a warmouse!"

    With careful consultation of the satellite footage, the team keeps up a rapid progress through the maze. From time to time, they see card soldiers peering around corners at them, but the soldiers seem very wary of the team after the previous battle, and they are keeping their distance. The journey seems to be surprisingly uneventful. "Being royalty is overrated," Donna says to Gilgamesh with a decisive nod. "But when we're out of this there are a few things I'd like to ask you. Our records of your time in Ur date a good thousand years after they happened and honestly I'm pretty sure they are mostly nonsense. But there are a lot of historians who would be happy if you could clarify that whole thing with Urshanabi. That whole episode of the 'stone things' and 'urnu snakes' would make a lot more sense if we knew what either of those are."

    Perhaps it is because the weirdness in the maze finds itself drawn to the other group of heroes approaching the middle from the other side, accompanied as they are by the Cheshire cat, or perhaps it's because this group has faced its own challenges rather more head-on and the inhabitants of the maze are wary of them, but the mile or three of maze the group travels through provides nothing they can't just ignore, and before an hour is out the group takes a turn that looks much like any other, and sees a couple of dozen feet ahead the hedges giving way to a huge open area, a field a few hundred feet across. The field is covered in neatly manicured grass, shaped into alternating squares of light and dark green grasses, and across the far side of the field another hedge-entrance can be seen, leading into the center of the maze. Filling that far end of the field is the army of red chess-men, hundreds strong. The white knight wasn't exaggerating.

    Gilgamesh and the Titans are so far unnoticed by the red chess-men, perhaps because their attention is focused on the half of the field ahead of them. At the edges of arrayed army there are a few breaks in the ranked formation, and around those breaks a number of injured horse-men and pawns lie writhing on the ground. The grass of the field between the heroes and the chess men swarms with triangular fins breaking the surface of the soil, circling around in hunting packs. Apparently the White Knight wasn't as crazy as he had sounded.

    Donna gives a shake of her head. "Sharks, swimming in the grass. Why am I not surprised. Suggestions?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"I don't love the idea of testing how good our armor is against land sharks," Caitlin says after a few moments of deliberation. Her nose wrinkles in thought. "At least a few hundred of these chess guys, and they're not exactly mooks, either."

She looks at the others, back at Donna. "I don't like the idea of playing these games, but my finely-honed senses are telling me that the closer we get to ... wherever we're going, we're gonna need to start playing by the rules or things are going to get ugly. We've seen what happens when magic gets involved. Still...." she frets her lip, gauging the distances. "We could just try and hop the whole battlefield. You can fly me and Gilgamesh over, and Garth can fly over Kaida and Gar. Meet the others in the middle and bypass this entirely."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan eyes the soldiers as they pass, but none of them decide to test the group. Probably good for them. By now he's stopped giving the White Knight any attention. There are things you just have to learn to ignore, and sometimes Gar himself is one of them.

"Hey, up ahead. There it is," he tells them once they've reached the..playing field. "And it's about as crazy as I expected. I really don't think we should be wasting our time on these things." Sounds like Caitlin's got the same idea, and he turns his nose up a bit. "You forget I can fly, too. And, better than most of you. So is that how we're...are those /land sharks?/"

He gestures toward them incredulously.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
"Wow..." Kaida states from Cait's shoulder as she surveys all the stuff that is ahead of them. It's a lot of stuff. Really. Stuff. Like, there's not a lot of better ways to describe it. Look at it. It's just a whole lot of stuff. She gestures at it and looks over at Cait.

"That sure is a lot of stuff." She then blinks at Cait's plan and then she huffs and looks at it.

"Cait! It's a lot of stuff. We're going to miss all that stuff if we go over the stuff. Do you have any idea how much fun it'd be to run through all those fins? I mean, we could hum the Jaws theme as we go!" Kaida nods and gestures again before looking over to Gar before looking ahead again and letting out a long sign through her nose and sitting on to Cait's shoulder.

"Ya know what? Whatever. We don't have to have fun. We can just avoid it all and head to the middle and whatever." She then looks back at Cait's knapsack and then she looks ahead, "I'm so gonna need another bar."

Gilgamesh has posed:
"I'm always happy to help educate people on Sumer," Gilgamesh tells Donna with a nod. "It's one of my favorite cultures. Had many wonderful times back then." As they get to the opening in the maze and see the forces of the pieces arrayed the ancient man shakes his head. Then he spots the sharks and frowns. Another look over the battlefield, "I can fly as well and I'm quite resilient if you'd like me to go first. That way if we can't go over or around at least I'll draw their attention while the rest of you attack."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna looks at Caitlin and frowns slightly. "I don't know..." she says. "I mean I think you're right. About playing by the rules. And flying over the board would be breaking the rules. I think... that would be a mistake." While Donna isn't exactly the most knowledgeable person when it comes to magic - Raven, or perhaps now Tempest, know sorcery better - over the years, Caitlin has come to know that her /instincts/ for magical things tend to be good.

    "On the other hand, what exactly /are/ the rules?" she asks. "I mean we were asked how we moved, and we answered that we move however the hell we like, right? So I think according to the logic of the place... that /is/ the rule now, for us. And that put us at a pretty major advantage. I think we /do/ have to have some fun, Kaida. What concerns me is that I'm not sure those sharks are exactly playing by the rules either."

    "I think you're forgetting something," Garth says, grinning. "I'm here. That means the Sharks are on /our/ side." The Atlantean sorcerer rolls his shoulders and steps forwards to the edge of the 'board', concentrating. After a few moments the shark fins stop their circling, and gradually start to 'swim' into a battle line facing the chess men.

    Donna gives Garth a wide grin. "Do it," she says.

    The Sharks start to swim forwards to the attack, and Donna leaps high in the air after them. Her lasso swings down in a wide arc, somehow penetrating the ground and looping around a mass beneath the grass where one of the fins is moving. The Amazon hauls upwards, and a large mottled gray shark rises up from the ground as it surges forwards, a mouth full of hundreds of great sharp teeth agape. Donna lands on the back of the shark, shifts her lasso to her shield hand, and draws her sword. Riding into battle on the back of a landshark, she yells out "TITANS AND SUMERIANS... GO!"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin lumbers forward with the rest of the Titans, a half step behind Donna and ahead of everyone else. These were tactics they were doing as *kids*, most of them not even old enough to drink. Ten years of experience flighting as a cohesive unit comes naturally to the OG Crew-- and Caitlin's more than happy to let Kaida catch a ride until she can get in range to mix it up in her own way!

She crashes into the first rank of the chess-men like a boulder hitting water, driving them away with every great swing of the battle-maul in her hands. They pile even more on her in desperation, dozens of them trying to hold Caitlin back. Between her obdurate skin and the Amazon-made armor, they're having a hard time connecting with her hard enough to do real harm.

"Garth, I can't keep them stacked forever!" she howls at the Atlantean-- and the noise brings even more of them charging in until the rear ranks are pressed so tight they can't reach her with their weapons at all.

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan places his hands at his hips. "Yeah, but if we're making the rules as we go, can't we just say we can fly over all of that if we want to? If none of this makes any actual sense, why would that change now?" In a weird way, his logic is undeniable, and he absolutely would bypass the whole mess ahead of them if he could get away with it.

Cracking his knuckles, he makes a show of rolling his neck. "We could have used a good montage, guys. A montage makes everything better." Now, be the rogue. Be quick. Be sneaky. Be decisive. As Garth takes control of the landsharks, he goes for a heavy-duty form of his own: a rhinoceros. Before long, he's plowing his way through a cadre of chessmen, taking no prisoners, giving no quarter. "Bowling for Bishops! Knocking out Knights! Rooks gettin' rekt! Pulverizing Pawns!"

So it may not be sneaky. Oh well.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
"It always makes me laugh and is somewhat endearing how you guys worry. I might get stepped on or hurt or whatever. ANd I get it. I'm tiny and fast." She stands casually on Cait's shoulder as she rushes forward. Not even seeming bothered by the shoulder bobbing movement, the speed, the wind, or any of it. Cait's shoulder rolls and moves and Kaida's toes grip. She often likes hanging on for dear life but right now she's making a point and that means standing up straight and making it.

"I do often bite off more than I can chew! I admit it! But you see, I was once hit by a bus, Cait. A bus! Ya know what happened? It bumped over me, I got a headache and I moved on." Cait is just moments from slamming into the line, "And that can seem scary but you see. I learned something a long time ago. Math. I'm tough. I'm fast. I can move damn near the speed of sound." And then Cait hits the line and she leaps off and while in air she pulls out just the shield and holds it out in front of her.

"And you see, now I have an Amazonian shield that is even tougher than I am while still being very tiny." And she lands in the crowd and rushes past their feet and smirks as she spots a Rook and it looms over her. A large castle like being, powerful and tough. And then her right foot slams into the ground and the shield is locked in front of her and she takes off like a shot. The sound is akin to a gun shot and the Rook suddenly finds itself flailing as an entire leg of the small living castle creature shatters in an explosion of rock and it falls over, crushing into several pawns while it does. Standing on the otherside is Kaida who turns and looks back at the destruction she has wrought before wincing and waggling her arm.

"Numb arm, numb arm, numb arm!"

Gilgamesh has posed:
Subtlety is out the window, which is fine with Gilgamesh. The ancient king leaps impossibly high into the air, flying for a bit before angling his descent down towards a group of the chess men. When he hits it's with a huge crash and bodies are sent flying in every direction. Before the first people start landing following the collision with the Eternal, Gil is already swinging at the enemies, raining blows down on them that continue to knock the chess pieces into one another or cause them to fly through the air.

Attacks are made against the warrior who manages to dodge and parry with the best of them. When a blow makes it through, however, Gil isn't bothered by the impact. It doesn't even seem to dirty his uniform. What it does do is make the successful attacker a bigger target, easily handled with a left hook.

Donna Troy has posed:
    The heroes charge forwards in their attempt to break through the massed ranks and make for the center of the maze, and so begins the Battle of the Board in earnest. The heroes are outnumbered a hundred to one, but they are far more flexible than the foe, far tougher, and aided by landsharks. And this is a dance they know so well.

    Caitlin smashes into the front lines, forcing them to fight in a crowd unable to drive forwards, while Donna pulls her landshark mount around to crash into the press again and again while they are engaged, a well-practiced hammer and anvil. Gar makes for a very heavy-duty rogue as a Rhino, but the charging green beast is there to pick off any of the enemy who try to move up the flanks and get Caitlin surrounded, tossing pawns high into the air. Kaida, though a much newer member of the team, is already beginning to fit very nicely into the Titans tactics -- fast moving and so small she's almost impossible to hit, she harries the flanks alongside Gar. Though not a Titan, Gilgamesh fits in to the formula with ease -- the highly-experienced warrior needs little time to see how the Titans fight together and work with it, his fists working into the line wherever the enemy forces attempt to mass for a push.

    They are outnumbered a hundred to one though, and sheer numbers do count for a lot. One thing the heroes simply don't have the numbers to do is manage the /width/ of the enemy line. Far to the sides of the battle, flanks of pawns march in slow lockstep marches forwards, advancing past the heroes' line and moving down the field. Things will become far more dangerous for the heroes if they reach the other side.

    One thing that has changed for the Titans though is Garth. He has been away from the Titans a long time, and the man who has returned is a very different fighter than the boy who left. Drifting above the battle, he calls down bolts of magical lightning to support the efforts along the flanks, but the real difference comes when the flanking pawns find dozens of landsharks rising up from the grass beneath their feet, great wide mouths snapping around enemy soldiers and dragging them down below the ground.

    Caitlin is a wall the enemy forces break against, but they have their tricks too, and suddenly a group of horsemen advance their dog-leg advance, leaping clean over the heads of the pawns Caitlin is pressing against to surround her -- this is where the job of the rogue becomes most vital!

    Unlike the card soldiers, this in army with brains amongst them, and eventually the fast moving mouse is spotted and recognized as a target that needs to be dealt with. Suddenly she finds herself assailed by a pair of towering men with heavy maces and tall mitres on their heads. -- moments ago they were half way across the field, but they tear across the ground to attack her at a speed anyone but the fastest speedster would have trouble matching.

    Gilgamesh powers through the line of pawns with his mighty fists, but the enemy are prepared, and he finds a half-dozen giant Rooks, each twelve feet tall, rolling towards him in a dense line that just keeps coming, many tons of animated stone bearing down on him.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin's attack is holding up pretty well but the sheer numbers are overwhelming her. The addition of the knights with their great reach forces her back on her trail foot; she can't take the risks she was with the hammer, cleaving through the pawns en masse. It slows down her assault and lets them press in more aggressively around her. She falls back on a tried-and-true option: kicking and punching them, and she bobs and weaves like the professional fighter she's turned into.

One swinging blade collides with her head. The helmet goes flying with a proud new dent and Caitlin staggers a few steps to the side. Enemies swarm at her to try and exploit that momentary vulnerability.

Gar Logan has posed:
Beast Boy turns as they mostly all fall down before him, and he goes smaller after Kaida's shot by for her own attacks. Honey badger time! He more or less romps his way around and leaves destruction in his wake as larger foes topple and fall after he's gone past, and when the knights leap in their L-shaped patterns over the pawns so they might get at Caitlin, he tsks. "Ohh no, we aren't having that. Honey badger don't care, but...hmm. Yeah, that'll work."

Knights aren't the only things leaping in, for with a distinct sound the others might recall from a few wildly popular movies, a green velociraptor jumps in and lands near Caitlin. "Can I cut in?" He leads with those wicked, curved talons, buying time to press on.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
She proved her point. Kaida doesn't always like to be looked at as a tiny flower that needs protecting or a little thing that should be careful. She's a hero first, a mouse second, dammit. She proved her point even if she can't really do those big hits often. The caloric requirements and self damage are high. So, when a new threat races in, she's forced to switch back to speed and intellect as her guide.

"Holy crap!" She gets out in time to dodge the first hit only to have to plant her sword into the earth brace her shield against it and rely on the power of Amazonian style to win the day against that mace hit.

A moment later she is dancing back as more attacks come and she spots her chance. Her shield arm is numb but she does the math anyway. In games of pool and croquet, angles, spin, and impact force all make a huge difference. She takes the hit on the shield and it sends her flying, sword first for the second bishop and his left knee. She drives the blade in, and then slashes up and out. A moment later the Bishop is falling and taking her with.

Using the falling man's own body as a smoke screen, she leaps off and races along his shadow as his form comes down, scooping a rock as she goes and still running along his form only to let the rock go like a shot, sending it flying in a blur out from the man and then she takes a sharp left. As he falls, she ends up at his side, dropping low in an attempt to hide behind the big man's body and wince, her right arm grabbing her left as she shudders, stifling a small scream as she notes blood dripping down the sleeve.

Donna Troy has posed:
    The sheer mass of the great stone Rooks bearing down on Gilgamesh might be enough to trouble even that hero, but he soon finds he's not alone as Tempest and Troia move in to help out with what looks like the heaviest part of the counter-attack. The ancient Eternal, once a legendary king of Sumeria, is joined by an Amazon and an Atlantean, and the mythic combination is simply more than even this massing of enemy power can deal with.

    Gilgamesh lashes out, crushing a pair of towers with each fist. Tempest too flies in to engage one with a greater strength than he'd ever shown back in the old days of the early Titans, wrapping his arms around the stone legs of one towering rook and simply heaving it to the ground. Troia charges in on her land-shark mount and leaps from its back to land a two-handed smash that sends it flying into one of its fellows so hard that both of them are smashed into rubble.

    The mythic trio pound fist against rock, each moving far too fast for the lumbering towers to cope with, punching with far more force than these chess men are built to cope with. Before long the three are standing on a mound of rubble and grinning at each other, and then all three move away -- Tempest back in the air to lead the landsharks on a renewed attack across the entire line of the enemy, while Gilgamesh charges bodily into the enemy force, where it is weakened by the destruction of those rooks. Donna remounts her landshark, guiding it with her lasson as it leaps and dives down under the grass, to swim below the army.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Gar's intervention gives Caitlin enough time to get to her feet and pick her maul back up. More of those vast, two-handed swings smash through the line of pawns and into the ranks of the lancers behind them. The redhead looks over at Donna, exchanges a handsign with her, then makes a few big swings to create more breathing room.

It clears up some space for her for the next trick-- she lines her feet up, hefts her hammer in both hands, and throws it forward like a throwing axe.

For most people it might have a range of thirty feet. Caitlin throws the three-hundred-pound maul-- all that burnished cold steel, bane to the Fae-- directly through the ranks of the enemy in front of her.

"Push!" she shouts, and kicks her helmet into her hands to start sprinting forward like a linebacker smashing through a cornfield. Her helmet's kicked up into her hands and she uses it to effortlessly scoop Kaida up, cradling her in close with one arm and using the other to protect her face and head while she rushes towards the rally point.

Gar Logan has posed:
If you've never heard a raptor whistle, now you have. At least, Beast Boy's version of it. "Steeeee-riiiike!" he calls out, and he wastes no time in going to cheetah form with an opening created. "Last one there's a slow Titan!"

With piles of wrecked and wasted chessmen littering the field, he races on ahead and leaps from this spot to that, ducking past others, moving well shy of super-speed but still damnfast.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Breaching -- the sudden launching out of the water to crash back into it with a mighty splash -- is something that is usually associated with dolphins, but just sometimes sharks can do this too. Including landsharks, when they are so encouraged by an Amazon riding them. The line is weakened, the flanks of the enemy are mired down dealing with Garth's army of landsharks, and Gilgamesh is free to join Caitlin and Gar for the push. And then Donna and her landshark breach ahead of them, crashing /up/ through the mass of enemies, sending them flying and collapsing the line Caitlin's maul has already cut a hole into.

    Donna leaps from the back of the shark, sword slashing from side to side as she runs to join the charge. Garth swoops down low to the ground, moving alongside Gar. Caitlin, with a tired and exhausted Kaida, find themselves flanked by Gilgamesh and Donna as they crash through the remaining soldiers, and run through into the narrow passageway at the far end of the board, leaving a wrecked chess-set behind them. The shell-shocked chess men make no attempt at a pursuit.

    This last hedge passageway is relatively short, and the hedge walls slope steeply downwards as the heroes run forwards, until they end at an opening where the hedge is a mere dozen feet high. The passage ends at an opening into a rectangular space perhaps twenty by thirty feet -- the center of the maze.

    Just as Caitlin, Kaida, Gar, Garth, Gil and Donna slow their headlong charge to a walk, the hedge wall opposite explodes, a circular hole burning through it as Vorpal flies through and lands with a thud at their feet, unconscious. Following close behind are Nadia, Kian and Vic, who walk through the new hole in the hedge in a rather more sedate fashion, to find themselves face to face with Gilgamesh and the other Titans.

    Within the space is a table, overthrown with broken crockery scattered across the ground, and close by it a tall stone sundial, beneath which a slender-limbed bird faintly resembling a shabby pink dandelion clock, with ragged feathers sprouting all around and a beak resembling a parrots, only upside down. On spotting the visitors to its lair, the bird lets out a passionate squawk.

    What really dominates the scene though is the tree in the middle. Although the trunk is not very broad, it is twisted ad convoluted as if it has grown for a great number of years, and the branches spread out in a wide, almost flat canopy of leaves overhead, sheltering the very center of the maze with soft shadows. Nestled into the roots of the tree and leaning up against the trunk is a most peculiar musical instrument, something like a four-stringed guitar with a body resembling a battleship in shape. It even looks like it has tiny cannons.

    All in all it would seem like a reasonably serene and peaceful place, were it not for the fact that a tall, gaunt man wearing a top hat is nailed to the tree by his hands. At first it looks like he may be dead but a few moments after the heroes arrive he raises his head painfully and looks at them, licking his dry lips. Tucked into the brim of his hat is a hand-written price card reading 'In this style, $49.99 or 0.012 Frabcoin.'

Donna Troy has posed:
( To find out what happens next, don't forget to pick up scene 9514 at your local comic store, or online at https://heroesassemble.mushhaven.com/scene/scene.php?id=9514 )