thearena | The Legion Is Dead, Long Live The Legion

Iskierka hasn't failed to notice how the Tributes are slowly diminishing in number. It's more obvious here too, without the forest getting in the way. Of course, this has its own problems. But that is perhaps less important. Iskierka doesn't really care for the waxworks, but she's been finding herself more and more interested in make a proper lair for herself, and the waxworks do at least keep her somewhat well hidden.

That said, she isn't at all pleased to find someone else skulking about in the places she's decided are most emphatically hers, by virtue of being fairly close to where the sky is, if she'd actually been able to get an use of out flying in this arena. And between finding people somewhere she doesn't want them and still not being able to fly, she's just about irritated enough to want to see these strangers gone.

Given that she wouldn't have recognized subtlety if it had bitten her, it's no real surprise that she doesn't even try. She simply steps out into sight, hissing the low quiet hiss of something that is not precisely friendly and has no interest in being so.

Edited 2014-02-17 07:25 (UTC)

"That one, I don't - I don't like that one," he said of the new threat that had stepped out among the statues.

He didn't like that one, Lyle.

Because that one didn't seem to like them.

"Run?"

Edited 2014-02-17 08:18 (UTC)

"Running's good!" Lyle said over his shoulder, having already seized the Coluan by the arm and taken off in a direction away from the sprocking dragon.

Dragon. Sprocking dragons, what the sprock, why were there sprocking dragons here, that was even more egregiously unfair than throwing two super heroic vegans into a long-term death-match.

Fade fade fa--

"Motherfucker!"

No powers! No powers and a sprocking dragon chasing them down!

Unfortunately for the both of them, running only gets her all the more interested in them. It's been a very long time since she's had something to actually chase, and although she still can't fly this is better than nothing. So it's perhaps no surprise that she comes after them, wings half-spread and head held at just about the right level for a proper breath attack, if there's reason and cause enough to try and burn them. She doesn't even care if she knocks over a few of the statues in the process.

It might be unfair to have her in the Arenas, but she doesn't care about that. She never has, when there's fighting to be had instead.

So she gives chase quite gladly, and leaves the rest of the details to other people.

There was no chance of them outrunning her so the only option was outmaneuvering her. If they could just get to the stairwell and up or down a floor before she saw which they ran to...

"Lyle, the stairs!"

"Yes!"

Stairs were good. Stairs were very good. Maybe this time he'd be smart enough to run down instead of up to the roof where they'd be cornered because they had these cheap pieces of nass on their fingers instead of their flight rings.

"Can you make it on your own?"

Because if Brainy could, then Lyle was going to try to lead her off. He wasn't in good shape for running and terror after these past few weeks, but he was still better off than Brainy was.

Stairs were good. But there wasn't going to be much time to decide whether it should be up or down, and Iskierka had her own opinions on the matter. True, most of those opinions tended to simply getting the both of them off the floor they were currently on, but there's any of a number of ways to manage that.

Chasing them off is only one of those ideas, and as she draws closer they might just pick up what sounds like the soft hissing of steam. And for all that she might actually know about the sprinkler she's certainly not above setting off a few fires to get the two of them moving if they don't decide in fairly short order.

When they get to the roof, there's someone there. A teenage boy blue pajamas decorated with white skulls and crossbones. Perfectly ordinary, except for the blood coating him, caked over his clothing, smeared through his hair and across his face.

But he's hiding, waiting in the shadows to see if anyone comes up to the roof. It would be hard to see him, unless they were looking.

Sounds of fighting in the stairwell were coming from below them.

"I can still move." For now. Just for now. "Up!"

The last thing they needed was to run while being chased by a dragon right into another threat. They'd worry about getting back down later.

"Up it is!"

What he wouldn't give to be able to lock the door behind them. Or, better yet, to be on the Bouncing Boy where they could slap on the environmental controls and temporary jettison parts of the ship. And where they had their super powers and weren't engaged in a death-match!

Lyle was the first one on the roof, holding the crowbar he and Brainy had obtained in front of him, prepared to defend the pair of them from any attackers. As hungry and rattled as he was, he missed the blood-soaked teenager lurking in the shadows on his first scan of the area.

Besides, they were running from a dragon. There were absolutely teenagers scarier than dragons (he was friends with several), but not at first glance.

Brainy slammed the door behind them and back away from it, looking around desperately for something they could use to jam it shut, just in case she tried to break her way through.

"I don't see anything we can use as a barricade."

"What are you running from?" His tone is casual, polite, despite the blood smeared across his face. Justin doesn't bother to look around for something to barricade the door, though he does step away from the shadows.

Lyle didn't yelp; but it was a full-body twitch of surprise that turns him away from the door, crowbar raised.

And that was a sentient covered in blood, a sight that had never once been a positive development in Lyle's life. Maybe they should have stuck with the dragon, it might have been predictable in a way this sentient (human?) won't be.

On the other hand, there was one of him and two of them, and if they played this smart...

...He didn't really have an end for that sentence yet, they'd just have to wing it.

"Dragon," he said shortly, not taking his eyes off the blood-soaked sentient and trusting Brainy to watch the door. "Wasn't expecting one of those. They seem pretty angry about the whole situation."

There were two of them and one was visibly having difficulty standing after using up so much energy running. He was starved and weak - visibly so at this point, given he'd burned off what little body fat he'd had to start with and was already starting to lose muscle.

So two of them, but more in the way there was two of something when you had a person and some dead weight. A person and some dead weight were definitely two of something - two somethings that didn't go well together.

The tone was not good. The hairs on the back of Brainy's neck raised in the way they had in so many situations in his life. Maybe it wouldn't have been that way if it weren't for the blood on the teen's face but a casual tone just really didn't go well with blood on your face.

"Lyle..."

It was a cautionary tone. He'd been there longer, seen more of the footage of arenas past. He'd seen more of how it twisted even the innocent.

Therefore, he was slightly more paranoid.

"Are you more afraid of the dragon, or of me?" He steps closer, expression remaining mostly polite. Justin Law was never innocent to begin with, and this arena has done nothing to help his killing intent.

Lyle wasn't as paranoid as Brainy was, but he wasn't unobservant and he was significantly less stupid than that. He kept the crowbar raised defensively and took a step back, holding an arm out to the side to block an attack on Brainy.

"Right now, I'm not particularly inclined to be within reach of either of you," he answered.

Brainy, if you've got any suggestions, Lyle was open to them

His brain was too slow, all four functioning tracks of consciousness currently stuck on one thought, dragged out endlessly:

Foooooooooooood.

"We have no qualms with you. You're outnumbered but we've had our fill of senseless violence for the day. I propose that we wait until the stairwell is clear and then go our separate ways."

He had to try to seem steady and capable of fighting and for the most part he accomplished it. He stood upright and carried himself as if he wasn't about to fall over.

But he couldn't stop the way sweat beaded at his temples and dripped down his face from the effort.

Two to one is nothing. At the most, they might give him a little bit of a fight.

"That does sound reasonable."

He steps back, giving them some space. But Justin has absolutely no intention of giving up so easily. He is going to kill them, but he has enough patience to wait for the right moment.

Lyle relaxed a hair or two at most when the blood-soaked sentient stepped away, but that was all. He'd spent the better part of the past decade as either a super hero or a spy, neither experience was inclined to let him put someone who couldn't even bother to wipe the blood off their face to his back.

He could tell how much effort it was taking Brainy to stay up-right. Sprock, he could practically feel it in his own limbs; he may have been here for a week less than everyone else and he didn't have the high-speed metabolism of a Coluan, but he wasn't in any where near the shape he'd want to be to fight some kind of teenage psychopath in hand-to-hand combat. They just had to fake it long enough to get out of sight again, Lyle'd done that more times than he could count.

It was just that usually, when he did that, there was someone coming to help him. That wasn't going to happen in here.

"Upside is it probably won't take long," he said. Once both sides actually get to fighting instead of posturing things likely ended one way or the other fairly quickly.

If she managed to chase them into another threat, Iskierka certainly wasn't going to complain, and as long as they were moving she would follow. Or at least, she'd follow up to the point where they where no longer on the floor she actually considered hers.After that, well, she'd get to that when she got to that.

Right now, there is the chase, and that's worth more than very nearly anything else, under the circumstances.

Edited 2014-03-02 01:26 (UTC)

Secure in the knowledge that Lyle had his back, Brainy went over to the door, keeping most of his body off to the side of it, but pressing his ear at the very edge, to try to hear if the dragon was on the other side.

He looked ready to draw his head away from the door at a moment's notice.

He heard a door slam several levels below.

"Lyle, I think our pursuer may be gone."

They made it to the doorway up top only just in time, slamming it shut in Iskierka's face.

"Is it?" Justin steps closer, mildly curious. "Are you going to be going back down? There is a faster way, you know."

"Ah ah ah!" Lyle said, raising the crowbar defensively again. "I thought we agreed on no close-quarters conversations."

Door, Brainy, get the door, get the door open so they could get out of here.

The doors of the stairwells were unfortunately locked from both sides, which meant he had to do his usual lock-picking.

"Seeing as there are no other points of egress from this roof other than this door, the only methods of escape he could be talking about would have require an uncomfortably personal rendezvous with gravity," he said to Lyle, his voice terse. "He's going to attack."

The lock clicked.

"Which is why it's time to take our leave," he said, wrenching the door open.

Edited 2014-03-12 08:54 (UTC)

By the time Brainy gets the door unlocked, Justin has a mask on. His arm transforms, growing a headlock on the end of a chain extending from his arm. It snaps out, controlled by his thoughts, and grabs Lyle by the leg.

He pulls back, dragging the other boy along the floor.

Oh, a mask.

Sprock.

Lyle lost his grip on the crowbar when his legs were jerked out from under him (get it, Brainy, get it, get it), and he barely managed to protect his head from cracking on the roof. The part of his brain that remained observant and clinical even when he was terrified out of his wits noted that this must be how he was covered in blood when he was apparently unarmed, which was not helpful.

He scrabbled uselessly against the pull of the chain, swearing a blue streak across the distance toward Justin.

Funny how they sometimes managed to do that mind-reading thing even when their friend the telepath wasn't around to drop them any hints, because Brainy immediately went for the crowbar, hefting it off the ground and moving to attack Justin.

Physically weak or not, there was no way he was just running and leaving his friend behind.

"Release him immediately!"

They should have listened to their instincts. But where had there been to go? Down into danger? Up into danger? Staying in the same play with danger? They'd made a call and it had blown up in their faces. There was no winning for most in the games in general, and Brainy had a sinking feeling that there was no winning this fight.

Edited 2014-03-26 06:58 (UTC)

Justin simply grins, showing more teeth than can possibly be comfortable as he raises a bladed arm to block Brainy's crowbar.

Lyle took the opportunity to aim a vicious kick at the kid's knee with his free leg. Brainy wasn't going to be able to keep this up for long, not in the state he was in.

They might be going down here, but Lyle didn't plan on going down easily.

Hardly any time at all.

Just the force of the deflection caused Brainy to step back, onto the glass of the skylight.

And as Brainy stepped back, Justin pulled again, trying to drag Lyle onto the skylight even as the kick to his knee took him down.

"Brainy, move!" Lyle shouted, awkwardly scooting closer to his now-temporarily-downed captor to try and get some slack in the chain binding his leg. He aimed another kick, this one for the kid's head -- the angle was awkward, but maybe he could kick the mask off or stun the kid long enough for the two of them to escape.

Nope, he was not running. He did move closer to the edge of the skylight - trying to get closer to getting off it, but it was mostly to try to swing the crowbard as Justin's head, holding between that and Lyle's attack that they might knock him out.

After Justin broke the glass and they fell through, it fell around them like a sudden thunder shower, tinkling to the floor below. He had caught a hold of what might have been the molding around the window, barely managing to grasp the rubber in his hands. The longer he held them there with it, the more the rubber strip started to slowly peel away.

Perhaps if he let go of Lyle, he might have had a chance to climb up and as their attacker wasn't looming over the hole, he might have been able to simply walk down a now empty staircase to (relative) safety.

That wasn't going to happen. Teeth gritted, arms shaking, he held on, digging his nails in despite knowing the pain it would cause, to have the tightest grip he could.

He was malnourished and exhausted and beaten and bloody but somehow that grip was like a vice. Somehow the Brainiac 5 that had been fainting earlier was gone and the person that had replaced him was a being of pure will.

"We seem to have - found ourselves - in something of a - nngh - precarious position." He wheezed in a breath, a difficult thing because of how his arms were stretched and the weight of Lyle pulling down on him. "Any ideas?"

Lyle wasn't looking down. He was not going to look down, because he already knew what he'd see and he really didn't need to actually see it. He could imagine it just fine.

"I can--" Lyle paused, swallowing down the notes his voice hadn't hit since puberty had wrapped up its business with him. "I'll grab your legs. You can use both hands, get a better grip."

Don't look. Don't look. Just move.

"There's nothing to grip, Lyle," Brainy said, each word careful and cutting like the glass down on the floor below. "And even if I get both hands on it, I'm too weak."

He hated that, admitting such weakness when he was used to being fit and ready to fight all the time. "Maybe after you grab my legs, if you climb up my body and get a hold of it yourself..."

Because he wasn't going to be able to hold on much longer.

Only, he didn't get a chance to help Lyle do that. More of the moulding ripped from the window frame, causing them to dip downward in a sudden jerking motion.

Brainiac didn't let go and the moulding didn't rip free entirely but the sharp movement dealt damage to already weakened muscles and joints. There was an audible pop as his shoulder came out of the socket and he cried out, then quickly bit his lip to stifle it. Sweat poured down his face and his eyelids squeezed shut.

Yet he still hadn't loosened his grip on Lyle's hand.

Lyle gasped and clung more tightly to Brainy's hand when they dropped, cringing at the sound of Brainy's should dislocating under his weight. Sprock. Sprock.

"Sprock," he said out loud, peeling the fingers of one hand off of Brainy's wrist and grabbing his legs. "I'll climb up and pull you up with me."

Assuming he didn't just peel Brainy's pants off with his weight and take them with hi-- no, not thinking like that. He couldn't afford to think like that.

He wrapped his hand around Brainy's thigh, digging in with his fingers. He was going to leave a bruise; he'd apologize later.

"Got your leg. You can--" his voice cracked again. "You can let go."

Oh sprock. Oh sprock. He didn't want to die like this.

He did.

He let go.

That was when the moulding decided to let go too. Before either of them had a chance to react - not that there was truly anything they could do in response to it - the moulding gave way and even dragged more pieces of the broken window frame with it

They fell, surrounded by broken wood and glass, onto broken wood and glass, gravity and their flailing causing them to lose their hold on each other.

Edited 2014-05-11 07:33 (UTC)

Lyle had invented the Legion flight rings. Brainy had created the metal they used, but Lyle was the one who'd taken it and tested how much weight it could bear and shaped it into rings and given them to the Legion. And he'd done it because he hated heights.

He really hated falling from them.

Having been focusing on taking deep breaths to keep himself from panicking, he had enough air in his lungs to shriek like a violin in a horror holo. Enough air, but not enough time -- the rest of his shriek was lost in a pair of sickening, crunching thumps as the two of them hit the glass-scattered floor below.

You're dying.

The voice came through a haze of agony, of blinding white light that had flared up in front of his eyes. The light faded to a redness that overlaid the world.

The pain had caused him to pass out and he'd finally woken up. As he laid there, body broken, mind in chaos as his tracks of consciousness tried to reassert themselves, one track had managed to pull itself together and present the objective reality that the others couldn't manage because they were too busy with things like "It hurts! It hurts!"

No concussion, but compound fractures, internal bleeding, fatal lacerations from the broken glass - you're already suffering from severe hypovolemia. Also multiple broken ribs and a punctured lung.

Blood burbled from his lips as he wheezed out a breath, helping to confirm it.

You're dying. Focus. Focus on what matters most right now.

Survival? Treatment of his injuries?

Impractical. This is beyond any available first aid and you have no allies to provide any assistance.

Evaluating possible nearby threats?

Wrong again. Even if there are threats, you can't do a thing to stop them if they attack. You're dying.

Yes, he was dying. That meant there was no chance of long term survival. There was nothing else he could do.

What's important - or should I say, who is important right now?

"Lyle," Brainiac 5 wheezed, tilting his head and blinking blood out of his eyes. He saw him there, body crumpled, bloody, and broken like his own, several feet away. His chest was still rising and falling. He was alive.

For now.

Edited 2014-05-11 08:01 (UTC)

Hurts. Everything hurts. Or enough things hurt that what didn't hurt didn't matter. Lyle whimpered, then gasped as his training took over -- you're injured, get away, get somewhere else -- and he tried to move, and it hurt.

He whimpered again, high in his throat. He hurt. He hurt and they'd won, the sprocking nassheads had won, he was dying and there wasn't a sprocking thing he could do about it.

Hurts.

The only thing they could do about it was die. That was the only option left to them.

Except that Brainiac found another option. He found an alternative like he always did. It still involved dying, of course, but it wasn't just dying. It wasn't them lying there in broken heaps of misery until they both expired.

He crawled, despite the pain it caused him, despite the fact that the leg with the compound fracture throbbed torturously with every movement. He dragged himself over broken glass and wood splinters, sucking in a breath rather than screaming as they cut into his hands and body. He crawled, even as the dark crept up and started to take him, several feet turning into immeasurable light-years.

Blood filled his lungs and dribbled out of his mouth as he reached for Lyle's hand. It looked mostly unbroken but just in case it wasn't, his touch was delicate as he enfolded his own hand over it.

This was the alternative to dying in their little heaps alone - dying in a little heap together.

Edited 2014-05-11 08:45 (UTC)

Lyle twitched in surprise -- drawing another whine of pain from his throat -- when something touched his hand. It was enough to get him to turn his head; if something was about to start eating him on top of everything else, he wanted to know.

But oh. Brainy. Dying was not a good look for Brainy. Had he just...dragged himself over?

Lyle blinked slowly. Brainy. Grife. He curled his fingers, squeezing the hand over his the best he could.

If they weren't coming back after this, at least they were going together.

He feared death like any other sentient but not this particular death. This was not his greatest fear. It was Lyle's.

So he simply lay there in silence, holding his hand as they both faded, as the dark swallowed them up and the pain subsided. It was the way it should have been, if they had to die at all.

Darkness came and and silence fell and they did what the Legion always did: they held onto each other as they went spinning out into the void.

The crowbar clips the side of Justin's head, tearing a bleeding line into his scalp. But Justin has not been training for more than half of his life to be defeated easily by anyone. His goal right now is to get them both on the skylight and then smash through the glass.

Edited 2014-05-14 00:42 (UTC)

This sprocking nasshead was just not going down!

Lyle didn't have enough slack to tackle the chain, so he flipped himself over and tucked into a roll toward the sentient's feet. Hopefully, he'd get just as tangled up in his own chain as Lyle was, or he'd trip over him and Brainy could knock him unconscious.

Batter up! Rather than running in and tripping over Lyle, he waited to see if Lyle could knock him down.

The Legion Is Dead, Long Live The Legion

If someone else was meaning to go first let me know; I can delete/repost

Re: If someone else was meaning to go first let me know; I can delete/repost

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My bad guys, I lost the notif

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Re: My bad guys, I lost the notif

Re: My bad guys, I lost the notif

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