Sonatorrek: Þrymskviða - 7

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WARNING: MATURE SUBJECT MATTER

The others take on the unleashed ice jotun, fighting for their lives.



The former bikers were massive, creatures easily eleven feet tall. Their blue and black bodies were densely muscled, and frost covered them in a thin sheen, cracking and reforming with each movement. The most shocking thing were their eyes - luminous blue and smouldering with barely restrained fury. They had received their orders, and with speed that belied their great size, they moved to attack.

Angelo's only advantage in this fight, he'd quickly judged, was his own speed and ability to dodge. And a kitchen knife he'd liberated from the diner, with which he was slicing at ligaments and joints and retreating as quickly as possible.

Ice giants, they were fighting giant bikers of made ice and Jubilee's powers while not strictly fire were a form of energy that burned hot. Finally, a battle she was supremely qualified to kick arse in.

She raised her hands to the first one that got close to her and let fly with her powers directly at his head.

"Dudes, you are so beyond fucked, you're like, waking up the next morning in the wet patch and the guy hasn't even left you a note levels of fucked."

Callisto's head whipped round in Jubilee's direction, her brow furrowing as she ducked a sweeping kick from one of the giants. "Wet patch, seriously? Is that a way to talk?" she said, catching the foot on return and slamming it downward, sending hairline cracks across both the ground and up the layer of frost that covered the giant's skin.

Then she let go quickly, stepping back and shaking her hands. "Fuck me that's cold..."

The jotun moved faster than she would have guessed, and an immense fist pounded into her, sending Callisto tumbling several metres before she could get her feet back under her. There was a palpable aura of cold emanating from them, and as Angelo tried another strike with his knife, the blade snapped in two from the drop in temperature. Jubilee's plasma had driven one back, but another caught her with a sweeping backhand. She was able to roll with it, but found herself trapped between two foes, and in danger of being mobbed to death, if not flash frozen first.

Marie-Ange had taken careful but certain steps back, out of arms' reach of the bikers-turned-ice-giants. In front of her appeared a mighty warrior in furs and leather bearing a sword literally half again her own size - one of the images from the temporary tattoos that covered her arms. The warrior surged forward, catching the attention of one of the giants to keep it away from Jubilee - perhaps if she could distract them, the little firecracker could set them on fire from a distance.

Jubilee used the distraction well, glancing around quickly to make sure no allies were looking her way before flipping her shades down over her eyes. She knew Marie-Ange would know it as the precursor to doing something flashy, and she didn't disappoint, setting off her powers like a flash-bang in the middle of the remaining Jotun arrayed against her. It was the work of seconds to use the resulting moments of blindness to put some distance between herself and the enemy.

Angelo was now dangling from the fist of an ice giant that had got a lucky grab, fortunately by his clothes rather than exposed skin, twisting desperately to avoid its swings. "Jubes!" he yelled over to her when she was clear. "A little help?"

The response was not a burst of fireworks but, instead, a hex bolt aimed just so at the exposed wrist of the ice giant. Whether that part of the arm was supposed to explode into ice shards was not something Wanda really wanted to think about or, rather, had the time to think about. As the former biker reared back, howling in pain, she darted forward to cover Angelo and allow him to regain his feet amongst the shards of ice that lay scattered around them.

Callisto had found her stride, now - she'd ascertained that she could crack their skin through sheer force, and also that she didn't much want to touch them, so she was employing the double knuckle duster approach, dodging and weaving around the massive jotun's legs, cracking knees and ankles, slowly weakening them and throwing them off balance.

One of the giants grabbed her solidly, and slingshotted her into Angelo, bowling them both over. Meanwhile, Jubilee's fireworks had forced several back, but she had to dive for cover when an oak tree was torn from the ground and tossed at her. Jubilee dodged the thrown tree, using the momentum of her roll to bring her closer to Marie-Ange and a giant she could see taking an interest in her team-mate.

"Yo, frogurt for brains, battles over here, yeah?" Jubilee called out and then throw a barrage of fireworks at his back before turning and heading in the opposite direction at a dead run.

She knew the only real hope she had was to keep herself out of a toe to toe battle, she'd quickly be creamed by superior strength but keep them running and hurting from her fireworks and she might have a chance of wearing them down.

Cold had as much effect on Marie-Ange's images as it did anything else - they frozen solid, and fell to pieces. It seemed to be an endless series of repeating monsters - serpents, dire wolves and odd-legged horses that kept charging headlong into the giants, freezing solid and then sublimating, leaving little puffs of steam before being replaced. Staying back had its advantages - Marie-Ange herself was not so much in danger, although the trickle of blood on her chin from where she bit her mouth told of the headache she must have been fighting to make so many images over and over - after the first dozen, they came up deformed, horses with snake heads, wolves with six legs and scales, but they served as distraction just the same even if they looked malformed.

The effect of Wanda's blast on the giant's wrist had given Angelo an idea as he disentangled himself from Callisto and got back up. Retrieving the broken pieces of his knife, he flung himself at the back of the nearest enemy and swarmed up it, deliberately taking the damage to his strands of skin. When he was near enough to the head, he leaned back, lifted the two jagged blades, and drove them into the blue eyes glaring at him.

Angelo's teeth snapped together as he was swatted from his perch with a blow like a speeding car, but instead of following it up, the jotun staggered around, clutching at its face and howling in an incomprehensible language. After a moment, it sank to its knees and turned rigid, before cracking and shattering into a pile of regular ice. Their numbers reduced, the remaining jotun redoubled their assault, mindless save for Loki's commands. One of the trio remaining charged Marie-Ange with a determined roar, ignoring the illusions between them as if they weren't even there.

Speeding back into the fray, Callisto dove into a roll that stopped neatly with her crouched right where the jotun's massive foot met the ground, catching it in the leg and sending it pitching forward, felling it like a tree.

The creature smashed full length into the ground, cursing in that same, strange dark language.

The axe that cut into the giant's neck was not wielded by one of Marie-Ange's images, but the frenchwoman herself, who for a moment looked to be armored in flannel and workboots before it faded, leaving her with just the axe covered in the giant's steaming blood, and splatters on her shirt and arms. She got off two chops before the jotun reached for her, and she ran, sprinting just outside of it's reach as it bled out onto the ground and tried to pull itself forward.

With a shout, Wanda hit the ground hard after one of the creatures managed to back hand her clear off her feet. She rolled backwards but wasn't quick enough to escape the grasping frozen hand as it clenched around her forearm; she shouted again from the pain. The former biker's grip wasn't just painful from the strength but the cold penetrated almost immediately and the entire arm felt as if it were cramping. She slammed a hex bolt towards it but the creature was faster and she screamed as it wrenched her arm out of her socket.

A gloved fist with fingers curled inside a vicious-looking knuckle duster slammed into Wanda's vision, impacting with the Jotun's wrist with a force that only added to Wanda's pain, but did, perhaps just as a muscle reaction, make its fingers release their grip. The jotun swung round, its focus shifting on the skinny women at the other end of the knuckle duster, as its other hand curled into a fist and impacted with her midsection - not full-force, but still hard enough to risk internal injury as Callisto went flying backwards through the air.

She lay still for a moment. Then she picked herself up, and was running back into the fray.

Jubilee had managed to stay fairly far ahead of any of the Jotun up till this point, peppering them with sparks from a distance, trying to wear them down into a state of mind she could get an opening with. Unfortunately they didn't seem the type to tire easily, which meant she was going to have to go in closer and really try to hurt them.

She hated when the universe gave her lemons, the lemonade always ended up tasting like ass. "Yo, Frosty the asshole, over here dude."

Jubilee’s call drew the remaining Jotun, injured by still dangerous. As they closed, fireworks started to dance across their flesh, outlining them in lurid colours. The young woman thrust both hands up, as if readying to dive and then drew them down sharply. As she did, the plasma ignited, and both jotun were suddenly pyres of fiery plasma. They staggered about, looking for Jubilee, but Walt dashed out from behind his bike and hauled her stunned form away from the creatures.

They swatted and fought the heat, but first one and then the other crashed to their knees, stiffening before their ice forms shattered into still faintly fiery piles.