Fear in the Dark: Breaker of Gods: The Worthies

[xp_dagger]

Kuurth is laying waste to Los Angeles.




Sooraya swallowed as she took in the destruction surrounding them, the purple glow blinking out behind them. People were running around, screaming and terrified, but luckily only a few still forms on the ground before them. "Okay everyone, remember... direct force is not going to hurt him in any way. We need to be smart and sneaky. Havok, Deathlock, we need to distract him away from the people first."

"It doesn't hurt him but it definitely distracts him," Alex said darkly. There were people running in every direction - it was the middle of LA, there wasn't exactly anywhere safe they could lead him. "If we can just...." he waved his hands, making a bubble-like shape, "contain him while everybody runs... uh, I can hit him from one side, you get him on the other?" he asked Deathlok uncertainly. He still wasn't quite sure what the deal was with these guys. "Try and keep him from moving."

"And distraction is required to allow your psis to do their job," replied Deathlok. "I agree with the flanking manoeuver, X-Man. And while we are using our ordinance, your three teammates can work on removing his helmet." Without another word, the cyborg began moving to the right of Kuurth, leaving Alex to take the left. Deathlok's arm shifted, becoming a high-caliber gun, spraying the Worthy with bullets.

Alex shrugged to the others and ran to the right, energy swirling up and down his arms. He took aim, making sure no one was close enough to get hurt, and fired it off, slamming Kuurth in the side. He got a bit of grim satisfaction from that after what had happened in New York.

"Your machined weapon is feeble, construct!" Kurrth shielded his eyes with one enormous hand as he shook off the spread of gunfire, but the force of Alex's energy had him skidding along the ground, boots kicking up sparks and rocks and dust. "Send your construct and clerics home, and fight me warrior to warrior, mage!" He swung the enormous hammer around several times and then slammed it on the ground, sending up a shockwave and ripple of dirt and gravel. "Your magic versus my strength! It will be a show like none other!"

"Wallflower, Sporty, Scary, I need you to stay back as much as possible. Don't go into action before it's safer." She felt a little awkward giving order to Laurie, who had just as much X-men experience as she had, but ruthlessly shoved it aside and dissolved into her sand form. As Deathlock and Havok kept Kuurth occupied, she searched for an opening in his armor. As soon as he had found one, she slipped inside.

For Laurie’s part, she’d never been bothered by people giving her orders as long as she believed they knew what they were doing. In this case, she trusted Sooraya’s abilities, and moved back out of the way until an opportunity presented itself.

Phoebe and Celeste grimaced as one as they fell back. Fourteen understood the logic in the idea, and as much as she hated to admit it (even to herself), the Juggernaut was exactly the wrong type of foe for her particular brand of conniving. All the subtlety of a rampaging rhino and half the intelligence made it so that he was, in many ways, too stupid to be tricked and too impulsive to be manipulated. It was why she'd been more or less forced into some generic-looking body armor by Doug as they'd prepped, including a matching pair of black leather jackets with green piping and hidden armored plating that she'd bet money belonged to Marie-Ange. Contrasting brightly against the black leather were a pair of red and white "Hi, My Name Is" stickers that someone had hastily scrawled "SPORTY" and "SCARY" across in black sharpie.

Nearby, Fourteen's remaining three bodies (decked in standard issue body armor) ran crowd control as they herded the mass of people out of the area with a judicious application of psionic precision.

"Just get that helmet off," Celeste said, hoping at least one or two of her team could hear her, "and the real fun gets to start." And until then, Fourteen would be dreaming up new and fun ways to absolutely murder Blink for naming her after the Spice Girls.

The shockwave sent Alex stumbling back, and he straightened up, gaping. "My what? Uh, okay." Well, he had Kuurth's attention. Might as well take advantage of it. He clapped his hands together, arms lighting up with energy again. "Lezzgo."

He raised his arms and fired.

"Now this is a fight!" Kurrth's hammer was a blur, catching Alex's energy blast and glowing a brilliant eye-searing purple for a moment before it exploded in the enormous man's face. The crash was tremendous, but Kurrth never stopped swinging, or charging, even with a cracked and sparking hammer. "Clever to take advantage of this desert climate, wizard!" He spat a mouthful of sand in Alex's direction, and shook more from his face. "But you will not defeat me, no matter how much conjured grit and sand you create!"

Laurie would normally touch a target in order to both give her a link to their body but also to make sure the people around her were less affected by what she could do.

In this case it was impossible to get close enough to do that, and so she had to find something that would both do what they needed by also be subtle enough that she wouldn’t also incapacitate her fellow team members.

What she settled on in the end was simply to mess with the systems that dealt with temperature control.

Deathlok continued his barrage, concentrating his fire at Kuurth's head. Between the plasma blasts, the sand and the body heat and the force of Deathlok's firing, things had to be getting uncomfortable in there for the Worthy.

Sweat dripped into Kurrth's eyes, for the first time that he could remember, and when he blinked, he could feel the sharp grit under his eyelids. It did no damage - his corneas were as strong and unstoppable as the rest of him - but it impeded his vision all the same, instincts from when he was soft, stoppable, weak. His eyes watered, he spat sand and could feel it under his tongue, in his boots, ground into uncomfortable places in his armor. He could hear and feel the pounding of his heart echoing from his ears to his mind through the helmet and back around again and it was maddening, he could not stop - not destroying, not moving, and he could not stop the sand and heat and heavy thud of his blood in his ears.

He ripped the domed helmet from his face, throwing it away so frantically that it cracked the patched concrete street. "Cease your trickery mage, or be destroyed!"

The moment that the helmet was off, Fourteen could feel him. That annoying fuzzy blanket that had been wrapped around what she could see but not feel had been torn away, and left in it's place was the glowing beacon of a mind stripped bare. Even the natural defenses every cognizant mind created subconsciously had begun to fade, withering under the shade of an external crutch. There was no need to slip inside, as the front door had not so much been left open as kicked in, taking large chunks of the surrounding walls with it.

It was nothing quite like 14 had ever seen before, and for a moment she considered preserving it just the way it was, as a monument to terrible ideas and idiocy. Two minds had begun to melt together, and even she couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Were there a way, she'd almost want to study the gestalt. Psychically cut it apart just to see how it worked, and what practical applications it could be hiding.

"Tch," Phoebe clicked her tongue, drawing attention her way. Kurrth slowed to pause his charge towards Alex. "You talk too much."

A second later, it was over. There was nothing subtle or elegant about it. Instead, Fourteen ripped through what remained of Kurrth/Marco's natural defenses with a single focused strike, then followed it with another, and another, and another. Two dozen strikes in the span of a half second hit from all sides. And yet Kurrth still stood.

"Strange," Celeste commented from her position nearby. Hands in the pockets of her jacket, she crossed the distance between herself and the Juggernaut. "That should have..." she commented, reaching out to give the comically larger man a push. Almost as if in a cartoon, he toppled over backwards and landed with a monumental crash. "Ah," Celeste tittered loftily. "There it is."

She turned towards the nearby Alex, who was still on the ground where he'd been the target of Juggernaut's charge. "What can we say? You're welcome."



Nerkkod has attacked Tokyo’s main port.

Natasha stepped out of Clarice's portal already intently scanning the destroyed area in front of them. Containers, cranes, and metal siding were crumpled haphazardly all over the place. Her guns were drawn with the specially prepped bullets dipped in her venom loaded. Her last resort would be using the additional venom however she saw fit. Dirt and debris covered everything in sight. There wasn't much still left standing in the shipping area and even what remained had an off kilter look to them. "Eyes open," she whispered to the people stepping out with her. "It's too quiet." The air felt tinged with fear and something impending.

The next figure to emerge from the portal was a foil to Natasha's caution. Namor strode out with every bit of confidence that comes from being a king and practically invulnerable could give a person, matched with the generous helping of ego those two things also provided. His first impression was the overall wetness: the smell of ocean salt was crisp in the air in this "Port of Tokyo," but all of the expected shipping containers, boats, and cranes were scattered out of the order that had been promised by surveillance photos in this team's briefing as if they had been tossed by a god's hand. That, and everything -- everything -- was covered in water.

Namor smiled smugly. There was only one king of the sea here, and that person carried a trident.

The once-king was airborne only a few steps outside the portal as the rest of the team filed out, and that height advantage painted a picture of the battle to come: swirling set of whirpools were tossing waves at the land like an angry sea god as an airborne mech circled cautiously out of reach, both juxtaposed against the flat horizon of the sea. Behind the port, there seemed to be a mess of military barring access between this industrial district and the actual city with only a few scattered civilians scrambling away from the battle and toward the blockade; a swarm of ants painted against the backdrop of a sprawling metropolis and a distance white-capped mountain. Strangely, there were limp bodies scattered amid the carnage of a harbor. Odd.

Recon gathered, the dark-featured Atlantean swooped back down from the sky to his allies as his smug smirk melted into a considered, battle-ready grimace. The group was still getting their bearings and getting cover. Good. "The Revenger and the Worthy are toying with each other out at sea like children. We should engage immediately."

Alani glanced around the area as she followed closely behind the group. The destruction she could immediately see made her more nervous than she was willing to let on, and she cleared her throat to cover it up. "This Worthy guy, he just smashes?"

Sharon felt the body armor settle around her like a long lost friend and with casual ease she checked her weapons, scanning her surroundings at the same time. "This feels all wrong... with all the damage, there should be more casualties. Something isn't adding up here."

"When does it ever on things like this?" Jean-Phillipe asked. Cynicism came easy to him, after all, though he would say it was the voice of experience. He was scanning around, looking for people. Sharon was right, though, for this much carnage there were essentially no bodies lying around.

Nerkodd wordlessly lowered his hammer into the water, channeling power through it to summon several water spouts and targeting them toward the newcomers. He leaned onto the hammer and continued his onslaught, watching and waiting for the pesky, puny mortals to be swept away under the waves and out of his sight.

"My experience it never does," Natasha said in response. There was always some kind of explanation for the out of the ordinary. She'd never walked into a situation and not uncovered that it had more of a story to it. She headed toward what would be the main terminal of the port by her mental map but then dodged the large water spout aiming right for her. "Looks like we have part of our explanation!" She dived behind what was remaining of a low wall to avoid the brunt of another wave.

"Fishy dude... Namor..." Sharon called out as she flipped out of the way of yet another sprout. "Can't you shut this guy up in some way? This is getting..." She dove out the way of yet another wave of water. "... annoying. And we can't fight him if he is out there somewhere!!!"

She was met with a glare. "You will address Us as Our Title Befits, medic." Still, Namor gripped this trident tighter and turned an eye toward the sea. "I will easily remove this 'Worthy' from the sea. Amuse yourselves by finding a way to contain him further."

With that, the Atlantean was up. Or he would have been.

From where she'd found cover from the jet of water, Alani snorted. With the immediate blast passed, she dusted herself off and called out to the Atlantean. "Hey, your Highness, how about I help you wrangle this motherfucker?”

War Machine lifted off, streaking of in the sky in the direction from where the water blasts were coming from/had came form. His shoulder guns unfolded and he released a full barrage of ammo against the Worthy, but had to roll to stay out of the way of an incoming water blast.

"We've only a few minutes at best to find a way to kick his ass! Fishy dude seemed pretty annoyed." Sharon called out to the two remaining people of their team. "Any ideas?"



"Wasn't there something in the mission reports about electricity?" Natasha glanced around the partially destroyed port around them. "Either way, there's probably something we can do with the down transformers and power lines to capitalize on the fact that this Asgardian wannabe likes playing with water."

"I am going to hurt everywhere when this is over," Jean-Phillipe observed. But it was apropos that a tactic he had attempted to use on Thor once upon a time should be brought to bear against one of the Worthy, he supposed. Grabbing one of the sparking power lines, he lugged it toward the water line. "Everyone who cannot resist electricity should exit the water," he muttered over the comms before stepping waist deep into the churning waves. Letting the power from the grid flow over him, and adding his own to the mix, he wrestled with more amperage than he had ever channeled before.

Then, steeling himself, when the surge had reached almost the point that he was about to pass out from the exertion, he jammed the cable down into the water, directing the wild arc of energy as best he could toward Nerkodd. The energy blasted into the Worthy, and the massive jolt of feedback, with a loud noise like a backfiring truck, sent Jean-Phillipe up and out of the water to land roughly in a sprawled heap.

The blast of energy smashed head-on into Nerkodd, encasing his entire body and wracking him with pain throughout. He tried to scream but he couldn't open his mouth, his entire body was tense and immovable. Then, as quickly as it had struck him, it flowed out of him, leaving him limp and motionless. His hammer crashed back down out of his hand and into the water, followed immediately by his still body, floating in place.





Skirn is in Mexico City.



"Bloody-fucking-hell." Clea was took in the scene as she was the first one out of the portal. The City was partially on fire, and it probably had to do with the Asgardian looking chick not far off. "Found her. I can use some wards to keep her from going deeper into the city." Her fingers already slightly glowing as she was already casting the spell.

Reed was still reeling from everything. He felt that since Paris, he was in a daze, going through the motions and doing whatever was asked of him. "Don't use all your energy now," he said, almost coming out of a daze. "She's ...strong. So strong. You'll need to save something back for later." He swallowed thickly. "Can you get me close? I know I can talk to her, she'll listen to me." He ignored the fact that he hadn't been able to reach her at all since ...all this, but part of him still held hope that Sue was in there, able to hear him and respond.

Jubilee stepped out of the portal behind him, instantly taking in the situation around her as she’d been taught.

“I’m sorry Reed, but that won’t work. Talking isn’t going to do anything but put you and the rest of this city in danger.”

"We'll keep the talking in our back pocket, aye, but..." Rahne said, shaking her head, the shock in her voice clear at the sights around her but she forged ahead. As much as she would have liked to try to talk to Sue, it was clear even to her that they were probably pretty far beyond that point. But she hoped they were able to at least capture Sue without it getting bad.

"You will still be useful, stretchy one," cut in the Avenger. Yelena had been dubious about working with these amateurs and the conversation wasn't making her feel any different. Children and scientists, except for the Asian woman. That one was hard to put a finger on. "The hammer made your lady love into this thing, it stands to reason that removing the hammer will reverse the process. If you restrain her, we will do just that." She looked over the group. "She has invisibility and force fields, as well as the powers of Thor, yes?"

Reed nodded. He didn't like the idea of restraining Sue, not really. If it was the only thing though that would work though ...

"She uses her forcefields to create a cloak of invisibility," he explained. "They can only withstand so much energy, so if we break them, if we focus a ridiculous amount of kinetic energy at them, she will become visible and the power backlash will render them useless for a certain amount of time. Now for the other powers..." He shrugged. "I don't know how we can deal with those."

"Maybe that is all we need to be able to knock her out. Remove her shields." Clea looked at the rest. "She is still human and can only take so much.”

“Well, well.”

Jubilee’s hands glowed as several thousand balls of coruscating light lifted skywards and slowly headed outwards from her in a circle. While they had a direction to aim for, she hadn’t yet seen the being who had taken over Sue.

She hadn’t thought she’d ever use any knowledge she’d gained from her fight with Amanda so long ago, but looks like she was wrong.

“I’m good at shields, just be ready.”

Yelena raise her eyebrows at the lightshow heading towards where Clea had said Skirn was, but shrugged. It would be a distraction from the rest of them. "Behind me," she told the other three. "Keep low and quiet. We might be able to get the drop on her."

"Low and quiet I can do." The only thing Rahne bothered to take off were her shoes - morphing into the wolf form while wearing shoes was the worst - but the clothes were easily replaced as her form stretched and changed, clothing ripping in places and drooping in others. The wolf shook herself out of the scraps she'd left behind, padding forward quietly behind Yelena. As she moved forward, she began to take deep breaths in and started to try to filter out all the various scents, trying to find the one that smelled like Sue.

Reed followed Rahne numbly, ignoring all the horrors and crying around him. All he could think of was Sue. Not the creature she'd become but Sue, herself. He knew that everyone else thought he wouldn't be able to get through to her, and rationally, he knew it too. He still had to try. After what felt like an eternity, they found her -- or at least who she was now.

And he found he wasn't able to say a word.

Skirn had fought beserkers, squashed elves and torn apart ice giants before, but these...these humans were infuriating! The Asgardian screwed up her eyes for a moment as she gave an angry cry throwing her hands up as she seemed to vanish. There was the sound of footsteps on the group, a soft crump that seemed to come from all around them before Yelena felt an armoured fist burying itself in her stomach.

Rahne's head whipped around as Yelena suddenly bent double with a loud noise but there was nothing that she could see hitting the woman. But despite her eyes telling her there was nothing there, her ears were flooded by the sounds of someone clearly hitting Yelena and moving around and she could smell the scent of someone who hadn't been there just a moment ago.

Growling loudly, she leaped towards where the invisible person was - unwilling to bite and potentially break a fang on armor, she rammed as hard as she could, hoping to aim for the knees.

The woman found herself rocked backwards, the head of the wolf smalling into her stomach, driving the air out of her lungs in a pained gasp as a clenched fist came dropping down on the back of the wolf shaking her off as she held a hand to her stomach, glaring at the team assembled against her. "So you wanna play? Who's next?!"

Now that Clea could see where Sue or Skirn, whatever she was going by this days, she focused on her magic to create a few copies of each of the people in play. The copies circled Skirn in hopes to confuse her from actually attacking the real ones. Once the spell was completed she started to work on another, to try and separate the hammer from Skirn, but Asgardian magic was very different and it seemed to fight against her own.

Jubilee, who had been maintaining her net of plasma globes sighed in relief as she sent them to pepper Skirn’s shields. It had been awhile since she had to maintain so many small projectiles at once but training didn’t disappear just because you spent more time with subtle then you did with flashy.

She’d be able to maintain the barrage for awhile at this level, and she had snacks to make sure it didn’t leave her with a case of malnutrition afterwards.

It was like living in a bad dream. Reed slowly walked to his position and waited. The plan was in his head, he knew what he had to do and he kept talking himself through it until the signal was given.

Without reacting, he reached out and stretched, covering Sue's body as tightly as he could. Where before he would have held her close in love and kindness, he had to use a strength and force he'd never wanted to use on her before. His brain kept arguing with his body but he kept his eyes wrenched shut and tried to think of the story of Tam Lin and Janet.

He could be Janet.

He would hold her until she changed back and prove he was worthy, or he would die trying.

It seemed that the latter would happen first, as Skirn struggled for freedom, cursing him in English and Asgardian. The air grew heavy with ozone as lightning crackled across Reed's skin, and the Worthy's strength stretched him to his limits. But then the hammer, which she had clutched still in her hand, abruptly dissolved into dust. And Skirn's struggles ceased.

It was as if the young woman had sighed, the air blowing out of her carrying something more, something vital with it. In the space between one heartbeat and the other she seemed to shrink down, loose something of the martial bearing that had suffused her moments ago. She seemed smaller, younger, almost delicate now in comparison to the terror that had been tearing a swathe of destruction mere moments before. A pair of crystal blue eyes flickered open, Sue's gaze resting on the man wrapped around her, her voice the softest touch of satin, the barest whisper. "Reed..." then silence, her eyes closed as she snuggled into his arms almost instinctively as consciousness fled from her.

When Clea saw the hammer dissolved and the armor vanished and the real Sue falling to the floor, Clea dropped all of her other spells and focused on hiding Sue's identity from anyone that may be lurking trying to capture the epic fight. This one was simple as she ran over to Sue and took her hand to finish the spell. "Hey. We need a quick pick up for Invisible Woman." She said into her comms, "Like now."



Mokk is threatening the ancient city of Jerusalem.




Jerusalem is not a particularly large city. Only one-tenth the area of New York City, and about three-quarters the size of Ev's own hometown, St. Louis. But almost four times as dense, which would make for some arduous crowd control, even in a city with an already-robust police and military presence.

"This is not going to help the peace process," Ev sighed, stepping out of Clarice's portal along with his fellow X-folks and Avenger. Carnage spread all around them, and there was no missing its source. "We need to keep Duval north and west, as far away as we can from the Old City. This is apocalyptic enough as it is, let's not risk destruction of some of the holiest religious sites in the world. Especially if mutants are going to be blamed."

"Very true", Kurt agreed. "Some of these sites are fragile, and with the powers of his hammer, he could do a lot of damage."

"I mean, that shouldn't be too difficult right," Stephen took a step forward and turned on one foot to stare at the group before shrugging, "I mean he's gonna follow us right, the hardest part of gonna be keeping other people out of his way."

"Spark arrows for herding panicking people, bomb arrows for armour, bola arrow if I can get the shot because tell me that wouldn't be hilarious," Kate replied, jumping up on a nearby vehicle and towards a roof bound ladder. "This is gonna suck but we've got this. Come on."

"Fine," Xavin muttered and ran forward. "He says we've got this but is he doing the hitting? No."

The discussion became moot with a rumble of thunder and a flash of lightning struck the ground at their feet. "More of you interlopers," said Mokk, contemptuously as he landed on the ground in front of them. "You think to end what has been put into motion? You are mere insects before the oncoming storm." And with that, he slammed his hammer to the ground, generating a shock wave that shook the buildings around them and sent rubble crashing to the ground.

Ev held onto a lamp post to keep his footing, and reached out his aura to Xavin. The rainbow glow turned greenish-orange as his skin transformed into stone. "Grandiose villain speeches, of course that comes with the magic hammer," he said, his voice as gravely as his exterior. He charged Mokk, slamming into him with his shoulder. It was clear this borrowed strength was no match for the demonic magic coursing through this guy's body, but he even a moment's surprise gave them an advantage.

Stephen's hands danced around in front of him, trails of light following his fingers around as a handful of pebbles lifted off the ground, floating in the miasma of light between his fingers. The pebbles seemed to glow with an internal light, and then he flicked his fingers, the pebbles racing forward, exploding with a burst of light, a loud concussion echoing with each strike.

A flare landed near a group of people headed their way, blocking their path towards the battle, a second arcing off the first to encourage a couple to veer right. Hawkeye, perched up on a roof now, was already lining up and releasing an explosion arrow at what she was hoping was one of Mokk’s weak points before the first set of sparks settled. “We need to get that armour off. Anyone finds a hole call off for the rest of us,” she said, holding off.

The rocky armor Ev wore melted back into his normal skin as he reached his aura out to Mokk himself. Beneath the forbidden Asgardian enchantments, Paul Duval was still a mutant, which meant Ev could in theory turn his powers against him. Of course, everything only worked in theory. Synching with him was like trying to hold onto wet sand; Duval's powers kept slipping through his fingers. It was not until Mokk grabbed Ev's wrist and activated his powers that Ev's synch snapped into place, and he pushed back to give Mokk a taste of his own medicine.

What the hell. What the actual hell was he trying to do? Xavin moved in to try a tackle, stretching and wrapping around Mokk's lower legs before being thrown off like a rag doll.

Mokk roared in pain. The body he inhabited hadn't had their mutant powers for long and the sensation of having those powers meddled with was excruciating. When the other attacker threw themselves at him, the Worthy reacted instinctively, flinging them away. Another explosive hit his shoulder and he turned, intending to fling his hammer at the irritation on the roof, the woman with the box. But the child with the magical abilities attacked him again from behind before he could and he spun around. These insects were fast becoming beyond irritating. Then his head was engulfed in a noisome smelling smoke and something settled onto his back.

Stephen had made more than a big enough hole in the armour for Kurt's purposes. Before Mokk could swipe him off, he brought down the syringe and plunged it into the Worthy's neck.

"You dare?!" Mokk reached for the blue devil, who had been holding back from the fight previously, intending to fling him into the ground and crush him underfoot. But the strangest sensation was gripping him, his throat was tightening, his chest felt like it was being crushed. The hammer was too heavy... he dropped it beside him and pushed off the helmet. "What devilry is this...?" he gasped.

"A weakness of your host, who is allergic to peanuts", Kurt told him calmly, watching and ready to dodge if Mokk grabbed for him again. "You will find he is dying... and so are you."

Not that he was going to let the first of those happen. The moment Mokk fell and lay still, the hammer melting away, he hurried forward with his second syringe in hand, this one holding epinephrine.

There was a breathless moment and then the man on the ground groaned and opened his eyes. "That was Reed's idea, wasn't it? He's the only one who would have known about my allergy," Paul Duval wheezed. At Kurt's nod, he closed his eyes again. "Tell him thank you for me."