16042/Entirely Necessary Roughing

Entirely Necessary Roughing
Date of Scene:	08 February 2024
Location:	Uptown, St. Martin's Island
Synopsis:	The Mammoths game is interrupted by a dimensional rift spilling out beastmen. Oddly, none of them appeared to be Mammoth-related. America and Karen treat them to the traditional Philadelphia sports experience. But in Metropolis. ...They punch them. They punch them a lot.
Cast of Characters:	Power Girl, Miss America

---

Power Girl has posed:
    Karen Starr has something of a reputation as a workaholic at STAR Labs. She's seemingly always there, first in the building in the morning, last to leave at night, with the occasional half-jesting rumor that she doesn't actually leave. But she does. Karen Starr totally has a human social life, just like a normal human should! Going to a hockey game is not 'A social experiment that took several days of planning and hours of reading up on the rules of the game' or anything. She has hobbies. Definitely. For real.

    This entirely normal social outing is going fine in all honesty. For one thing, Karen finds that she's enjoying the game. There's a lot of flagrant aggression and physical contact, and she can appreciate that. And fighting! There's /fights/! But just as part of the overall game! It's like boxing but EXTRA! It might not be as all-American as baseball and peanuts, but she's digging it. Right up until the second period, the game's score is close, the teams are lined up for the faceoff, and suddenly there's a rippling in the air above center ice.

    And in a moment, that rippling in the air is a seeping, bleeding gash in the empty space, bleeding a scintillating rainbow of colours, seeming to drip like liquid only to vanish, the thin gash in reality begins to spread, to split wider and wider. "...This wasn't in the wikipedia article."

    Karen's remarkably deadpan about it, but hey, strange breaches in reality aren't always problematic, right? Wrong! As that tear widens, a towering figure, twisted mockery of bull and man, somehow a minotaur, but Karen's fairly certain if Diana were with her, the Amazon would insist 'No, that is not a minotaur, I know minotaurs, that is something else.'. But it's certainly braying and howling and swinging a club that looks like nothing so much as the gnarled limb of a tree as hooves slam into the ice and cracks spiderweb out.

    Fortunately, the stadium crowd is used to this. They know what to do. PANIC AND RUN!

    The game officials are on the same wavelength, though they're less running and more skating, as the teams seem a little more torn. Forwards? Skating away gracefully. But every teams got a goon. And it really looks like one of them is intent on squaring off against what looks like almost nine feet of angry monster.

    Karen's already gone of course, by the time the hockey player's throwing his gloves off, she's nearly pulling her cape on back at her apartment. Later on she's going to remember she had a five hundred page report on a recent experiment on her coffee table. And that it's now all over her apartment.

    But she's more focused on speeding back to the arena to give the hockey player a helpful shove to launch him across the ice and into the empty net before descending club turns him in to paste.

    Which would be a real victory for Karen. Except that gash in reality is still open, and the only reason there aren't two dozen more monsters on the ice is it's not expanding fast enough for the ravenous dumbasses to avoid Three Stooges-ing in the 'doorway'.

Miss America has posed:
Ms. America Says: Baseball & Cracker Jacks Are The Bad Shit! Embrace Physical Violence!

You heard it here first, Americans!

America Chavez is a sports person. Of course, 'sports' when you happen to be able to casually cross the boundaries of causality encompass an entirely too huge umbrella, and the kinds of sports she's both played audience and participant to range from things as mundane as a right proper game of rugby to something that in no way resembles sports within the coherent, conventional boundaries of logic. The Microverse just does things -different-.

Still. Hockey. Hockey's pretty good. She likes when they jam each other against the walls. Very visceral.

She's enjoying it from her place near the back of the stadium seating (she didn't pay for it, mind; she just kind of discretely teleported in and shot a "-what-?" at anyone who made faces and that settled that) right up until the second period, the teams lined up for a faceoff, a dimensional disturbance tickling at the back of her brain.

Wait. A dimensional disturbance tickling at the back of her brain? America is positive this is not -that- sort of hockey.

And she frowns, the moment she sees that bleed of hypersaturation spew thick spacetime crime all over a perfectly fine hockey game.

"Fu" she begins but her assault on the PG-13 rating of this fine establishment is drowned out by the sound of blaring horns and shouting hockey fans.

Dark brown eyes narrow. America rolls her neck, slowly gets up to a stand. She takes a moment, to assess the degree of the reality-bleed, how deep the wound in space is.

Stars on the insides of her wrist are glowing pulsating ceruleans by the time Karen gets on her fanciest cape and bolts back to the game.

And as POWER GIRL arrives to shove that very stupid -- brave -- brupid goon out of the way, a big, bright blue star bursts like a wish just in front of her face, between her and the big not-a-minotaur's club. The weapons swings.

And the star shatters as one powerful, dusky arm -punches- through it to intercept that club palm-first with a resounding THWACK of impact.

Emerging from her portal, America holds that weapon with one-hand, exerting force against struggling force.

The other is still holding her Metropolis-style pizza* as she assesses the situation.

*America doesn't know what the difference between Metropolis-style and other pizza is that merits it getting its own naming convention, she just knows every city worth a damn in every universe worth a damn has its own pizza style**

**yes, that includes alien cities

She considers. Sizes up the Minotaur as they both strain against each other.

Sizes up Karen.

Her brows heft.

"Hey." she greets Power Girl, casually as they come -- and then gestures towards the GAPING hole in existence, with her pizza slice.

"Help me get a good opening, bombshell?"

The extraplanar minion of chaos grunts its immense dissatisfaction at this disrespectful interplay that has nothing to do with maiming, murdering or masticating.

Power Girl has posed:
Power Girl wasn't braced to do much more than tank that club hit and respond with a haymaker of truly epic proportions. But that haymaker is delivered before she can wind up and swing and... wait, that wasn't /her/ haymaker! Star-shaped dimensional portal bursts in front of her and dazzles the Kryptonian bombshell momentarily.

but then America's stepping through it, and maybe /that's/ what has the tall blonde dazzled. That's one helluva entrance.

And while that portal dazzles Karen, the far more pressing 'portal' above disgorges a wave of slavering monsters. Some twisted, lithe and writhing hyena-like creature happens to launch itself off its companions at just the right angle to land atop her and bite down.

At which point, Power Girl's claim that every detail of her costume, from collar to cape to boots are chosen for only the most important of tactical considerations. Because those jaws clamp down with vicious intent, only to find fangs nearly chipping on the golden pauldron that adds just a bit of panache to her otherwise minimalist attire.

She grips the scruff of this monster's neck and eyes America with a little one-shoulder shrug. "Sure, I think I can help you out."

As the monster the Kryptonian grips writhes and snarls and helplessly flails wicked talons, Power Girl glances back to it, held out at... well, literally arm's length. "...You don't seem very bright. But I hope you understand I am in no way sorry how demeaning this is going to be."

And then Karen spins about, cape flaring, arm curling, and then muscles snap with intent and fierce, focused force.

Power Girl swings the hyena-like monster into the minotaur-like monster and delivers an impact of bone-crunching force. Minotaur bone. Hyena bone. Not Kryptonian bone. Her bones are fine. Karen Starr drinks her recommended daily amount of milk for strong bones.

But yes, she did just hit a motherfu- ...monster with another monster. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

And then Karen's flashing a grin, "Power Girl, actually. I think 'Bombshell' was already taken. Probably. I mean, gotta be some semi-creative explosive enthusiast out there. Probably in Gotham."

It's about then when Karen looks up at the teeming mass of writhing monsters still trying to claw their way into reality. "I... is that getting bigger? I think it's getting bigger."

Miss America has posed:
Milk-enriched Kryptonian bone: accept no substitutes!

As far as proper superdense bone structures go, though, Utopian Parallel isn't a bad substitute, by all accounts. Take, for example, the way America uses her entire forehead bone to crush in the horned skull of a banner-waving goatman to get just a few precious centimeters into headbutting range: note the fine crunching of feeble chaos skull when introduced to its Utopian counterpart! Note the unblemished look of America Chavez's forehead as she pivots back with a double deuce to the flying goat!

Well, not unblemished. There's a lot of... -lot- of viscous fluids smearing her face now. Is that blood??

Well. At least it's not hers!

"Not bad," the bloodied Utopian offers the Kryptonian seconds before another satyr-wannabe flings itself at her.

But where there's one grotesque goatman, there's about half a dozen more with horsemen, bullmen, and jabberslythes (wait what) on the horizon. Three more dogpile on America one after the other, trying to bury the star-spangled brawler under their weight. She falls onto the ice back first, legs curling towards her chest so that she can piston kick one of those chattering, horizontal-pupiled menaces straight flailing into the air. She stuffs her fist into the mouth of the second just as it starts gnawing at her forearm, using it to -swing- the entire beast-creature like an improvised weapon straight into the third.

She's launching off her feet and into the air to -drive- both into the wall with a less than pleasant splatter effect that may or may not also contribute to the abrupt shattering of a segment of tempered glass.

(she always wanted to do that)

More are coming. More hyenas. More goats. Even more minotaurs. They seem to be getting both a) more plentiful, and b) larger and meaner. But that's just the way of these beastfolk. America stares down the encroaching horde with a scowl.

It's a glare that doesn't break, even when Power Girl offers that correction on her name.

"Uh huh?" America wonders; a small smirk tugs at her lips despite herself, at Power Girl's words. "I knew a couple Bombshells once. You remind me of her. Maybe I'll tell you all about it after this."

Is she angling for Hero and Chill time with Metropolis' finest? -Now-? Well. In her mind --

This is absolutely the perfect time.

But that doesn't make the swell of hording monstrosities knocking at their doorstep any less pressing. Power Girl wonders about the increasing size of the thing.

"Yeah. It does that," she informs Karen, looking back into that portal that has become less a portal and more a traffic jam of festering insanity. "Welcome to the gaping asshole of reality, Power Girl."

And America rolls one shoulder, then the other, as she readies herself in mid-air.

"Worse things are gonna get pouring out of that space-hole soon if I don't fix it." And with that, America -drives- towards the big bleeding wound in the hockey skies, SLAMMING into the pouring mass of beasts without relent or regard.

She has this problem, with flying off half-cocked at the drop of the hat.

Some might call it being a self-starter!

Power Girl has posed:
Karen's eyebrows rise high. Goddamn. That gal does not mess around. And given how casual she is about wearing evidence of that headbutt, this is not her first... alarmingly literal goat rodeo. Still, being impressed by the Utopian exemplar isn't an excuse for slacking off.

And so with a few more powerful slams of hyena beastman into minotaur, the hyena's hurled up towards that hanging dimensional rift with enough force that there's a sympathetic shockwave back down towards the ice as the beastman rockets up and into the rift.

He might also rocket into and through several of his herdmates. Karen's really not sure, nor does she particularly care. He held up to being slammed into the minotaur repeatedly, so she's got a feeling he'll be fine enough for her to feel comfortable with it.

Especially as more various and sundry beastmen spill out onto the ice and Karen begins delivering blows that make the earlier bench-clearing brawl in the first period look like the most dainty and civil of tea parties.

Karen's doing her typical Kryptonian thing, which is to say letting the beastmen futilely claw, bite, and find out she is paradoxically as soft as one would expect a woman to be, and distressingly invulnerable. The blonde lets more and more goatmen and other beasts pile on and then spins fiercely, drawing in air to a sudden tornado that lifts a dozen or more beastmen into the air, at which point she rockets upwards in a series of brutal, shattering uppercuts that snap heads back, and batter rib cages.

Things seem to be well in hand, really. At least as well in hand as being swarmed by twisted mockeries of animal form can be.

"So, how do we close it? I mean, we've been doing some work at the lab with subspace and dime-oh. Okay! You got this, girl!"

Karen calls out in her best full-on bravado even if she sounds a little uncertain about the entire thing. These /really/ seem like they're magical. It's why the minotaur made her think of Diana. Diana knows all about magic. Karen just knows it's bad news for her. At least so far none of the beastmen have had any /offensive/ magic. Karen delivers more knockout blows, hurls more limp bodies back into the rift, glancing up at the scintillating tear nervously. It's only been a few seconds, but... hopefully that spunky powerhouse that flew in comes back out before it closes.

Karen doesn't have a lot of friends, and she'd really /really/ be irked to meet someone she feels like she could get along with only to have her vanish into some sort of weird hell dimension.

Miss America has posed:
Beastmen can definitely take it. Uppercut one beastman through ten beastmen and there'll be twenty two beastmen to take their place.

It's the same basic arythmetic as a hydra, just furry and disease-infested.

And it's straight into that plague-pustuled hole between the mundane and the monstrous that America Chavez immediately hurls herself into. There's gibbering horrors beyond and behind -- but she's counting on Karen to keep them good and distracted while she tears off and does her thing with only perfunctory warning.

Look. She asked for help in getting her opening! For her, this is progress.

For those few, precious seconds it takes for Karen to trepidatiously tilt her gaze hellhole-wards, there's nothing from the strange woman on the other side of the portal. Nothing but howls and jabbers and chitters, as something that looks less like any known documented beast and more like a mass of tendrils attempting to ape the characteristics of a man and a four-legged beast starts to emerge--

--only to suddenly get /yanked/ back with a hideous yelp. The hole in space starts to shimmer more blue shades than red as it contorts and thins.

"Hey! Power Girl!" calls that distinctive voice from within the portal. "Throw them in! Quick!"

There's only about five seconds left before that portal completely sews shut with a shiver of oppositional, space-bending power, but for a Kryptonian -- that's five whole seconds of flex time.

By the fifth, that portal is entirely a shimmery white-blue hue as the hole becomes a scar becomes a sliver --

and winks out of existence.

The sixth second comes and goes without incident or sign of Karen's potential new friend. The seventh, too.

It takes somewhere between the ninth and tenth for a great blue star of shimmering spacetime energies to bloom above the hockey rink again before a sneaker-clad foot smashes through it in a shower of glowing fragments of shattering reality as America falls back in, in a practical waterfall of ichor-thick black fluids sluicing the rink.

Drenched in untold fluids, America hits ground in a crouch. The portal closes after her.

"I," she begins, spitting out something gooey and black, "hate those assholes."

Somewhere in the morass of blood - god let's hope that's blood - a severed claw flops and drags itself around uselessly. Is it -- is it alive??

Power Girl has posed:
As Karen continues whack-a-(insert the closest match to the animalistic traits of each monster) and depositing them back into the portal. It's all going great! Well, as great as being showered in blood and other fluids she'd prefer not to think about can go.

Indeed, it's only towards the end of the portal's closing that a jagged spearhead reaches out to graze along Power Girl's side and rend her costume in a thin, sharp line. It's not something she's not used to... truthfully? It's the benefit of her costume's design that mending is straightforward. And replacements are surprisingly cheap.

No, the shock comes when Karen sees America reappear and land... in a shower of absolute horror. Eww. Gross.

And that claw twitching and jerking around? Well, that's easy enough. Is it alive? Maybe. Maybe not. But it's clearly not a sentient being.

And so with a narrowing of eyes and an intense blast of heat, Karen's got no qualms about incinerating it. Which is right about the time she realizes she's feeling a /stinging/ under that cut in her outfit, and fingers reach over to find a thin, shallow incision. It's barely enough to count as a 'cut', but still. "Ow! Well... that's new! ...Maaaan, I hope that was a magic spear and not like... Iron Kryptonite or something. Last thing I need is a bunch of generic-looking metal to have to be on the lookout for."

Miss America has posed:
Kryptonian heat vision. Never leave home without it, if you want expedient gibbering horror cleanup.

America Chavez, for one, is grateful for it the second that single blast of heat scorches that lone flopping vestige of chaotic evil out of existence. Coming to a stand, she waves her hands to fling what gunk she can off her fingers; the rest, well.

She's just about to turn towards Power Girl palms up to request a heat clean for her hands when she notices the blonde bombshell eyeing a sliced opening in her costume. The Utopian tilts her head, brows lifting fractionally at the sight. Without a word, she walks towards Karen.

And, wiping her hands off on the back of her red-white-and-blue shorts, the curly-haired vagabond leans in and reaches out, seeking to press two fingers close to that exposed wound as she inspects it with a critical stare.

"You oughta be okay. Doesn't look like any of their poisons got in." That is not especially reassuring, but at least she delivers it with confidence aplomb! "Those fuckers are all up in wild magic. Not a whole lot of sense to 'em or what their dinky weapons can do. The shit they coat 'em in, that you gotta be careful of."

She looks up from inspecting that injury, gaze fixing on Karen proper.

"Kryptonian, huh?" she wonders. It makes more than sense. Metropolis. God-like. Really ridiculously good-looking. It checks all the boxes.

The Utopian upnods in acknowledgment, and offers:

"Name's America. Nice moves out there, Power Girl."

Because a belated introduction just has that much more impact after you've both been through the beastman crunch together.

Power Girl has posed:
Karen tightens up, stiffens a little as America strides in, but she lifts her arm to part that fabric and there's only the ghost of a hint of the barest bit of a scowl like she's enduring a doctor's office visit. But there's a slow exhalation of a breath she didn't realize she was holding as she gets a good prognosis.

"Well, that's a relief... I imagine their poisons are magical too, and I'd rather not find out how effective they are on me." She sighs and clicks her tongue softly, "I guess we might want to let the Amazons know, this does seem more their speed... or maybe Zatanna. You know, the magical bookworms?" Not that she really thinks of Zatanna as a bookworm. Bookworms don't have stage shows.

And then she upnods right back and grins impishly, eyes sweeping over her savior a little more carefully, appraisingly. "Nice moves yourself. So... come to a lot of hockey games? Or just the dramatic ones? Bet this doesn't happen during the pre-season exhibitions."

And then she's eying America again, or rather, eying the absolute deluge of seemingly demonic gunk the woman's drenched in. "I think we should probably tidy up." Not that she's not got her own fair bit of blood and mysterious gunk that's /far/ too close to 'a drenching' for her comfort. "I'm afraid my secret lair's a little far away. But I've got an office at STAR labs and it has its own suite of sorts. I mean, that makes it sound way more impressively decorated than it is. But it's got limitless hot water."

One eyebrow perks coaxingly. Hey, what's lending your shower to your comrade in beastman crunching? It's only polite.

Miss America has posed:
"You know the Amazons here?"

It's an honest question as the Utopian inspects that wound; it's just the wording that's a little off. Specifically the 'here.' It's such a minor thing that it's easily overlooked -- and it's not something that America affords very much time to dwell on.

"Tell 'em. They usually have a good head on their shoulders. If there's something off they can probably fix it." She swivels her wrist in an errant little corkscrew of a gesture.

"Or, y'know, the magic bookworm. Whatever."

Sorry; Zatanna is now a bookworm in America's eyes, and it's all Karen's fault.

Her thumb drifting brief over the edge of that injury, America gives the wound a final once-over before nodding once to herself. A soft snort flares past her nostrils as Karen asks her little come here often question. Bet this doesn't happen during the pre-season exhibitions.

"Yeah," she agrees, voice effortlessly deadpan. A brow lifts fractionally. "That's why no one likes the pre-season exhibitions."

Her hand falls back to her side after this, and she herself takes a single step back, to afford the tensed up Kryptonian her personal space once more now that her impromptu, maybe slightly haphazard checkup is done. Arms folding over her blue tee-clad chest, she offers a questioning look Karen's way as she eyes all the gore and gunk. America looks down at herself. Frowns. Back at Karen.

And then she leans in to reach out and flick some beastly bull gunk off the blonde's shoulder.

"Yeah. I think we should."

The offer is floated, here, complete with a hefted eyebrow of persuasion +10. America considers Karen for a few silent seconds, and then:

"... Alright. You got my expectations sky high now, Power Girl. Show me that suite of yours."

A second passes. She looks around her.

"Pretty sure we're crowding this place anyway."

This stadium, almost completely emptied from Metropolis-standard evacuation procedures, save for one man still eagerly sitting in the stands. He pumps his fist in triumph.

"WOO! YEAH! FUCK YEAH! GO MAMMOTHS!"

... Yeah. They've probably overstayed their welcome.