2097/Apokolips Now: The War Begins

Apokolips Now: The War Begins
Date of Scene:	16 September 2017
Location:	Metropolis
Synopsis:	The forces of Apokolips begin to arrive; Metropolis is the landing point for Ground Zero.
Cast of Characters:	Grace Choi, Lazarlite, Terra, Andromeda, Blink, Origami, Gravitas, Superboy, Miss America, Molly Millions, Kaelyn Silverleaf
Tinyplot:	Apokolips Now

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Grace Choi has posed:
    It's kind of hard to find armor, for a 7' tall half-Amazon. Especially when you don't know Reed Richards, or have direct connections to the Justice League, or Tony Stark. So, instead, Grace went shopping and bought one of those 'upper body core improvement' weight vests of 75lbs as a small means of protection. It's not like it's going to weigh her down. And, while Chaney's is busy as 'hell' right now with many other bars also in Metropolis with all the drinking going on with the tide of Darkseid's approach now on the lips and minds of many Metropolians, she's called in some 'personal days'. Grace Choi is not a hero. But neither can she stand buy, blessed as she is, with so much desolation around her. Threatening her home. Her friends. "It's probably time to go introduce myself to the Themiscyrian Consulate." She pulls at her vest. "They better have a 'half-Amazons get free body armor' plan." And then she grips the warhammer - designed for two hands, but Grace easily wields it in one, tighter on herself as she vanguards and watches for another one of those 'BOOMS' that she heard before Metropolis was turned into a crater-hole. And, the Justice League had released a red alert, planet-wide, for the incoming threat. Everyone was on alert.

    She has been waiting all day. But her waiting has finally paid off.

    BOOM.
    BOOM.

    BOOM.

    BOOM.

    BOOM.

    Not one. Many. And many more. The swirling portals suddenly paint themselves into the skyline. And it's as Barda said. Hundreds upon hundreds of alien creatures begin pouring through. Some fly, and as she deemed begin to thicken it with their forms, like a swarm of locusts. There are larger openings, though. Painfully larger. And from these, huge tanks begins to pour forth, followed by those upon two legs, and no wings. Armed with weapons of various sizes, natures. Some, with melee weapons - swords and maces. Others with guns like those of Intergang, or entirely new.

    The army of Darkseid has appeared, as promised.

    "Today," Grace says quietly, hefting her Hephaestus-forged hammer, "Is -not- a good day to die. But ... dammit. It'd better be a good day to kick some ass." Okay, so Grace isn't so great at pep talks. She looks up into the sky, looks into the oncoming army that's continuing to pour out the Boom Tube Holes. "So, I guess ... charge."

    And charge she does.

Lazarlite has posed:
Lytle has decided to try a different tack today. After "Train Surfing" back to New Your, he has decided to head up to the Hall of Justice. If he can not find a schoolfor supers, possibly he can find a hero looking for a sidekick...at least that is his reasoning.

Of course, his plan is rudely interrupted by the appearance of an alien army. Well, he is trying to learn to be a hero, looks like it is time to start. He makes his way as quickly as possible to the nearest arrival point.

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    Grace isn't the only one who's been waiting. Terra has made Metropolis her temporary home. After all: it will be ground zero for the attack.

    And Atlee doesn't want more people to die when she could have been there to do something.

    As the sound of boom tubes opening across the city, she stands up from where she's been sitting, next to the stone and asphalt pyramid she created from the rubble of Faora's return, looking up as the swarm starts to darken the sky, standing in the middle of the ruined crater in the middle of downtown. She lets out a soft huff of air, then crackles her knuckles, before the ground under her shudders, then lifts up, a rocky platform lifting her into the air as she starts to soar towards the oncoming tanks. She can't do a lot yet with the things in the air....but things on the ground...well.

    Her platform bobs and weaves as she rises enough she can see the tanks, before she holds out her hands, focusing...

    The ground shakes.

    And a moment later, a gigantic spire of rock spears upwards, punching into the underside of one of the tanks...then another, as she starts trying to spear them in place.

    She can't hold back here....she has to stop them before they start threatening the civilians who haven't yet made it to their shelters.

Andromeda has posed:
    Since Faora's surprise appearance (and catastrophic) apperance in Metropolis, Laurel had been patrolling - mostly over Earth, watching for large space incursions. Nothing had appeared so far and so after a quick trip to the Legion cruiser for a bite to eat she headed back down to the planet below.

    Just in time, it seems. Even as she was entering the atmosphere Laurel could hear the unmistakable sounds of the Boom Tubes opening.

    "So many?" she asks herself. "Grife." she curses.

    Still, she has a job to do. "What would Brainy say to do? Hit the biggest threat first. Alright." and she turns on the speed, intending to collide with one of the rock-speared tanks like a red and blue (and invulnerable) missile.

Blink has posed:
Portals. How dare they. Clarice had sat and watched the news with growing shock and anger at the audacity at which this 'Darkseid' entered the planet. With the warning she'd had plenty of time to make several phone calls, one to Molly and another to Conner. Both conversations had been brief, she was going, she was going to /fight/ for her home. Her planet. And they were welcome to come, if they wanted. When the teen dug her heels in, obstinate was an understatement.

Despite having had that amount of time, she'd still managed to almost be late. A soft -Blink!- heralds the opening of a bluey-purple edged portal in the air. The magenta haired mutant leaping through to hit the ground at a run. Wearing her full 'hero'ing' garb of a loose green dress and deep green lycra cycling shorts, she's ready for action. Even her javelin quiver on her back is fully stocked. It's time to kick some alien behind.

As the freedom fighter known as Blink breaks into a run towards the amassing army, she doesn't even spare a look back to see if her friends follow, giving them ample time to get through before she closes the doorway back to wherever it was they'd come from.

Origami has posed:
Miyako Moore has been fussing around trying to help firefighters prepare for this a bit. Then, she slept. Because if the world is going to end, it's always best to deal with it when well rested. Earlier, she tried getting people to shelter. Now, she has a whole satchel full of paper ready to go, and this looks like where things are going to get bad. She is leaning on an absolutely gigantic paper airplane, behind a wall of her own make, listening to an emergency services radio for updates when things start appearing. She slips a paper mask over her face, holds up a sheet of paper, and sighs. "Okay, I'm ready."

Gravitas has posed:
    Victoria woke up this morning and made a sandwich. It contained ham, cheddar cheese, dijon mustard, lettuce, onions, some leftover bacon, and a tomato. She had nothing else to do. Her family and animals had already evacuated the city but the young heroine wasn't planning to go anywhere. There was a refrigerator of food and no one to eat it. And sometimes following a daily routine is comforting. Afterward she stopped to do her Physics homework. If class ever started again it would be due in a week.
    Tori has to travel a short ways with her duffel bag in tow before she could find someplace discrete to change into her uniform lest someone actually see her make the transition from chollege student to "Gravitas". The sandwich sat at the bottom of the bag uneaten while she worked. Forgotten. Physics, at least, occupied her desk. She just barely managed the presence of mind to snag it before she took off into the sky.
    The sonic boom is audible all down the street. The deep rumble of soundwaves crowding into one another first as gravity pulls them together, and the crack as the body creating them shoots into the air and abruptly exceeds that speed. Then the speed of sound outside of her vicinity. It's a pretty distinct noise.
    When Gravitas does arrive she is followed by a cloud of rubble from the previous night's events. Everything from fist sized rocks to boulders. Literal tons of debris. It follows in her wake, gathered up by the rapidly expanding gravitational field responsible for her movement.
    "Atlee... Can you do something with this?! Incoming!" Abruptly Gravitas comes to a screeching halt some two hundred meters distant and puts her Physics classes to work.
    Inertia, noun. The tendency of matter in motion to stay in motion in a straight line. Directly at the incoming army.

Superboy has posed:
Superboy follows Blink half a second later. Today they were supposed to visit Molly's place in Madripoor but the world emergency totally derailed their plans. Instead they ended up listening to all channels (well, Molly did with her 'robot parts') and waiting to see if they could help.

Conner actually hoped nothing would happen; it was sort of a date, damnit. But of course aliens invaded Metropolis. A whole army of them! "Holy s..." he manages to close his mouth in time, just this time. "So many... we gotta close those portals before they just overrun the whole city!"

Miss America has posed:
    America Chavez is angry. She's been angry ever since downtown Metropolis was, essentially, turned into a giant crater. It hasn't gotten better -- if anything, it's only gotten worse. It has to. Because she knows how badly this kind of invasion can end. Because she knows that if all of this is resolved with the only loss being a city, they'll be damn lucky.

    So she stays angry.

    So that, hopefully, she can help this world avoid the worst case scenario the only way she can:

    THOOM

    With her fists.

    She's an unceremoonious scream of tri-colored fury in the skies the very second one of those boomtubes opens to connect a dimensional bridge between this world and that place beyond. She can feel so many of them opening up. Opening up for an army. She doesn't care. There's no announcements, no dialogue, no witty quips to be spared. This is war. And you don't screw around with war. So she does the sensible thing:

    She makes her entrance at velocities far surpassing the speed of sound, the boom of her own entrance following well behind her as she has every intention of colliding with Parademon footsoldiers and tanks and anything else in her path with force that would turn just about anything into a fine paste. No elegance, no mercy.

    Because they're sure as hell not going to get any.

Molly Millions has posed:
Molly's... well, not really a hero. And frankly, she's been avoiding the United States in general for weeks. But one of her daughters announced, //announced// that she was going to war. And she's not the sort to just stand by and let that happen. So it is that in the face of an advancing alien army.. a relatively unimpressive looking lean woman clad in black with distinctive silver 'sunglasses' emerges from Blink-portal to toss a backpack sized spider-shaped drone onto the ground with the quick command of,"Shadow, seek high ground and relay telemetry to user." and unslings a rifle from across her back.

"Don't get closer than you have to, Clarice!" is the shout offered in the wake of the running teen,"Strike, and move... damnit!" she's not going to go running after her but she doesn't wait for the drone to finish its ascent up the closest structure to bring the rifle up in the direction of the nearest portal while she tries to find somewhere with clear lines,"Portals are all you and her, I got three grenades some guy traded for a couple of whiskey's and I can probably wake up Unyielding Hatred if Bog hasn't already got it working on this problem... but otherwise it's all bullets and blades."

Kaelyn Silverleaf has posed:
Kae's at home, she'd been trying to restore as many of her healing potions and items as she and her journeymen and apprentices could. Least till her little alarm crystal starts flashing. Kae's head snaps over to it and she waves a hand over it. She sees what's starting to happen in that burned out area of Metropolis, and the woman glances to her charges, all three of the younger women looking nervous "You girls stay here, keep on working on what you're working with. Set up the area in the back as an emergency medivac area... Just like we planned." She says evenly, then takes a deep breath and she waves a hand over one of her circles, forming a gateway to one of the building's roofs and she steps through.

On the other side Kae moves quickly to the edge of the building, now taking a deep shaky breath... "Tanks? Tanks?" She mutters quietly and runs through her mind of various spells that could possibly be used to try and help out with this whole thing. Kae's new to the whole pitched battle and war thing. She frowns a bit then hmms "See how they deal with this..." She mutters, and steps to the edge of the building and begins incanting, her hands being held over her head and spread as she all but shouts the words to the skies, her voice oddly carrying. Around her feet a triangle with an eye in its center forms, then that's circled in by twin rows of runes, next a pentagram forms around that and another ring made of slightly different runes appears around that. Kae's trying to draw as much energy as she can for this next trick.

Grace Choi has posed:
    Somewhere, there's the sound of metal-on-metal. And, metal-on-metal again. And again. And again. Somewhere, in Metropolis, not too far from that crater, several bug-like, alien creatures that do not have wings go flying in the air with a mangled face, sunken chest, or arms at the wrong angle. Grace Choi is fighting. And she's not holding back.

    One tank is speared, by the rockwork foundation of Atlee, as is the next, their guns pointed helplessly up into the heavens until one of them is torn asunder by the speed and power of Andromeda. But that only brings the attention of two of the other tanks towards Atlee and Andromeda both. And, they fire. Beams of white-hot light erupt from their main weapon to annihilate the interloper. The first misses Atlee by inches -- the second makes short work of her rocky platform that she was hovering on. In the meantime, four or five of the winged creatures descend towards Laurel, "FOR DARKSEID!" One of them screams, the four arms of each of the creatures extending outwards as their insect-wings plummet them down towards the Daximite Legionaire.

    Emergency services, are, to say the least, prepared. If not strapped. The amount of work they've done in the last 24 hours was harrowing. And they knew more was coming. But on the outskirts, they're ready. Waiting. And as the armies come through, the screams of those few citizens out on the streets, or in the wake, or even who can see them are plainly visible.

    The heroes begin arriving, then. Those who weren't already here. Some, with a full tonnage of rockwork behind them, thrown into the army. It clinks off tanks, wounds, kills some of the oncoming soldiers while other tanks blast that searing-white light into the debris field, blasting larger pieces apart as more insect-creatures descend towards Gravitas, and towards America from those now descending onto the skies as the tri-colored splotch of light and fists makes short work of yet another tank. Another tank. One of a hundred? Maybe more than a hundred.

    Barda had not been lying.

    Molly's intel, and 'robot parts' would provide communications that not only was Metropolis under attack - but other areas were too. Around the world. No. Barda had not been lying about the size, and reach of Darkseid, and the threat he posed.

    In the distance, several more BOOMs are heard. This is only the beginning, some will realize.

Lazarlite has posed:
Lytle is doing something that seems suicidal...he jumps in front of one of the alien tanks as it fires. The Brilliant beam of energy strikes the blue youth, and is gone. Almost like a reflection he fires an equally intense bolt of blue from his eyes back into the tank. They can dish it out, but can they take it? Thank goodness for energy absorption...

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    The bolt of brilliant coruscating energy narrowly misses Atlee as she leans back, putting the rock she's on between her and the incoming fire...just in time to catch the second blast, as the platform explodes in a thunderous explosion, sending smoking fragments raining down in all directions. One of is a slightly smoking young heroine who hits and skids skipping along the ground, leaving a good sized crater at her first point of impact, before she finally slams full onto a parked SUV.

    "...ow..these really...ARE terrible for my environment..." she says with a groan, then falls forward into a crouch, as she shakes her head firmly to clear it, pieces of shattered glass from the windows raining down around her. "Okay..."

    The ground under her trembles as not one, but five platforms rises up this time around the geokinetic...one for her ride, four others forming into an orbiting array of shield to absorb incoming fire.

    This time she reaches out to one of the two spikes she's already created, causing one to surge up, flowing around the tank...then coming down like a hammer on one of the intact tanks like a hammer...with the wrecked tank as the hammerhead.

Blink has posed:
Blink winces as Molly calls her name out over the battlefield. But it's too late now, besides, this time tomorrow they might all be dead, so what's the point worrying? Pulling two javelins from her quiver, she lobs them both at the same time, shattering the crystal against the nearest tank - which begins to glow blue as the dispersion energy takes it. The other was a little off, missing it's target to take a very surprised looking soldier in the chest. He too turns blue And disappears.

A Boom Tube's occupant only gets a moment to take in the suddenly there tank as it appears directly in the path of the flying insect-like vehicle. BOOM! Fire and shrapnel burst out in every direction as the heavy metallic remains plummet Earthwards. But Clarice hasn't stopped to pay attention, oh no, it's given her an idea.

Diving to the floor and rolling behind one of the fallen boulders to use it as cover, glowing green eyes are directed towards the sky. Twin gestures are joined by -Blink!- -Blink!- high up above, her signature noise hidden by the bang and crash of Grace's powerful blows and the barrage of stone brought in by Gavitas. Blink knows portals, and one of her's is directly outside one of the Boom Tubes, it's twin? Well that's directly in front of another. "Let's see how they handle /that/!" she intones to herself gravely.

Superboy has posed:
"Molly, I need to disable as many of those tanks as I can," decides Superboy, looking pretty worried about leaving the squishy women alone with an army coming from all directions. Then again Blink can also be anywhere. But Molly is the responsible adult. Mostly.

He is technically invulnerable, but the Parademons' weapons are so advanced and powerful that after a couple painful hits he trusts more in his speed than his invulnerability.

His main goal is not smashing the tanks like Laurel and America are doing. It would take him a minute or two to destroy even one of those things. But he only needs to touch them and let his tactile telekinesis bypass the armor and wreck the far more fragile weapon systems and the engine, turning the war machines into useles chunks of immobile metal.

Andromeda has posed:
    Laurel frees herself from the wreckage of the tank she obliterated, then drifts back into the air to look for another target. Several come to her - five of the insectoid soldiers. These she greets with a firey gaze - sweeping her heat vision across three of them, the remaining two she blurs over to meet, blowing out a gout of freezing breath meaning to encase them in ice so they can't fly any more.

Molly Millions has posed:
"Go. I'm quite capable of finding a hole to crawl into." Molly grunts for Conner with a flick of her hand by way of permission,"This is happening all over the world right now, so it doesn't get stopped... not really going to matter whether I'm breathing or not."

The downside of having constant access is the understanding of just how effed one really is. The one drone clambers up to a point where it can give her an overview as she seeks some high ground of her own,"Upside... High Town is a more attractive target... downside... someone sets fire to Lowtown they probably wont need to invade it." muttered under her breath. It's hard not to flinch, with the supersonic, energy absorbing, tank destroying rays that are flying around.

This isn't Molly's scale, by a longshot, and there's a whole litany of toys that she wished she had right about now as she picks a suitable spot to clamber up in to. Once there she belly's down close to the roof to pick off what seems vulnerable to plain old lead, but also flips open what looks like it should be some new fangled cell phone, dismissing Shadow's display and scrolling through until she can find the right one.

"C'mon, c'mon. Offline. Well, nothing ventured... Unyielding, initiate start-up sequence." she mutters at the device as her attention goes back to the rifle, picking off those she can and trying hard not to let herself get too distracted worrying about where Blink is.

Miss America has posed:
    Her whole world fills with the sound of roaring metal as strange, alien alloys rend apart from her point of impact. Shrapnel shrieks, shorn from the tank as she punches through it, the impact alone rendering it into so much scrap.

    But it's not enough, and America knows it.

    The numbers are overwhelming. And they're likely only a piece of a much larger pie, which is all the more disconcerting. She only allows herself to dwell on the implications insofar as it lets herself plan ahead; if this is a vanguard, that means they have to be all the more prepared for when the big leagues come.

    And so, she pits all that focus, all that -anger-, on thinning the numbers of those invasion forces. There's almost zero downtime for her, no moments of pause; the second she collides with that tank and blows it apart? America is already spinning about in mid-air and -striking- -- not for the approaching insectoid soldiers, but for the debris still flying loose from the falling wreckage of what was once one of their engines of destruction. She punches one chunk of metal, sending it screaming through the air towards those descending soldiers. Another, towards a tank. A kick sends one careening in the direction fo the forces approaching Gravitas. She just continues to hit as -much- of that mass of wreckage she's created as she can -- turning her own act of violence into impromptu artillery to just rain down over as much of that army as she can.

    Her teeth grits, her concentration focused wholly on her work. Right now, she doesn't have room for any other considerations than trying to keep the people below - everyone - safe.

Gravitas has posed:
    The A swarm of insect creatures descends upon Gravitas and for a second she disappears in the midst of them. It's a bit like a wrestling match. For all the raw power that has her throwing around boulders large enough to crush tanks like baseballs what the girl lacks is fine control. Up close she is swatting at gigantic flies,flailing and whirling.
    With a snarl Victoria manages to clear her airspace, largely by flailing her arms. Insects are being thrown head long and as she tosses them away a gravitic distortion begins. It is sucking in local matter, changing the direction of up and down for the insects and pulling the ones nearest the girl into a bound cluster of flailing alien limbs.
    Victoria's already sweating and she's hardly started. The next Apokalips soldier to approach her gets punched in the face hard enough to put him through a wall.
    Clearly Tori can't afford to get swarmed over.

Origami has posed:
Miyako Moore takes the sheet of paper and starts working it in her fingers, turning it into a small, pretty little paper flower. She leans out around the wall, then tosses it out onto the ground some distance in front of her where things are likely to approach, where it blooms into a soft red color on the middle of the road where things are most likely to approach.

She looks around a bit more, studying the heroes here, then nods to herself. "Who needs a hand here?" She grabs another sheet of paper, stepping into the paper plane and lifts into the sky.

Kaelyn Silverleaf has posed:
And still, Kae incanted, even after she notices the aerial menace now, she continues incanting. The circles around her now are now glowing visibly, forget arcane senses, they're palpable with regular senses as Kae pulls more arcane energies to her. Then a series of circled pentagrams appear around the circle from which Kae stands in, these are horizontal. Another 5 above them, 10 in all have now appeared around the woman. They spread out and begin angling toward various targets, some airborn.

Kae then sweeps with her hands forward, now all but shouting as beams of eldrich plasma, these having what appears to be something akin to lighting crackling along them as they lance outward and as big in diameter as a human being, begin blasting out of the various pentagrams, some aiming at tanks on the ground, the beam striking then sweaping across the vehicles, cutting deaply into the ground as they correct their path impact.

As the lower pentagrams fade, Kae looks up and waves her hand again, still shouting her incantation. Though Blue and surrounded by what appears to be crackling electricity, the aerial blasts are quite different, instead of concentrated maintained beams, streams of spheres made up of similar energies lance forward, much like one might see coming from a machine gun, or instead, perhaps flak cannon, burst after burst lance out, carreening headlong at the incoming flying creatures and bursting in close proxity, much like flak.

Grace Choi has posed:
    On the ground, Grace is swarmed by a dozen, more, of the fell creatures of Darkseid's army as they gang up on her, biting, clawing, pushing onto the hammer-weilding woman. And, she goes down, for a moment. And then, after a moment of pounding the flesh beneath -- the creatures pinning her are sent upwards, backwards, away as she stands, still gripping her warhammer she had coined: Bitchmaker. She now grips that Hammer, almost on instinct, begins to spin like a top, smashing the invincible hammer into alien armor and flesh, knocking it back, and creating a small pocket about herself of alien destruction.

    And, another one of the tanks is, literally, lit up as it's own energy is expended back into it in full by Lytle, exploding in flame and smoke. Several more of the flying forces dip downwards, grabbing Lytle with a couple of their arms and they zip upwards, to carry the would-be hero off into the air with them and remove him completely off the battlefield. Some had tried that with Grace, too, but they'd been met with a spinning hammer.

    And the army advances, unperturbed, undaunted by the losses, and the resistance. They are used to resistance. And death, here, on Earth? Far more satisfactory than a death at the hands of Darkseid for failure. And there are worse fates on Apokolips, than failure, they all know. They, long ago, were subjugated to Darkseid's Will. And, fear him far more than anything else in the Universe entire.

    There are more explosions. More screaming, as several people - caught out of doors, are also swept up by the flying hoarde, or grabbed and hauled back towards the boom tube portals by some of the ground soilders. Now? Now they seem interested in taking prisoners. Fuel. For Apokolips. For Darkseid's Will.

    And then there is Atlee's inventive hammer, created from ground, earth, and alien metal as it crashes into it's own forces, obliterating them into a fine, crushed, metallic paste even as two of her rock shields are blasted apart by alien gunfire from ground-soilders. "APOKOLIPS WILL RULE!" Shouts one of the ground-force figures, as they target the Geokinetic.

    Laurel is pegged a more significant threat as her heat-vision roasts and her freeze-breath solidifies those soilders looking to cart her off, and she's met with a tank blast in the center of her chest as she's doing that which sends her nerve synapses screaming, and her hurtling into a distant building with the force of it.

    Those nearest Gravitas are, indeed, highly disoriented and lose their own control, as they lose grip on the flailing, flying heroine and those that Gravitas doesn't take care of America's thrown projectile certainly does. This causes several of the flying hoarde pause above, seeing their own forces halted, and one of them fires a shot at her, while a dozen more move in to grab her and assault her in close-quarters combat.
    Curiously, as Molly pot-shots the soilders, hitting them with ammunition from a 'sniper' spot, and they go down she is not immediately targeted, even as a few of them fall. More losses. Causalties. The soft fleshy mortal humans of Earth are trying to resist. But their sheer numbers will overwhelm. ... Even if Blink's portals temporarily 'trick' and make an endless circle of porting in and out. Until one portal closes that they were stepping through, and two more, in it's place, open. Still, now, the forces pouring through finally seem to be slowing down. For what that's worth.
    Superboy takes out one of the tanks with his own unusual powers, but his cost for doing that is that of Grace Choi's, to be swarmed by several soilders, bitten, clawed, stabbed, piled on, and overrun.
    As Kaelyn's spell goes off, several more tanks are taken out, exploding by the power of magical lightning and even more of the aerial soilders plummet from the skies, becoming dead 'missiles' and cracking pavement and rooftops as they impact, dead. Thinking that it's some weapon, perhaps, a tank fires at the building Kaelyn is on, to bring it -- and the weapon down.

Grace Choi has posed:
--and to also bring the weapon down with it, with the buildings destruction.

Lazarlite has posed:
Lytle has his weaknesses, he may be immune to most forms of energy that impact him, but he can be grabbed like anyone else...and has other weaknesses as well. He is not exactly helpless though, there are reasons his code name is Lazarlite. He focuses and blasts a laser at the hand that is holding him on one side, while using his own limited flight abilities to pull away from that hand.

Andromeda has posed:
    "Ahh!" Laurel cries out as she's struck by a tank main gun shot.

    *Thoom*

    She's thrown back into a building, punching through the outside wall and then crashing down several floors. She's still for a moment in the rubble and then sits up, touching her chest with a hand. "Ow." There's a huge hole in her costume now. "Important sprockin' tip, Laurel - don't get shot."

    "Back to it."

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    Two more platforms detonate in showers of smoldering, red hot rock and showers of dirt as Atlee is rocked by the blast, swiping at the incoming pieces as they abruptly changes course to fall away from her, the two surviving shields rising to take the place of the two destroyed. But now...she has only two directions she can defend from....so she makes up for it with movement, suddenly changing course sharply upwards.

    Because she's heard the sound of those people screaming as they're carried off. And she makes a mistake.

    She assumes that the Apokolips forces won't fire on her if their own forces are in the way, as she shoots upwards, the shields reshaping themselves and breaking apart into wide curving U shapes, as they begin methodically moving...the first aimed for the parademons carrying the people off. The second sweeping up to catch the people before the can fall and bringing them back to deposit on Atlee's main platform.

    Which leaves her briefly unshielded, counting that the tanks won't fire on her from the ground.

Kaelyn Silverleaf has posed:
Kae is smiling as she looks at the effectiveness of her spell. She holds up a rod that now looks rather burned out, and tosses it over her shoulder. "It worked! Yay! Burned out y foci, but... ack!!!" She screams out, eyes getting big as a tank turns her direction. Kae's now racing as fast as she can to the edge of the building and leaping as she mutters something, and then ends up hopping from one astral platform to another, before leaping as the roof of the buliding behind her is blasted...

Her personal wards flare to life as she's thrown off the astral platform and onto the other building. She glances over the edge of the other building, and drawing another rod from her pocket and pointing at the tank. She says a simple word "Zap!" and a tiny ball the size of perhaps a pea zips out from the end of the rod, zooming toward the tank. When it impacts it tries to burrow into the front armor of the tank, before waiting a brief moment then exploding with all the force of a small anti-tank missile, though this one is made up of the same energy she unleashed before, only much less visible.. Kae learns quick.

She is peeking over the edge of the building briefly to survey her handywork. She pauses, sniffing, then looks back and realizes her shirt-tail is on fire and eeks, quickly trying to slap it out, before she gets up and runs forward, firing a few more of those miniaturized eldrich bombs at tanks or even flying things, hoping to take a few more down as she runs along the roof top.

Kae is nearly squished by a falling fried flying demon and she then grumbles before she starts looking around for another building top to launch attacks from.

Blink has posed:
"Well that didn't work!" Blink grumbles to herself as one Boom Tube closes and two more blossom like some mythical beast with many heads She's sure she remembers that from somewhere anyway. Regardless, with her eyes looking up her peripheral vision takes in both Atlee's unguarded state and at the same time, Conner being swarmed. Neither a good thing.

As the first tank ray speeds towards Atlee's unprotected back, Blink whips a hand up opening a rent in the air a few feet out from the geokintetic. Another wave and it's twin opens near conner, the blue-white beam of energy shearing off several of the horde of soldiers. Not enough to clear him, but certainly helpful in freeing at least one of his arms. And she knows how strong he is, time to focus again on the enemy.

Leaping up, she takes a running start, two, three and /leap/! Straight into a new portal of her own making To hurtle out high up in the air above the army, as the mutant plummets she starts lashing out with dispersion waves, not even opening secondary portals as aircraft and soldier's alike start falling towards the floor cut to pieces by the girl's militant fighting style. Mister Creed would be proud; Now if only she can do something about that terminal velocity...

Gravitas has posed:
    Gravitas isn't really rprepared for this one. THe shot that is fired sears past her left shoulder, trajectory subtly adjusting in midair as she herself dives aside, haphazardly flinging herself through the air with shards of stone and weapons following in her wake. This awkward, fumbling dodge throws her right into the middle of the attacking melee range enemies.
    Victoria is able to throw two of them away from her, but two more die in for a punishing assault. It's obvious that she's being protected - any of those blows would take down an ordinary person. Cuts become blunt impacts that leave bruises. But Tori has her hands full throwing Apokalips soldiers all over the street.
    It mostly seems to be a matter of dropping as many people on top of a bruised, beleaguered Gravitas as possible. She's just not coordinated enough to stop them all.

Molly Millions has posed:
Scrolling. Scrolling scrolling. Molly ignores the messages on the tiny screen. Systems checks, ticking readiness half in cyrillic. Molly sets her rifle down so she can unbundle a cord from one of her pockets and slot it into the device, then slot the other end into the jack behind her ear so she can shove the device into her pocket. So far she's been lucky, there hasn't been any concerted effort to dislodge her, granted, in the greater scheme of things she's a drop in the ocean.

"C'mon... please." muttered largely under her breath for herself as finally on the inside of her left lense green scrolls,"Shadow, rendevous with user and initiate defense protocols." is offered aloud as she eases herself along, edging as she can towards better cover as she mentally crosses her fingers. Controlling the mobile platform isn't like controlling the small drone, even beyond sheer size and firepower. Unyielding definitely wasn't designed with a human user in mind and leveraging its bulk out of its storage location takes a delicate kind of precision in communications.

So Molly drops out of sight so she can concentrate and make sure her instructions and weaponry selections are... precise. Careful about where she points what on the distant artillery and what she selects in terms of the armaments. It'd be better, to move it closer, but she's not willing to take that kind of risk under the current circumstances, merely focusing on the AI's instructions of 'in case of alien invasion'.

Miss America has posed:
    So focused is she on hammering the armed forces of Apokolis with their own weapons, that America Chavez doesn't quite notice the descent of more upon her until that first bolt of plasma rips through the air, striking her at center mass. Energy flares, burns, and while the force isn't enough to penetrate or scald that impenetrable skin, the concussive force is -just- enough to send her spiraling through the air...

    ... and right into the path of the rest of those Parademons. Insectoid soldiers swarm, landing and striking, clawing and kicking. America lets out a strangled grunt of annoyance as the first several make impact with her, followed by the rest, the momentum enough to send her on a collision course with the ground. Street churns into so much powdered concrete as she hits artificial earth with an audible CRACK of impact, chunking asphalt unpleasantly as the Apokoliptan soldiers scramble and pile atop her.

    "... guh..." She feels them, blunt force impacting her head, her ribs, feeling claws desperately try to break unbreakable skin. But more importantly...

    APOKOLIPS WILL RULE!

    Anger flares within her. And within a single moment, with one brutal movement, America snaps up, the uncanny force of her own momentum intent to blow all those soldiers away from her like they were little more than ragdolls -- knocking them into other soldiers, into tanks, into anything in the way as America just LAUNCHES into the air and pulls one fist back.

    "Apokolips will kiss my ass."

    And then she just punches. Punches her way through a line of Apokolips footsoldiers attempting to flee with human prey. And America?

    She's just going to very literally punch the heads off of every single one she sees, catching people as she goes.

Origami has posed:
Miyako Moore soars up into the air, crinkling a sheet of paper in her fingers, bend, fold, tuck, fold.. She tosses it up into the wind, where the paper grows, spins, unfurls giant wings covered in papery feathers, screams with a birdlike noise, and angles to try to peck at the things swarming Victoria. She slips another sheet of paper out of her satchel as she soars up toward the kidnapped people, deciding how she is to go about rescuing them on the way. "I am NOT ready for this.."

Superboy has posed:
One tank is down, like a hundred left, but Superboy never reaches the second one as a crowd of Parademons piles on him. He should have been faster. Conner is stronger than any of them, but not stronger than two dozen of them, and it is only thanks to that energy blast Blink redirects he manages to escape, punching a couple out of the way.

Second tank, this time keeping an eye up and using the first Parademon that reaches him as a club to keep the others at bay. It takes him a few seconds to thrash the circuitry and he needs to touch them, making himself a target.

Grace Choi has posed:
    Grace is bleeding. She doesn't realize it. She only fights. A warrior, furious, and righteous in her rage. The hammer sings in her hand, and against the armor of the enemies as more come at her. Tirelessly, she fights, bodies falling around her, flying about her, as more claws, more blades scrape her skin. She fights.

    One of the flying insects is incinerated as Lytle's laser-vision splits through it, and even as Lytle begins to fall after wrestling himself out and fly, others are coming at him, one of the creatures grabbing his arms again, another grabbing his feet as they seek to do a draw-and-quarter of Lytle in mid-air. They pull. And, they pull excruciatingly hard. Lytle may feel his back pop, or his arms or legs, potentially. They're trying to rip him apart, afterall. Unfortunately for them, it's too tempting a target for another who shoots a weapon at Lytle.

    It's probably a good thing for Laurel they think she's dead. Or, out of the picture. They aren't looking for her anymore, which will make it easier for her to avoid getting shot - and bringing the initiative back to the enemy forces which now, are no longer pouring out, but the portals remain open for those carrying off the citizens.

    Atlee's quick thinking saves several citizens from being drug to Apokolips, but several more of the parademons see their opening, and turn their attention not to the civilians, but to the Stratta-born girl, coming from behind her and slamming a fist into the back of her head, and then picking her up by the shoulders to start to carry her off, instead. Darkseid, afterall, could use another Fury, and Granny Goodness can turn almost any mind given enough time.
    And that is just in time for the newly exploding tank thanks to Kaelyn's spell earn more attention towards Kaelyn, and another tank-blast shreds into her new building with impudence.

    Superboy will get to watch, up close and personal, several decapitations as heads are split by a wide laser-beam in front of his eyes, and Grace notices the pink girl shredding the Apokoliptian forces who is falling through the air as several of the ground forces are shredded next to her. She briefly looks up, and nods to the falling pink demon-like girl, thankful, before returning to her bloody work, doing her best to hold off her side of the forces even as her 'punching buddy' America swathes a path through the ground troops with her fists opposite Grace. America's punches are fast and furious, and uncaring of it's own forces, a tank levies a shot directly at America. And probably a good 10 or 12 of it's own forces. And it open fires, even as Superboy frees himself and begins taking down another tank.

    Gravitas is saved, to some degree, by of all things, strange orgami birds that seem to annoy and irritate the forces, and two of them pull off of her to deal with them while several of the parademons descend on the flying form of Miyako, to also take her prisoner, while Molly continues to avoid detection because she -is- that drop in the ocean. For now ...

Lazarlite has posed:
Lytle was grabbed agaiun after he broke loose...and has just starting to think that he WOULD be torn apart when the energy blast hit him. Bad idea Parademon, Lytle amplifies his strength and hits the parademon holding his arms into the one holding his legs. His laser-scan identifies a falling person and he quickly moves to intercept...when the person hit him he absorbs all their kinetic energy without any impact. He turns the kinetic energy into flight and lands the two of them on the ground near the tall woman doing the close combat. It seems to him like a good idea for the group to start coordinating their efforts.

Andromeda has posed:
    Laurel is not dead, though.

    She bursts through a ground floor wall of the buulding she crashed into earlier. She had seen the parademons taking Atlee and it seemed time to get back inthe action.

    Laurel becomes a whirlwind of action, intending to disable the parademons carrying off the other girl and then get Atlee inside the building Laurel just left while she recovers.

Molly Millions has posed:
Radar. High-fidelity targeting, it paints the inside of Molly's lenses so completely that they could walk right up in front of her and she'd never see it. She's too busy scrolling through, working things out, letting the AI select targets with only minor adjustments from the cyborg who is ill-equipped to be handling its kind of firepower. Finally, though, she thinks she's got a handle on it, on what she might be able to hit without it taking out the people helping out or the civilians below.

In New York, a mobile platform sets its legs, aligns itself in the direction of Metropolis, and with final affirmation from the lean woman lets fly with the volley of missiles. She'll have to try and square it with the AI later. But... well, 'in case of alien invasion' indeed.

She doesn't have access, doesn't know most of the people here, but some small thread of her thoughts is spared to fire off a text to those she does to alert them as to the incoming artillery. For however much use the simple 'Incoming' is with the overlay of targets in low-fidelity .jpg form is liable to be.

Origami has posed:
Miyako Moore acks and starts folding rapidly, soaring away from the parademons in a circle around the battle. Her plane swoops low, skimming the ground, and angles to try to catch Blink out of the air, though she isn't the only one with that idea, and she's the one closer to the ground. She turns the plane to the side, soaring temptingly close to the ground in a straight line so that the demons following her will cross over a certain cluster of highly explosive paper flowers on the ground.

The paper in her fingers is worked into a new shape all the while, waiting until after that flower patch is passed before another crane launches into the air, winging to attack the demons on the outskirts of Grace's fight in hopes that that she can catch a breather and do something more than just fight things off in place.

Kaelyn Silverleaf has posed:
Kae notices theflying woman get clocked in the head, just in tie for yet another ward of hers to be burned through as the building below her starts to collapse.. Her wards shine to life and she hisses a bit in pain, before she's dropping through a gateway below her feet. The next end opens up above the ceiling on the upper floor of the next building over, unceremoniously dumping Kae on the floor. Her feet kick out from under her and she lands in a huff, the girl now rubbing her backside before she gets shakily to her feet and checks her warding bracelet, one of the gemstones is now faded... "Lovely..>" She mutters "NOt even a direct hit and my wards are cracking.." She limps a little to a window, then starts running when she sees what's happening to Altee. She looks up at her gateway, the thing still open and just barely visible, and then to Altee..

Kae gets a sly look to her face and whispers in the direction of Laruel, her voice somehow carrying "Getting you an opening, make use of it." She then unleashes a number of those wierd 'missiles' of hers, each one a nearly invisible ball of tightly compacted raw kinetic energy through the small gate before it closes, a dozen or more spheres go up, then abrubtly change direction before taking a wildly eratic pathway toward the capturing parademons that are trying to capture the defender and the also at the demons going after the platform folks, buzzing like a bunch of angry magical hornets. Kae is then moving again as the gateway collapses, looking for a window to get another shot at something else at.

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    Terra grunts as she's hit from behind, carried right off her platform. The people currently on the platform shriek as it abruptly drops as the geokinetic's abilities are disrupted by impact, plummeting towards the ground. But while she's not strong, Atlee -is- tough...and she shakes it off, starting to struggle, but more importantly, reaching out with her abilities again to catch the platform, slowing its descent as she squirms, kicking uselessly. "Let....GO...." she growls, then blinks at the pink whirlwind that slams into the parademons and snatches her up. "EEEEE!"

    Despite the startlement, she doesn't protest too much being carried off to the building, blinking. "Thank you...." she says, then pushes herself up, reaching to rub the back of her. "We've got to stop them from taking the people....before they can get them back to those portals!"

    She pushes herself up, shaking her head a bit to clear it. "I'm...I'm okay...

Blink has posed:
Versatility, that's the name of the game. Too many enemies to take in one go and with all this rushing in her ears as she falls it's pretty hard to concentrate "Oof!" Her descent is suddenly slowed by the timely catch of Lyrtle, which earns him a quick peck on the cheek before she jumps down. "Thanks cutie!" But that's all he gets as she's still got work to do, and heroes to err save?

Versatility Her off hand waves, blossoming a small portal through which her right hand plucks and throws a javelin, straight into the back of Atlee's now falling tangle of civillians, causing the group to start to gain that blue glow. Another gesture, another throw. Again and again, each time hitting a captured ally or a helpless human. Blink rises above the idea of 'mutants and normies' as everyone becomes 'Earther's and Darkseid's' in her mind.

Keeping close to her new hammer wielding friend, Blink let's her javelins shatter, porting humans out of the fight, off into the groups of emergency services well back from the combat. Apparently her javelins don't pierce, just breaking apart on impact regardless of what it is they hit. "We're gonna need a bigger boat!" She yells at Grace above the din.

Superboy has posed:
Superboy disables another tank, but before he can get to the next he spots Blink crazy stunt and flies up... but no, Blink is caught. Whew. Flying up put him in the middle of a group of Parademons, though, so he dodges and punches down a few.

And then sees the crumbling platform, still with people there. He catches it, struggling to keep it together with his telekinesis.

'Incoming' buzzes his cell inside his jacket. "Incoming? What is incoming? It better be Superman."

Miss America has posed:
    Parademons go flying, largely sans-heads, as America blows past them in a torrential vent of all her pent up aggression. Dark eyes snap Grace's way -- and the half-Amazon gets a brief nod of acknowledgement from the star-spangled girl before they pass each other by on opposite sides.

    Soldiers go flying. But they're not the problem. The real problem is the whining sound of a cannon charging behind her, distinctive enough to catch America's attention right in the nick of time. Brown eyes narrow; the Utopian adventurer's hands curl towards fists. She springs --

    --and that blinding burst of power deafens the air surrounding her as it hits ground, blowing away those Parademons and ionizing the air as America is just barely caught by the fringes of the blast. It sends her spiraling upwards through the air, denim jacket aflame and expression twisted between pain and annoyance. She flies upward... and then forcibly -stops- herself in mid-air. Turns to face that tank.

    And -plummets- downwards toward it fists first, aiming to punch a hole straight through one end and out the other, grab the thing--

    --and then just start using it as an impromptu bludgeon, smashing it into parademons, other tanks, everything she can like it was some sort of massive, oversized hammer, looking to call attention away from the civilians the demons are targetting and towards herself.

Gravitas has posed:
    "...Woah- um. Stop. Don't hit me there! Knock it off!" Gravitas shoves an insectoid hard enough to put him through a concrete wall. Then she's hit from behind. Back and forth. Around her the scattered wreckage of the city is wobbling and bouncing about wildly as gravity goes insane. If Gravitas could get herself under control she could easily deal with these. And yet...
    "Origami birds...?" Gravitas has a split second to be confused. This is because all at once her foes are whirling, trying to confront the strange "paper" constructions assaulting them from all sides. Tori takes a deep breath and then she throws her head back, planting a foot. The ground around her is twisting and then she and the soldirs surrounding her are all thrown wildly upward into the sky, like falling in reverse. Except Tori stops in midair two hundred feet up. The insectoids, on the other hand, being to descend.
    After this Gravitas turns her gaze upward. "That's - .... I definitely can't do that with pieces of paper -"
    It's about at that moment that Gravitas has her attention on the platform of people. She's already streaking (falling?) through the air in the direction when Superboy leaps to the rescue, catching the platform in midair. She takes a deep breath, floating in midair, and looks around slowly. Messy blonde curls frame the young woman's face as she turns slightly to take stock of her surroundings again.
    There. Parademons, hauling off groups of civilians. No one else is between them and their destinations. Tori closes her eyes for a second, hands trembling. "Think this will work. Okay, Tori. Okay... Don't, um. Crush anyone. wide area. Like we talked about before. Okay..."
    Victoria overtakes them relatively easily then whirls in mid air like a gyroscope, resisting the urge to be nauseated as she orients herself on her foes. Then the entire world near her goes topsy turvy. Rocks fall into the sky first, then Tori. The flight of enemies is designed to resist gravity from beneath, not from multiple angles, so flyers around her tilt and wobble. At least one person is dropped but they can't "fall" to the ground.
    Of course, continuing too far into the sky would be bad for everyone involved. One step at a time, right? Only time will tell if this even slows them down for long.

Grace Choi has posed:
    Incoming. And it's NOT Superman.

    There's a shrill whistling sound.

    Some may recognize it. Others will know it in the future. It's a very distinct sound that one never forgets, once heard. It's the sound of incoming artillery. Those, like Superboy, Laurel, will hear it long before the others do. And be able to track it from the NYC area. But the artillery comes. In heaps. Explosions begin to ring around, exploding in the sky and decimating large numbers of parademons with shrapnel and explosions -- and on the ground several tanks, and hundreds of ground forces are eliminated. Curiously, the artillery seems to avoid all areas where there is any type of resistance. The devestation, however, is just as bad for the city as it is for the forces of Apokolips.

    Between Laurel and Kaelyn's efforts as the sorceress plays skip-across-buildings with her spells that may be starting to drain her, Atlee is indeed pulled to safety.

    The javelins that Blink tosses so expertly help get the people to one of the dedicated, and 'hidden' emergency service areas that have been pre-determined for the attack, thankfully. "What?" Asks Grace grabbing one of the parademons coming after her, and throwing him, hard, into the onrushing enemies to knock them all down. She's sweating. Wounded. Blood and cuts scattered across her flesh, and the makeshift armor. "You want me to scoop out a tank for you to put them all in?" She sounds like she's actually offering. And serious, in that offer. Between her efforts, and the paper crane she's finally able to set her hammer, headfirst on the ground and take a few deep breaths. "Dammit," she swallows. She looks to Blink, "At least they're not coming out anymore, right? If we can hold them back just a bit longer."

    Miyako's paper bombs cause chaos. A loss of a few limbs, lives, of the advancing soilders and several beams of laser-fire is shot her way even as Superboy manages to hold together the crumbling platform Atlee had constructed, enabling him to get the rest of the saved civilians to safety.
    Other shots are taken at America, who seems to be taking inspiration from Atlee's previous hammerized earth-tank hammer after causing a massive amount of damage to troop and vehicle alike, hoping to take the star-spangled girl out of commission for good, even as other forces begin to move further into the city. Even as gravity becomes, literally, Gravitas' toy and plaything and the parademons are suddenly faced with the reversal of gravity -- something they are not expecting, or prepared for. They fly at awkward angles, firing at weird angles too to try and peg Gravitas, anything, frustrated and desparate. Her ploy is working. For now.

    The heroes are successfull, for how few of them are versus how many are here, but there is just too many. And many of them are now moving by the heroes, towards other targets while others yet remain to engage the heroes. Keep them busy. Threaten the city. They, afterall, aren't concerned with casualities. Not even their own.

Andromeda has posed:
    "You're sure?" Laurel asks Atlee. "You don't look too badly off." and she take a quick once-over of the other lady with her eyes. "Nothing broken. Alright."

    There's another of those searing blasts and Laurel looks through the solid wal of the building, tracking America's seeming exit and then rapid return. "Sprockin' fast." she says. "I'm going back out." she tells Atlee.

    Laurel zips back out as America goes to work mashing parademons with an Apokalyptian tank, the Daxamite blond has what seems to her a brilliant idea... she rips a piece of tank armor off of one of the burning wrecks and moves to defend America's back - using the armor as an ablative shield, held out before her.

    "Hello." she says cheerfully over her shoulder at the furious latina. "I'm Laurel. We need to stop meeting like this." she jokes as if this was all perfectly normal.

Lazarlite has posed:
Lytle is playing blockade for Grace and Blink. His strange wide solid-black eyes have a very wide angle of vision and his laser scan lets him spot anything moving nearby in what would be the blink of an eye if his eyes could blink. He Intercepts the first blast aimed at the Amazonian woman and uses it to speed himself up so as to intercept more. He can not cover a wide area, but for now Blink and Grace has a blurred blue wall between them and any ranged attack, hopefully they can figure out what to do with the reprieve.

Origami has posed:
Miyako Moore has been swooping around and hard to track, avoiding being grabbed by her persuers and likely gaining more chasers in the process. She hears the first hint of whistling and the plane suddenly twists to duck behind a corner out of sight of whatever is chasing her for a moment.. a couple seconds later, the plane swoops up and banks to the side, flying directly into a field of artillery fire, luring her persuers that way, only to be torn apart by an exploding shell.

Miyako drops and rolls to her feet, stifling a cry of pain at the rough fall around the corner. Is the spot she found to dismount safe from artillery? Probably not.. She rips a sheet of paper out of her satchel and stretches it out in front of her, closing her eyes and huddling against the wall behind a shield of paper as the shells start raining down on her.

Blink has posed:
Blink knows exactly what to do with the reprieve, ever since shed seen the Boom Tubes opening, shed had an idea forming in her head. Its a stupid idea, it could be catastrophic. But then, it could be glorious. A chance of a chance is all she needs, and besides, no one ever accused the Blasé Girl of being /shy/.

"Ive got a plan!" She calls back to Grace; "Just uh; Keep them off me kay?" Her Barbadian accent sounds strained, as she focuses her concentration, glowing green eyes picking out one of the nearby Boom Tubes. "Here goes everything!" She yells before pulling both her hands down and to the side. Double -Blinks!- sound, but with the portals she creates being side on - the best anyone can see is a pale blue line. However, the result is spectacular.

Blinks own dispersion wave slices through the energy matrixes holding the Tubes open, the resulting feedback not only causing the the bridge to collapse, but sending out a shock wave that has Blink and Parademons alike bowled over onto their backs. Shes quick, but shes no stronger than anyone else... For now shell just take a moment... To get her breath back.

Kaelyn Silverleaf has posed:
Kae whispers to those heroes fighting, her words carrying neatly to their ears... "We need to figure out how to close those tunnels they're coming through, otherwise all this fighting we're doing is going to amount to naught..." Kae says, now sitting down a moment to catch her thoughts. She grabs a couple insect-like automata from her pockets and sends them aloft, to try and get a better idea of how the enemy forces are distributing around the area. She mutters to her self and tugs her phone out of her pocket, the phone relaying the telemetry the automata are giving as the girl takes a little bit of a rest...

"Jeeze there's tons of them." Kae mutters to her self as she gets a birds eye view and starts to get a better picture of everything going on down below the tiny and rather unnassuming mechanical bugs doing a great job of giving her a whole picture to operate with. She then whispers to the other heroes "They're just isolating us and passing us by. They're taking the fight to civilians and the like, we need to try and figure out a way to keep them isolated, either cut off their reinforcement or choke them up in those boom tunnels."

At this point, Kae stands and takes a pull from a thermos she gets from her backpack, the grass green opaque liquid dissapearing quickly from inside it as she takes a long pull. Then she's reaching into her backpack and tugging a broom? Kae peers at it, raises an eyebrow and wipes a hand down the runes down its side the thing hovering as Kae climbs on board, sitting side saddle. She leans and the broom darts forward, zipping down the hallway and out one of the windows She then sees the stunt Blink pulls and tilts her head before whispering her way "Whatcha do? Open a portal inside theirs?" She asks.

Miss America has posed:
    Sweat and soot smudge America Chavez's skin and mats at the brown curls of her hair, mixing unpleasantly with the smear of Parademon bodily fluids and what passes for innards decorating her fists and clothes and her fists and also, her fists. She pays it no mind, pushing herself further and further, even as she eyes the encroaching forces beyond. There's so many of them. Her eyes narrow, her lips turning towards a frown. She has to do something.

    The dull glow at the stars tattooed on her wrists might not go noticed for how quickly is is aborted when America hears the sound of encroaching firepower. Artillery rounds powder earth and demon and city alike. It makes her frown deepen, just slightly -- but for now, whatever she was planning on doing is forgotten.

    Forgotten, largely, in favor of just trying to push those forces back. Her tank-bludgeon becoming an increasing wreck, America does not notice or care; so lost is she in the moment that those Parademons might have gotten as clear a shot on the star-spangled girl as they're ever going to get; weapons fire --

    --and America hears energy scorching metal with a burbling protest of superheated alloys at her back as something -- someone -- lands next to her. She blinks. Looks behind her, at Laurel. At the impromptu shield she's holding to protect her. Her brows lift, faintly.

    "... Thanks," she manages, after a moment. "Name's America." And at that joke? America just lifts that tank up high.

    "Working on it."

    And then just HURLS it like a runaway meteor to SMASH into a faraway tank hard enough to - with any luck - rupture the engine and make the whole thing explode -- to take out any of those Apokolitan forces unfortunate enough to be nearby.

Molly Millions has posed:
One person, at least, barely registers the noise. Watches the strikes from the weird disconnect of scrolling information behind her lenses rather than what's outside of them. She could pour more on, but even she recognizes that she could empty the platforms tubes and it would make relatively little impact overall.

"Unyielding, execute present firing solution, then return to base and initiate shutdown." the lensed woman instructs the device she fishes from her pockets, waiting for the acknowledgment before she yanks the plug from her jack and has to reorientate herself to a reality not augmented by overlays and targetted tracking. A tongue is run over her teeth before she spits on the ground and lurches from her hiding spot, trying to find equilibrium again in meat and wire as she surveys the battlefield

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    "...'m good....been hit by a giant stone demigod, he hit WAY harder...." the petite, stocky Stratan notes, nodding to Laurel with a quick smile, wincing a bit as she rubs her neck, then nods as Laurel returns to the fight. "Good luck!"

    And she's out the window...and Terra tries to figure out what to do next. The sheer numbers are....daunting. Like nothing she's tried to fight before.

    And then there are explosions everywhere! Airbursts and ground bursts alike ripping into the forces...and not really making a dent. Artillery...the military is here? And everything...explodes.

    The young heroine is briefly overwhelmed, before she takes a deep breath. "...okay. Okay. They're coming through the portals. They must be...staging so..."

    She steps to the hole Laurel brought her in, then summons up another platform. This time, however...she reaches out for incoming artillery. It's metal...and it's a bit harder to manuver. But then she's not planning on deflecting...just...redirecting.

    As a good chunk of the shells suddenly take a right turn...straight into two of the portals to detonate on the other side.

Superboy has posed:
Ow. Ow. Ow. They are shooting at his back! The second the platform is empty Superboy uses it as a baseball bat to send those Parademons flying in all directions away from him.

Then the 'incoming' reveals to be a rain of projectiles coming from New York and he takes advantage of the distraction to pulls back to meet with the others. "What are we going to do? Hey, pretty nice Blink." He helps her up, "can you do the same with the other gates?"

Grace Choi has posed:
    Grace isn't about to look gift-horses in the mouth. "Grace," she introduces herself to both Blink, and Lytle. "This," she says, slamming a top-heavy blow onto the incoming demon to give him a face-first kiss-crush to drive his head into the earth, spider-webbing it, "Is Bitchmaker. She says she likes the way you kick ass." Then Grace tells Lytle, "You must be Absorbing Man." She's heard of Absorbing Man, before. "Nice to meet you. Thought you were older. And taller." A pause, "And you're Superboy. I think we finish taking these #*$&$tards out, and then ... we find other heroes. Figure out a plan. We can't just stand here and fight this army by ourselves forever," she suggests. She has an amazing amount of stamina, but even she's getting tired at this point.

    Miyako's plan does pay off -- to some degree. She's lost her persuers for now. Out of sight, out of mind. And with her gone, those remaining behind focus on the more visible heroes. Like, Blink, who is taking up Kaelyn's idea -- even if it there's a crapton of feedback from that. It knocks Grace, and Lytle over as well as those demons around them. But maybe it's a start. Maybe. But there's -so many- of the damn things. Near. And far. Around the world. It's a temporary reprieve, at best. But no new Boom Tube portal opens, for now. Then again, most of their forces have bled off. Into the city further, or into the outskirts. Tonight, heroes of all sizes, shapes, and power levels will be busy. Tonight, the Justice League, the X-Men, Avengers, the Titans, and so many others will not get much sleep. Tonight, perhaps unlike any other time, the world is in true danger.

    The skies have thinned with the overhwelming forces of the flying parademons - partially due to losses, partially due to overpassing the entrenched heroes standing vigil by way of airways.

    Atlee's redirection of the mortar shell explodes the portals into flickering existence, the backfire reducing them to nothingness. While no new troops are coming through, it at least prevents them from retreating or dragging civilians or heroes into Apokolips back with them. Slowly. Very, very slowly, the heroes are winning the war. But there's always a cost for winning the war. Several flying parademons have noticed Atlee again, and they converge on her, one firing at her platform, the other three grabbing her, and they begin to punch her, kick at her even as they claw her flesh with extra appendages even as Gravitas continues to play gravity-hell towards a large number of the flying demons to keep them off her, as well as away from the remaining few civiilians and opposing forces. She's doing a good job, too.

Lazarlite has posed:
Lytle can not really talk while he is accelerated...or really understand what is being said either. Normal words are just too slow. The Shockwave hits Lytle, he absorbs the first impact, but the continued overpressure after the first impact pushes him back. It throws him into Grace...not that he is bothered...noe is she,he absorbs all the impact so there is no damage. He slows down a moment and saysto Blink, "Next time, drop me just outside the portal before you wreck it. I should be able to absorb most of the impact so it does not wreck everything else around." He has done that before, throwing himself nto a bomb in practice...it should work.

Blink has posed:
Blink is only too happy to have some help getting back to her feet, and if she leans a little on Superboy for a moment - well who can blame her? "Blink." She grins at Grace; "You can tell your friend the feeling's mutual." She adds, giving a nod to Bitchmaker.

Looking at all the Boom Tubes, she has to shake her head a little. "I can close some, maybe even most. But I'm pushing my portal against their's, I've got to break it. It's tiring... I can't do all of them." It pains her to admit it, but it's the simple truth. "What I /can/ do though..." The girl adds with a grim look... "Is this."

Turning to scan the cratered landscape, the mutant spots a group of about thirty parademons charging up towards them. She frowns, a quick, worried look at Conner. "It's necessary." She says, knowing he'll understand. It's barely a flick of her wrists, the -Blink!- lost to the war, the men slow, take a step... And then their torsos fall forward, severed neatly from their legs at the pelvis. The portal had to be at least as big as a bus... The mutant goes to one knee from the effort.

"Tunnel's next... Just let me catch my breath..." Sweat slicks the girl's brow, magenta hair plastered with dirt and debris as it hangs lankly down her back.

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    Most of the parademons are focused elsewhere...but they're good pack predators...and they're very good at picking out targets that are alone. Even with Gravitas shoving them back, there are just too many to stop all of them...and a crowd of them slams into her as she lets out a cry, clawing and biting as her platform shatters again under the sustained fire. And she's falling. Somehow, despite the claws, her costume is impervious..but her skin, while turning aside impacts, is not nearly as good at preventing her from being cut as her exposed skin is sliced into, one yanking on her hair to keep her off balance as the group plummets to the ground, with the heroine on the bottom of the pile as they slam into it hard enough to crater, as she disappeares under the pile.

    A moment later the ground quakes Atlee comes up swinging, stone jerking upwards in small pillars to knock them back, then reforming around her arms and hands into oversized stony fists as she swings, putting her power behind the swings as she sends several parademons flying to smash into buildings nearby, blood running down her face as she stays low, then uppercutting another. "...GET....OFF!!!!"

    And the ground goes wild around her as it deforms, swirling and shaking as sharp spikes and pillars begin crazily shooting out in all directions, one after the other as she's forces steadily back under the constant attacks. For every one she knocks away, two more try to get past, until she's got her back against a partially shattered facade of a bank, backhanding a parademon away from her with a sharm CRACK, panting.

    Then one comes through the wall behind her, grabbing her as she's yanked inside with a startled shout, followed by several others piling in through the hole.

Kaelyn Silverleaf has posed:
Kae frowns and zips toward another boom tube, the girl tugging a couple of her magical spheres from her pockets... She glances at them and as she dips down, flings them into the mouth of the trap, before she pulls up and banks back toward the rest of the group. "Yup this is easier.." She mutters as the little gate traps suddenly pop open, and releasing a large amount of magic inside the boom tube, much like a set of arcane bombs having had gone off inside as Kae now banks and accelerates her broom as fast as she can toward the others to get out of the blast radius.

As she accelerates now toward Blink... "Heeey, grab my hand!" she calls out, slowing down to reach out to the the portalling woman. Kae's pretty tired too as she's now having to rely on her items for offense at this point, waiting to use her own 'mana' reserves as it were to try and close other boom tubes.

If Blink grabs the redhead's hand, Kae will try to pull her up on the broom too, and hand her a thermos with her drink in it "This'll refresh ya... Figured you'd need the energy more than me." She says as she now focusses forward, her wards extending to protect both the women. As shots come their way, Kae banks hard and then pulls straight up like a small rocket, before rolling over and darting back toward another boom tube. Some beams do hit but they're glancing and Kae's wards flare to life, hissing as they deflect the glancing blows.

Andromeda has posed:
    "You look like you have this under control." Laurel tells America, then she tosses her shield at a nearby tank's main cannon, at least it won't be firing at anyone.
    The blonde looks around quickly. "They look alright-ish." meaning Superboy, Blink, Lytle and Molly. Atlee seems to be in trouble again, though.
    Laurel is there in a flash of red and blue, trying to get the parademons off of Atlee and tossed down to crash into their fellow invaders shooting at the Stratan's platform. Those that need lasering get a nice warm bath in heat vision.

Gravitas has posed:
    Of all those trapped in the gravity vortex that Gravitas has created only she can move normally. She's bobbing for civilians, swping people as they come past whilst leaving the parademons trapped inside the chaos of the fiercely fluctuating gravitational fields. She's darting back and forth, up and down, left and right, trying to keep up with this.
    "I suddenly - have newfound respect... For pinballs..."

Blink has posed:
From the crouch Blink manages to push up into a half jump, grabbing hold of Kae's wrist and pulling herself up if not with ease, then with practiced grace. "Thanks!" She doesn't query the green liquid, downing several mouthfuls and wiping her lips. It only takes moments for her to take effect, and that big, vicious grin returns to the mutants face.

"Let's do this!" She crows, as her hand begins to wave and weave, portals forcing through the Boom Tubes almost as quickly as she can see them a staccato of -BOOM!-'s following their way across the battlefield. "Keep up!" She calls back to Lytle.

Superboy has posed:
"That's right, I am Superboy," replies Conner. "Nice to metcha, Grace. And all the other folks I don't know." His leather jacket is history, but the rest of his outfit has been protected by his TK forcefield. Conner is mostly fine but for some burns, and he won't really physically tire while the sun is up in the sky.

He would add something else. Probably something stupid about signing up autographs. But then Blink kills a group of Parademons. That makes him lose his smile. "It was... I don't know, but please do not use lethal force like that unless it is really the only option to save lives. We have a lot of power here and we should strive to do the right thing even if it is the harder way."

"Now... if anyone has a way to keep Blink energized... yeah, that's it!" Seems that redhead go it. So Conner returns to the fight, trying to keep the enemies away from the team.

Lazarlite has posed:
Lytle Focuses his remaining energy into movement...but in this case he puts it into his flight first...not accelerating his perception and other metabolic factors, just moving him to the first boom tube before it collapses. Once he absorbs the ebergy of that collapse, then he can spare enough power for the full speed thing to reach the next...while the rest of the battlefield seems to be almost turned to stone from the speed he is moving. Good thing he absorbs the friction heat and sonic booms or he would be doing a lot of collateral damage. He has to find each portal Blink is throwing up and get there before the explosion spreads...

Origami has posed:
Miyako Moore tosses a sheet of paper aside as it smoulders and burns, then steps out, already folding a piece of paper in her fingers. She takes a running jump up as it expands into a paper airplane that soars into the air to fly towards Terra and Gravitas. "Hiya! Origami here! Need a hand?" She folds quickly, making an accordion of paper and opening her hands, launching the middle of the page toward them. It unfolds in a zig zag, turning red and gaining a brick pattern, to encircle around behind Terra where the attackers are coming from and slam down into the ground to stop them from escaping or getting more reinforcements from that side.

Molly Millions has posed:
Molly's not a hero. She's said that before, but apparently today, at least, she's... well, making an effort, at least. Blink's got Superboy and some others near her, she's okay. But some kids down below? Being dragged off by some of those insectile troops? They look like they might need a little bit of a help. So the lean woman in black sighs and stows her rifle, hauling herself over the edge of the railing to go help them out in decidedly less than 'non-lethal' kind of ways. She might not win prizes for civic duty, but at least there's a couple of people that might know she was there to help out.

Grace Choi has posed:
    wo-and-a-half dozen parademons are cut in half. Literally. By Blink's efforts. Grace whistles, low, ... not in revulsion, but in appreciation. "Damn," is all she can say before she hefts up her hammer again, resting it over her shoulder. She sees the oncoming tank, moving to fire on her and Superboy, and any others near her -- and she runs towards it, hoping to get there in time. The tank's cannon whitens with the blaze of firing and Grace is a mere second - maybe two, too late to intercept the tanks output. She does the only thing she can think of in that last momentary instant before she's incinerated and that's to put the hammer between herself, and the blast ... Grace is knocked back, a hundred feet or so by the pure impact, slammed against a wall. The hammer smokes, but -- isn't even scratched. And, having absorbed the entire power spectrum of the blast? Grace is alive, too. But she is knocked out.

    Atlee's force is a sight to behold, the ground turning into a network of cannons, spikes, and debris of vicious velocity and righteous indignation as it batters, and hammers at the remaining forces. And then Atlee is snagged yet again, pulled away from the ground from behind, a last attempt to kidnap her for Darkseid until Laurel intervenes, and Miyako's orgami shelter provides reprieve from further forces that might stray down to pick them off. But, the main forces have passed now, and those who haven't passed have been defeated. Killed, most. Unconscious, or severely wounded others.

    The forces now are bare, withered and destroyed, or moved on, even as America goes back to hammering away, blowing up, punching, and obliterating the remaining stagnant forces with Gravitas' help of disorienting them. And with Kaelyn escorting Blink to slice into the remaining held-open Boom Tube portals and Lytle to absorbe the feedback energy for the time being? They'll be naught, soon enough, at least, in this section of Metropolis. Especially with Superboy cleaning up the remaining heavies, through his pure power and tactile telekinesis. It's enough to give some of the heroes, like Grace, a reprieve. Enough to slowly let military forces in, to take command, along with paramedics and evac teams.

    Today, the heroes withstood the first initial onslaught. But there are more forces coming. More forces within Earth. But, today, they are not yet defeated. And they proved that they can still stand.

    From the rubble, Grace Choi groans, low, and only just begining to rouse. Slowly. But, certainly.

    The air is alive, still, with the very distant sounds of other battle. Military fire. Apokoliptian fire. Elsewhere, the fight continues.

Lazarlite has posed:
Lytle is wondering what the limits on his absorption ARE. Well whatever those limits are, he can take this much damage and channel it...that is good enough. For now, he sticks near Blink and bets the job done...however long it seems to take.

Kaelyn Silverleaf has posed:
Kae's wards flare and hiss with the shots that impact them, one peeling and crackling away like so much glass, before another snaps up in place while Kae 'pilots' the broom with her self and Blink on it. she flies like a madwoman, darting in and around boom tubes, enemies and the like, occasionally Kae will cast a spell, hurling a bolt of kinetic energy at a troop, or a blast of plasma at a tank and so on. It's obvious though, she's getting a bit tired.

As the last tube in the area closes, Kae spins back, now noticing Grace taking that hit, then she accelerates forward again, now pulling close to Grace, before pulling to a stop, and tugging a blue potion from her pocket and tossing it her way. She also hands one to Blink.. "Get these to the heros, we'll need it, but I'm running short." she says to the two, then whispers to the others "I have some stuff that will help with y'alls recovery, best come and take it now... We have more fighting to do in te very very near future..." Kae says, her voice somehow carrying and giving the others her location.