4711/Germination - The Graveyard

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Germination - The Graveyard
Date of Scene: 21 June 2018
Location: New York To France
Synopsis: A mushroom stalk in a graveyard causes havok, but some heroes are there to make it snow.
Cast of Characters: Iron Man, Origami, Shadowlite, Black Panther, Spider-Woman (Drew), M
Tinyplot: Germination


Iron Man has posed:
The location? A graveyard in upstate New York. There's a large mushroom stalk present there, and some unusual activity.

The eerie alien 'mushroom' stalk stands roughly the size of a person, though the broad canopy stretches that same distance as well. The ground all around it was already scarred and destroyed from signs of battle, but directly under the shadow of the stalk, the ground crawls with a mold-like white fungus. It churns, like the top of a beer, with a few shapes moving in it. The white plant 'squidlings' are present, though small, and usually hidden in the mush of corrupted soil. Now and then a shiny surface of one of the monsters can be seen, as it moves around, or a piece of a long vinelike tentacle appears; it then crawls out, to go find something to bring back to the stalk. They aren't big, perhaps only a foot high, but there's piles of them in there.

The 'unusual' part is that the local graves are raked up and pulled open, and pieces of bodies are strewn around, slowly being carried towards the stalk, as of the past hour. That's somewhat out of the ordinary. Each 'piece' brought back creates a new spawned squidling monster, and makes the mushroom grow.

Origami has posed:
Miyako Moore was at the fire station, fast asleep, when the call came in about a mushroom problem at the graveyard. Well, something more than just that they were there, they already knew that, but fire hoses aren't as useful as one might hope. No, this was from a 911 call. So she threw on some clothes, folded up a paper airplane, and went winging over that way to take a look and maybe offer some help.

Now, she is sitting atop a triangular paper airplane like one you might throw across a classroom, trying to figure out what is going on. She takes some notes, looking to see if anybody else turns up. Surely somebody else is checking on this?

Shadowlite has posed:
Space mold. It's something that Shadowlite never thought he'd be dealing with in his career... but when SHIELD activates your mercenary retainer and has you investigate new activity for it with your abilities, he wasn't about to argue.

On the edge of the graveyard, black lightning arcs here and there as a hole in reality opens. Black swirling mist emits off of it as a man sized hole is torn, and out steps a man in a black one piece suit and mask with goggles. With a backpack on his back and a chem thrower attached, Shadowlite gives every appearance of a man with a flamethrower. He has a few backup guns here and there on a tactical vest, as well.

Seeing the mushroom stalk for the first time, Shadowlite starts to walk over to it casually, examining it. "Bigger then I thought it'd be." Shadowlite muses through his voice masker as he takes in his surroundings.

Black Panther has posed:
Since he had offered his help to the Avengers, T'Challa had been busy helping the Asgardians. In fact, he had just returned to New York after dropping Asgardian children in Wakanda for treatment. But he had told his people to alert him at any hour of the day if there was something truly out of the ordinary going on. He took Ms. Van Dyne's warning about being willing to do the hard work seriously.

The report came in as a mushroom having killed and dismembered several people. It was not until he was already airborne that a more senior analyst, more familiar with Western society, pointed out that the mushroom was in a graveyard and had dug up corpses. He might have turned around at that, but the sight of the injured Asgardian children, and even just being on their vessel, left him with pent up energy that needed outing.

Okoye flew their cloaked ship over the graveyard for a first pass. The Black Panther signalled to her on the second pass and leaped out the back of the craft, landing silently and uninjured, thanks to the Vibranium suit, at the edge of the graveyard.

"Do not use fire!" the Black Panther warns the man with the flamethrower.. "It will only grow stronger."

Spider-Woman (Drew) has posed:
Jessica Drew swings in from a web, but remains firmly affixed to the trunk of a tree, above the heads of the others. Relatively without fanfare, her arrival might go completely unnoticed unless someone just saw her arrive. She watches the ground churning beneath the mushroom, and waits, as she sees the white surfaces of the squidlings. From all she has heard, so far anyway, fire is useless and only strengthens the creatures. The warning from below echoes that concern. She waits until she sees one of the creatures begin to surface and shoots a web to ensnare it, giving it a firm jerk in the direction of her tree. The centrifugal force coupled with her enhanced strength, she hopes, might remove it from the aggro zone, and with any luck might smash it against the trunk. She can only hope...

M has posed:
Monet St. Croix is not on anyone's 'emergency call list'. At least, insofar as she's aware. The haughty bourgeoisie Monagasque is at the cemetary for personal reasons. A series of mausoleums in the 'wealthier' part of the cemetary is her destination, and she carefully places a bundle of lillies at the foot of a middling-sized crypt.

The commotion nearby draws her attention, and she turns in place to narrow her eyes at the noise and activity. Wearing creme-tone trousers and a sleeveless blazer in grey, she certainly doesn't look like she's prepared for a fight.

With an effort of will, Monet floats skywards and soars towards the confrontation brewing a little ways from her position. The mushroom gets an upticked, inquisitorial brow, particularly with the entourage settling into flanking positions around it.

"What is going on here?" she demands of no one in particular, in heavily accented English.

Iron Man has posed:
Approaching the mushroom stalk and making noise draws the attention of the squid creatures. There's no warning: suddenly six of them are rocketing along the grass towards Shadowlite. They are silent, eerie, and lunge quickly on their strange legs. At this size, they look a great deal like 'Alien' fame face-huggers. And they want hugs.

To the opposite side of the stalk, four other squidlings are acting in a team to drag a corpse out of a grave. One of the squids also grabs all the fresh flowers on the grave, too, as if to further insult the dead. However, the web sent by Jessica snares it, and suddenly it is yanked her way and into a tree, BONK, flowers still in its grasp. It confusedly waves the flowers in a tentacle, starting to rip at the webbing, tentacles churning out of the small hole it is trying to make.

Another thing, easy to overlook compared to monsters and corpses, arrives. It is a small flying mechanical drone, about volleyball in size. It zooms down from nowhere, little repulsors flashing. There are flight panels with spinning servos underneath, fins for flight balance, and a large ocular apparatus on front. It surveys what is going on, pausing to one side out of the way. A close look will reveal the STARK logo brazen on its backside. The branding is not subtle.

Shadowlite has posed:
"Great, I have facehugger wannab-WOAH!" Shadowlite shouts in undisguised surprise over his voice masker. Dropping the chem thrower 'gun', Shadowlite brings up both hands, before dropping them into the ground, going to one knee as he does so.

There's a large swirl of black shadow and shadow 'stuff' brought into reality as Shadowlite hastily constructs a Darkforce Dome over himself at a titanium grade. It's not large, or fancy, but it's more then enough to cover himself as he disappears from sight.

Black Panther has posed:
The Black Panther runs and leaps toward the man with the flamethrower, though his eyes widen in surprise when the dark shield comes up. T'Challa rolls through his landing and comes up with a swinging strike to try and claw through the middle of the nearest squiddling to the shield with claws strong enough to cut steel. Then rolls out of the way as one of the others tries to get a tentacle on him.

Spider-Woman (Drew) has posed:
Jessica watches astonished when the squidling simply bonk and doesn't even scree. "What a jerk. If you think flowers are gonna get you out of this, you're sadly overconfident." But the web has at least kept it busy and left it swinging crazily below. At least it isn't attacking anyone else.

Thwip! Thwip! Two more webs shoot out and ensnare two more, as the Spider-Woman jerks them in to join the florally-adorned first. If she can get them all three together, she'll swing them in a tight spiral around the tree to bind them together. The fewer there are free, the less damage they can do to others. It's like a morbid game of tetherball. Only squidgier.

M has posed:
Monet focuses on one of the squidlings bounding towards T'challa and makes a careless gesture of flickering dismissal. The vague motion is accompanied by a sledgehammer of telekinetic force, sending the squidling flying backwards mid-leap.

"I'm not getting near them," Monet declares, bluntly. Which is probably a good policy, given her attire and the squidling's fleshy, disgusting demeanour.

"What /are/ they?" she demands again, surveying the scene with a detached professionalism.

Iron Man has posed:
"Is assistance requested by this vigilante team?" a little robot voice questions from the vicinity of the air near Jessica's tree. Those who have fought the stalks elsewhere will recognize the little drones; Stark has them all over the place, monitoring the bigger mushroom stalks.

The pile of squidlings that were running at Shadowlite run into the barrier. A few divert quickly around it as if they were trying to surround and come into the back somehow; Black Panther cuts three limbs off of one. Lopsided, it falls down, and tries unsuccessfully to entangle Panther's foot. He rolled, though. The squidling rolls too, but far less successfully. The removed tentacles start to turn into a light spore-dust. The others are trying to leap onto and climb Shadowlite's shield. However, they do NOT appear to be able to consume it or eat it, and aren't trying to do so.

Jessica's snaring tactic isn't one that the creatures know what to do with right away. They're wrapped in webbing, and pulled over towards her. One of them wasn't fully enveloped, but still was pulled. The trio hang, squishing and trying to free themselves like creepy spider snacks. Two of them have tentacles loose, but so far haven't done much more than struggle (and drop those flowers on the ground in a soft shower of yellow carnations). They don't make any sounds, they don't yell or cry. They're silent, oozing tentacle bundles.

Monet's attack is highly successful, and pulls one of the squidlings off Panther's flanking side. It tumbles and crashes, without complaint. Between the heroes, none of them are able to actually jump at Black Panther for now.

In the back, one squid manages to get an arm of a corpse into the feeding zone under the stalk. The area under it bubbles and churns, making short work of the flesh, and multiple 'fruit' begin to grow, as it uses the fuel to generate more minions. And to grow a foot. The stalk's headed towards 7 feet tall now.

Origami has posed:
Miyako Moore really just knows one thing she knows she can do here, although there's lots she COULD do. But this, she knows will help. Up on her paper airplane, she quietly folds, tears, and so on until she has a small paper figurine of a flower.

She swoops lazily across the edge of the mold forest of doom, near the heroes, and drops it. The flower flutters slowly to the ground, takes root, and starts growing, flowerhead turning an icy blue and the rest of the plant spreading in a cluster of crayon green plant drawings. "That will start helping soon.." The air right next to the flower starts to feel a little bit chilled. She looks around, hmmming.

Spider-Woman (Drew) has posed:
"Nah, I think we got thi--" Jessica begins to reply to the hovering drone. But she breaks off when the corpse makes it into the trough. With the appearance of more fruit, she changes course. "So y'know, maybe a little reinforcement couldn't hurt. These guys are like bunnies. Corpse-eating bunnies. I mean....LOOK AT THE BOOOONES!"

Jessica spies another corpse being dragged toward the pit of doom, and she thwips one more web to capture the corpse, pulling it toward the tree as well. Tetherball just got a little more disgusting.

Shadowlite has posed:
Upon hearing feet coming to the top of the dome, it suddenly starts to emit black 'mist' once more... and tendrils of Darkforce start to wrap around each in turn as Shadowlite closes his eyes, one hand pressing against the dome as he concentrates in maintaining the dome and grappling those outside.

~Lostie, let me know if I manage to grab all of them.~ The thought voice of Shadowlite gives to the Lost One in his head ~Of course, Michael~. Elastic tendrils start to appear out of nowhere on and around the dome as Shadowlite blindly tries to subdue the squid dogs around himself. Is there a chance Black Panther could be caught in it? Probably.

Black Panther has posed:
One of the black elastic tentacles manages to grab hold of the Black Panther's leg. Completely uncertain what will happen to him, he pulls at it, then releases a burst of kinetic energy stored up from his landing in the graveyard. The black elastic tentacle is blasted into the ground and the kinetic shockwave hits a squiddling close on him. He twists and front rolls away from the black shield before more tentacles try to grapple him.

M has posed:
Monet shakes her head and swoops towards Black Panther, hovering about eight feet off the ground without any visible means of flight. "You," she tells T'challa, getting his attention. She swings her hand in a slamming gesture and impacts one of the squidlings with a telekinetic hammerface that leaves a foot-wide dent in the ground around it.

"Do you have some idea what to do with these things? Simply swatting at the .. insects seems ineffective," she remarks.

She looks up at the hovering drone, brows settling in a straight line of irritation. "Assistance? No, but some direction would be welcome," she remarks. "This seems more an issue for animal control, no?"

Iron Man has posed:
"Your request for Avenger assistance has been noted as declined," the robot started to say when Jessica said 'Nah' and Monet says no. And then Jessica changed her mind. The robot updates accordingly: "Your request is now pending approval; requests are reviewed by severity designation. If answers are available, they will be provided," the little robot assures Monet and Jessica in the same tone, and continues to hang out near the tree, nonchalantly. Then again, it is just a floating ball, and isn't terribly expressive anyway.

The squidplant critters on Shadowlite's dome are easy to grab. They are trying to slam and pull at the surface of the dome. They're decently strong and there is a lot of them, and they're working hard. Still, the darkforce is finding them relatively easy to latch on to: they don't recognize it as something that is harmful to them, it appears. Not yet, anyway. There's five present on the dome. A few more have joined in the merry attack, though they are now going for Black Panther, since he is close by and on the ground. The kinetic wave tossed the closest away, it lands on the dark shield (bringing it up to 6 total now on the shield). Monet's hammer actually CRUSHED one flat; it is now a blob of spores in the dirt. Direct crushing and slicing have seen decent results.

One of the new ones just created is meatier than the others, about the size of a big dog, and has seven tentacles. It skitters low and seems to think, acting slightly more tactical than the others. Size seems to influence how smart they are.

Jessica stops a corpse's thigh (or something) from being pulled into the zone under the stalk, but one of the bundled guys is sneakily getting loose, AND crawls up his friends to attack the tree limb they are stuck to, starting to rip pieces out of the wood. If they are ignored, they'll free themselves! Two are in bad shape, they'd been hit pretty hard by Jessica, and only have a few limbs left.

The paper flowers are not noticed by any of the monsters; they have other things to do for the moment. There's lots of them around: some start to crawl out of the holes of graves they were in. It's probably alarming, to see them all suddenly start to come forth, as if the undead were rising.

The robot adds, "Your request is important to us, please continue to prioritize your safety!" to Jessica.

Origami has posed:
The paper flower blooms, burying crayon scribbled green roots into the ground. A puff of tiny paper circles with crayon drawn snowflakes erupt from the roots and swirl around, then a wave of frosty arctic chill starts spreading, chilling that entire part of the park with magical cold wintery air.

Miyako Moore soars around, and turns slowly to soar closer to one of the drones. "Origami here, Who has incident command? Do they need any walls, cold patches, tangle patches, ravenous killer paper cranes, anything?"

Shadowlite has posed:
Unfortunately for Black Panther, Shadowlite didn't ask if he caught any humans. The kinetic blast partially shreds the tendril... but with Shadowlite actively maintaining it, it starts to regrow itself. It isn't instantaneous though, so Black Panther could probably wipe it clear through if he tried.

Inside the dome, Shadowlite gets a voice in his head, ~That's all of them.~ Then, he uses his outside voice, "Time for some pest control, assholes." Shadowlite takes a deep breath as he places both hands on the dome... and suddenly each squid dog is pulled down to the ground as the tendrils pull down into the ground, pinning them to the ground for now. The Dome dissolves as he does so... the chem thrower that was dropped, picked back up.

Then, the nozzle is aimed at the squids, and concentrated liquid nitrogen is spewed at each in turn, one at a time. "It isn't a flamethrower, bucko." Shadowlite quips.

Spider-Woman (Drew) has posed:
"Did...did you just put us on HOLD??" Jess asks the drone incredulously. But the Spider-Woman becomes a little confused when the scene goes full-on anime, and she watches Miyako for a moment. "Well, I'll be da--" And just then, the least injured of the three squidlings has broken through a limb and reached her leg, doing what she can only describe as gnarfing on it like some sort of gnarfing thing.

"JESUS you guys are persistent!" And with a sudden fight or flight reaction, Jessica summons the electrical charge from within the tree, and within her body, and discharges it in one powerful shot of electricity into the gnarfing little bastage.

Black Panther has posed:
"Freezing is the most effective," T'Challa answers Monet. "More of that would be good," he says loudly, pointing at the winter wonderland developing around the origami tree.

T'Challa laughs as Shadowlite unleashes his liquid nitrogen. "I see you came prepared!" Then he pulls two Kimoyo beads from his wrist and tosses them into the seething mass at the root of the mushroom. There is no sound or light, but in a small sphere around each one all the thermal energy is absorbed into the Kimoyo bead, creating a small area at almost 0 degrees Kelvin.

M has posed:
Monet nods curtly at Black Panther, and rises a little furthur up so she's out of lunging range of the nasty little critters. "Regrettably, I didn't pack a portable nitrogen gun," she says, her voice still a constant calm. "But I can provide some covering support, I suppose." The Monagasque beauty sets herself up to watch over Miyako, as T'challa seems to have Shadowlite covered and Jessica looks quite capable of handling things herself. "If you can freeze any more of them, now would be a good time," Monet advises Miyako.

Iron Man has posed:
The freezing cold and winter conditions have obvious effects. The monsters draw back from it when they can, and others clearly slow down, struggling due to the cold. They aren't dying, but they are also far slower, their tentacles restricted in elasticity. Shadowlite will not be killing them with his cold shot, but they do freeze up in place, becoming extremely easy to shatter with even moderate force. Sitting frozen ducks.

At the base of the mushroom, multiple spheres of cold are pitched in, and the squidlings nearby 'duck and cover' into the soil. While in the soil, they seem protected, because once the chilling zones pass, they climb back out, though slower. They don't run at the heroes: all squidlings suddenly are all going for corpse pieces and bits of bushes or anything at all, as if suddenly priorities changed in the winter wonderland.

The three squidlings by Jessica though? One of them gets zapped harshly with electricity. And it bloats and grows suddenly, churning. The potency of the electricity is delicious to it: it quadruples in size and promptly attempts to tear Spider-Woman in half with newly spouted tentacles, if she doesn't evade. The other two surge in to try to trip her up, eager for this tasty prey.

"Ability advisory: refrain from using fire, solar, or electrical abilities, as these will empower the opponent," the robot says. "Your request for identification of incident command has been received!" The robot answers Miyoko. "Your requests are important to us."

Then, suddenly, the robot entirely changes mode as if something took control over it: it orients around, adjusting angles over the fighters. It attempts to 'assist' Jessica quickly, physically ramming one of the squidlings, tossing it back.

Communication bridges into Black Panther's comm. "Looks like you have a mess there, Black Panther; I'm about two minutes out, unless you got this," comes Tony's voice from his drone. There is a certain expectation that his voice will be recognized, of course.

Origami has posed:
Miyako Moore sees that someone is giving orders, and he looks like he is used to giving them. She reaches in her messenger bag in a practiced movement and produces another sheet of paper, then folds, creases, bends, folds.. creates a tiny paper figurine of a crane. She puts a few finishing touches on it, then lightly tosses it up in the air where it grows and expands, gaining a penciled in feathery texture and flapping slowly down to circle around T'Challa's head, leaving more than enough room to fight without it getting in the way.

Meanwhile, the area of cold from the flower expands and blankets EVERYTHING, turning the whole battle into bitterly cold wintery frostiness with the occasional paper snowflake drifting around. Miyako Moore yells back, "Copy that!", cold fog coming from her lips in the sudden cold, happy that her use of firefighter gear means she gets to wear a COAT to such things. She slips another sheet of paper into her fingers effortlessly, then frowns at the sudden escalation near Spider Woman. "..Ugh!"

Shadowlite has posed:
"The blatant ego from the drone would be hilarious if Stark didn't put that bit about requests in at the end." Shadowlite notes, half amused, as he releases the tendrils of Darkforce finally... and sighs in relief as he stops having to focus.

Then, the electricity is heard. "Well, shit." Shadowlite turns to regard the big one... before he jumps into the air, a black disk forming below his feet as he starts to fly over to the stalk on the Darkforce disk, liquid nitrogen is aimed at the squid dogs trying to bring bushes and other fun things.

"I'll handle slowing down and controlling the small fry, you all can deal with stay puft over there. I got an intel report on these things before I came out here. Have fun!" Shadowlite gives in a casually dismissive tone as he works on containment.

Black Panther has posed:
"Mr. Stark," T'Challa says, surveying the impact of their combined efforts. "We would appreciate your help with the mushroom stalk. I do not think we can root it out."

He waves to Shadowlite. "Just do not let it feed itself!"

Then T'Challa leaps, tosses a Kimoyo bead in mid-air at the now super-sized squiddling near the woman in the tree, and lands close to it. He jumps again and tries to slash through one of its tentacles. The crane above him follows him, shadowing him as he attacks the large squiddling.

M has posed:
Monet lends some aid to the fight swirling around Jessica. She rips away two of the squidlings with teleknetic hands, smashing them against one another to form a gross xenomorphic paste.

She swoops accross the battlefield, ignoring the flash-frost painting the foliage white, and takes T'challa's advice to heart. Still avoiding physical contact with the squidlings (because eww, and also: her shoes are probably worth as much as the drone overhead), she blasts a trough in the corpse-strewn mud around the fungus' base. Chunks of corpse and smaller squidlings are sent flying out of reach as she deprives the strange myconid of more resources.

Spider-Woman (Drew) has posed:
"NOW YOU TELL ME, COOTER!" Yeah. She named it Cooter. What of it?

Jessica's strength suddenly comes into play as she launches herself from the trunk to a tree limb a dozen feet above her. She grabs onto it and girls herself over it, parallel bar-style. She gives a definitive SNAP with both legs to free herself from the giant squid, grabbing at it on the dismount and hurling it against the tree trunk with all her might. The force would kill a human. But this isn't a human. "I did NOT give you permission to Hulk out, Gigantor!" she screams as it hits the trunk with a sickening thud. She promptly gathers the other squidlings into a thwipped-up bag, and begins shooting webs hither and yon over the field of battle, intent on gathering as many of the slow-moving little jerks as possible into an intricately-woven web. "You won't like ME when I'm angry, either!" she shouts, clearly done playing.

Iron Man has posed:
"Make that /one/ minute--- wow, snow globe of the living dead," Tony's voice observes, into Panther's communicator. Above them the shining flare of Iron Man's flight trail passes into the area, the shiny red and golden armor making confident appearance overhead. He has a few drones with him, naturally. The snowy landscape, with all the corpse parts littered around, makes for an interesting scene for Stark to arrive into. And he arrived just in time for Monet to shower pieces of cadaver all over in the mix of paper snowflakes. "Very festive." He watches Black Panther and Spider Woman, with Monet and Miyoko as well, take on that giant squid creature. Between Monet crushing its buddies, Spider Woman's graceful show of gymnastics, Panther's claws rending off tentacles, and all the ice, the thing might be big and powerful, but it got HAMMERED by all of the attacks. It has maybe one tentacle left, then none: they destroy it, together.

"You know, I /like/ not having to do anything," Iron Man 'compliments', giving a good clap for that team, hovering nearby now, and then moving to Shadowlite's project. "Cotninue to keep the little ones off, and that cold going, whoever is doing THAT---, and I'll isolate it out." The little ones all over the place will give plenty to do, and might overwhelm Shadowlite's attempts by himself.

The drones Tony brought set up in a triangle around the stalk, and start to unfold. High tech in action.

Iron Man has posed:
The original little robot, not under direct control anymore, also reverts to prior settings. "Your request has been resolved! Wouldn't you rate this a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10?"

Shadowlite has posed:
"I could probably have pulled the stalk out with a bit of time, but not while I'm keeping the crawlies on ice." Shadowlite notes to Black Panther as he zooms about. Shadowlite himself is fairly fast on the disk... but he can only freeze one at a time without a larger bomb, "next time, I'll ask for bigger bombs." He grumps as he continues to do containment. "Lucky I can bill my client for all this. This much nitro isn't cheap."

Then, the drone talks, and Shadowlite groans audibly through the voice masker, "I think your drone is malfunctioning, Stark. It thinks this is 'resolved'." Shadowlites tone makes it clear what he thinks of /that/ idea.

Spider-Woman (Drew) has posed:
Jessica is almost too focused to notice Tony's arrival. Almost. "I didn't know not doing anything was an option!"

Spider-Woman hurls herself to the ground, landing on her feet and -almost- sticking the landing. In all the excitement, she scarcely noticed the chunk of flesh along her left thigh that Gigantor had ripped out along the grain of the muscle, and she goes ass-over-teakettle before hopping back to her feet, weight on her one good leg. She continues to thwip one line after the next of webbing, over the ares of cold and thawing cold, trying to keep as many of the squidlings as possible in the areas most frigid. "I can keep them where they're slow, but I need someone to bash their cute little brains in." A pause. "They do have brains, right?"

Origami has posed:
Miyako Moore folds the piece of paper in her hand, humming a bit and floating overhead in the paper plane like a juvenile flying carpet. She almost casually tosses it off the edge, then starts folding another. The figurine flutters down toward the ground, growing and expanding. Another paper crane... well.. don't you know what birds are evolved from? Dinosaurs.

The origami raptor lands on the ground, now nine feet tall, and screams loudly in Jurassic Park style from its triangular paper beak, showing penciled in teeth! It lunges forward to grab a squidling and rip it to pieces, the start of a mindless, animalistic rampage of ultraviolent paleontological paper monstrosity.

Black Panther has posed:
"I will remember that for next time," T'Challa remarks to Shadowlite. He quickly dispatches a couple of squiddlings near him by slicing their bodies in two, leaving puffs of spores behind.

"We will have to talk, Mr. Stark. I have some people who could help you study these mushrooms," he comments, then rends another squiddling. "Though I see you have developed some solutions of your own," he adds with a nod toward the drones setting up around the stalk.

M has posed:
Monet flies overhead near Jessica, a dynamic figure despite her fine attire. She spikes the ball from Jessica's setup-- each time a squidling is webbed up, Monet smashes it into the dirt with enough force to crush a beer keg. She keeps able pace up with the web-flinging wallcrawler, picking up the spares as one or two of the little monsters evades Jessica's webbed attempt to corral them.

Iron Man has posed:
"Malfunctioning? Nah. I'm here. That's 'resolved'," Iron Man replies to Shadowlite with evident confidence, gliding down closer to the Stalk to partially guide a change in where he needs the drones. The place is a mess, and it's requiring some manual adjustments, before the system hums into activation, and an inwards pulsing field kicks into action. Iron Man diverts attention to Jessica's thighs. Because she's injured. That's clearly why.

"Hold up there; did it disintegrate while grabbing your injury?" Tony asks her. "Let's get a look at your legs." Right.

"Sure, let's get in a chat. If you can manufacture these alongside me, we can be a lot more efficient with this," Tony answers Black Panther, multitasking, evidently. The machines are starting to collapse some sort of zone onto the mushroom stalk, while the other heroes keep its minions busy. Bits of crushed squidling are in a fine dust all over the icy area and graves, amid the variety of powers and raptors.

Origami has posed:
Miyako Moore soars down to the ground and steps off of the paper airplane, which implodes into a crumpled up bit of folded paper that she grabs out of the air. She snaps to attention and angles toward Tony and T'Challa - they're obviously in charge, and if there's one thing she knows to do, it's to obey and maintain the chain of command in a situation. "Origami here. Are we at all clear?"

The raptor, seeing no more things to attack, suddenly implodes into a small crumpled up wad of folded paper that falls to the ground. The crane stays soaring around for the moment, not having specifically lost its reason for being. Ditto the paper snowflakes. Miyako isn't ready to get rid of that until told.

Black Panther has posed:
The Black Panther looks in Miyako's direction and nods. "We are, thank you for your assistance. Your storm was very effective," he says in his heavily accented English.

"If you need medical attention I can take you to a hospital," he offers to Spider-Woman. And he takes a moment to introduce himself, as the Black Panther, to Monet and Shadowlite.

Shadowlite has posed:
On the other hand, Shadowlite obviously isn't interested in deferring to Tony or T'Challa, with the way he's been going on. Nonetheless, he does give the group a two finger casual salute as he replaces the chem thrower onto a holster on his backpack, "pretty sure I'm going to be called in for more of these elsewhere, stay frosty." Shadowlite gives in a quip as he holds out a hand... and that black lightning arcs through the air again as black mist emits from his outstretched hand. Five seconds later, and Shadowlite has disappeared into another black hole in reality.... before it collapses in on itself.

Looks like Shadowlite is too busy with what he does to do introductions.

Spider-Woman (Drew) has posed:
Everything was going (mostly) as planned for Jessica Drew. And now, Tony Stark is looking at her thighs, while she wrangles a web full of squidlings like a macabre army of marionettes. "That's....my...." She blinks, looking down. "Oh! Right. I guess he got a good shot in on me." She pulls open the tear in her costumery with one hand, to reveal a large chunk of flesh separated gruesomely from the other muscles there, but surprisingly the tissue is beginning to knit itself back together, albeit a little more slowly than SOME highly-paid franchise names. "It...it SHOULD be okay...in time..." She tries to maintain her focus despite Tony's own focus being focused oh her thighs.

M has posed:
Monet goes high, circling once more to check if any of the squidlings have broken around the little containment zone. Seeing none, she swoops down to the group, her designer shoes hovering six inches off the dirt. The Monagasque mutant lifts a brow as Tony Stark inspects Jessica's... injury.

"Are you a doctor of medicine now, Mr. Stark?" she inquires of him, with a tone of bored and haughty derision. She glances once at Shadowlite as the enigmatic man makes his departure, and Origami is given a flickering once-over before Monet turns her attention to Black Panther. Her brows lift in mild surprise.

"I did not realize the Wakanda Monarchy was in attendance today," she tells T'challa, with a tone that is almost bordering on being civil. "My apologies for not realizing it sooner. I am Monet Yvette Clarisse Maria-Therese St. Croix," she tells him. "Of the Monaco St. Croix family. I am pleased to meet you, your Majesty," she says, ducking her head in something almost like a curtsey.

Iron Man has posed:
The stalk finally curls fully out of existence in the strange high-tech field, and Tony calls back his drones. They drift into a circle near his left. "As fun as that spore spreading into a hospital might /be/... Panther, mind taking her back to our med-lab instead? If this is a new trick it's doing by infecting us, better safe than sorry. I haven't seen spores in a wound like that before." A pause. "Hey, I'm sure your thigh will be just fine," Tony says, offhandedly casual, with a gesture of hand, as if fanning away all problems. "Someone'll check you out." All innuendo is probably entirely intentional.

"I'll meet you back at the mansion in about an hour," Tony adds, mostly aimed to Black Panther. And diverts briefly to Origami. "Great magical doodads. Ice seems like the ticket. If you find any other magical types that it's weak to, pass that info to us, if you get time," Tony requests, smile in his tone, even if his mask is closed. He looks at Monet, but she's occupied with T'Challa, so he lets that go without comment

Then, the little drone of requests pipes, "Duration of response expended. Response rated 10!" cheerfully. Tony finger-guns at the group on that note, and blasts off.