Masks 2

There was a flashback moment as Orla leaped at the giant monster. Weirdly enough, even diving into it's mouth, this wasn't the worst time she'd leaped at a humongous creature, falling through the air with weapons out.

Then she was inside it. Again, flashes of being consumed before. This was unpleasant. Painful. But this time she wasn't screaming in utter, horrified panic. Yet.

As she slid down the gullet, a shortsword slashed out, slicing through the inner skin until she landed in the stomach and began to burn. Immediately she stabbed out with the spear first, putting her shoulder behind the powerful thrust to break through the inner lining before then stabbing into the point and tearing with her sword, better suited for cutting open once the initial break had been made.

It stank in here, hard to breath. Hopefully they dealt with this quickly on the outside.

Ezren whooped as Orla got consumed, ”GET IT!!!!”

He picked up another spine and hefted it on his shoulder, before realizing maybe stabbing the meatsack that she was inside of might not be swell for her. Hmm. He took to holding the thing like a baseball bat instead, and set about trying to swing at the thing to slow its roll as it ran by.

Nice!! Now that Orla's been well and thoroughly Gobbled, Finn sets about trying to limit this thing's movement while she's inside. She'll start zapping metal street-features full of electricity - benches, lightpoles, all of it! - so that this thing can't move more than a few inches without getting a nasty shock! Probably won't do real damage, but might start confusing and hurting it.

"Fuck!!"

Esen keeps pulling people out of the way of getting crushed, and hopes the others think of something!

Ken is going to go into the back and see if there is even more horrible weapons remaining in the city network. The lasers aren't going to cut it and the monster is probably going to keep, evolving or something.

Theraea settles for jamming loose spines and debris into the ground ahead of the rolling kaiju, in the hopes that it might get stuck or at least slowed down! She can't really do much damage from the outside, so preventing it from moving around seems ideal.

Candy will help in the distraction by manipulating the sound around the kaiju to make it think people are in places they aren’t by replicating peoples voices.

The assault of the heroes was relentless as they sought to slow down the kaiju's roll! Ezren ceaselessly assaulted it from the front with a swinging spine while Theraea put obstacles in its path. Finn's electricity arced into it from all sides, and Candy overwhelmed its senses with voices and distracting noises. Esen continued to save lives by pulling people out of the way, saving a few resistance fighters in the process.

Ken, seeing that the lasers were only annoying the creature, searched for heavier ordinance in the city's stockpiles. What he found was an undeployed squadron of defense drones that could arrive on the scene within the minute, if he so chose. They were armed with miniguns and missile launchers, and would probably be capable of doing immense damage to the mutant hordes if nothing else.

The Demon, Harpwn, Bloodsport, Lady Light, and the resistance soldiers continued to hold the line against the mutants while Folly, seemingly uselessly, continued loitering far from the fight. Gullgirl covered Theraea as she did her work, slamming flying mutants out of the air with her flail.

Inside the belly of the beast, Orla stabbed and slashed and did her best to generally rip the creature apart from within. It seemed to be working! The creature was letting out cries and roars as she attacked, and it wouldn't be long until it went into shock from the pain at the very least!

And then everything went bad.

Outside, the group saw several enormous pulsating roots shoot up from the ground and drive themselves into the kaiju. Before their eyes it began to shift, growing larger and spikier and generally more terrifying. Inside the creature, spikes grew from its stomach, impaling Orla in countless places as the stomach contracted. She felt a lot of her bones breaking, her skin melting away from intensifying acid, and her consciousness fading from the utter agony of the situation.

And then the creature exploded, sending spikes and spines and barbs every which way. Finn was immediately impaled through the chest (going right through her armor) by one of the creature's spines, sending her flying back into a brick wall with a shredded right leg and a mangled left arm. Candy was shot through by about six spines and collapsed to the ground, bleeding out. Orla was left a mass of crushed melting flesh on the ground where the creature had exploded, but was slowly pulling herself back together as Khazra took on most of the pain. Ezren was shot through by two spines and a load of barbs, but his demonic nature mostly just made this annoying. He could rip them out if he wanted. Esen managed to deftly dodge all the flying spines and spikes with her agility, but wasn't able to save anybody else as she did so. Similarly, Theraea was further away when it exploded, giving her time to throw up a barrier that saved herself and Gullgirl from impalement.

Ken was thankfully in the internet, and was in no danger of impalement. Being virtual rocked!

The fighters on the mutant front fared no better than the ones fighting the kaiju, having their backs turned to the monster when it exploded. The Demon's armor held up against the smaller barbs, but one of the spines went through her shoulder, severing her left arm and part of her torso as she went crumpling to the ground. Harpwn was impaled through the chest and lost his right leg, while Bloodsport deftly dodged behind a burned out truck, avoiding any serious damage. A couple of the resistance soldiers were impaled, but most managed to avoid damage by rushing INTO the mutant fray, letting them take the barrage instead. Lady Light, with her super durability, was able to avoid suffering any damage. Once the barrage had ended, she flew down into the fray and rescued the stranded soldiers, sending out as many panicked light blasts as she could to stem the now overwhelming mutant tide. Even Folly got a barb through the shoulder, sending her sprawling to the ground.

By the time the dust cleared from the explosion, most of the heroes were left strewn across the battlefield, mortally and horrifically wounded by the cataclysmic kaiju detonation.

Theraea stared in horror as a good two-thirds of the group was wiped by the deadly corpse explosion. What was she going to do about this? She didn't have healing powers! Or any sort of medical training! Maybe she could summon help from another timeline? But who would actually answer that call? Theraea still flapped down from the sky, to at least try to figure out what to do, but this was far beyond her.

---

Well.

The kaiju was gone. That was something. Shame the heroes were dying too.

Someone should do something about that.

A figure descended from her vantage point atop a nearby building, silhouetted by the sun above. A tall woman with a massive pair of white, feathery wings, dressed in protective gear that looked more suited to a hospital than a warzone. Her black hair was pulled back in a short ponytail, she wore a large rebreather on her face, and if you stared at her just a little too long you might find it hard to focus on how many eyes she had. Two, right? Surely it was just two.

Standing in the midst of the blood-and-acid-stained battlefield, there stood one that few now would recognize as Dr. Emily Hartmann. A hero of the robot war of 2018, who quickly faded into obscurity afterward - receiving, at best, side character status in some corporate superhero media. A doctor was on the scene.

And it was time for some triage.

With a beat of her wings, Emily rushed her way, first, to Candy. She knelt down, placing a hand by her grievous wounds, and a blindingly golden light began to pour from her hand. In mere moments, the six spines impaling Candy ejected themselves and clattered to the ground, one-by-one. The gaping holes left behind, as the light poured into them, began to seal shut. Bone mended as though it had never been broken. Blood vessels and musculature grew back into place. Punctured organs knitted together, ruined nerve endings grew back, and the skin closed over each wound without leaving so much as a scar. Confident that this one would now live, Emily moved on.

Finn was next. Emily quickly removed the spine from her chest and suffused her, too, with that healing light. The most critical injuries, those in her chest, healed first, before the light diffused outward to her limbs. With distressing (but strangely painless) cracking, the bones twisted themselves back into the proper shape before becoming whole again, from the inside out. With any luck, Finn wasn't lucid enough to really take in the experience of a femur un-breaking itself. Emily couldn't do anything about the ruined armor, but Finn would live.

Next came the Demon. Emily actually knew her, which was a bit of a shock. Not a lot of the old heroes left these days. Well, this one would live. Emily, as usual, healed her chest wound first. Next came the arm roughly torn off at the shoulder - unpleasant, sure, but not unfixable. Surrounded in a glowing light, the bone began to grow outward once more, followed by layers of musculature, blood vessels, and skin, each traveling in sequence from shoulder to hand. This seemed a little more taxing on Emily than the other injuries, but when she was done, the Demon's arm was restored, good as new.

Harpwn got much the same treatment as the Demon, although regenerating a leg was somewhat more of an arduous process than an arm. Just a question of mass, and legs are, you know, big.

Next to receive treatment were the unnamed resistance fighters, whose injuries were mostly limited to impalement rather than catastrophic limb removal. They may have been redshirts, but dammit, redshirts aren't obligated to die!

Emily walked up to Folly, gave her some healing to the shoulder, and helped her to her feet. Her injury wasn't as serious as the rest. Still bad, but not, like, dramatically bad.

The life-threatening injuries dealt with, Emily rushed to attend to Orla. It was obvious that she'd heal on her own, eventually, but her current state must have been agonizing. Emily gave her a good dose of healing, as well, accelerating the process significantly and easing the worst of the pain in the process.

Finally, she approached Ezren, and offered him healing - though she could tell he didn't really seem to need it. Still, no need to be rude.

When she was done, Emily took a knee, breathing heavily. Healing that many people that quickly took a lot out of her, and she needed to catch her breath, thank you very much. At least she'd managed to arrive in time - today, the heroes would live.

Well that had been horrible. Not quite the worst death she'd barely avoided, but up there.

She'd been screaming of course, confused and horrified as the unpleasant of being digested had suddenly turned into multiple impalements in the dark and then, there was a feeling of indescribable horrible pain that quickly eased as her body went from mush somehow pulling itself together to a mostly human shape. Thank god for that dose of healing skipping over that "barely-not-dead-lumps-of-pain-feeling-meet" to "just mostly fucked up but getting better" stage.

Pushing up and blinking at the Doctor running about. Was that Dr Emily? She recognised the wings, Dr Emily had always been a pretty popular claim on the RP forums.

There was some adjustment of her gear, feeling a little... Well, the amazonian armor was still working thankfully, strands of her garb restitching as her clothing fixed itself too. That had been awful, raising a hand absently as her spear returned.

Magic items were the best. "Thanks Doc." She sort of mumbled blearily, still a little groggy as she looked about, seeing bits of Kaiju around, and then limping on a bit to help support those keeping off the mutants whilst the healer healed.

Finn was conscious. Frighteningly so.

It was easy to think you'd made peace with death. It was easy to say you'd welcome it when it came for you. It was easy to think about how tired of living you were, and about how many less people you'd disappoint if you could just stop breathing, and how things would run so much smoother without you.

But staring into the unending maw before her was something else entirely. She didn't have regrets, didn't start thinking about things she wished she could have done, but the primal fear that overtook her as she laid on that ground struggling for each painful, gurgling breath was intense. It was real.

She wanted to call out, to ask someone to call her mother and tell her what she'd done. She wanted to apologize to Orla. She wanted to tell Lizzie she cared about her, even if the old bitch would never know how to care back. She wanted to tell her father she loved him - just in case he didn't know. But she couldn't. She was broken; ripped to shreds; thoroughly fucked up. She'd give her left tit for one more easy breath.

Thankfully, no such bargain was necessary. A figure who'd been made a beacon of her childhood through intense commodification descended upon her and ripped her bones back together before fluttering off to do the same to some other poor fuck. She forced herself back to her feet, eyes still hollow with pain and fear, adrenaline still pumping through her veins. She looked across the battlefield, mind trying to process the relief of her friends still living.

Then she ran up and slugged a newly-healed Lizzy across the jaw.

Many of the newly-healed heroes (including Orla!) rapidly returned to the fight, helping to hold back the mutant tide. The Demon herself was just getting up and getting ready to return to battle when Finn came up behind her and punched her in the face. Her helmet absorbed most of the attack, but the force of the strike still sent her stumbling to the side before she looked back to Finn.

"Glad you're all right too," she said, shaking the daze of the blow away.

Ezren smacked the hand offered to him, as if he had been offered a low five instead.

”Hot damn, nice one!” He coughed, starting to pull the all-too-long spines out of himself like a magician’s bright rags. ”Lookin’ kinda dramatic out here, why don’t you all uhh, take five or something, I’ll play with the small fries.”

Taking one of his nicely bloodied spines, he jumped on it to give it a little bend, and fired him up an enormous scythe to go cut the grass with. And mutants, you know, whatever.

"Woah, dude," Hackerman says. He materializes sunglasses just so he can take them off, dramatically. Because this is Emily, one of the oldies, we're talking about. Gosh he would talk to her, but he first need to deploy the squadron first. To protect against any anticipated monster/grass attacks.

Finn wiped away a bit of blood spattered on her face.

"Just figured if we're gonna die I should get anything worth communicatin' out. You broke my heart, y'old goat, and I haven't forgiven that, but you'd best live through this, if you don't want me hauntin' you to the ends of the Earth."

With that, she gets a move on. Not much more time for emotional speeches.

"I'll do my best," the Demon nodded at Finn before going back into the fight.

The heroes charged in and Ezren in particular went to town on the mutants, tearing a great number of them apart. This was compounded by air support from Ken's drones, which finished off the last of the mutants and gave them a second to catch their breath.

"Everybody okay?" Emily asked over the comms. "I've got reinforcements inbound, so just hang in there. Hackerman, if you could shoot down any spines that try to take out our dropships, that'd be fantastic."

A few moments later, some resistance dropships came in to land at the wall breach. Several squads of resistance soldiers came forth, backed up by a number of familiar faces:

Nick Urias, clad in his usual scraggly attire, with a head full of gray hair and some light scruff on his face. Despite his age, he looked just as energetic as ever.

The Red Reaper, dressed in his black and red body armor, his eyes peering out from behind his skull mask. He carried a number of firearms, grenades, knives, and gadgets.

Don Diamante, dressed in the finest of Italian suits, still looking as dapper as ever. His skin was still composed of solid crystal, and he hadn't appeared to have aged much.

Darkmagic, clad in her imposing black duster and a tricorne hat, with a silver-accented black rifle in her hands. Her animated t-shirt displayed a cartoon snake tearing the head off a doll with the words "SERPASEV" below it.

Salamandra, a ten foot tall humanoid salamander with deep red scales, bright red eyes, and giant black horns. She wore a custom-made pair of jeans and a black tanktop for her giantass salamander form.

Banshee, dressed in a white t-shirt, a pair of jeans, and an old power armor helmet taken from a dead soldier years before. She had a strong build, and stood at around 5'6". Those who knew her recognized her better as Umeko.

Then Tony Margera, the Birdman Reborn, wearing a ridiculous bird mask and a full set of 90s skater clothes. He carried his legendary skateboard in his hands.

And finally, the Raven stepped down. That introduction was best left to another.

Once everybody had disembarked, the dropships took back off to avoid being ripped apart by the city. It looked like they'd have a few moments to compose themselves before everything hit the fan again.

Esen wipes the sweat from her forehead and takes a breather. She pulls out some water and drinks half the bottle in two big gulps. Putting the rest away, she looks around.

"Phew, that was close. What's next? How do we get deeper in?"

The Raven stepped off the dropship, with an unassuming staff in one hand and a very worn, if well maintained, twelve gauge shotgun held in the other. He looked up into the skyline over LA and the utter devastation wrecked upon the megacity and the stink of death and burning devastation on the air. His Raven's cowl, from his mask onto his armour shown dully in the afternoon daylight.

He didn't seem to react before looking back down to his allies and striding forward.

"Alright, where are we needed most?" he asked.

Orla blinked, looking up from catching her breath at the end of the carnage, and seeing all the reinforcements arriving, and immediately ran over to John. Apparently giving him a big giant hug was a stronger instinct than being star struck by all the new heroes, grinning hugely.

"You're here! You're alive and you're here and everything! How are you?!"

Ezren didn't really care about all this, except that it meant maybe they could go punch the tree sooner, and for that, he added this lot to his list of best friends on earth. He caught a mutant on the flat side of his scythe and started tossing them back at their fellows. The fun people could have a second before they got accosted by a game of catch.

Surprisingly, rather than beelining for the big name heroes, Finn grins at Nick and gives him a slap on the back! "Hey, da - long time no see! Hope you're ready for one last round of bullshit. How was the ride here?"

"Right away, Emily, but holy shit. Is that Tony Margera? And his SKATEBOARD?"

Theraea, meanwhile, was making the best use of barriers she could to protect the area! Might as well do something while her player is also playing another character. It's almost like she can't stick to just one character in any Masks game.

"Hi, Salamandra! Hi Raven!" she called out as the dropships unloaded.

---

Dr. Emily Hartmann, meanwhile, stood from her kneeling position, having caught her breath enough after healing approximately everybody. She dusted herself off, stretched her wings, adjusted her rebreather, and approached the incoming squad of heroes.

"Welcome to... yet another Hell. Surprised you're all still at it thirty years later." Emily didn't want to call the old heroes, well, old, but some of them must have been pushing sixty by now.

Orla rushed over and gave the Red Reaper a big hug, and it actually took him a few moments to realize who exactly was hugging him!

"Orla?" he finally said, giving a single chuckle. "Sorry, took a second. Glad you're all right too."

He looked around at all the destruction.

"Didn't expect to see you here, kid. Looks like you're well suited to it now, at least. Nice armor."

To her credit, Umeko ALSO seemed like she wanted to catch up with Orla, but now wasn't really the time. Instead she went to the front, aiming to hold off the remaining mutants while everyone else caught their breath.

***

Nick smiled upon seeing Finn, and ALSO approached to say hi.

"Hey kiddo, fancy seeing you here," Nick told her. "Ride was good! Don't think this'll be the last round of bullshit based on how my entire life has gone, but we'll get through it."

Nick looked up at the giant tree in the middle of the city.

"Really wish this was the first evil tree I'd encountered," he sighed, looking back to Finn. "How've you been? Seems you've taken some hits."

***

It was indeed Tony Margera, and he did indeed have his mythical Board of Rebellion. He was passively chilling near the frontline, waiting for the order to move out.

***

Salamandra waved back to Theraea in a pretty friendly manner! She liked Theraea.

***

Don Diamante, who actually recognized Dr. Emily from when he'd fought in the Robot War, smiled and gave her a handshake.

"Can't keep a good businessman down, so they say," the Don said to her, glancing around at the carnage, heroes, and resistance soldiers. "Hm. Well, guess businessmen are going out of fashion now, huh?"

He cleared his throat.

"Can't keep a good revolutionary down, so they say."

***

In response to Esen and Desmond's questions, Emily had a few answers.

"So, at this point it'll probably be most effective if you all split into two groups. Too many of you guys fighting in one place tends to diminish your effectiveness. Takes room for a lot of you to properly use your powers, so cramming you together will just make complications. I'm thinking the main push will be...Nimue, Aura, Cadence, Orla, Theraea, Hackerman, the Raven, the good doctor, the Demon, the other demon, the Red Reaper, Banshee, Nick, Darkmagic, Margera, and Salamandra. Meanwhile the secondary team will consist of Gullgirl, Harpwn, Folly, Bloodsport, Lady Light, Don Diamante, and the resistance squads. Secondary team is a bit light on powered people, but its role is to support, distract, reinforce, and give a few of the flashier people room to move. Primary team's job is to break through and see what this tree is doing. If the main team ends up needing help, Gullgirl and Lady Light can probably fly over and do so. Also worth noting that Siren and Atom Rain are out off the coast right now keeping a lot of kaiju monsters busy."

She paused a moment.

"Any reservations or questions? Concerns? Alternative plans? I'm open for anything!"

"I'll have to tell you how I got it after. Um, one sec, one sec! You're looking great too! So silver age." As Emily started talking tactics.

Orla, in a rather determined fashion during the description of the plan by Emily, once she looked around and locked eyes onto Banshee, cocking her head slightly to recognise past the helmet, pulled (if allowed) John with her to stand beside Umeko, assuming no horrible mutants were being a serious threat before giving Umeko a giant hug too, making sure to not do so from behind during combat to avoid any misunderstandings.

"Um, 'Banshee'! Hi! It's such an awful time to catch up." Said through a huge, laughing smile, much more bubbly and honest than the smol girl when they'd first met. "Seems we may be working together on the big over-the-top attack. I'm looking forward to showing you both I can kick ass now!"