A small screen appears in the bottom right of my visual field as my rings slow down the image: Wallace grinning maniacally as he runs around shooting me. Darn it. Without empowerment from a high-tier New God they shouldn't do much-.
I Deserve To Be Hurt
My armour… Thins, then fractures as the bolts keep coming. I restore it a moment later, drop a vertigo inducer and fly up-.
And with an energy weapon, he doesn't have to wait for the projectile to leave the barrel before moving, so as not to mess up his aim.
Wallace staggers for a moment, shakes his head-.
Down and grab!
Good hit with the vertigo. Might want to bind him properly, though, just to be safe.
"Kid Flash-!"
He shakes off the still-active inducer and blurs, my giant claw construct fracturing-.
Honestly, feels like OL is holding the tactical idiot ball here. Anyone else, he'd have accelerated, shackled and stunned them in a second... Still, a friend at risk probably makes him reluctant to go all out.
Kinetic barrier-!
Damn it, lost-! What do those-?
Drawback of fighting someone who knows some of your tricks: They can deal with them easily. Good thing KF doesn't know
all his tricks.
Joy of someone getting a lot more actions in a combat round than you do...
Okay. So I just got to re-enact Flash's attack on Superman in Dark Knight Strikes Again; use super speed to dash up, cover the super tough object in shaped charges and then dash out of the blast radius. New Gods weapons. My armour construct failed and my actual armour… It's going to be easier to just replace the outer plating rather than repair what's left. Okay, I-.
And Flashes tend to be that much
faster than everyone else. Even Supermen. Makes them dangerous when they've got a nark on for you.
Alert.
I dodge left as an arrow screams past me-. Wait, what? Artemis is-. That's a New God bow, but she isn't a New God herself. Sleez has to be in the area, with… Some way of empowering her himself.
So that arrow was probably
supersonic. Doubt she'll get to keep that afterwards, even if it can withstand her strength.
"Orange Lantern to Robin. Artemis and Kid Flash are being controlled. Send Donna but do not-."
"Arsenal's not mind control proof, got it. She's on her way."
Yes, Robin
does know what he's doing, OL. Sadly, that backup will still be a minute or two out, even with the speed of Hermes or similar.
Okay, so if vertigo inducers don't work, then-
More blaster shots fly up towards me, but they're a good deal easier to dodge now that I've got distance. Armour repaired, and-. Artemis has vanished again.
Shoot and move. Good sniper tactics, and decidedly not superheroic methods. Drawing on her father's training, I see...
Options.
Defeat Artemis and Wallace, then go looking for Sleez. They'll fight me every moment and they're not exactly easy to contain, especially when I don't know exactly what they can do with him buffing them.
Although you can fix any permanent physical damage. The emotional damage, that might be trickier, especially if Sleez had time to get
creative.
Look for Sleez. He's probably around here somewhere, and it looks like the.. employees are evacuating.
Look for his machinery. That-.
"I'm sending Roy to Simon's home, but it'll take him a few minutes to get there."
Looks like Robin's already ahead of you. Also, what employees?
A different office, I assume? Either way they're smart to vamoose. Edit: Ah, the New God technology storage depot, and Sleez was
lucky enough to be present...
Superhero luck, eh?
That's a sensible idea. I doubt that he'd put it in his office-.
The shots have stopped. And I can't see Wallace. Darn it, Sleez is trying to disengage. He doesn't need to defeat or kill me, just get away. He can dump the 'Simon Leas' identity easily enough, and it looks like his mental influence can linger…
Yeah, fighting these two is just wasting time. But if they've been told to hurt people, you especially... They have to be restrained.
I drop back down, construct armour replenished, as I start scanning for… Ugh, anomalies. Something that sticks out-.
Ah. Even well-trained people experience some fear when they're ordered to evacuate when a super fight happens in their place of work.
In other words, it's raising chaff to his empathic visions. Albeit chaff he can see past by adjusting his senses a little...
Alert.
I dodge and the arrow misses-. Detonates in mid-air and-. A chunk of my shield vanishes and-.
Because of course she goes for the explosive arrowheads, knowing he can dodge basic shots.
"So long-"
Charges appear on my exposed armour-
Dangit, Wally...
Ah, retreating into the Honden. Smart, though it leaves them free to act.
Alright, back in the material world my armour just had its head destroyed by an Apokaliptian demolition charge, but floating here… I saw Wallace for a second perched on the roof to watch. Makes sense if Sleez is amping up his desire to inflict pain, except he's doing it in an entropic way rather than using an orange light substitute. He's motivated to harm rather than gain. Meaning that he will check my body in a second regardless of risk because he needs to know that I'm at the very least injured.
Ah, pumping up deeply-buried sadistic impulses, I bet. Or flat-out implanting them, since Wally is a
nice kid.
Two places I can go. Would he hang back, or-?
I
Sleez is probably hauling ass away from here. If he was here at all, and not sending new lackeys out as distractions.
step back in on the roof, spraying a gallon of Trickster's anti-Flash goop around me!
"What the Hell-?"
The classic 'web them up' move. Can't fight if they can't move.
And I trap Artemis, who is swiftly enveloped in the hardening non-Newtonian resin, but Wallace isn't-. Armour! And if he dashes up-. Spray again!
"He's not in-. Huh?"
Wally is certainly
predictable, even with mind-altering influences on him.
Wallace ran up the wall and ran straight into the second spray. He tried vibrating to get himself free, but all that does is spread it faster. Though that.. does prove that he's gotten faster under Sleez's influence. And more impetuous. Normally, Wallace would recognise something like this stuff instantly.
Which suggests the commands are either weakening their usual tactical skills, or Sleez is close at hand directly ordering them and didn't know what that was.
And I'm stuck too, but that's a simple matter. While the goo can deal with construct energy fairly easily… Because Trickster knew that Flash and Lantern Jordan are friends, it can't stop me just stepping-.
Just stepping…
Greediport jamming? Good grief.
Right. So that's not me, but Sleez could easily have bodged together something to stop me moving to the Honden once he realised that was an ability that I had. But he didn't stop me the first time because… The device is traceable with our technology? Finite battery? Didn't want to split his concentration? Don't know.
Or he thought that grenades-around-the-head trick would have gotten you, and realised his mistake after you noped out.
Alright. The correct way to get out requires very precise sonic-.
Donna drops out of the air in front of me. "Where is he?"
Ah, good, backup can get him while OL deals with the two mind-whammied young adults.
"West, group of five. He's second from the back."
"Got it."
Here's hoping she can resist his tricks.
She spins in the air and rockets away. Sleez was intelligent enough not to simply block my ability to sense his emotions, but he didn't appear to be capable of faking them. The rest of the crowd were feeling at least some fear, even as they followed protocol by evacuating.
I figured that's what it was.
Alright. Precise sonic-.
WzzzEEEEN!
Yeah, like.. that?
Looks like Artemis got there first.
The resin trapping Artemis cracks and fractures as her sonic arrow activates! Wallace is still trapped and she looks like she strained herself a little, but-.
She draws an x-ionised knife and starts walking towards me.
Hopefully without suffering hearing damage, though OL can fix that without too much trouble.
In the damn office? Man, that place must have stank some days, then.
