I just about manage to see a black blur, a throwing motion that he started incorporating into his repertoire after my performance review sending projectiles screaming towards the Sheeda at relativistic speeds. Looks like he's learned from the few Sheeda who adapted to his speed; rather than just throw directly at them, he's throwing at everywhere they could conceivably dodge to within the fraction of a second they'd have available.
As nice as it is that he's been taking OL's guidance, this is not the time to find out about it!
Slightly more clearly, I see wards of protection and warning light up around the Sheeda, the slight shimmer of a displacement ward trying to find somewhere safe to deposit them within the time available and failing, and the slight widening of the queen's eyes as they make her aware of this.
And then the whole thing turns green.
And Orcus is getting off his throne. Well
done, Barry, you just pissed off the
big dog.
"Perfidy!"
The queen gets smeared across-. No, not the queen. One of the handmaidens swapped places with her, and the best I can say about Lord Malvolio's effort to shield her is that it protected the floor behind her at the cost of redirecting the entire force of a relativistic projectile into her body.
Not even chunky salsa. More like
smooth red paint. Flash don't fuck around.
An ironic death, considering what the Sheeda have been doing to the humans they caught.
I can see projectiles stop in the air, motion arrested by Lord Malvolio's command of the green light. Is he strong enough to force-block that many projectiles..? Since this is clearly going to shit anyway, I reach out with my own orange light senses, and-. No, the normal physical laws aren't operating around the bullets. Malvolio's changed the laws of motion in order to stop the projectiles. That's interest-.
Presumably he's manipulating the physics of this pocket dimension directly, not by any Spectrum effect. Suggests he's got a lot more control over it than we thought, even if he's still locked inside.
A shadow in the green light and Malvolio's head is knocked to the left and then to the right, green light dimming, and then-.
Ah!
Barry going for the direct approach to taking out Malvolio, eh? I don't think it'll work, no matter
how hard you hit him.
Normal speed, and then corpses of the Sheeda fall or evaporate, depending on what Mr. Allen did to them. The man himself stands just in front of Lord Malvolio, breathing hard as the super Lantern comes to his feet.
Mr. Allen flicks the Sheeda-blood off his hands once again.
Although the Queen is unlikely to be
permanently dead from that. She was almost as hard to kill as Melmoth, if I remember right.
"And I'm not even a little bit sorry."
Jordan looks shocked. "Barry, what the hell?!"
Yeah, when even your own teammates are calling you out for it, you know you dun goofed. You dun goofed BAD.
"You have chosen your own death."
A fat beam of green light blasts from his ring, hitting Mr. Allen in the-.
Unfortunately, he's kind of needed alive for other things, as much as you want to punish him, Malvolio.
It was going to hit him in the chest, the green light shining throughout the room appearing to somehow restrict his movements. But Mr. Allen gets his arms up, blurring them, and somehow… What looks like it should be a blast powerful enough to erase him instead just shoves him backwards into the rear wall. Squire Wallace dives for cover as Diana draws her sword and shield and charges Lord Malvolio-
And isn't it nice that she instinctively supports her team mate in this situation?
Hmm... Scattering something in the air in front of him to scatter and deflect the destruction pulse? And for fuck's sake, Diana, think!
-while Jordan takes a moment to get his head in the game. I… Could help, and I'm certainly interested in how my abilities stack up against his, but… Does it matter? With the Queen and the rest of their leaders dead, the mission is over. The people in this system don't exactly appear to be languishing under the heel of a tyrant. Or at least, not a capricious one. With our target eliminated, our only obligation is to ourselves. Therefore, our aim should be to get ourselves out, not beat up Lord Malvolio.
Good luck convincing the others to step back and think rationally, when the big boss is trying to kill them...
I try to move, but whatever Malvolio's doing to slow down Mr. Allen so he can hit him is also holding me in place. My environmental shield expands as I focus on my desires for freedom and movement and-.
Fuck!
Looks like Mallie didn't like that. And it seems what he doesn't like, he
smashes...
Ugh. I'm… Outside of the station, my environmental shield glitching and fading. Lord Malvolio just shot me through the walls, and while that wasn't anything like enough to harm me inside of my defences, that… Overwhelmed my control.
"Orange Lantern to League. I'm going to try-."
Impressive, given his enlightenment. He got smashed so hard, he forgot
all desires for a moment?
There's an explosion, green beams blasting through the station in multiple directions! We walked past the people-!
I fly at speed towards the closest breech. No real need to slap a barrier over it; the station still has gravity and the pressure difference is only one atmosphere. People aren't going to get sucked out, but they do-.
Yeah, the entertainment industry has caused a lot of myths like that to become 'common knowledge'... I'd be more worried about anyone who was standing in the path of Malvolio's shot against OL. Again,
chunky salsa...
The ones who survived the initial careless blast need to be evacuated. I grab everyone I can see, pull them towards me and transmute spacesuits around them and then throw them outside. Five, ten, fifteen… Internal bulkheads have engaged and the walls are blocking my ability to scan, and-.
Block!
Blind shot? looks like Barry pissed Malvolio right proper.
I'm knocked back, but most of the force gets deflected around my construct shield. I can't see Malvolio, so I assume he just aimed at a light? I check-.
The blasts deflected into the walls behind me, widening the hole and-. And one of the people I rescued was hit. The suit was torn apart, and… Well, he's.. dead. The others must have calculated that they could save more people by stopping Malvolio than by directly making rescues.
Or they're forgetting about the bystanders in the heat of battle. Typical for comic-book heroes, really. At least on Earth,
most people are smart enough to run away...
Um.
I transmute a new bulkhead against the innermost breach in the walls, then grab the survivors and head out into space. It looks like the whole station is weakly glowing, but hopefully if I get far enough away-. Test transition? Yes.
So Malvolio's empowering of the station has limited range beyond it. Handy, especially for rescue work.
A blink and I'm down on the surface, dropping off the evacuees and reclaiming their suits. Another blink and I'm up close to the station again. Next breech-.
If I knew where everyone was, that would make it a lot easier to get them to safety. I split my focus, one set of orange strands putting the station's crew in the refugees into the suits while another forms a crumbler construct and tests-. Yes, the station's hull is vulnerable to crumblers. Right. Pull back, transition this group to the surface and reclaim the suits, then go back up.
He'll save as many as he can, even if he has to pull Malvolio's palace down around the man's head...
I try putting one foot outside of the material but while it works, the station itself is obscured from my vision.
Hard way, then. I throw out tendrils, poking small holes in the material of the station, seeking to pierce as many sections as possible. Probe constructs follow, searching for-.
Just have to be careful to stay out of the way of...
I lose constructs in a section of the station as Malvolio and Jordan rampage through, Diana hanging off Malvolio's right arm by her lasso.
Not a good match. Nothing about Malvolio suggests that he's inclined to lie.
...the roaming boss fight. And every moment it goes on, both Hal and Malvolio are
less inclined to give up. Hopefully it doesn't end up doing too much damage...
I keep going, using constructs to stick suits on civilians as I find them. Some are heading towards escape pods, but they haven't made it very far. Misplaced faith in their ruler-? No, it's only been nineteen seconds. Fair enough, then.
There are a cluster gathered in… A dining area? I use crumbler constructs to smash my way in, grabbing them and flying back out-
...Nineteen seconds. Holy shit, OL works fast, even by hero standards. He's not even accelerated, is he?
"Paul? Where'd you go?"
"Evacuating-"
Really not the time, Hal.
Someone's got to clean up after Barry's fuckup...
-to the blocking limit, transition down, transition up.
"-the civilians. Do you need me?"
"No, good thinking. We're good h-."
Well, at least Hal can see the value is saving lives. But somehow, I don't think they
are good...
Another blast of green goes through the hull, and this time it's heading towards the planet.
Okay, I can-.
Was that Jordan?
...I
really hope he's at least in one piece. While he's not enlightened-good, Hal is pretty damn good at shielding...
