20th October 2012
15:10 GMT -5
GrabTedandconstructshield!
The bullets sent at Diana hit her bracers and stop dead, flattened metal discs falling to the ground with a 'tink' noise. The ones fired at
me punch straight through my construct and through the wall behind me and I think it's only due to the fact that she wasn't ready for how fast I move that it didn't go through
me.
Diana lunges forward, jinking out of her line of fire to strike with her extended right fist-. Which meets only mist, Crimson Avenger becoming intangible as it intersects with her face. I have my rings handle evasion, keeping Ted and myself out of her line of fire even as she adapts to my evasiveness.
Ring, scan her face and try to find matches-.
Jill Carlyle. Lawyer. Reported missing three months ago.
Diana imposes herself into Miss Carlyle's mist, blocking her eyes with her own head and striking at both guns with her hands. And it's working, she can't fire when the guns are intangible-.
The plume of mist
wafts across-
Evade!
-the drawing room, Miss Carlyle calmly walking out with her guns raised. There's a very slight delay before she fires again, and I'm already moving-.
Ring, are those bullets punching through the walls?
Yes.
I get a sudden mental picture of their flight path. The Themysciran embassy
isn't fortified enough to block high powered bullets, and I seem to remember that these ones are demonic or something? There are people working here, and being Amazons they're rushing to arm up.
I need to get Ted out of here.
I fire energy pulses at Miss Carlyle's face and hands and another at the window. She doesn't bother evading, her outline rippling faintly as the pulses pass through. It
does prevent her shooting for a moment, and I use that to extend a filament outside and transition both of us into the sky.
"Who the hell was that?!"
"Her name's Jill Carlyle. She's a missing person. Did you recognise the guns?
"
"Colt Nineteen elevens? Yeah, I recognise them."
"No, those specific ones. The decoration on the grip. They're Crimson Avenger's old guns.
"
"I don't know if his guns were custom jobs."
"Her bullets punched through my construct and-.
"
And there's a hole in my shoulder. We're a mile up, how is-? Doesn't matter. She can teleport and has unearthly aim. Transition
again and keep moving.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes, it's just a-. I don't really feel pain and I fight by ring, so getting shot in the shoulder doesn't really do all that much. I'll fix it now. Did you know Crimson Avenger One?
"
Since my armour's not doing anything I send it back into subspace, along with my shirt. Whatever magic causes it to bypass armour doesn't seem to otherwise increase the amount of damage it causes. That's a pretty normal bullet wound, and the bullet is lodged in my scapula. If it was punching through brick walls and
my constructs then it should have gone in the front and then out the back.
"Ah, no, not well. Met him a couple of times in the war, but he was from my dad's generation, and he never joined the JSA."
"Okay, so do you think she was aiming for
you or for
me?
"
"You're the one with the bullet in his shoulder."
"Yes but -no offence intended- I was the priority target. If
I died then the fall would probably kill you.
"
It's not healing. Okay, attach a construct to the bullet-. Naturally it falls apart. Okay, create a-. Create a tool for fishing around inside myself? What
am I, a
monkey?
I disintegrate my own shoulder, the bullet falling into a construct-supported metal tray. Then I reconstruct my shoulder, and test the motion. Yes, good.
"You mind.. warning me next time you plan something like that?"
"Oh. Ah, sorry.
"
I use my newly reconstructed shoulder to move my hand to a pouch and take out a rune stone. Bullet is… Weakly magical, and the intensity is decreasing. So the magic effect is generated by either the gun or the shooter.
Might explain why it tapers off. Good for one surface only?
"Orange Lantern to Blue Lantern.
"
His face appears almost immediately.
"You and Ted okay?"
"Yes, one little bullet wound. I've saved the bullet. Has she left the embassy?
"
"Yeah, about five seconds after you did."
I turn my head to look directly at Ted.
"Five dollars says I was the target.
"
"I'll take that bet. You know how many enemies I've made?"
"You know how many of them are still alive?
" Ah.
"Sorry. Alan. Was anyone else hurt?
"
"Diana's got a grazed hand. Whoever it was teleported out just as the other gals charged the room."
"Jill Carlyle. And I think she was using Crimson Avenger's guns.
"
"You noticed that? You been staying after class with Batman?"
"No, of course not. It's an image stored in my ring from when I did research on old superheroes. I just compared the two.
"
He nods.
"Yeah, that makes more sense. Not all of us are Batman. Okay, Zatara's going to come by and try and work out what sort of magic she was using, then we'll see if he can block it. I'll pass her name on to Batman."
"She's-.
"
"A missing person." Closer inspection of his projection shows that his eyes are glowing.
"I can learn how to do interweb searches too, you know."
I don't know whether that was intentional or.. not.
Wait.
I float the flattened bullet up, and calculate what it looked like before it flattened… Add a little abrasion from the force field…
She's the one who shot at me and Dana. Or someone with those guns did. I suppose that the multiple layers of shielding dealt with the penetration spell-effect. But why only
one shot? Why didn't she maintain the attack?
"We'll need to go over the police interviews. See if she was acting strangely before she vanished."
"And look for other gunshot victims. If she's been gone three months there's no reason to assume that we were her first targets.
"
"Good point." He smiles.
"Welcome back to Earth, I-."
BANG!
I think you have You-Know-Who on ignore
