"Nice sword. Apokoliptian?"
And he's angry. Very angry. I really would like to know what actually happened on Karrakan, but I think this is a three-edged sword situation. I can't see either side giving me a reliable answer, and I can hardly-.
Short of using some kind of time-viewer to observe impartially, you're stuffed for getting intel. Which is not really the
priority right now, remember?
I yank myself to the side as he appears again, sword cutting through my construct armour and cutting a slice in my power armour. I send a filament at him as he hesitates for a split second, not sure whether to swing again or retreat. It splashes against some sort of protective barrier around him, and that appears to make his decision for him as he vanishes back to his starting location.
Angry, but making good judgements. That's-. That's me being compelled to intellectualise and not actually act.
Hmm... So they're both being made...
More of themself? The soldier is focused despite his towering anger, while OL keeps getting stuck in 'detached tactical evaluation' mode.
No reason not to combine the two impulses. Whatever shielded him from the filament appears to do the same to my empathic vision, but that doesn't mean I can't just sever-. Okay, apparently it does.
X-ionised knives, then.
Unfortunately, New God Bullshit is
almost as good as Earth Bullshit. I suspect they'll have
difficulty hurting him.
"Pathetic. Could they find none better?"
Ring, it's been a while, but Ready In-.
Heh, throwing himself back upon his preprogrammed self-defence routines? It has
indeed been a while since he's needed to do
that.
Alert.
I turn, knife blades moving as my assailant appears to my right, sword stabbing into my thick rerebrace rather than going into my face. My knives stab at his armour while I try draining the sword in the same way I did the ship's shield.
And given that it's apparently channelling divine energy, that's likely to be an
effective counter.
He tries pulling the sword free, and it doesn't come. My knives fail to pierce his cuirass, while he raises his off hand to block the one that I sent as his exposed face.
I step away shoulder armour glowing as I suck whatever magic is making his sword work out of it. He tries to pull it free but it's stuck; the heavy outer plates of my armour clamping down on the flat sides of the blade.
The power armour equivalent of wrapping your hand around the hilt of their sword in a grapple...
And then I punch him with my left fist, crumbler gauntlet smashing into the protective shield his armour generates, flares of magic and plasma flickering out as I increase the output. With a frustrate snarl he releases the sword, backing off a pace.
"Thank you."
Yoink! Also, shrugging off the crumbler field with presumably minimal damage? Cheeky New God tricks...
I form a construct-.
The sword vibrates, the plates gripping it abrading and losing their grip as-.
Whoops, not a loot drop
just yet.
As I form a construct positron ray and shoot the owner in the chest!
"Ah!"
Let's see how his displacer field handles
anti-matter...
The positrons don't hit the armour, but the energy released by them reacting with the air immediately next to his protective aura is enough to send him hurtling backwards. Doesn't look like his armour has any sort of inertial dampening system, but he's toughening it out and getting back to his feet.
The sword stops vibrating, and I extend a strand of orange light up to the handle and pull it free before knitting my armour back together.
Now, let's see if you can work out the
trick of using it.
"Thank you. I'll keep-."
The accompanying squad aim and fire, blaster-. No, plasma, striking my construct armour. But these weapons are far more conventional, far closer to the levels of energy output that I designed my power armour to take. So while my weakened construct armour fades and the armour starts taking hits, I'm not really worried.
That moment when the Boss'
adds charge in,
maybe dealing 1 damage a hit... At least you don't suffer knock-back.
At least not for the fraction of a second it takes to turn my own gun on them. The first load of positrons hits my initial target and erases him, the explosion burning the deck, walls, ceiling and sending his comrades flying! There was a force field there, but-
"Damn you!"
Huh, even in a battle-rage, he still cares about his men? Impressive.
-it wasn't anything like strong enough. Or perhaps it wasn't designed to cope with positrons? That's not uncommon.
Their leader draws a small knife-. Then uses it to cut his exposed face, coating the blade in blood before-.
Uh-oh, he's using a self-buff power. Better interrupt it before...
I shoot him again, but he's touched his knife to his chest plate and his body is swelling, veins of red light appearing all over its matt black surface.
"Thank you, alien, for giving me the chance to prove my faith!"
...
Nope, too late. Seriously, what a pain in the ass...
"Is there any chance we could talk ab-?"
He lunges, and while the travel time isn't nothing, it's quicker than his-
Guess not. I suppose this
might be useful practice for dealing with Red Lanterns one day...
And he's punched me back outside of the ship.
-other movement. He grabs my armour, one hand on my right shoulder and the other on my left arm and both pulling in opposite directions! I can hear my armour creak as he keeps growing and the force he exerts keeps increasing! I send x-ionised knives at his face once more, and while they bite into his flesh I can actually feel the resistance as his innate magics try and nullify the thing that's harming him.
Sheesh. Now I'm picturing
Sláine mac Roth in the grips of a full warp-spasm... At least he's not turning about in his own skin or anything like that...
Yet.
My left arm is at full extension and he's trying to tear it free.
Tether his discarded sword, connect it to my tattoos and feed it and stab!
Well,
worst case, it won't take much charge to grow it back if he
does manage to detach it. But it will make it harder to
stop him... Especially if he tries to beat you with the
wet end.
It slices through his cuirass, punching into his gut! He twitches and grimaces before snarling.
"You first!"
Goddammit, just
die...
I try slicing further in, but this sword isn't really meant for sawing. My shoulder is approaching maximum strain, it's just not optimised for sheering force. Ah-.
Drain him directly.
The
armour's joint, or the
flesh inside? Either way, it's a good thing you can turn off your
pain.
Orange light radiates out of his stomach wound and the pressure on my armour decreases at once. Still more stress over a sustained period than I'd like, but he's not going to rip my arm off like that. I lift my right arm and grab onto the hand on my shoulder, reinforcing my environmental shield and yanking at it, doing what I can to remove the friction-
He loses his grip, twisting sideways at the sudden loss of pressure.
And in a near-weightless environment like this, leverage is
everything.
-as I drain harder.
"What-? What are you-?"
Well, he's certainly not familiar with Lanterns, especially Orange ones. If Grayven has
any ties to them, he didn't pass on any
intel.
"Enjoy existence as a construct."
He shudders, body shrivelling without shrinking, armour caving in on itself.
Huh, looks like the armour is burning his own life-force to fuel itself? And he's only got so much to go around, so...
"Assimilate."
"Unable to comply."
Are you
kidding me? Because of the New God-style power-up or...
He starts choking, vitals fading.
"Why not?"
"This one is not yours to take, Lantern."
...
Ah. Well, that makes sense, then. Sparta's empowering her army's higher ranks.
I scan, but I can't tell where that came from. I take a moment to look at the corpse still clamped onto me. It hasn't lost any height but it's unnaturally thinned, giving the impression of a long-term dungeon inhabitant who has been drawn on the rack. Then toss it aside and fly back into the ship.
The surviving soldiers are picking themselves up and I use constructs to grab onto the armour and pull, tearing it from their bodies and leaving them in scraps and their under suits.
Okay, the compartment's
not depressurised. Interesting. Evidently whatever force is running through the ship - Sparta's divine power, presumably - is forcing the atmosphere to remain inside.
Probably intimidating it into doing as it's told, perhaps?
Still need information.
"Assimilate."
Orange strands leap out and are pushed back before they can touch them, the bodies of the defeated decaying to.. ash to fuel the spell.
Goddamn self-destruct spell-work.
"And neither are these."
"Sparta. I don't know what you want, but you came here to pick a fight rather than settling anywhere else." I run in the direction of the cruiser's bridge. "You won't get the choice again."
In other words, there's an ass-kicking in orange headed your way. Make it easy on yourself and get
comfy.
"What is one more titan to the Bane of Titans?"
"If that's how you want it."
Interesting, she's assuming he's one of the Titans of Myth? Must be
something about his meta-physique.
