Renee: Superious is just a Superman clone, like Nightman is a Batman clone. They seem like good names for comic books characters. They are a little silly and light-hearted, like the other fictional characters in January's world, such as Jet Gladiator or Wolfstone the Barbarian.
There is nothing about that which is unique to Tennessee. That's all over the US. Law enforcement has a association with the KKK. There have been times where police departments directly deputized mass groups of KKK members. The same goes for other right wing fascist groups. Whenever fascists march, the police protect them. The Battle of Cable Street is a prime example from the 30s. But it is no different today.
Yep, Manson did it first. One thing I don't want to do is make Nazis look cool. Because in real life they are not. They are pathetic, and always have been. Everything about them is stolen from other people, like the swastika. It was a holy symbol from South Asia for thousands of years, used by the Hindus and other religions. Then the Nazis appropriated it. They do the same with Norse Paganism. Even the term red-pilling that modern neo-Nazis love, was literally stolen from the Matrix movies (which were made by two trans women).
Acadian: Ryo did point out that January went to the Rocky Balboa school of fighting a little while ago!
Seriously though, being the team tank really does inform her decision-making process. Putting herself in the line of fire is what January always does.
You know the old saying: "If you can't be with the one you hate, hate the one you're with." Wait, well, maybe that's not the old saying. But working out some anger issues on a deserving target is always a win-win scenario.
Blitz could have had a lucrative career in porn, or followed Richard Gere's footsteps as an American Gigolo. But no, he chose to use his powers for evil...
U2 "Dragon Lady"F-4 PhantomBook 12.22 - Broken ArrowShe could see Reinhard floating in the air above, still locked in his duel with Silverlight. As before, the diametrically opposed abilities of the pair continued to result in a stalemate between them. Both of them were effectively out of the fight, having cancelled out one another's ability to determine its outcome.
This meant that she, Hwarang, and Mercury would now have to tip the balance themselves. With all the ordinary henchmen now taken care of, they had a golden opportunity to do exactly that. The three of them would simply scratch all the other Nazis off the list, then join in with Silverlight to take down Reinhard in the end.
January could not make out Bismarck however. An F-4 Phantom was parked between her and the last place she had seen the man. With its distinctive upturned wingtips and the downward angled horizontal stabilizers on its tail, that was a plane that January recognized. It was one of Avery's favorite planes to fly in his Air War World videogame.
She took a moment to push her senses into astral space. The auras of everyone within the exhibit instantly glowed with brilliant life, while planes, displays and artifacts faded into near total obscurity. That confirmed what she had guessed. The mundane neo-Nazis were all down, along with Tirpitz and Blitz. The auras of the latter pair were aglow with the violet threads of meta-humanity. However, Reinhard overhead showed the golden threads of a mage stitched through his own astral self. So Cray had been right about that.
Bismarck's aura was a curious thing. Large parts of it had faded to near blankness, like all the machines around her. Unlike the artifacts on display however, she felt energy that sizzled hot and strong through the mechanical parts. It was not electricity or plasma. January was quite familiar with what those felt like in the astral by now. This was something much more exotic. She wondered if it might be quantum foam? Avery had once told her that Zero Point of the Sentinels used that in his powered armor. Yet the meat portions of Bismarck's aura were laced with violet, which betrayed his meta-humanity. So from what she could gather, he was both a meta and a cyborg at the same time. That was interesting.
There was still no trace of Skorzeny at all. Unless he could cloak his presence in astral space, he must have been elsewhere. Perhaps he had some other mission to perform? Or maybe he had a falling out with the others, and he'd been given the old Ernst Röhm treatment? Nazis were catty bitches after all. Sooner or later, they always turned on one another.
Between her and the Atomkrieg's leader were a pair of smaller, weaker auras. They were huddled within the cockpit of the F-4 Phantom. It had two seats, laid out one in front of the other. Each aura hunched down in a separate chair. But Bismarck seemed to pay no attention to them. Instead she could see in the astral that he was intent upon something else. It might have been that same parachute she had seen him studying before. Now that her awareness was in astral space, she could tell that he was projecting some sort of power onto it. Or perhaps divining some sort of information from it. There was definitely a transfer of energy and information going back and forth between them, though to what purpose she could not guess.
"So... fancy bumping into you here," Hwarang said out of the corner of his mouth. All the while his eyes scanned the museum for more targets. For the moment Reinhard had moved out of view, having flown behind the U-2 spy plane that hung from the ceiling overhead. "You're the Crowgirl right?"
"At your service flower knight," January quipped. She saw the energy of his aura stir momentarily with surprise. She also noted the distinctive violet stitching of a mage throughout his astral being. So as she had already suspected, he was definitely a magician. More specifically, he was an arcane archer. January had not known that was a thing. But as Blood Raven had been wont to note, the world was indeed a wider and stranger place than anyone imagined.
"My pal Ôkami loves K-dramas. So I know what a Hwarang is. You're a long way from Ancient Silla."
"And you're a long way from the Dragon City," Hwarang smiled in return.
"I was just in the neighborhood, and thought I'd drop in." January shrugged. Then she went back to business.
"Our bad guy is down there, on the other side of that plane." She now pointed out Bismarck to Hwarang. "But we've got friendlies in the cockpit."
"You can see that?" the Korean said. "I can't get a shot from here."
"You should have come to Silverlight's astral sensing class a few days ago," January smiled. Then she nodded up to the U-2 hanging overhead. "How about from on top of that?"
"Oh, that will do nicely."
January leaned forward and cupped her fingers together to form a saddle with her hands. The archer stuck a foot within and leaped skyward. January gave him a super strength assist, and sent him rocketing up skyward. The modern flower knight somersaulted in mid-air, and came down lightly upon one wing of the great old spy plane.
January did not waste any more time watching him. She lowered her eyes to Bismarck, and the two auras in the F-4 Phantom between them. She dropped her astral perception in order to better focus on the physical world. Then she leaped out from the MiG-17, toward what she imagined was one of its old rivals. She came down lightly in front of the cockpit of the Phantom a moment later, and saw two teens huddled within.
She glanced over at Bismarck. He still stood within the same shattered display case, and continued to pore over that old parachute. Now she could see a holographic map of North America and the Atlantic Ocean spread out in the air before him. A thread of glowing energy rose from the parachute, and connected to the map. She could see it move across its surface, and create a small dot wherever it touched. It was as if the parachute was trying to pick out a specific spot on the map, but could not quite make up its mind where.
January looked back down at the two teens beneath her. Right now they were more important. They were too close. She had no idea what powers the Nazi leader might unleash if she engaged him straight away. They could all too easily be killed, even if by pure accident. That was a chance she could not take.
She bent down to grab the forward canopy, and tried to figure out how to pull it up. The teen inside the front seat shook his head with terror. He reached up to grab the glass dome, and pulled back against January's efforts. January could not blame him for not wanting to leave his hiding place, not with a supervillain just a few feet away. But it was not helping either. They could not be there when the fighting began once more.
She wished she could say something to the teens to reassure them. But Bismarck would hear it if she did. At the moment he appeared engrossed in what he was doing. But surely he would put it on hold if he noticed a superhero next to him. Nazis were not known for their restraint after all.
So January pushed harder on the canopy. She did not exert her full force. She did not want to destroy it. It was a priceless historical artifact. Not to mention the noise would certainly attract Bismarck's attention. But it appeared that the teens inside had locked it shut from inside. That forced January to gradually push harder and harder, hoping to force it open without wrecking the thing.
She wished that Ôkami was here. He could have faded through the hull of the plane, and faded right back out with the two civilians. It would have been nice, neat, and without a sound. But apparently her current, ersatz team did not include a rogue to handle such subtleties.
January heard hard, metallic clomping ring out from beyond the tail of the interceptor. Her head jerked up to see the author of the noise, though she had a sneaking suspicion that it was something railroad related. Sure enough, a moment later Mercury stamped out from behind the plane. His silvery armor glinted in the light that streamed down through the glass ceiling high overhead. His train wheels and passenger car had vanished, and the metal that had formed them had once again taken its original places around his body.
Talk about a complete lack of subtlety.
Bismarck looked up at the clamor, and his eyes set upon both January and the Philadelphian hero. The neo-Nazi raised one hand to January, and before she could react, a gray-white haze extended from his palm. It enveloped her a moment later, like a giant, glowing blanket. It felt like a giant invisible hand had clapped down around her body. Yet while she could still move her arms and legs, it was all to no avail. Nothing she did could pry the energy field from her body.
That gray-white force picked her up, and in an instant it violently jerked her sideways and down. That sent her toward the floor, and straight at Mercury. He did not see her coming until the last moment, and by then it was too late. January crashed directly into him. She felt the metal of his armor dimple under the impact. But it held, even if he went flying back head over heels.
He and January went careening across the floor in a most undignified heap of arms and legs. January imagined it must have looked like bowling for superheroes. They crashed through a display of cockpit instrument panels, only to skid to a halt amid a group of mannequins clad in the uniforms of various nations.
"Watch where you're going!" the armored hero snapped.
"Hey, it wasn't my idea!" January shot back. She pushed a dummy clad in an old Soviet uniform off of her. Then she tempered her response. "That guy's a telekinetic."
"Stormcrow, you and Mercury need to concentrate on Reinhard." Cray's voice was a calm, mellow tonic in her ears. "Leave Bismarck to Silverlight and Hwarang, he shouldn't be able to stop their magical attacks."
"Got it coach," January nodded as she rose to her feet. Apparently Bismarck had released her from his telekinetic grip, for she was once again free to move.
"Who are you talking to?" the railroad-themed hero asked, as he clambered to his feet.
"My fairy godfather," January quipped.
She idly realized that she never would have come up with such a smarmy one-liner just a few months ago. She had indeed leveled up quite a bit since then. She hoped that Cray at least appreciated the joke.
She was about to relate what the hacker had suggested to the other superhero, when Bismarck took the matter out of her hands. He turned off that energy field that he had created around the parachute. Now that he was finished with it, he tossed the piece of life-saving equipment carelessly aside.
Bismarck looked up and shot skyward. As he flew up, he reached out with both hands. That gray-white energy field reached out once more, and wrapped up the unconscious forms of Tirpitz and Blitz. They rose up in the air with him, plucked aloft by his telekinetic grip. However, the other terrorists sprawled out around the museum did not accompany them. Whether that was because Bismarck could not see them, or because he had reached his limit and could lift no more, January could not tell.
"Damn, we've got to move!" January leaped after the Nazi leader and unfurled the wings from her back. But he was too far away for her to reach. Without thinking she called for the sky overhead. Once more it turned dark as coal, and a blanket of storm clouds instantly raged overhead. Then the elements answered January's call, and a ragged bolt of lightning crashed down through the glass ceiling.
The silver white energy slammed full into Bismarck. The thunderclap that followed the blast caused the remaining windows to shake, along with the displays down upon the museum floor. But when January's eyes cleared from the bright flash, she saw that while Bismarck was a little singed, he continued to rise up in the air. He seemed otherwise unaffected by the blast.
In fact, she saw her electricity play around his frame for a moment. He smiled, and his eyes glowed brightly. The energy seemed to fall down into his body like water going down a faucet. Then his eyes turned to brilliant scarlet, and an instant later one beam of ruby light after another blossomed forth from them. These new lasers lanced up and around, and sliced through the wires that held the nearby U-2 spy plane aloft as if they were made of string.
"Speckt!" January cursed.
The U-2 was directly above that F-4 Phantom on the floor, the plane in which those two teens were still hidden. As if that was not enough, Hwarang still stood atop one of its wings. Now the archer fought to maintain his balance as his footing literally dropped out from under him. The five-missile finishing shot he had been just making against Bismarck wobbled far off course, and burned its way through the ceiling of the museum instead.
January dove for the falling plane. Even as she did, she knew that she had unwittingly caused this. Bismarck had clearly absorbed her lightning, converted it to laser energy, and finally emitted it back out once more. She had given him the ammunition he had needed to not only interrupt Hwarang's finishing move, but also to scratch the Korean-American off the playing board for what remained of the fight. Not to mention the falling U-2 now threatened to kill the two civilians that still remained below. It was a perfect storm of ineptitude on her part.
But there was no time for self-recrimination. That could come later, in the after action report. She had lives to save, before it was too late.
She called upon Air to impart greater power to her flight. She swooped under the plummeting surveillance plane, and then looped back upward. She hit the hull face-first. But at least that was intentional. She spread her arms as wide as she was able, to get the most purchase she could against the plane. Finally her wings beat furiously, and she pushed up against the weight of the falling aircraft.
A few months ago she had struggled to hold a car aloft from the edge of the Ambassador Bridge for more than just a few minutes. In the end both it - and her - had plummeted straight down into the Detroit River below. The spy plane was not very big, at least as far as planes went. In fact, it looked quite spindly with its narrow fuselage. But it had to weigh far more than that car ever could.
But as January had so recently noted, she had leveled up since then. She was not the same woman that she had been before. She had learned, exercised, and grown; both as an aerialist and as a magician. Now she poured all that she had learned into her flight, and willed herself to hold the U-2 aloft.
Air give me quickness in body and wit. Let the weights of the world fall from me.The solid black aircraft slowed its descent as January called upon the classical element of Air to further refine her power. But it still did not stop. The floor was coming up closer and closer under her. Then Silverlight appeared beside her, and joined her on the bottom of the plane. Wings of pure light spread from the other heroine's back. They did not flap like a bird's did, as January's did. But she could feel the power within them nonetheless. They altered reality around the lunar heroine, and held her in the sky through the force of her will.
Out of the corner of her eye January saw Hwarang fall to the floor. He went down back first, and fired his bow skyward again and again as he dropped. But if his arrows hit anything, January could not tell. The bulk of the spy plane lay between her and the Nazis, whom she imagined must be making good their escape through the glass ceiling overhead.
The U-2 slowed further, but even together, the two heroines could not completely arrest its descent. Then January saw Mercury below. He had created those train wheels around his feet once more, and he rolled up behind the F-4. He pushed against the tail of the plane. After a heart-stopping moment, it went lurching forward. January could imagine she heard the man's armor chugging like a train. But maybe that was all in her head. In any case, the Cold War interceptor slid out of the way, even as January and Silverlight brought the U-2 down to a soft landing where it had sat moments before.
Mercury had cleared the Phantom out of the way with seconds to spare. He took the time afterward to remove his wheels once more, and caused the metal to flow back up like liquid into the rest of his armor. But then his frame altered again, as the metal flowed straight down under his feet, and pushed him skyward. It formed what was essentially a pair of wide stilts under his boots. That lifted him to the same height as the cockpit of the interceptor. He touched the metal rim of the canopy. January heard the bolts that had locked it shut pop open, as if through the will of Mercury alone.
Then the single canopy seemed to split apart, and revealed that it was in fact divided into two halves: fore and aft. From each a curved section of glass rotated up from rear-mounted hinges. That allowed the occupants within to finally make their way out of the long, narrow cockpit.
January and Silverlight moved out from under the U-2, once they were sure it was safely down on the floor. January breathed a sigh of relief. That had been close. But they had all managed it by working together. She paused to look skyward, but saw no sign of the Nazis. They had clearly made good their escape.
"Sister, you have excellent timing," Silverlight observed. She leaned in close, and wrapped up January in a brief hug.
January heard the distant wail of sirens as Silverlight pulled away. But for the moment, the exhibit space was otherwise quiet now that the battle was over. Hwarang appeared to be uninjured from his fall. His magical bow vanished from his fingers, and he stepped up alongside Mercury. One at a time, the armored hero passed the teens down to the Korean-American. The two students were white as sheets, and shook profusely. January did not blame them. They had nearly been pasted by the falling U-2 spy plane.
It was the oldest villain trick in the book. Endanger civilians to distract the heroes. It always worked too, and January knew it would continue to do so. She would always place the lives of people like those two teens over "winning" any day.
She stepped over to see if she could help. But found that the other two heroes had things well in hand. Still, she put on her usual post-battle smile for the public, and tried not to show any winces or make any groans from her latest set of bumps and bruises. Tirpitz could pack a wallop, especially when her guard was down. She would have to ask Silverlight if she had anything for a headache...
"Well, that could have been better, but could have been a lot worse too." With the last civilian down and safe, Mercury's legs shrank down to their normal length. The Philadelphian took in the scene around them. The exhibition hall was a mess. The floor was chewed up in numerous places with trenches and craters from the battle. Melted and broken glass was scattered everywhere, and numerous display panels and cases lay in ruins.
But there were no dead or critically wounded people that January could see. In fact, her previous astral sensing had already told her that the hall was empty, save for the last two civilians from the F-4. They were already headed to the door. All the planes had made it through intact as well. So that was something.
"Everyone goes home alive. That's the important thing." Silverlight declared.