[color=orange][center][h1][i][b] Thursday 14:00 Gaggles Carnival [/b][/i][/h1][/center][/color] [color=gold][center][h2][i][b]Sparks and Stars[/b][/i][/h2][/center][/color] [color=yellow][center][h2][i][b]Lightning Girl[/b][/i][/h2][/center][/color] [@cosmiccowgirl] Fumbling forwards, Lightning Girl was getting more and more on them, and she couldn't even find the car batteries behind the stalls to charge on. There were more and more, gathering beyond the claw machine, where she had taken one clown out, but seemingly, endless more were coming. And here to finish the job. Sophie readied herself. This would go as bad as last time. She'd have to try and draw them in and.... Suddenly, they weren't going to do that. The crash of Blackstar's black energy threw even Lightning Girl back onto her ass, as she fumbled back up, having felt the jolt of power run through her from the nearby machine that discharged power into her that she had been sucking on, at a greater rate. There she was. Blackstar. Christ. She looked just as rough if not worse. But she was doing something she never thought. A level of violence she never had seen her co-worker do. It was like she had done this dance before, because clown after clown fell, hacked apart, by the void itself. The dark energy blades poked from arms, and Blackstar suddenly decapitated someone in plain view moving on Sophie, the clown's lifeless corpse falling like a chicken without a head into a dusty pile next to Lightning Girl, as she walked forwards and over the body having nothing to add, yelping a little in movement, the wound sealing a little more, leaving skin at the side of her costume that looked like one massive lichtenberg scar a stain of black, until it reinforced more, like any scar. It hurt though. Shit, it felt like her muscle cords were actually split a little, so it felt like she'd pulled a muscle, hard. Lightning Girl leaned against the post of the stall, as Blackstar came over, panicked, scared. frightened. Her eyes white, her costume bloodied and dirty, the fuzz of her dark energy alien. Not quite as alien as maybe someone else maybe, would have imagined. Sophie's power came from the the void too. From which one, she wasn't sure, but somewhere, it felt like kin. Blackstar's voice interrupted Lightning Girl's blurred vision and gave focus in a moment she snapped back into realising who and what she was. And what she needed to be right now. [quote] [color=gray][b]"Do-- Do you still have comms?"[/b][/color] Her voice sounded strained as she turned slightly, addressing Lightning Girl. She was breathing heavy, wobbling a little, and not fully turning her head -- as if she was purposely avoiding looking directly at the other heroine with her eyes smoking light through her mask. She was on the verge of going supernova again, and she knew looking too closely and seeing how exactly LG was hurt would send her chasing down clowns with a vengeance, when that wasn't what she needed to be focusing on. More than that, she'd caught a glimpse of Lightning Girl's half-shredded mask. She was scared to see what expression might be on the other heroine's face if she looked. [color=gray][b]"Mine broke. There's -- tunnels. Lots of tunnels. Under us."[/b][/color] [/quote] Sophie nodded to the comments, knowing Blackstar had fear. Plenty in her. But wasn't ready to make words. Not yet. The blur coming back as she let Blackstar get it out, while maybe she was still lucid. She was terrified to look at her face. But fumbled some words out anyway. "Blackstar. Fuck. You're hurt. And you...thanks." Sophie said, totally oblivious it seemed to her own condition, groaning with pain as she walked across, realising that there was just one Alaine. She hadn't duplicated. That was good. She was slurred a little, adjusting her comms, hearing the other bits of anarchy going down across the carnival. Nodding, letting the overflow carry as she put hand to ear, somehow still there, luckily on the other side of her head to where she'd been hit, hard. [quote] The revelation was accompanied by a stiff jerk of one cosmically-bladed hand, the tip of the blade indicating the ground beneath them. [color=gray][b]"Goggles or whoever went... under. I tried to follow him but there were too many ways to go. I lost him. I--"[/b][/color] Blackstar's strained voice, slightly deeper than normal and far less friendly, finally cracked a little. [color=gray][b]"I don't know what to do."[/b][/color] [i]Blackstar[/i] hadn't said that, Alaine had. She hadn't meant to show that hand. She didn't want to do it. She'd just massacred a bunch of clowns in a decisively brutal way, severed limbs scattered among the bodies and gore spilling out of sliced-through, half-cauterized heads. [i]She didn't want to do it[/i]. But she'd [i]had[/i] to. She didn't know what else to do. [/quote] Fumbling across, Lightning Girl felt her own mask peel uncomfortably where the carbon had broken. To break carbon meant the force must have been strong enough to sever steel. Sophie pushed it forwards up her head and uselessly threw it and the rubber strap to the floor, revealing a hurt Sophie Speight. Not that it mattered. To Sophie, it wasn't anything. From one eye to none covered by carbon, it was just a distraction. An expression of pain, not of pretty heroine, just one of dust, blood and a cut that still sat on the side of her head. Games people played. A pretense that was worth nothing. Alaine looked scared, terrified, and more than that, possessed. Sophie had seen clips of Blackstar at work, from social media from what Hat Trick had gathered given the highway chase and the social media work, but never, ever anything like that. Nothing at all. Holy shit. She went through them like they were confetti. But she had been wounded. Blood had poured from her nose. Maybe not a stab wound, but she was battered too. Sophie knew Alaine didn't want to look. She hoped discarding any pretence of image may have helped, that and the fact it was really hurting now she was out of fighting. She had no other choice. From the moment she saw her come into that gym, showed her where to go, Sophie knew she had to look after Blackstar. Make sure she would come through this. Even if she herself couldn't, she had to do this. Had to be brave. Be a big girl, and make sure she would come through this. Lightning Girl was so stupid, thinking she could do this alone. But Sophie had her to look after. And she could help. But not if she was scared. Frightened. Her fear felt like it jolted into her fingerless and cut up gloves, static loose but pulsing, planting to spot. Sophie, or Lightning Girl, whatever she was, rested her hands against Alaine's shoulders and leaned forwards given her height was at least eight inches taller, leaving the kinds of marks that came from drying blood, watching behind, her unmasked eyes burning with a discolored grey. The expression wasn't of horror, but the kind of reassurance, that she had to push everything into. Blackstar may not have wanted to see Lightning Girl's expression. But she would see the woman behind them. "Listen to me, Blackstar. We're gonna get through this. We don't have any choice, we're the best shot at saving people right now...you did what you had to. I've got comms. I'll raise the team. We're doing fine. We're...." She spluttered with confidence at first, before coughing blood to the side and trying to avoid her suit, from the mix of that red stuff still in her mouth and from her battered nose, Lightning Girl, Sophie, whatever it was now, looking back again, almost in embrace. In spite of the action suggesting her words weren't fine. She reiterated it, hands against shoulders, leaning on Blackstar a little for weight. "Okay, maybe not quite fine. But we're enough. We're gonna find those tunnels and I'm.....we're going to turn Gaggles into vapourware. Take a breather, and look at me, Blackstar. We're gonna be okay. Take a deep breath. We need to keep going, and we need to protect them. Find the team. Save the day. We can do this. You can do this. Yeah? You can. You saved my arse there. You're golden." She knew Blackstar didn't want to look. And maybe knowing Blackstar had every single right to believe Lightning Girl was in a worse state. But Sophie was stubborn. And Blackstar was new to this. So she couldn't project any doubt. Any weakness. That wasn't her. That wasn't the woman that wore this costume. She had to do the right thing. Even if it felt wrong, strength was all Blackstar needed right now, whatever the shorter of the two women had to bear, she had to bring. She had to give Blackstar some hope. Some trust. Knowing that in the moment Blackstar must have felt horrified to do that level of violence, there was no judgement. "There's more coming. Take a moment. Stay close, together, we'll stop them." Sophie grit her teeth, pushing up from her shoulders and facing the new threat, cape fluttering a little into Blackstar before it picked a better direction to not get in the way. More clowns had arrived. Lightning Girl looked to Blackstar, moving aside, standing tall, looking on, focussing on the information first, before the clowns would bear down. "Team, there's some tunnels we might be able to find. Sending a ping where Blackstar was earlier. Might be a way down.." Lightning Girl added with a blur in her vision returning before it focussed, watching as they all saw her as her hair blew in the gust of wind in the high atmosphere, Lightning Girl's mask off, revealing, rather strangely, little at all. A white haired woman that was pretty behind it was guessable from the jawline and nose. Sophie looked to Alaine, then back at the clowns, as one of them tapped a baseball bat into a wooden stall with a double tap, grinning, giggling. "Two for one....and I thought Lightning Bitch didn't have a pretty face. Shame we can't see Starfucker's because we all would love to.....oh, the shame. Well, we're gonna make you look hella ugly when you girls ain't gonna put up a fight. Prepare to die. We'll be smiling." He cackled with an evil, almost minor-villain grin, as Lightning Girl didn't go with the option of throwing electricity like last time, the other clowns emerging in view that had decided to come back and finish the job. Not yet. She assessed. Took her time. Injury made her think more even though her head was a minefield. They were better clowns than creative writers, Sophie mused internally though. Outside a putting stand? Really? That was the best? She had nothing to say. Nothing but a slate-like stare, protective of Blackstar, even though she had no right to be. She was hurt worse, the red of the bandage and her pain making her nearly turn her vision into a blur, wanting to yell and curl up rather than move and put pressure on the pain. [i]Murder is wrong, Sophie. But it isn't if they are going to kill you and Blackstar first, then everyone else here. They've already tried, and they are trying again. And they don't deserve to be the bastards that put you in the ground. They need to do better. This isn't how it ends.[/i] [b]Soundtrack: [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoFxcFMhOCE]Dead Sara- Weatherman[/url] [/b] No, she instead decided if they were going to fight dirty, she was going to, morals as tested as they were went out of the window when she was gonna die and she'd already killed half a dozen clowns already. That meant putting away the fact this was a crowd control kinda situation. It meant embracing the fact they were picking on a hurt lioness, pale white pigment-lost hair bloodied by her own and other red. It meant using the other power Sophie had. Pulling weights in. Pushing out with legs. Power that made her stronger. They weren't finishing the job. And she still had power. Still had fight. Just had to find that next gear. The nearby putter at the mini-golf game between her and the clown was an easy target to go for. As the clown charged, voltage spread into the metal mini-golf stick, and Sophie didn't need to clear the move- as she under-swung the metal putt forwards to hold him back and dodged the bat. And swung. And cleaved his head almost into two with a swing across as he tried to go for a swing of his bat overhead, a viscera of spray emerging as she then threw it at another clown moving towards Blackstar handle first like a javelin, pinning them to a wooden stand before she bolted a stun of electricity that made them shudder, then a third one who tried to leap her, getting an elbow into the stomach, and a hard pull of his head into her knee, bouncing off with a trail of blood, walking forwards over bodies now from the mess she'd made. Sophie was hobbling after that spike of adrenaline, feeling the pain run through her side, the healing stopping in there when she used her powers and coming from her ribs and stomach, looking at the lifeless corpse before her, and the other clown spasming on the ground. "Three for one. At least get our names right, scumbags." She cursed, the nice, pleasant image now gone entirely. She had a good one liner in her now, potentially, that she could make at least, as the tension burned through her, the putting club through the clown's stomach illustrating she had a bit of power still on her even without pushing too hard. Now when she had all the adrenaline and zero filters left, maybe a more basal protector had come out. Without a mask, who was this? Sophie Speight, Lightning Girl, or someone else that stopped seeming like she was fighting here. Embracing the fact that she had no choices left. Learning a lesson quickly. Sophie looked to Blackstar, supporting where she could with the other clowns chasing, bolting electricity where dark energy didn't help, helping her clear the group. They were fighting together. Sophie was countering as another clown ran in with a swing on Blackstar with a hatchet and nearly landed a lucky shot where Sophie managed to swing a baseball bat to defend and push him away with the long side of it, before flipping the bat to narrow point smashing his windpipe in with the loose end like a pointed stick, using that distraction to then kick him with an almost sparta-like kick across Blackstar's vision into a barrel where he fell in ass first and made a satisfying *bonk* against a wooden stall as the barrel followed his trajectory of falling over. Sophie exhaled hard, wiping her brow, clearing the stray strands of hair that were in her face, panting hard, holding side a little and continuing to hobble. She was discharging a hell of a lot to fight them, and her bioelectricity in her body was in deficit, but when clowns were charging, she was throwing herself at it. She looked to Blackstar, a confident nod, in spite of the lack of mask now. It changed nothing. It felt like there wasn't any point hiding right now. Not for the moment. "Let's go find the others. Regroup and get to this tunnel you found. And find Gaggles." Sophie added, her comms spluttering as she adjusted it a little. "Team, me and Blackstar are grouped up, by the big Helter Skelter. We've found a way to find Gaggles. We need to stop this before we keep climbing higher..." She uttered, trying to get words back, keeping it on open transmit for Blackstar to call anything out via Sophie.