TeChameleon

((I'm pretty sure they were still brawling with Marty... or at least, they were until Diov *poofed* out of existence... while Energon X was yelling at Danger and Groul, and he hasn't posted since that I've noticed; granted, I've been a little out of it lately, but...))

Target raised an eyebrow, then cringed as a particularly sharp stab warned him that several popped vertebrae had just realigned themselves under the 'tender' ministrations of the medinanites in his blood. A sharp chuckle, harsher than it might have been otherwise thanks to his raspy, laboured breathing as the nannies constricted his lungs to prevent jarring of the ribs while they worked. "I can see why Uncle E went off on you lot... I could hear him shouting through the tank, and that takes some doing."

He leaned forwards and leaned on the table, steepling his fingers. "First off, you can get any ideas of 'speciesism', or whatever the hell you want to call it, out of your paired craniums. I don't care what you are, I dislike you because you are, not to put too fine a point on it, arrogant [Censored]."

He waved a hand, returning the Deus In Telum to its usual resting place in his own private cross-D storage. "Time for a quick history lesson; we don't call ourselves 'heroes' because we're fighting in a war." He snorted. "Trust me, this war wasn't our idea. Most sane folk dislike the idea of having their back garden turned into a battlefield, and this was our home."

The archer waved a hand. "Back in the day, we were considered 'heroes' because we did stupid and dangerous things to protect people from things they couldn't protect themselves from. Aggressive action by gangs, natural disasters, alien invasions, shambling undead seeking to consume the flesh of the living... that sort of thing." A faint grin, Target taking on the thousand-yard stare of a man peering into the past. "And, oddly enough... for the most part, it worked. Don't ask me how, or why... really, a collection of loonies in spandex aren't the first thing you'd consider building your security around, normally... but work it did. Calling ourselves 'heroes' is more of a holdover from those days than anything else."

"Of course, back on topic... as always, there was trouble in paradise. Across the water..." the Archer unlaced his fingers and waved a negligent hand to the East. "Lay a small, independent nation made up of a collection of islands and ruled by a complete nutjob who... well, I really don't know what he wanted, he seemed to have control issues more than anything else." Target relaced his fingers and shrugged eloquently. "In whatever case, he decided that we were 'in his way', and that he'd best do something about that. So he declared open war on us by bombing our center of government flat, while simultaneously unleashing more than a million troops, including hundreds of thousands of superhumans of his own, of a decidedly antisocial bent; the self-styled... and yes, they called themselves this... 'Villains' of the Rogue Isles. It's rather sad, really..." he added as a bit of an aside, "they defined themselves, by and large, by their opposition to us. If we went away completely, their organization would probably implode in a titanic squall of infighting."

A bitter chuckle that made Target seem far, far older than his thirty-five years. "Of course, in the process, they'd probably kill every living thing on this continent, but hey, why not? Then we'd be able to argue rather stupid philosophical points with you all night with a clear conscience. Well, clear of pedantic 'but you're not heroes just for fighting!' arguments, anyways; I suspect that there might be a twinge or two regarding the hundreds of millions of innocents we might have been able to save by acting."

"So there you have it. I suppose you could call it a 'war'... personally, I'd call it an invasion. We're more... I suppose you could call us Partisans... than anything else. A valiant, rather desperate collection of speedbumps in the way of the titanic enemy war machine." he paused as a thought struck him. "By the by... should you be planning to import your own war here, we'd really rather you didn't; we've got more than enough of our own."

"Oh, and insofar as me being lied to about the arrow? I saw it in action with my own eyes, when six of Lord Nemesis' alternates formed a hivemind collective against us, the united armies of four worlds and the secret troops of two others invading. I was the one to fire that fateful shot after a tiny team of us fought our way to one Lord Nemesis' throneroom, and it will haunt my dreams until the day I die. All six of the hivemind died in a cross-dimensional flash. Nothing was left. Nothing. Not even vapour. So... well, you may not think it can work, since we are just lowly savages and all, but... the evidence would suggest otherwise."

"And I'd rather not brawl, thanks... getting beaten half to death because some thug decides he doesn't like your looks tends to reduce one's desire to fight, at least until one's bones knit." A sardonic twist of his lips. "So, are we quite done shouting at one another over misplaced righteous indignation?"

*points and laughs because Chaotic forgot he seeded all the popcorn with microscopic Black Holes*

*laughs some more as Chaotic gets a brief view of his own colon, then swears as he realizes he was standing next to Chaotic*

*is sucked in too*

*rezzes*

*shrugs and pulls the plug on Entropy's time machine*

Have fun, you're-your-own-grandpa boy!

((It's not necessarily going to work to kill Black Scorpion, but it will cause Cry some problems whichever way it plays out))

The Scarlet Eye watched with some amusement as Black Scorpion and his minions charged around like ants from a stomped-on hill. He was standing calmly on the ceiling, invisible and not-quite-there as an astral projection.

With minimal warning 'his' troops arrived. The Tanker smashed straight through the wall, his invulnerable body shedding mace-blasts like water off a duck's back. He continued his charge and nearly took Black Scorpion off his tracks, grappling with the giant cyborg. The two Blood Widows struck next, each popping into sight as they drew their blades across the throats of two of the loyal Bane Spiders from behind in a valiant attempt to decapitate them.

The Fortunatas hit next, psionics filling the room with pink mist, and the remaining troops hit as a mass, mace blasts, bitter ice blasts, head-splitting broadsword strikes, force bolts, and fire imps striking as one.

The Scarlet Eye chuckled silently to himself as a thought struck; Cry's mental imprint was so strong that about the only way his own meddling would be discovered is if he physically removed one of the puppet's brains and carved his initials into it with a pocketknife. He idly considered doing just that, then discarded it. Amusing as it might be to attempt, the chaos to be gleaned from an attack by Cry on the big dummy was so much greater.

Besides, it was already too late, as the battle was joined, and even an idiot like Black Scorpion would notice a dark man in a trenchcoat pulling out one of the combatants and performing impromptu brain surgery.

Target ambled into the room. He was limping slightly, and waving Sarah off with one hand. The other was clutching his ribs as he tried hard not to laugh.

"Oh noes! We pathetic aborigines might get our hands on your fancy technology and destroy ourselves!" he mocked, having caught the last few sentences. He waved Sarah off again. "Would you leave off, woman! The blood nannies will take care of things in an hour or so. If I have to spend one more minute in that bloody tank, I'm going to lose my mind."

The archer slumped in a chair, favouring his ribs a bit as the faint green glow of working healer-nanites enveloped him. "Hey 'Wing... how many times have we heard that line? 'Our tech is far beyond what you monkeys can comprehend!' or some variant thereof?" Target made a show of counting on his fingers, then smirked. "By my count... and this is just the times that happened when I was 'kicking for Uncle E and you were along for the ride... this'd be, what, the eighteenth time a 'highly advanced alien' lectured us on the dangers of their oh-so-superiour technology?"

He shrugged carefully and fingered the dark goatee he now affected. Then Target fished out an arrow with an oddly shaped, glowing arrowhead and tossed it to Groul, underhand. "I call this little toy the Deus In Telum. Nothing special against a standard target, but if they're trying something cute like cross-dimensional psyche backups or trans-temporal 'backdoor' escape routes... well, let's just say that the half-gram of antimatter and half-gram of ferrous neutronium suspended in the quantum crystalline matrice might have something to say about that." He held out his hand for the arrow to be passed back, and continued.

"Tracks via psionic morphic resonance patterns with an 0.4% margin of error (so some poor bugger doesn't get vapourized just because his dimensional alternate was being naughty); once it jumps the dimensional and/or time barriers (after using the dimensional border storms to power up the superstring generator), it will strike all the 'backups' simultaneously, then create an Annihilation Sphere out of woven Superstrings. Inside the grav-sphere, the Quantum Crystalline matrix is broken, and the neutronium and the Antimatter are introduced to one another at relativistic velocities, and everything in the sphere is... well, annihilated, while the surroundings are untouched."

Target shifted uncomfortably, his ribs stabbing a bit as they shifted around to knit back together properly. He shrugged again. "One of our tech boys slapped it together after fighting this aggravating sod named "Lord Nemesis" for the umpteenth time. Had a math git tell me that he could get it to run along seventh-dimensional lines pretty easily, but I haven't yet met anyone who needed to be erased from the Multiverse entirely." The archer waved a deprecatory hand. "'course, you shoot it at a regular bloke, it'll make a nasty bruise, maybe an unpleasant flesh wound, but that's about it."

He snickered, then winced. "I'm sure you lot have stuff that's vastly more dangerous but, eh, that's your lookout. So... you buggers're lost, eh? Looking for anything special when you popped out here, or did you just decide to swing by and right royally piss off my Uncle E for giggles? That's the glowie bloke with the armour, by the way."

*rezzes*

LET'S FIND OUT!

*NerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfN erfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNer fNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerf
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*pant... pant... pant... pant...*

*NerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfN erfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNer fNerfNerfNerfNerfNerfNerf
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*gasp... wheeze...*

There. Your Wave Motion Gun is now slightly less effective than getting a damp sponge thrown at one, and everyone else is just about as dangerous.

*rams Nerf bat up Chaotic's nose, reducing his brain to uselessness and killing him instantly*

((... how did I get killed something like five times while I wasn't even here?))

*rez*

*hands Hellspite-Norris a note that says "You can't see the real Chuck Norris"*

*waves as Hellspite-Norris gets Texas Roundhoused into next Tuesday*

Energon X was halfway to his feet, hands planted on the table, as he glared at the saurian and the midget. His ever-present glow had intensified to a level that there was a perceptible pressure coming off him, as his already badly-frayed temper snapped.

"How dare you?" he hissed, vocoder spitting and crackling as his mounting energy levels began to interfere with its function. "Knowing nothing of our situation, you blithely wander in and sit in smug judgement." A deep, shuddering (and wholly uneccesary, except as an emotional outlet) breath.

"We hide in holes in the ground fearing for our lives, forced to scavenge like animals simply to survive because a powerful enemy craved greater power. Under his rule, it is not safe to walk the streets, even as a being of considerable power. My nephew, a skilled, battle-hardened warrior, was beaten nearly to death for the 'mistake' of escorting me to my place of grief for my yearly observance. We offered harm to none; yet, merely for the crime of passing by when another superhuman was bored, he is now in the regeneration tanks, near death."

He slammed a fist down on the table as a few of the civilians in the base rolled their eyes, and one grumbled "Hey, I'm going to have to fix that..." Still others nodded agreement. "Let me guess. You are 'peaceful explorers', which you feel gives you the right to stay aloof from the petty problems of the worlds you explore." A sneer was clearly audible in the synthetic voice. "Before the war, we stood between those who did not have powers and those who would do them harm." A trace of amusement. "The thin spandex line, they called us." Anger returned. "We sought to uphold justice and defend the weak. Now, we are hunted like dogs, justice is dead, and the weak are food."

The Blaster stood, straight and proud. "I will help you find your machine. The sooner you have taken your sanctimonious sneers from here, the happier I will be. One of the scavenging teams, or perhaps the scouts, is sure to have seen something." He turned and stalked out, cape swirling about him.

((... hrm. That was quite the rant >.> Anyways, Wolffe, I think Project_M is just having Cry go Godzilla on Steel Canyon to try and draw the heroes out.

Also, would someone mind NPCing Black Scorpion? I know he wasn't present in the room with Cry, but the Scarlet Eye has possessed a bunch of Cry's discarded toys and gone hunting for him- there's four ex-heroes, along with three Bane Spiders, two Fortunatas, and two Blood Widows, running as a pack and out to kill Black Scorpion. If they all die, Cry will be blamed for the attack, since his psi signature on them is so strong, and if Black Scorpion dies, Cry will still be blamed, and there will be even greater chaos, 'feeding' Scarlet Eye))

I spent the first 20 years of my life in Vancouver. Failure #2.

*beats Hellspite to death with the now rather soggy side of frozen beef*

... what, that's supposed to kill me?

I'm Canadian. That's barely going to slow me down.

*chips his way out of the freezer*

*beats Chaotic to death with a side of frozen beef*

((... okay, that was kind of a cheap shot, Th3or3m. And if he turned to electricity, how was he throwing stone shards around? Anyways, there's not a lot for me to do in response to that- Target was already out of the fight; you just had Fenrir beat the hell out of someone who was on his knees- so, Energon X is just gonna snag Target at Superspeed and ditch you.

Also, as something totally unrelated, it's 'vicious' punches, unless you actually meant 'like a thick liquid'.))

Energon X stalked into the common room and claimed a chair, flopping into it. Ignoring the visitors for the moment, he nodded to one of the more sombrely dressed occupants. "Hey Sarah? You mind decanting my nephew in about a half hour? He got the living [censored] beaten out of him by some jerkoff villain for no real reason. Granted, you should see the other guy, but still..." Then he turned to glare at Groul and the Specialist, armoured cranium swivelling slowly to fix two points of blazing purple light on the interlopers. It was uncomfortably similar to the look of having twin energy weapons, primed to fire, trained on them.

Ignoring Marty, he tossed a quick comment Bladewing's way "Y'know, Wing, I think your usual bravado is unsettling our guests. Maybe tone it down a little?" Then he spoke directly to the interlopers for the first time, his synthetic voice decidedly cool. "I'm assuming that you're new here, given that your IFF is coming up as a row of question marks." he paused. "And yes, we really do have to be that paranoid around here. As to our designation as 'heroes'?" He shrugged, settling back more comfortably in his chair.

"At this stage in the game, I'd call us more 'survivors'. Used to be, we were what stood between this city and chaos, or outright destruction, depending on who and what we were facing that day. Then, a country of 'villains' decided that they'd had enough of us standing in the path of their conquest, and declared open war on us." The Blaster shrugged again.

"Far be it from me to question the morality of someone from another culture..." he continued with exquisite sarcasm, "But it seems to me that the old days, when a child could walk down to the store to buy a carton of milk for their mother without fear of being abducted, murdered, or molested, or even when a normal guy could walk out onto his front step to get his newspaper without fear of being butchered for parts or fun... those days were an improvement on now."

Energon X hunched forwards suddenly, cape flowing in a disturbingly alive manner. "I know you don't know what's up here, but you'll have to excuse me if I take offense at the suggestion we're doing this for selfish motives. I haven't even had a body for twenty years. If it were just for my own sake, I would have let go a long time ago."

A long, uncomfortable pause, then the Blaster blinked (at least, that's probably what happened- the lights in the helmet flickered on and off momentarily). "On a related note... what are you two doing here?"

Target was caught in a whirlwind of stone, a punch slamming into him, then another, as he allowed the Brute to close in with him. The third punch knocked him away in a long arc that ended in a couple of bad bounces. On the fourth hit, he managed to regain control, skidding to a halt with his bow out.

He spat blood, then glared at Fenrir. Nearly two dozen small red lights blinked all over the larger man's torso... the grenade-heads of as many explosive arrows, held in place with variegated fields of electric force and with less than a second before they exploded. Target chuckled harshly as he sank to one knee, not bothering to check if his final gambit worked as he quoted, "If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it."

The Soldiers of Rularuu were already having to climb (or float) uphill to get at Horowitz as he fought atop a pile of dead Rularuu. "Bog for deener!" he roared excitedly as he lay into a group of Wisps. A quick cloud of psionic energy and dissipating Wisp-smoke later, and he yelled to the others "Hoy, dese leedle yellow t'ings are great! Dey don't do anyt'ing!"

He lunged off his pile of dead, jaws gaping, launching himself after a startled Wisp Overlord. One savage bite later, and the Overlord was minus an arm, and Horowitz was on his backside, looking very startled as the bite of Wisp he had taken evaporated in his mouth.

The Jager sat and blinked for a moment, his eyes crossing and uncrossing, before rolling back in his head. He scrambled unsteadily to his feet, singing under his breath something that sounded suspiciously like "Hy hass a leetle dreydl, hy made eet out of clay..." before losing coherence and singing random nonsense. The singing picked up in volume, becoming a Jager-ized version of Bubbla's Catastrophe Suite... a fitting accompaniment to what he was doing.

On an acknowledged battlefield with a hallucinating Jager was not a good place to be, as the Soldiers of Rularuu were rapidly finding out. Horowitz was already obscured by a cloud of ichor, puffs of Rularuu-smoke, and flying body parts.

Target closed, darting forwards in a flying rush, rushing into the partially-completed smash and planting both feet on Fenrir's downward swinging arms. He used the force of the Seismic Smash to rocket downwards, pulling up in a dramatic swoop just off the ground and already moving fast enough that a small sonic boom rattled the rubble on the street.

Banking in a screaming turn as the stone shield whiffed past where he would have been if he had simply dodge, he brought his bow into play again. Wrists're still too sore to allow my usual fire rate... guess I need to be a bit trickier. Target fired, alternating positively- and negatively-charged arrows, managing to get three supersonic arrows off in the first pass.

Can't... keep this... up. he thought, already feeling the strain and wishing he hadn't tried to stop that mallet with his electrical shield. He twisted in the air, another rocketing turn (although perceptibly slower than before) bringing him into firing range once more. Another arrow left the bow, and then a trio of explosive arrows with a non-conductive flaming arrow right behind, calculated to hit in the instant of blindness the exploding arrows would cause.

((Bleah... it's taking a considerable amount of restraint not to just include the Trick Arrows primary in this fight, since it makes no sense to have some gimmicked arrows, but not others >.<

But, Target is an Archery/Electric/Electric Blaster, so apparently he gets less toys -_-))

((Uh... actually, Th3or3m, I posted that so you could change your post. I'm assuming that Fenrir is too experienced a fighter to make a silly mistake like that, trying to earthquake an airborne enemy. It's an immersion thing for me.

Also, to clarify- Target's fighting here in much the same way I fight as him in-game- staying airborne, closing quickly to deliver some nasty melee attacks, then darting back out of range to rain pointy death... well, mostly Can't grapple in-game))

((Hrm... 'kid'? Target's 35 in this RP >.>

Also, he's in the air- he's been flying since before this fight started, and has only come down to take a swat at Fenrir.))

Target stared at electric-Fenrir for a moment, amazed, before he finally found his voice. "Uh... how are you talking?" he eventually managed to ask. Then he shrugged, and loosed another of his non-conductive arrows, cursing as his wrists stung. Hopefully, this one will make him think that my arrows are now totally harmless against him, and that I'm out of ideas.

Then he fired a spread of plain old aluminum-shafted, steel-tipped, highly conductive arrows, after giving them a positive charge. Then he fired a second spread, giving them a negative charge. No matter which spin Fenrir's electrons had at this point, one batch of arrows was going to act like a set of homing missiles and punch harmlessly straight through the now-electrical being, and into the ground at his feet... grounding him out completely once they struck earth.

... oookay, 'stunned' is not an appropriate adjective to describe my reaction to excessive exposure to girly shops.

I get bored, and my mind does strange things... you're likely to find me attempting to figure out (through experimentation >.&gt how many bras and sales racks need to be combined to launch a mannequin through plate glass.

And the "Pink Pink Pink" in your sig? There's one 'Pink' who will always be cooler than that.

*grooves out with a tenor sax while shipping Perfect_Pain to Greenland in November without a coat*

[ QUOTE ]
excessive girly shipping

[/ QUOTE ]
Not sure if I'd call it 'excessive', but... hey, whatever works.

((I know, Devious, but check my edited post. I'm assuming that Black Scorpion is somewhere onsite, since he sent those Bane Spiders. Scarlet Eye has decided to send Cry's ex-puppets on a postal rampage directed at BS. Cry will get blamed for it, especially since he just finished telling BS off, and his psychic imprint on the puppets is so strong (and un-subtle) that any traces of Scarlet Eye's meddling will be obliterated.

And, in the happy event that the deranged super-puppets actually manage to off Black Scorpion, more chaos will be created, 'feeding' Scarlet Eye, and he's rid of one more person who pisses him off. Yes, Scarlet Eye is quite homicidally insane))

Target caught one mallet on his bow, spinning away with a grunt and putting the bow away. The other mallet had been deflected by his electrical armour, and he was briefly thankful that his opponent's terrakinesis seemed to be at least partially electromagnetically based, leading to stone mallets with a high ferrous content. Nevertheless, he was going to be spending a bit of time in the regen tubes after this fight.

Okay... bruised ribs, and the way my wrists are stinging, I probably won't be able to launch shots with any degree of accuracy for a few minutes. Suppose I should be thankful that those mallets of his had any kind of conductivity at all. the archer thought. Aloud, he grumbled "Wish I could say the same about you."

This is going to hurt, but if I don't bring this guy down soon, he's gonna do a lot worse to me. With that thought, Target brought his hands together with a titanic thunderclap in an attempt to force Fenrir back. Then he wove electricity into a net, casting it around Fenrir to cage him about with electromagnetic force. If the Brute could be held in place, he would be, essentially, at the Blaster's mercy. At least, once Target could shoot straight again.

*shrugs*

By Canadian standards you're a month and a bit late (our Thanksgiving is the first weekend of October).

*ignores poisoned turkey, crystallizes Entropy_Aegis, then chills him to Absolute Zero*

Voila. Crystalline-state object at Absolute Zero= no Entropy.

*Entropy_Aegis suffers a sudden and complete reality failure*

Energon X shrugged. "Eh, pull up a piece of rubble and enjoy the show, then. Target'd never admit it, but he likes a good scrap as well." "Get... stuffed... Uncle E." Target managed to grind out, breaking the grapple and jerking back. He hadn't lost much, but the energy he had drained from Fenrir into himself had been lost just as quickly to Fenrir's own draining field.

He closed in again, darting forwards and dropping a quick one-two combination, a feint towards the bridge of Fenrir's nose and a much heavier punch aimed at his breadbasket, then launching backwards, clawing for altitude and firing as he went, a rain of poly-carbonate arrows specifically selected for their 100% non-magnetic properties. Electrical fields would do little to stop these. And, just for good measure, there was a mix of explosive arrows mixed in.

((the Scarlet Eye post has been edited appropriately... and I still need someone to play Black Scorpion *evilgrin*))

((er... Th3or3m, I thought we were actually in Talos now, not in Founders Crater- the whole thing is basically just a big, glass-smooth bowl right up to the walls, not really conducive for fighting in))

"Actually, I had no particular plans on fighting you at all." Energon X returned mildly, as Target hovered and gasped for a moment. "I tend to avoid fights to the death, since last time I died..." he waved an arm back through The Gap "that happened."

Above, Target recovered and launched himself forwards. Arrows seemed to be doing little to his irritating foe, so perhaps a test of electrical mastery was in order. He rocketed over his foe's head at speed, flipping at the last second to try for an overhead grapple, hands already ablaze with lightning.

Should the maneuver work, he would begin drawing his enemy's power out, sucking him dry in a matter of moments, and, hopefully, leaving him significantly more vulnerable to attack.

Energon X watched this with an attitude rather more casual than the situation warranted. "By the way... is there any special reason you're accosting random strangers in duels to the death?" He shrugged. "Not that it really matters, mind. But I do prefer to know why people are trying to kill me."

The Scarlet Eye stifled a gasp as he was forcibly ejected from Cry's mind. Intangibility was not something he had expected. He hovered in astral form for a moment, watching the battle, then solidified. If he could not reach the target of his immediate anger, killing Cry's thralls would, at the very least, offer some measure of amusement.

He deftly inserted himself into the minds the Cry had vacated, psychic defenses already shattered by the infant's immense power, and took control of the remaining ex-heroes and the handful of Arachnos that had been under Cry's direct control. Then, with a chuckle like someone choking on a mouthful of gravel, he sent them all searching out Black Scorpion, baying like hunting hounds as they sought the cyborg.

After all, in terms of the chaos generated, the death of one Lieutenant was just as good as that of another. Failing that, at least Cry would need to find some new puppets. And, best of all... Cry's psychic 'imprint' was stamped so heavily onto these puppets that even a fairly thorough post-mortem of them would indicate that they had been under the infant's control all along...

((Would anyone mind taking command of Black Scorpion for the duration of this little excercise? I'm not really expecting to kill him, although it will be amusing to try

EDIT... oookay, Black Scorpion's not there. Tweaking post appropriately.))

Target's arm was a blur as he lobbed another great fistful of arrows at Fenrir, then blasted another rain of arrows into the sky to fill the local airspace with pointy death.

Then he simply hovered, firing at Fenrir as he came, a mixture of flaming arrows, grenade-tipped arrows, regular arrows, and the occasional cone of lightning, and readying a thunderstrike of electrical power to try and knock Fenrir away, trusting in his own electrical armour to protect him from the mallet, at least enough to survive, should Fenrir get through.

((so, Target's doing his best to prove the old adage "The best defense is an overwhelming offense", and mixing in a bit of control/knockback there to try and keep Fenrir away. If you decide to punch through all that, feel free to auto the mallet bouncing Target through a wall or whatever, although I'd prefer you didn't claim to have broken his ribs or anything >.&gt)

Scarlet Eye chuckled harshly. Cry's response to being unable to overwhelm him with sheer power was to unleash still more power? "Ah, sweet innocence of youth..." the voice echoed across the mindscape as the Scarlet Eye slid out of Cry's grasp like a fistful of razorblades.

He 'watched' for a moment as the infant flailed about, a giant trying to see ants as psychic power that could level mountains bludgeoned across the landscape with barely enough refinement to even see unprotected minds, much less the machinations of an immortal.

Then he struck like a cobra, flowing into Cry's mindscape, the center of the Eye... and manifested himself physically on the psychic plane, vanishing completely from the storm of violence in the infant's nursery.

Another raspy chuckle, echoing strangely in the mindscape, as Scarlet Eye took in Cry's shock at this apparent impossibility. "You are... for all your... power... a creature of... Order, child. Of... rules." The elemental spat the last word as a curse. "I..? I am... chaos..." the sentence trailed off as the Scarlet Eye shattered, becoming a million million razor shards that spun in a terrible vortex that broadened... so diffuse that even a master telepath would have had trouble detecting it, much less gathering or stopping it... dancing a trail of destruction through Cry's mind. "Chaos... incarnate..."

((Project_M- what I'm trying to say here is that Cry, while massively powerful, can't just grab and squish the Scarlet Eye. Cry's only, what, fifteen months old? Maybe two years? The Scarlet Eye has been doing this for a very, very long time, and he's got a deep bag of tricks.))