I remembered black skies, the lightning all around me [ Open! ]

[secondcity_npc]

Characters: Anyone interested in putting the Denarians into their place once and for all
Time: April 16th-April 17th
Location: Outside St. Mary of the Angels church
Content: This has been a long time coming.
Format: Poster's choice
Warnings: None. No tag order.

Comments

[becauseimboring]

Clare hated she slept well, this wasn't a night she felt she should sleep well. They were at the edge of everything collapsing in on itself. Everything hung on the outcomes of the next few days. Given that three out of four Chinese Gods were out and playing around town, it wasn't going to be getting any easier

[secondcity_npc]

"Be my guest."

The words may have been surprising, but perhaps not in context. Of all the gathered Fallen, he was the only one who hadn't rushed into the battle, had altogether seemed quite reluctant to. The smile he gave She-Hulk was cold, grim. "I have no desire to play into the sorceress's hands, unlike the rest of them." He nodded at where the others were viciously fighting. "The apocalypse of her devising is not one I care to be a part of - I'll see mine another day. Besides when this is over, not all of you can stay, and I am in no hurry to regather any coins lost here today."

[legallygreen]

"Then why are you here? Why are your people attacking?" She-Hulk asked, shaking her head. "You'd like me to believe you're hanging around to help stop this?"

[secondcity_npc]

He laughed at this. "You don't survive two thousand years on earth without picking up something of the local custom." It was unclear who was talking now - Nicodemus or Anduriel, as the shadow continued into tumultous boiling beneath his feet and spreading out like an oil stain against the pavement. "I'm hardly here to stop anything - whether the sorceress wins or loses is truly none of my concern. I'm only here to pick up the pieces of whatever climactic battle you all participate in."

A shriek attracted his attention away from the Amazonian woman, and he gazed past her in time to see Clare Edwards deliver the killing blow to his daughter. Something dark and furious flashed in his eyes as the impaled silvery demon collapsed back to the ground, blindly staring up at the sky. The shadows, if possible, grew darker.

"All of the pieces," he murmured, catching Clare's gaze.

The grotesque shadows hovered for a moment and then swarmed around Charity Carpenter's prone body.

[legallygreen]

There was no way she could get to Charity in time. Even if she did, they would just both just be swallowed by the shadows. She-Hulk knew the chances of any attack working in the back of her mind, how pathetically minimal the percentage of success was. But Charity was her friend, had been kind to her, and she would have protected anyone else in the same position. So when she pushed herself forward on those muscled legs, it was not for Charity, but the source of the shadows.

The moment her feet stepped on the shadows spewing from Nicodemus, she felt cold, despite the sweat she had worked up in fighting demons. The chill did not stop her as she threw herself forward to tackle him to the ground.

[secondcity_npc]

His fury over his daughter's death blinded Nicodemus for a fraction of a second, but that fraction was all it took. The woman plowed into him with enough force to shatter bones, but whether it was the angel that resided in him or the shadows, he didn't nothing except grunt as they both hit the pavement with a bone-cracking thud.

Still, the shadows did not abate and Charity Carpenter had vanished completely from view.

Nicodemus lifted dark eyes to meet She-Hulk's and chuckled humorlessly, even as more of the darkness swept over them. "Can I not avenge my only daughter?"

[legallygreen]

She was hunched over him as they landed on the ground together. She-Hulk drove her knees into his torso to try and keep him down, her fist balled up in his shirt as he spoke to her, her expression shifting from the built up rage to something almost close to sadness.

There was so much she wanted to say. Jennifer, deep inside, wanted to just beg him to take her instead of Charity. The sheer anger inside wanted a drop down, all out brawl with him. But there was no negotiating with him. She-Hulk knew that, and somehow she felt as if she were breaking the last of the bonds she had with Neal's memory as she grabbed the noose around his neck and pulled to the right, wrapping it around her fingers tightly.

[secondcity_npc]

The darkness swam over both of them, blocking out the sight and sound of the battle just a few feet beyond. It drenched them in icy coldness, blinded them, so that the world only consisted of this fight, long in coming, each trying to dominate the other. Even as the chokehold tightened around Nicodemus's neck, the shadows that were his and Anduriel's sank deeper into She-Hulk's skin, as frigid as lie.

But then-

Jennifer...Jenn...

It was almost as if someone was laying a hand on her shoulder, to calm her or reassure her - who knew? But there was no one standing there, no angelic presence nearby - there was no one there except them.

You don't have to do this. It's alright.

Let it go.

[legallygreen]

The icy cold was painful, even for her when she had survived Arctic nights. Her fingers were numb, her skin throbbing as the blood pulsed beneath the surface, trying desperately not to freeze in her veins. She could not let go though. Lives depended on it, lives that would leave behind sadness and holes in hearts.

Her head jerked up, blind in the darkness, hearing the voice as she held on as tightly as she could to the noose, the strange voice far too comforting, eating at the rage that kept her in the green Amazon form. It told her to let go, and she almost did, wanting to badly. The battle hurt her heart as much as it hurt her body.

Closed off from the fighting outside, she knew Karrin and Dean would be getting tired. Getting slower. Blindly, she groped upward and searched for a hold on Nicodemus's head, to pull it the opposite direction of the noose.

"...No." She managed, though it nearly choked her to speak, "So many lives will be lost if I let go."

[secondcity_npc]

This time, it felt as if the hand was on hers, stopping her from reaching further.

No. Everything will be okay. They'll be okay.

Let him go, Jenn. Just...let him go.

[legallygreen]

"He deserves it..." She grunted through clenched teeth.

But the hand on her own was enough to stop her, to keep her from yanking his head the other way and snapping his neck. The voice was not angry or demanding, not something she would expect to come from a trick from Nicodemus. Yet neither She-Hulk nor Jennifer wanted to kill him.

Her fingers slowly uncurled from the noose around his neck.

[secondcity_npc]

Maybe. But you're not like him.

The shadows seemed to dissipate from around her along with the ghostly presence, so swiftly and suddenly that it was if the entire thing had been in her head. Maybe it had. But if she looked back at the ground again, where her hands had been clenched around the noose wrapped around Nicodemus's neck, there was nothing there except chilled pavement.

Twenty-nine out of thirty wasn't a bad count at all.

[legallygreen]

As she stood slowly, she put up a hand to push it through her hair, pushing it away from her face. Turning, she looked to where Charity Carpenter had been lying. She-Hulk tried to ignore the fact that her hands were shaking as she stepped away from the cold pavement.

The Fallen Angels

[secondcity_npc]

It wasn't a fair fight even in the slightest sense. While some of the group had years of fighting experience, the Order of the Blackened Denarius had centuries of dark terror lacing their fighting skills. When one of the Angels fell, another took its place, a fierce whirlwind of gnashing teeth and claws and fur and diamond-tough exteriors, strange double eyes glowing in the grayish light of the morning. Even in the presence of the church and the glowing light of one of the three Swords, it looked as if it would never be enough - slowly but surely, they may have been just a breath too fast and too conniving to fall completely under the blows aimed at them

[tinybutfierce]

By this point Karrin looked like she'd just crawled out of the pits of hell, doused in blood and gore and sweat. Her eyes shone fiercely despite the fatigue, somehow powering through it and yet there was an acceptance in them that this was probably the end for her. Still, her eyes shone because she was going to go down taking as many with them as possible. It didn't help that her sword was wedged deeply in the throat of a part-goat woman.

And then the light of a second sword had caught her eye. A sword she had been hoping to see once she'd learned they were back in the real world. A sword and the man with it in whom she had had utter faith in showing up. She smirked, "You think? I was starting to think your invite to this party got lost in the mail." Karrin pulled her sword out of another Fallen Angel's body as it crumbled to the ground, another of the coins rolling away.

[becauseimboring]