The Luckiest Girl In The World

Stealth crouched on the arch about the Melrose gate with Gorgon, St. George, and the visitors. The other heroes had been dispatched to the other gates she'd marked as vulnerable on her map, but Zzzap was flying recon and they were backed up by almost fifty more of the Mount's guards. They were the most vulnerable gate, to be sure, with Gorgon standing up front as bait for Cesares, but she had estimated the capabilities of the assembled people would be more than capable of repelling an attack, even if Zzzap was not able to return to aid them.

The exes had always been thick here, but now they grew denser by the moment. They packed the space in front of the gate and pushed back into the streets. Hordes of them staggered down Melrose and up Windsor. The guards walked the walls and stared down at the hungry mob. Some of them manned scaffolding towers. The dead pounded and clawed at the stucco. Another fourteen gate guards rammed pikes and spears between the bars of the gate. The dead stiffened at their skulls cracked and their brains were shredded. Then the humans pulled their weapons free, stepped back, and then lunged at the gate again even as more exes staggered forward.

"When do you want us to start sweeping?" one of the men asked, his rifle tucked against his shoulder.

"This is not the attack," shouted Stealth. "Just a massing of forces. Conserve your ammunition for now. Pikes only!"

Another wave of crushed skulls echoed up to her.

( Everything about this is fine. )

***

Zzzap flew through the air, lighting up the dark sky, and came to a hover above the arch where they were watching the crowd of exes grow. Something big and scaly at Van Ness. Thought you'd want to know, he said in his crackling, electronic voice.

"Damn it," St. George said, scanning the street. "How'd he get by us?" He looked at Stealth. "You all good here?"

"Go," she said. "And take Dante with you. Cairax Murrain cannot be allowed to breach the gate."

The big hero nodded and took off, with Dante close behind. "Demon's at Van Ness," said Gorgon as he watched them leave. "Not the best way for us to start, with you being wrong right at the top."

"Thank you for pointing that out," she said. Her cloak draped across her shoulders and down over the edge of the archway. "Can you see any further than four blocks under these conditions?"

Gorgon looked around. "Not really." Hid hand went to his mic. "All gates, let's get some flares up." Across the Mount, small comets shot into the sky and burst into stars. They could see for blocks now as red and yellow light bathed the surrounding neighborhood. Melrose was visible for a quarter mile past either end of the walls.

The walking dead kept coming. More and more, until the pavement vanished under a carpet of death. Thirty thousand dead eyes stared at them, and thirty thousand brittle hands clawed at the air. The exes pounded the walls, pushed at the steel fences, and rammed their arms between the gate's curling decorations. In the distance, they could hear engines roaring and horns blasting. The Seventeens were near.

Gorgon rolled his head in a circle until his neck popped. "Still feeling confident?"

"We are prepared," said Stealth. "We know their capabilities. It will be a challenge, but we are ready for whatever they have fight to fight us with."

And then the lights went out.

( Again, everything is just great! )

The planned ambush of the Mount had been foiled, the Seventeens too impatient to wait until the gate had opened enough to let Mean Green out. The survivors had successfully routed the gangmembers, Gorgon dropping about half of the group before they'd gotten close. And, unbeknownst to most of the Mount, they'd even managed to collect three prisoners and were keeping them down in the holding cells by the Lansing Theater. In earlier years, the solid doors had held reels of archived film. Now the solid doors kept things in instead of out. Usually, these cells served as a holding pen for people who'd gotten drunk or rowdy, participants in the occasional fistfight or someone caught stealing. Now, however, they were holding prisoners of war.

( Everything just keeps getting better )

[Content warning for attempted and completed suicide, though the act happens off-screen. Text taken from Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines, Chapters Twelve and Fourteen. NFI, NFB]

"What the fuck is that?" ( Always an auspicious way to begin! )

It was a question that would linger with Cerberus all afternoon, right up until the trap sprang.


[Take taken and adapted from Peter Clines' Ex-Heroes, Chapter Four. Prepare for a lot of these in the coming days. NFI, NFB]

After a week of pollen and then finding out that Minako was Sailor V and Mara Jade was some kind of...knife-wielding badass, Kathy had decided that spending a week with her classmates on a ship was not in the cards. She needed a little time and space to put her confused thoughts into order, to figure out how she felt about who and what, if anything, she wanted to do about it.

Rather than hang around an empty (and frigid) island while everyone else was enjoying Mexico (so much that no one had returned any of her handwavy texts!), Kathy had decided to head back to LA. Rather than going back to her parents' apartment for the week, Kathy'd rented a tiny motel room where she wouldn't have to worry about rules, curfew, or her family finding out about her late night hobbies. During the day, she could work on her homework and brood be pensive and at night she could be Banzai, too busy leaping over rooftops and chasing down criminals to live inside her own head.

You relax your way, she'd relax hers, all right?

Not that tonight was anything like relaxing. LA was so much bigger than Baltimore, with more crime and, specifically, more violent crime. She'd just finished taking down a mugger when she'd heard gunshots coming from the north. Giving the mugger's collar one last shake, she let him go and ran off as fast as she could towards the guns.

It might be kinda sick, but she loved this.

[And the link to the thread that begins after LJ breaks the page]