Society of Justice 3: Crisis on the Earth

[RBMidknight]

"What do you think?"

"Add some Dr. Pepper...." Taryn murmured. "And it's a date." A slow grin formed as she thought about the scenario. 'Sounds perfect...' Some time to relax...some time to talk...or to not talk...Taryn's gaze drifted down to linger on Levi's mouth. Somewhere on the fringes of Taryn's awareness the other team members were discussing something. But at the moment, she didn't care. She just wanted to stay be here. With Levi.

Taryn ignored the other conversations until someone mentioned 'leaving'. Then suddenly she was alert. Pulling away from Levi, reluctantly, Taryn scanned the area for the others. 'They're leaving?' Some people had moved but everyone was still accounted for. 'Good' Taryn cleared her throat quietly and took a small step so that she was beside of Levi but they both had room to maneuver if necessary.

 

[NeoAC]

Brian braced himself as the doors were being opened. Richard and Garrus would have to handle whatever zombies would be swarming the door as the first wave. Hopefully they could buy him enough room to make a break for the main entrance. It was going to be a long run, he'd have to go through two museum wings worth of zombies before even getting close to where the chest might be, amidst the wreckage that the main hall had been reduced to. It could very well be a suicide mission if it was too deep in the debris to salvage. So this is it. This is what I'm going to be facing here. Well, I guess now's a good time to be hitting up that Timmy's in the sky as any.

Brian waited a few seconds as the swarm was being allowed in. Richard and Garrus had bigger guns than he did, he was hoping that the added time they had to draw zombies towards the more actively firing members would open up a seam that he could exploit to try and make the passage to the main entrance easier. All right...keep going.......now! Spotting an opening along the right wall, he began his dash, knowing that now whether or not he won this race would be a literal matter of life and death, or whatever one could call a zombified state.

 

[blaze96]

Richard immediately took up a position in front of the door next to Brian before he broke through. As soon as the door was opened Richard opened fire, using precise shots to focus on the ones nearest to Brian.

"Alright, let's get moving. Hopefully this insane idea works." Richard shouted as he tried to keep up with Brian and provide what cover he could. The wave simply kept coming and progress for him at least was terribly slow. The only saving grace was that they were so densly packed that each one he killed slowed down the horde by causing it to fall back into the others. He didn't know how long that would prove useful though, especially if their pace picked up.

 

[tsatoma]

The mutated zombies had managed to get through the improvised barricade made up of the Promenade, and from what Garrus could tell they would have soon been swarming through the rest of the Promenade had the group not come out first. Garrus made sure to cover Brian as best he could, keeping the zombies at bay. A number of them could be taken out in one hit due to their closeness to each other, though they were still quite dangerous as Garrus found out when he was bitten by one that was still alive after trying to jump over some of the bodies.

"Ack! Just keep going Brian! We have your back!" Garrus yelled to Brian, watching him dash along the wall to the right. Most of the zombies were distracted by everyone else to even notice the man running past them.

 

[NeoAC]

Brian was staying as low as possible as the two men behind him mowed down whatever zombies he could. A couple of them got close enough to drool on him, yet a shotgun blast ensured they would only be drooling because they had no jaws to contain it. Eventually the herd started thinning out towards the first museum wing. They must have just been swarming the door! I think I made it! Fuckin' Eh!

He headed out to the main entrance, it was still a mess, splintered wood and smashed concrete all over the place. Scanning the rubble around him, Brian could still see a large chest, a couple of boards on top of it, It had a couple of boards splintered, but it still seemed intact. All right there we go. Just gotta get this smashed open there I guess and we'll see what kind of weapon we got here. Picking up an exposed piece of rebar, he went to opening the chest in the traditional Canadian manner. However, this chest was proving stubborn, the wood that survived the wrecking not giving much away. Come on you bastard! Why won't you open? A couple more tries and still nothing. Brian looked out on the horizon, as if to try and find what unseen force was keeping him from the prize inside. All he saw was zombies. Many more zombies. Far outnumbering the relatively paltry number of beings that remained inside the Promenade. The thin gray line on the fields in front of him was slowly spreading wider. Oh...fuck...

With renewed vigor, Brian desperately smashed away at the chest. It seemed funny that the fate of the entire team would rest on being able to bash something in with an improvised hammer, but that was just the situation that the fates had brought to pass, and the fear inside the young Canuck was growing that he would not be able to pass this test.

 

[socialtangent]

With Brian and Garrus's bold charge down the hall and Richard laying down covering fire, the battle was resumed. The staccato blasts of gunfire trailed off quickly as the three of them broke in a frantic dash towards the main entrance. "Well, we can't keep them waiting," Levi said to Taryn before taking off after his teammates. He made a hard right after running out the hallway and charged forward at the approaching horde of undead.

Standing in their path was Garrus, who seemed to be having a bit of difficulty fending them off. Levi made his presence known by hurling a concentrated burst of magnetic energy into the center of the tightly packed decomposing mob. The energetic projectile slammed into the closest zombie, sending it flying backwards into its comrades. Scores more toppled over like a group of fleshy dominoes, causing a severe dent in their formation and presenting a hazard for the zombies behind them.

 

[RBMidknight]

"Time for some thrilling heroics." Taryn muttered before following Levi. Though still running her pace was slower than his and she watched Levi turn the corner a few seconds before reaching it herself. She paused before turning. The slashes across Taryn's back had broken open again. Constant power usage had cauterized her injuries and between that and the adrenaline she'd tried to ignored the pain. With moderate success. But now the wounds hurt. 'Hope the infirmary isn't trashed.' Taryn thought fleetingly as she resumed her run.

Taryn kept her back to the wall, keeping distance between herself and the enemy as she fired jagged blasts at the zombies. White and blue mixed in sharp diagonals before impacting her target. She focused solely on wielding electricity with as much precision as she could manage. No longer controlling the electricity around her body the stray bits of power ran freely across her costume and skin. Taryn noticed some flying zombies and grinned at the bowling pin impression Levi created. She picked some stragglers to battle. With her right hand outstretched, alight with power, Taryn fried two zombies with a single shot. The headless corpses remained upright for a moment before collapsing to the ground. 'Next!'

 

[Captainguy42]

A zed head twelve feet tall loomed over Brian as he smashed away at the chest. As he fell back from the rear entrance, Tommy saw the huge zombie prepare to attack. With all the strength he could muster in his legs, he rocket across the room and punched the zombie out. When he recovered Tommy scrambled back to Brian.

"Let me have a whack at it!" Tommy yelled as he took a swipe with his gauntlets and ripped the top of the box off. For a second he hesitated before looking at the contents, as soon as he did the same zombie he just punched got up and tackled Tommy, carrying him off into the horde. As he was carried off he yelled " Brian! Use it! Use the Destroyer!"

With a sudden dropped the horder cocooned Tommy under a blanket of acid, teeth, and nails. From withen the steady bead of Tommy's fist against a Tommy could be heard, until it was dampened into nothing by the zombies massing on top. Soon nothing could be seen or heard of Tommy. From the box polish bright pink metal of an eight barrel mini-gun gleamed at Brian, on it's muzzle a unicorn breathing rainbow fire, and spray painted in black on the body. RAINBOW PONY DESTROYER As the natural moment of awkwardness passed, a thump was head. Then a second thump, louder, from with in the horde, and a third...

A mass of zombie exploded into giblets, From a crater Tommy lept up and yelled, " SHOOT THE FUCKING SHIT OUT OF THESE FUCkS." Before a wave of zombies swallowed him up again.

As he sank under the weight of rotten flesh, Tommy felt tickled as zombies tried to work through his reinforced skin and muscle. But surrounded by zombies necrotic magic from their rotten souls swirled around Tommy. As he fed off the magic around him this energy seeped into Tommy's own soul, weakening him from the inside. A tickle turned to a dull throb then into a sting then a sear and finally into out-right torture as his magic drained as his defenses softened. As he was slowly being picked at by the zombies, he thought I really hope he mans up before I'm toast.

 

[NeoAC]

There weren't many things that would have stopped Brian in his tracks when it came to weaponry at this moment in time, but this...thing was certainly one of them. It looked like it came from Barbie's First War Crime set. So this is it then? To save the day I've got to use the Hello Kitty Death Machine? God damn it.

Hearing Tommy's curses off in the horde snapped Brian out of the semi-shocked state he was in, and he reluctantly reached in for the massive mini gun. Even with a career in youth league hockey it was a bit heavy. He swung the new weapon towards the horde where he guessed Tommy had disappeared and quickly set the tripod up as stable as he could get it within two seconds. Gripping the twin handles as he prepared to fire the My Little Pony Chunker, he figured a warning was in order. "Hey guys who are alive! You know, you may want to duck here!"

A couple of zombies turned around at this call, but once Brian figured everyone who could duck, did duck, the only thing they saw was the sight of bullets flying out towards their faces. Brian was a little wild at first, spraying the museum walls and ceilings with bullets, but once he got used to the kick that the Polly Pocket Army Destroyer had, he was mowing down zombies like they were grass. The bullet holes that punched themselves into the walls during his earlier shooting were quickly being plastered over with zombie guts and any movement above the waistline was being met with more lead. Soon enough the horde that had overtaken the museum was now only holding the floor with their gooey remains.

"Wooooo!" Brian shouted out triumphant. "That's how we do it right there, yeah!" He turned around to the outside and remembered the other much larger problem. He pivoted the Care Bear Stare of Despair around, cursing that he couldn't come up with more derisive names for it. "All right zombies, come get your complimentary ticket back to hell."

 

[tsatoma]

'You can do this Garrus. Brian is probably at the gun by this point and you just need to make sure you don't do anything foolish...like get surrounded by the undead. Shit,' Garrus realized too late that he had found himself encircled by a few dozen of the zombies after knocking the head off of one that had gotten him. He looked at all the drooling monstrosities, somewhat thankful that at least he wouldn't be turned into one. 'Though that wouldn't even matter if they tear me to shreds.'

It was then that Garrus heard Brian yell out for those still alive to duck, and since Garrus put himself under the term 'alive' at the current time he fell to the floor and put his hands over his heads. The zombies paused for a moment before charging to the easy pray; about to make contact when bullets started to shred through them and all the other zombies around them. A few were smart enough to get to get out of the gun's range, but were quickly dealt with by the other members.

Once the zombies were dealt with inside Garrus followed after Brian to see the carnage that would happen in the front of the Promenade. "Hey Brian, nice gun," he said with a cheeky smile, catching his breath now that they were not in quite as much immediate danger as before. The streets in front of the Promenade were crowded with thousands of zombies, the faster ones breaking apart and already making their way across the parking lot.

All at once the zombies suddenly stopped and fell to the ground, odd smokey shapes emitting from them as they became still and lifeless.

"H-holy shit, I think they're dead..er. Again, or something. Shoot them a few times though to make sure they aren't faking it," Garrus told Brian, not wanting to get his hopes up only for them to be shot down.

 

[Captainguy42]

One arm after another Tommy pushed through the mound of zombies that had formed around him. When he got out he took a great breath before crawling out. He was covered from head to toe in bites, with chunks as large as golf-balls missing from his arms, legs, and chest. The left half of his face was plastered with blood to the point where he could not physically open his left eye. And pain soaked into every fiber of his being until he couldn't crawl anymore. So he laid down and breath in, then breathed out.

 

[NeoAC]

Brian had pulled away from the gun, a little bit stunned that all the approaching zombies just fell to the ground like that. Still, Garrus wanted shots and Brian was more than happy to serve them up. "All right then," he said as the minigun whirled to life again. The bullets sprayed out across the fields but they were just kicking up more corpse pieces, the only movement coming when they flew off their previous hosts.

Brian stopped firing and turned to Garrus. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're all dead out there you know?"

 

[tsatoma]

"This is good," Garrus replied to Brian as he watched him fire a number of rounds into the twice-dead zombies. He patted Brian on the shoulder and told him that he did a good job before heading back into the main hall to inspect the damage. Around him amongst the debris was his teammates, most of them looking quite bad from the suicide rush they had done.

"We did it everyone," Garrus told them all, smiling at the relieved faces that met his, "So now let's just head back and heal up. Have some candy and such before we start work on clearing out the many...many bodies."

A week later...

"Tomorrow the construction begins, and that's final. We've put it off long enough; it should have been started days ago," Garrus told his brother as he took a sip of orange juice, not bothering to look up at his brother.

"UGH! I hate construction! Don't expect me here the next month or however long it will take this time then," Leland replied with annoyance, taking a few of Renton's Cheerios before heading out of the kitchen and onto the coach. He heard a 'whatever' from his brother as he grabbed the remote, desperately hoping that there was something on TV this early.

 

[CounterAttack]

"Ai yai effing yai..." Katie murmured to herself as she finished shaping the last of the many topiary hedges that had been ruined in the zombie attack. She and Rowan had both copped hell for being missing in action for the entire fight, though the rant at Katie was nothing compared to Rowan's. She had heard a few snippets... 'dereliction of duty', 'expected to stand and fight no matter the odds', and 'sleeping on the job' came to mind. She found it hard to believe that the shapeshifter had slept through the whole thing when the Promenade was being torn apart, but that was what he had claimed.

The Promenade's gardens had been turned upside-down, literally in some areas. Katie had spent most of her time restoring them and growing new versions of the older trees and bushes. The past few times the Promenade had been attacked had taught her that no matter the beauty of her creations, it wouldn't last. As a result Katie had cut a large portion of the artistry from her home and its surroundings, seeing as it could easily be ruined by a simple flamethrower, and written up a list of the plants she maintained in order to keep the diversity that expanded her abilities.

"Just for once I would like things to go according to the god-damn plan," she said to herself, unknowingly quoting a certain cancelled TV series, as she continued her work. "Seriously, you would think that we could have a holiday in peace, but noooo. Something has to ruin our day and leave us licking our wounds for a good month or so."

[hr]

It was true that Rowan had slept through the entire encounter with the demonic zombies, but no-one believed him when he backed it up. The shapeshifter slept like the earth itself when his head was on a pillow; he had opted to take a nap before things went south, having had no idea what Renton was going to do to ruin the Society's day. Bizarrely, he and his room had survived the 'mission' untouched.

The lecture he had received was somewhat deserved, seeing as he was somewhat new to the Society and all. Technically he had near-unlimited energy through his shapeshifting; this didn't stop his brain from tiring, though, and sleep was usually a good thing in his case. He wasn't one of those people who could pull all-nighters and still feel fantastic in the morning.

Right now, though, his primary concern was food. Even shapeshifters had to eat sometime. With that thought causing a smile to play the edges of his lips, he made his way to the kitchen to find himself something.

 

[Captainguy42]

Tommy walked groggily into the lounge, he was bare-foot, still wearing plaid pajama bottoms and an old t-shirt. His left eye was bandaged up, it was taking a suspiciously long time to heal and the doctor didn't want to risk an infection. Tommy's skin was also notably paler, and his right eye had a heavy bag under it because he has not been able to sleep. Overall it was easy to see Tommy was still very worn down from the fight. His attitude didn't seemed to have taken too great of a hit though. He fixed himself a bagel with cream-cheese and raspberry jelly, and a glass of cranberry juice.

"Good morning guys." Tommy said, as he patted Renton on the head and sat down to eat, "So anything going on today?"

 

[tsatoma]

"Not that I know of. Tomorrow construction is beginning on the Promenade again as you might have heard with my brother's constant muttering about how much he hates it. Other than that though not much going on, which I think is a good thing. It's been a stressful week with all the clean up we had to do, the re-burials, and one again construction planning. You were lucky you didn't have to go to the meeting where we had to explain what the hell had happened to the city council. Yeesh," Garrus told Tommy, shaking his head as if to try to get the memory of that meeting out.

 

[elementsoul]

Unlike the entrances into the Promenade and the surrounding area, the workout room was luckily untouched by the zombies and remained in perfect order. This meant Tyson was free to go about his normal morning routine without having to wait for another month for the construction to finish. Fortunately Brain's healing powers were able to remove the healing time and physical therapy so Tyson was unheeded by it.

As Tyson walked out of his room after getting showered and dressed he headed for the kitchen to grab something to eat. The voices of conversations traveled down the hallway leading into so Tyson knew exactly what they were talking about when he got there.

"Ya I never thought they'd have such a problem with deadly explosives in an emergency. I'm rather more surprised that they didn't have a problem about me causing the Cafe roof to collapse unlike some other people who stay here." Tyson said as he walked in and gave a small smile to Leland, knowing he wasn't happy with the construction that was necessary because of the damage that he'd done.

 

[CounterAttack]

"Can't we just build some kind of reinforcement into the Promenade's walls or something? I'm sure a few tons of adamantium or whatever wouldn't go amiss," Rowan chipped in with a hypothetical as he began to rummage through the fridge. It was nice and cool with the door open. "Seriously, take this place apart and build a skeleton of nigh-indestructible material. I'm sure there's something in this bizarre universe that is impervious to damage."

Pulling out a jug of milk, the shapeshifter found himself a bowl and a box of cereal and dug in, keeping an ear open to the conversation.

 

[Captainguy42]

" Try to explain to my dad how I let nearly a thousand demons get loose. I swear I was scared for my life when I did that." Tommy munched on his bagel.

"I'm not sure how easily we could reinforce the place, or what's the point, something stronger will always smash it, so it's cheaper just to rebuild the place, thankfully we've got it down to a science now. We can rebuild this place from scratch in a month" Suddenly Tommy had an idea, " Hey Leland have you ever heard about the Auto-building tower?"

 

[tsatoma]

"I don't think adamantium actually exists. Even if it did, isn't it supposed to be really rare or something? Anyways we won't be tearing the whole place down, even though it's pretty much torn down as of now. Rebuilding it might be a good idea, but I know that problems will arise if that's done. There is a lot of history in this building, even the newer bits. The many newer bits," Garrus replied, sighing at the end. He brought the newspaper higher up, not wanting to discuss the topic anymore. "Let's just talk about something else okay? The new plans are already done, and the construction workers are coming tomorrow to start rebuilding. Today will be our last peaceful day before the noise begins, so I plan on enjoying it as much as I can."

----

Leland was a bit distracted flipping Tyson off behind his back to hear most of what Tommy had said. He faced Tommy after hearing the last bit though, scratching his chin as he tried to remember what he knew about it. "Yeah I kinda do. I remember reading about it in some of my books. It...rebuilds itself via magic whenever something happens to it right?" he asked Tommy, wanting to make sure he had the right one.