watchtower_rebirth | Sunnyville, California

Current Location: Sunnyville High School
Current Music: "Love You 4Eva," by Valentina Cazador

Entry tags:

Sunnyville, California

It's a gorgeous Southern California day in Sunnyville: the sun is shining, music's blaring from cars and open windows, young people are dressed for the beach, seemingly if they're just going to school.

Whitney Winters has come to hate the sun. She sees it as just a big lie glitzing over the horror that lies beneath the world's surface. And she's seen horror. Horror that's cost her friends, family, her very innocence,

"Yeah, yeah," she says to herself. "Pity party, table for one." She shakes it off and shuffles to class. That annoying Valentina Cazador is playing in the hallways. "That girl is the devil," she thinks, now realizing that she's late, and doesn't even have her chemistry textbook. She sighs, and doubles back to her locker.

No sooner has she pulled the book from the locker, though, then she realizes that the hallways has been blocked by a wall of ice.

"Miss Winters," says a pale white man with a sort of Jack Frost motif costume, "It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm afraid I need you to come with us."

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Outside, the SUV has just pulled into Visitor parking and Jakita emerges, squinting against the bright sunshine before sliding on a pair on sunglasses.

Assuming that Adam will follow her lead, she heads towards the nearest entrance, scanning as she goes for anything out of the ordinary - no screams, no explosions, nothing melting, no doorways to other dimensions.

Ordinary suburbia sometimes makes Jakita's skin crawl, if only because she's seen what can be under the surface. Ignoring the stares that she's getting from passing students (and the whispers that follow), she opens the door into a long hallway.

As she does, a familiar whisper of cold air brushes past. Jakita's felt that more often than she'd like in fights involving the old man, and since she knows where he's supposed to be...

The door bangs back against the wall as she pushes through at a run towards the source of that cold draft; seeing that the hallway appears to be blocked off ahead does not stop her, and she crashes directly into the barrier.

Adam had just gotten to the doorway behind Jakita when he saw her take off at a sprint. She obviously knew something he didn't...and was willing to trust her instincts.

SHAZAM!

He flies in and after her with the swiftness of Heru, hitting the barrier simultaneously with Jakita.

Edited 2017-03-22 00:42 (UTC)

Cameron Mahkent had been assured this would be an easy job. Snatch a teenage girl. Really, how hard could it be. Of course, he realized at the time that no one hired the fire power that was attached to this mission if they weren't expecting trouble.

But this ... this was completely unexpected.

When the pair crash through the barrier, he barely has an instant to leap forward to avoid getting injured. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the Winters girl scamper. Fine. His partners will catch her.

"I don't know who you are," he says, firing his ice ray at Jakita. "Definitely not Power Girl."

Quickly, he trains his vision on Adam.

"But you," he says. "Been a long time, Adam. Betray any teammates lately?"

Without warning or hesitation, a huge, hulking figure pounces on Black Adam.

"BORN ON A MONDAY" shouts Solomon Grundy, hammering his fists into Adam's face.

Oh lovely. The zombie.

Adam absorbs the initial attack, as Grundy is very powerful but won't knock Adam out with one punch. Shu's gift.

A quick survey of the building shows it to be of standard construction. Heru's swiftness combined with the strength of Amon allows Adam to spin backwards around Grundy, place him in a hammerlock, then fly straight upwards with him. He would have preferred to do so at Mach 6, but with a building full of schoolchildren, he didn't want an international incident. Or worse, to be chastised by Garrick.

Once he clears the building, THEN he tries for Mach 6. In the open air, it would be loud, but less destructive.

Edited 2017-03-23 01:54 (UTC)

More than willing to let Adam deal with the shambling hulk, Jakita throws up her arm in an attempt to absorb it. Making a mental note to hassle Elijah until he approves the manufacture of cold-absorbent armor, she shakes off the ice and strides forward.

"Ok, bargain basement Jack Frost, I'd highly recommend that you stop whatever it is you're trying and just surrender now."

She's not expecting that to work - it rarely does, since most guys just want to posture and make like they have a chance to make it through this without bruises and broken bones.

Grundy struggles and flails, trying to kick and tear at Adam, but it's to no avail. But the monster doesn't stop, and there's an agonizing sound of something. like bones contorting as he twists and claws.

On the ground, Icicle is far more calm, assessing his mystery opponent.

"OK," he says, watching Jakita's movements. Despite the gaudy costume, he's clearly a professional, and not as reflexively clownish as a lot of supervillains. "I have no idea who convinced Adam to come after this kid, too, but he and I go back, and even at his best, he's not on the Justice League's reserve list. So that means this is something else."

He steps backward and drops the freeze ray, raising his hands as though he's surrendering, but a sudden smirk makes it clear it's only a charade, and suddenly Jaikita finds herself encased in ice.

"Artemis, honey," he says on a wrist communicator, retrieving his gun. "We need to bolt. That'll probably only hold this one for a few seconds. Sooner if Adam gets back."

Whitney Winters has run away from the melee, but quickly has become aware that she's being stalked.

Artemis Crock, also known as the Tigress, pounces on her prey. tackling her to the ground.

"I've got the girl, Cameron," she says, but Whitney -- seemingly terrified before -- seems to have regained her composure, and now there's a look in her eyes that seems older, more powerful. It seems to radiate death.

"I really didn't want to do this again," she says, and suddenly, the school's floors begin to shake, and grey-skinned hands begin to claw through the floor, dead corpses breaking from the ground, rising, shambling ... and soon, the Tigress is screaming as she's engulfed by the dead.

Adam is no stranger to the sound of bones breaking and grinding...it's happened to his enemies more times than he can count.

Within seconds, his flight speed has him over the Pacific, where Adam then toss-spins Grundy as hard as he can towards the Pacific Rim. It won't SOLVE the problem, but it will get it out of the way sufficiently for Adam to assist Jakita.

It certainly doesn't take her long, Jakita flexing and attempting to move inside in order to crack the icy shell. Standing in a rain of shards, she points at Icicle.

"I even gave you a chance, you twat, and you have to go and do something like that. Now I don't have to... be nice... what the fuck is all of this?"

She knows what Whitney Winters can do - it was all in that dossier handed over in the office. But seeing in action is something different, and it takes her a moment to take in the crawling dead.

Icicle starts a rejoinder, but is then distracted by the hoard of zombies that have begun to appear everywhere. Instinctively, he fires his gun and forms an ice wall between he and Jakita and the hallway where they emerged, but already frightened screams are beginning to erupt from all directions.

"Artemis," says Icicle, over his com link. "Artemis, can you hear me."

He looks at Jakita with a serious expression.

"Look, no one warned me about the zombies."

Adam returns from over the Pacific and hovers in front of Icicle.

"Which way did the girl go, Mahkent." Adam says, simply, yet menacingly.

"Adam, I think we can just follow the trail of creepy crawlies and find where she went to. But you..." A finger stabs towards Icicle, and Jakita moves towards him.

"Take that wall down or I'm going to punch it down, and then punch you until you can taste time. Then you're going to come with us and help fix your damned mess."

Icicle doesn't even hesitate.

"No need to lean on me, Wonder Woman in Leather. Tigress is in their with the cast of 'The Walking Dead.'"

With a gesture, the ice wall melts. On the other side of it, a full-blown panic has broken out, as children and faculty members run and scream and basically try not to get their brains eaten.

"I knew the money was too good for a job that sounded this simple," says Icicle, firing his ice ray to freeze a zombie that was closing in on a gaggle of cheerleaders.

Edited 2017-03-28 22:31 (UTC)

"Jakita, please find Ms. Winters. Mahkent, please try to stay out of my way"

With that, using the speed, power and strength that were the gifts from his gods, Black Adam starts cutting a swath through the horde of zombies ripping them in half dozens at a five second clip. The wisdom of Zehuti allows him to discern the zombies from the humans as he makes his haste.

On the other side of the school, the zombies have formed what looks like a protective circle around Whitney, who seems ... remarkably calm. She's glassy-eyed, as though she's not really there. Artemis Crock is partway down the hall, having toppled some lockers as a barricade, from which she's firing crossbow arrows.

Unlike Grundy, who teenagers might refer to as a "zombie on steroids", the masses appear to be of normal human level strength and endurance. Additionally, they will find his brains very hard to reach under unbreakable skin.

Adam powers forward to the area where Whitney is standing, and is seemingly allowing the zombies protecting her to swarm him.

"Make a hole" Adam shouts out to Jakita. Time to take this outside.

"C'mon, Frost. You're with me." Despite the chance that he might slip away in the melee, Jakita will not turn away someone who might be an ally even for a short time.

It doesn't take long for the undead to figure out that there was more than one target, and soon Jakita is throwing punches, even taking one of the creatures and using it as a battering ram to clear a path to what appears to be a large pristine picture window overlooking a wide green lawn.

CRASH
First the zombie, followed by Jakita in a shower of glass.

"Adam, the way's open."

Adam pushes through the zombies, swiftly scooping the girl into his arms, despite the groaning protests of the zombie horde that surrounds them.

"Awaken, girl. Your classmates are in danger."

With barely a glance at Tigress - and a slight narrowing of his eyes in warning - Adam launches himself towards the exit Jakita has provided, barreling through a legion of the dead.

No sooner has Adam picked up Whitney than he can hear the distant whisper of voices ... his wife, Shiruta, and his sons Gon and Hurut, all gone centuries. And a louder voice: Adrianna Tomaz ... Isis ... They seem to come from everywhere and nowhere, distant, asking nothing ... but present.

But the Wisdom of Zehuti makes one thing clear: Something is wrong with the girl. There's no way Elijah Snow would have allowed her to live relatively undisturbed if he didn't feel she had control over her powers. No, someone is doing this to her.

Edited 2017-04-04 01:36 (UTC)

Adam bursts forth from the school building, out onto the clear - his eyes closed for a moment as those voices of his past assail him.

Teeth clenched, his eyes re-open and search the area - seeking the puppetmaster of this scenario, so he might have an outlet for the anger burning inside him.

The Winters girl remains in her trance,a s the zombies continue to run amuck.

Icicle sees Huntress and breaks for her, creating an ice shield to protect them from the coming onslaught.

"Did you know would be zombies," said Huntress? "Because no one said anything about zombies. is this why the Gentleman Ghost wasn't sent with us?"

"I'm thinking so," said Icicle. "This is going all pear shaped. I'm pushing the panic button."

Icicle pushes an unseen button on his glove, and there's a crack of lightning across the sky ... it sounds a lot like the Wizard Shazam's lightning, but it couldn't be ... and then, there's a figure standing among the smoke ...

A tall, humanoid figure ... muscular, with horns and red skin, a pentagram carved into his chest.

Sabbac.

"Finally," he says, looking at Adam. "An actual challenge. I was afraid my time in the Injustice society would be boring."

A sneer of contempt crosses Adam's features. Invoking the swiftness granted to him by Heru, he sets Whitney safely on the ground and turns to face his ersatz replacement in the Injustice Society.

"It appears they have lowered their standards since I worked with them, Sabbac. Prepare to be broken."

Jakita's hip-deep in zombies, fighting her way towards Whitney and calling out to her.

"C'mon Whitney, we've got this in hand, time to tell your friends to get their dead butts back to sleep. Plus it's going to be a bitch to clean up..." The arm of the closest zombie comes loose in her grip and she tosses it over her shoulder with a grunt. "We'll never match these limbs back up at this rate."

The flash of lightning catches her attention for a brief second, but she's back to zombie punching almost immediately. Adam will handle that, and when he can't, she'll step in.

Sabbac smiles wildly as he barrels toward Adam, fists flying savagely, and without restraint.

"Truly, Adam," he says. "It is you and I are who are meant to be rivals, not Shazam's weak children. Only you and I are true warriors!"

Whitney Winters stirs a bit, shaking off whatever drug Tigress paralyzed her with. Her eyes flutter and she looks up at the zombie hoard.

"Not again," she says, staggering to her feet. The zombies all turn and regard her, as if waiting for her instructions.

"Ok, you guys are up WAY past your dead time," she quips. "You are totally grounded."

And at her pun, the zombies seem to recede into the ground, disappearing as if they were never there, except for all the damage they've caused.

Adam braces himself for the impact of Sabbac's fist, absorbing a savage body blow to allow him to position himself for a brutal double-handed swing at the demon's jaw.

"You are no warrior - a warrior has honor. You are a brute, and nothing more."

Jakita moves to Whitney's side, keeping an eye on Icicle and Tigress for their inevitable move to go for the girl again.

"Hi there, Whitney, I'm Jakita Wagner with the Planetary organization. There's some things we're gonna need to chat about, but I think we might want to go to a starbucks or something. Something with a high probability of coffee and low probability of kidnap and mayhem."

"Planetary ..." she says, absently. "There was an old guy a few years ago. He interviewed my parents. Something about 'my aptitudes.' He was surrounded by ghosts.

Whitney looks at Jakita in the eyes, as if evaluating her.

"You've got a few ghosts surrounding you, too, don't you?"

Jakita was right to be wary of Icicle and Tigress, though ... the zombies gone, they've resumed their mission ... Tigress fires a crossbow bolt at Jakita, which Icicle follows up with a freeze ray ...

Meanwhile, Sabbac launches himself into Adam with abandon, looking to pummel him into submission quickly.

Submission is not an option - Adam endures blow after blow, teeth gritted, choosing his moments to strike for greatest effectiveness.

Such as shutting Sabbac's infernal mouth with an upward knee to his jaw.

Sabbac laughs hysterically as Adam's blows pound into him, and he returns the favor. There is a sound like bones cracking underneath his impervious skin, but he seems to be relishing the pain.

Whitney looks toward Jakita, and there's something in her eyes that says she wants to stay and fight, but she knows that's a bad idea.

"OK," she says. "We need to motor. What about your friend?"

Then, the pair are hit by a nauseating wave of disorientation, and suddenly it seems as though the world were turned inside out.

At the end of the hallway stands an older man with a goatee, leaning on a cane.

"Wizard," shouts Icicle! "Glad you're here, this was way crazier than advertised.

"Indeed," says the Wizard. "But worry not, dear boy, re-enforcements are here. Artemis, if you'd be so kind ..."

At the Wizard's commands, she shoots darts at Jakita and Whitney. One hits Whitney, and she collapses again.

"Our employer wants the girl," says the Wizard, "and he has uses for Adam. Subdue him and bring him along."

Jakita has fallen to her hands and knees, dizzy and fighting off the feeling that the world has literally turned upside down.

"You like ghosts, Whitney? When we're done here, let's take a field trip to Hong Kong."

She squints up at the wizard and climbs to her feet, positioning herself over Whitney's comatose body. Adam can take care of himself, and as much fun as it is to watch the two powerhouses tear each other apart, the girl has priority.

"Do that again, Gandalf, and I'm gonna have to go and throw up on you before beating your face in."

Adam snarls - his clash with Sabbac has taken an unsavory turn, with the way he seems to enjoy the pain.

He leverages his speed, then, trying to get an opening at Sabbac's spine - the demon won't laugh THAT off. If he cannot end this soon..

Sabbac' screams a demonic howl. Adam's impact has hurt him. Enraged, he flails madly at his opponent, throwing blow after blow of titanic power.

The Wizard glares at Jakita and seems to move to attack her again, but Icicle instead throws a barrier between Jakita and his team, which would at least delay her advancing on them. Zard takes the cue, and instead turns his attention to the more dangerous threat ... Adam.

With a wave of magic, he tries to blind the warrior.

Meanwhile, on there side of the ice, there is one member of the Injustice Society left. Tigress regards Jakita, and eyes the unconscious girl.

"I can't let you leave with her," she says, but the look on her face says she knows she can't take Jakita alone.

Jakita knows just how this will go, but decides to give Tigress a chance.

"I can leave with both of you, if you want to go ahead and just surrender to me. That's the only way you leave with a minimum of bruising."

One chance. That's it.

His sight begins to fade, as Adam whirls on the source of the spell.

"ZARD!"

Adam knows he cannot endure Sabbac's blows for much longer without the aid of his sight, so fury dictates his strategy - he grabs hold of the demon's body, and - screaming with rage - attempts to fly them both straight at the Wizard's last seen location, hoping to crush at least one of his foes in this last effort.

Tigress eyes Jakita, and gives her a respectful nod.

"We both know I can't do that," she says, before leaping a kick that, if it connected with a normal person, would be deadly.

Zard sees Adam coming and disappears in a cloud of smoke ... replaced with what at first appears to be a hulking silhouette, but which is quickly revealed ...

"BORN ON A MONDAY!!!!"

... by Zard's magic, Grundy's back, and he leaps straight into the oncoming Adam and Sabbac.

Blinded, and sandwiched between two fighters of comparable strength to his own, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Grundy is insensate to pain, and Sabbac seems to enjoy it.

Adam isn't sure where Jakita is at the moment, but he calls out, hoping she's close enough to hear - or far enough away that she doesn't need to.

"Run!"

It will be minutes before they can fully subdue him, but the fight is effectively over.

The kick staggers Jakita back a step, but that's it.

"As much as I'd like to continue to punch you until you fall down, we don't have time for this."

She reaches out with both hands to grasp the front of Tigress's costume, swivels, and tosses her in the general direction of the fight happening between Black Adam and the others. They'll sort it all out, and in the meantime Jakita needs to move Whitney away.

She picks the girl up and takes off towards the car.

Grundy and Sabbac continue to pummel Adam, until he finally falls. Icicle watches, but instead of coming to their assistance, goes instead to see to Tigress, who seems bruised, but not seriously harmed.

"Well," says Zard, reappearing in an explosion of smoke. "Not the ideal outcome, but at least we won't return to our employer empty handed."

He conjures mystical shackles to further bind Adam.

"Yes," he says. "This one will suit the master's plans nicely."

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Sunnyville, California

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