The Black Out

[Etienne Mbane]

With a crunching cracking of bones, Etienne stepped out of the shadows behind Arthur, tossing the unconscious body of one of the beasts aside. A flicker of turquoise light shone from behind the solid black eyes as what little starlight was out gathered within. His hands and face were marred by dozens of cuts, but none of them bled. He stopped, nodding once to Arthur, then faded back into the shadows.

He stepped back out of the shadows near the door the students had emerged from, knowing it didn't quite get closed behind them. Pushing it shut and hoping it would lock, he turned just in time to meet a trio of the beasts, closing quickly. An almost animal snarl growled in Etienne's throat and the three froze in their advance, their eyes the bright glistening of terror as he walked toward them confidently. Seeing more behind the trio, Etienne took his guard at the door, knowing he would have a much greater chance if he had the solid building at his back.

The Loa within him pulsed, whispering in his ear to rend them limb from limb. Eteinne bared his teeth and dropped into a ready crouch. If he couldn't go after the pack leaders of these monsters, at least he would stand his vigil at the door to where the students lived inside.

[Lorne Hazlewood]

The bat creatures crashed into the group below emitting terrible shrieking sounds as they did. Lorne really wished his heightened senses weren't so heightened at that point. Lorne retaliated by rolling back with the creature and kicking it over his head. He rolled back up to his feet and spun around punching the creature as hard as he could. The creature staggered a bit before it took off running and flew away.

The display the students mustered quickly sent the other creatures following after the first.

Lorne looked at the rest of the group, "These guys aren't so bad." Just then the arm of a robot fell inches in front of Lorne's face slamming into the ground with a thud before him. Lorne let out a surprised yell and fell backwards looking up at the sky at a black silhouette of some giant creature with its pitch black angel wings spread out fully gliding on the open sky. The wing span must have been twelve to fifteen feet at least. Whatever it was it had made short work of one of Tosh's bots and was flying in the direction of all the other creatures. It disappeared over the top of two buildings nosediving at the ground behind them.

[Cadence Calloway]

Cadence arrived, now free of the glass created by the combination of her own powers and Seth's sand, and was once again aflame as the creatures retreated. Her heart was pounding and she was on a bit of an adrenaline high as she hovered above the group of students. She watched the path the giant creature took, until it became lost behind the buildings.

"Those things are all over the campus," she said. "They all seemed to be heading to one spot though. I bet that's where that big one is headed..."

Adrenaline rush aside...she was plenty scared, and instinctively her thoughts reached out for her boyfriend Kyle. At such times, the young psychic always seemed to know what to do, what to say to allay her fears. How many times had he said he would make sure nothing happened to her, and how many times had he said so long as they worked together, everything would be fine? Way too often, she thought to herself. There wasn't time to wait for him to come flying in to the rescue. She'd been doing this for over a year now, and she needed to learn to stand on her own two feet and stop relying on someone else to come to the rescue.

....okay, so she really wasn't all by herself, since there were other students here afterall...

She continued to hover as she added, "I don't think rushing that group would be a good idea though. We need to...I dunno, thin the group out a bit."

[Arthur Rawlings]

They weren't dead yet, which was always a good thing. The little ones didn't seem too eager to fight even odds, which was a very good thing, except that it meant they were smart, which was a bad thing. He realized he was calling nearly person-sized bats small, but that monster had changed the scales pretty radically.

"The ones on the ground are all heading for the center of campus. If we've seen all of these things, there's still more than enough for them to take us two on one. If there aren't more. I'm gonna go take a look, then thinning sounds brilliant."

He looked up at Cadence the Beacon floating overhead as he faded out of focus again. "Ready to douse, yet, or do you figure they're blind and the big one won't start a dogpile on you the minute he sees you coming from a mile off?"

He didn't wait for an answer before trotting off the way the crawling creatures had gone, cursing himself the whole way. He'd seen the burnt scrap of sweatervest back there; he was actively leaving the scene of a naked girl. These things owed him big.

[Lorne Hazlewood]

As Ar rounded the corner from between the two school buildings he could see the creatures converging on a building across the grounds. He could see bright red arcs of light flash outside the building entrance but whatever was making them was rapidly getting overwhelmed in the dog pile of creatures.

Ar looked at the building again to see what it was they were all converging on. The health center? What's the deal with that?

[Lily Shen]

Lily pulled herself back together after the last ambush. She was happy to know that her powers worked just as well on these things as on people; the one beast that went after her made the mistake of getting too close to her bare fingers, and it left with the open wounds to show it. Brushing herself off and cracking her knuckles, Lily put in her two strategic cents.

"Standing here out in the open does us no good whatsoever. I say... we follow the big one. I think we've taken on bigger things, and it might be like... the mother or something. Take down the mother and we weaken the whole group, right?"

Focusing her goggles on where the giant beast was last seen and feeling a little cocky, she made her way to the shadows, slinking towards the building that the beast dove behind, whether others followed her or not.

[Arthur Rawlings]

"Tosh, it's the health center. Pass it on." Then, after a short pause, he continued with a sigh, "Going in."

Gonna get yourself eaten, Ar, he thought to himself as he crouched down and launched into a massive leap. Whoever was fighting wasn't gonna last much longer on their own. So why not give them a little company while we both die horribly?

He landed on a window ledge above the approximate center of the fray and dropped down, thinking very heavy, hurt-y thoughts, on the neck of one of the creatures. There wasn't much opportunity to get a clear look at who he was going down with before another was in his face. "You looked lonely," he called over his shoulder, arms firing a flurry of punches. "Figured we could go for the Doubles title in Epic Death Scenes."

Hopefully, talking was enough to distinguish him from the writhing masses. He didn't dare shut off his cloaking; it could very well be the only reason he wasn't missing bigger chunks of himself yet.

"More help is on the way," he said with a swift kick in what he estimated was this species' nether region. "I hope."

[Epic Scale]

People underestimated things. It was what Trev counted on with his powers. Sure, the big flashy stuff like volcanoes were cool, but the simple fact of the matter is that the earth was made up of a little thin crust that was resting in pieces on a huge tide of molten rock. It was actually pretty easy to concentrate on this chunk of rock, bring the magma up THERE, and then have the whole shebang break up THERE.

The ground split underneath one of the flying things, and there was a burst of super-heated steam that whistled out and cooked it where it hovered. Temperature and pressure, all so delicately balanced that a tiny push suddenly cooked a monster.

Trev grinned, looking for another target as he hummed "This is Halloween."

[Toshiko Rikuo]

The sudden loss of her largest bot stunned Tosh. A full year of planning and testing and going back to the drawing board had just been reduced to scrap in a few seconds. "That- I... What?!" If a person could have a BSOD, Tosh was experiencing one. The shock slowly slid away to reveal a cold calculating frame of mind. Quickly Tosh ordered her remaining robots towards the health center and relayed Ar's command to the rest of the students.

"These things are heading for the health center. I know it probably won't do much good, but be careful out there. What I can only assume is the leader just tore apart my big gun," Tosh said, flatly. "Robots can be repaired and rebuilt. I'm ordering the force field generator I built to seek out you guys. It should be there in no time."

As the drone detached itself from the wall and took off out the window, Tosh jumped from video feed to video feed, trying to get a good look at what was attacking. And what they wanted from the health center...

[Lorne Hazlewood]

Will punched one of the creatures sending an electrical shock through its system. Another one jumped on his back and as Will doubled over from the weight he concentrated sending out an arc of red electricity into the creature knocking it away and sending it into convulsions on the ground. He stood there momentarily before Ar. His black and red tights were scratched up from the creatures' claws and teeth. He was visibly bleeding in a few places. He had some kind of electrical conducting rig strapped on over his shoulders.

"I'm sorry."

That was all he could get out before another creature attacked and he turned to punch it as well sending another arc of red electricity into the monster.