2013.09.25 - Fire Hunt

It's autumn in New York. The air is chilly, the trees are painted all manner of colors befitting the season, and the splashes of firey red and gold and purple are just about the only thing that Pyre feels makes this awful city and awful planet any less awful. Sure, there's other things, like being able to return to Titans Tower and get warmed up again after patrolling or going on social outings or whatever, but the point is that in opinion she should not have to. She should be able to go outside without the thermal suit she wears almost all the time now to keep from freezing to death. Her tolerance point for cold temperatures is significantly higher than 70 degrees Farenheit. Like around 100 degrees.

It's no longer just a matter of dressing warmly in the Tower. It's now a matter of survival that she stay as warm as she can with the means available. The thermal suit she has now covers almost all of her body except for her head, and she's very much hoping they find a way to fix that in the near future. In the meantime she has pumpkin-shaped ear muffs keeping her ears from freezing and falling off, and a long orange and green scarf decorated with more pumpkins wrapped around her neck and the entire lower-half of her face.

Say what one will about Pyre, but she is -- after being taken out of everything she has ever known and thrown into a strange new (and hostile) environment -- making the effort to adapt. She is even being more careful about what she says, trying to learn the social customs of Earth instead of just belittling their stupidness. She is also being quieter of late, though that may also just be the cold making her sluggish. It's hard to tell. But most of the time during Titans social visits she doesn't talk much anymore. But she at least shows up for them. She hangs out with the others, she does things with them, and she doesn't make herself a nuisance by being loud and complaining and reminding people how feeble and inferior and dumb their technology is.

There's another factor to consider, though perhaps not one that may have occurred to the others. Pyre is a very long way from home, and aside from an A.I. on her arm, she doesn't really have anyone else from her world to talk to. Even with team mates she may or may not actually be friends with, she feels lonely and homesick. Still... There's one person Pyre feels some kinship towards. Kara Zor-El is also 'stranded' in a sense. Pyre doesn't recall if Kara has other family here on this world or not, but she figured as two aliens from obviously advanced cultures, far from their own planets, they should 'commence hanging of the out'.

This is why Pyre gave Kara the invitation to do so. And that is why she is sitting in a smallish cafe, in a corner booth, with her legs pulled up to her chest, her fire-red hair practically being used as a blanket as it hangs in her face, a very large cup of hot chocolate in her thermal-gloved hands, and a table covered in the remains of all manner of cafe treats, snacks, and meals, all heaped together. But not quite as much as Pyre usually eats. Maybe the cold is slowing her metabolism after all or something.

She siiiiips from her hot chocolate and looks out the nearby window while waiting for Kara to arrive.

And unbeknownst to her, there's a large metal object streaking towards planet Earth from outerspace, hidden from most forms of detection by its design, materials, and equipment.

Autumn was one of Kara's favorite times of the year! Tied right up there with other such favorites as Winter, Spring, and Summer. Supergirl was just one of those cheery people year-round who found things to like about every season: snowmen and pristine white landscapes in the winter, blooming new life in the spring, the fashions of the summer and the ability to wear less and show a little skin, and the pretty colors and in-between styles of the Fall as people transitioned from t-shirts and shorts to sweaters and jeans. But then, Kara Zor-El didn't have to get cold in the winter nor hot in the summer. So she got to experience all fo the pleasant parts and ignore the things about them that people hated.

And now Kara Starr is entering the cafe, a little jingle overhead as the bell tolls the arrival of another customer. The bespectacled teenager in a light blue turtleneck sweater and high-ridin' jeans looks around briefly, spots her quarry, smiles, and waves. She slides into an empty seat across from the other alien, taking the large carryall off of her shoulder and setting it down. The thump it makes when it hits the floor indicates there's probably books in it.

Judging from that it'd be a fair assessment that Kara has just come from school. "Hey, sorry am I late? Had to wait for all these 'walk', 'don't walk' signs, people in the way. Honestly don't know how Kal and Karen manage to do it. I spent all that time wishing for a secret identity and a life of my own, and now I just miss not super-speeding and flying everywhere!" She rambles on breathlessly, pushing some of her hair out of her face.

"What's with the bundle up? Is the thermal suit not cutting it anymore?"

Pyre jumps a bit when Kara appears next to the table, moving a hand from her mug of cocoa to the hair hanging in her eyes so she can actually see the other teenager. She puts the mug down on the table and puts her arms around her legs, hugging them to her, before saying, "Pyre is have time to eat five iced creams, twenty-four bisquets, six doughynuts, drink two cafe mocha, four heated cocoas, and one-half 'king-size' Butteredfinger. All of that and bag of chips!" She reaches over and lifts an empty back of nacho doritos from the padded bench she's sitting on and shakes it to illustrate its emptiness. Then she tosses it on the table and Pyre puts her hands in the air above her head. "Not late at all! Pyre has barely start!"

It's rare when Pyre isn't frowning about something or -- more common of late -- looking kind of distracted and distant. But her smiles are even rarer. She looks so much younger when she smiles. Like she's really just another teenage girl, not some kind of super-powered alien princess. It helps that her pointy ears are covered right now. Right now she's smiling, and putting her feet down on the floor as she scoots towards the edge of the bench. The smile goes away a moment later though as she pulls her scarf up to cover her mouth and nose and puts her arms around herself. Sounding kind of muffled, she answers, "Suit has only cover body. Head has get so-so cold like opposite of sun!" Pyre stands up and says, "Pyre is get Kara munchies?"

Yes, the spoiled princess offering to go get food for her friend rather than expecting it to just be brought to the table by virtue of her being a princess with a guest clearly in need of sustenance. How much things change. She scowls a bit and looks around the cafe, as she adds on, "Waiter-ess is so-so slow like super-sloth what stops at red light." Well, okay, some things stay the same.

Meanwhile atmospheric entry occurs high above, but the flames that should streak from the interstellar object are smothered by heat-absorbing materials. It re-orients itself on the location of its target, and starts flying towards New York City.

Kara's ear twitches, she cants her head, as if listening to something only she can hear. Then she smirks, "Sounds like someone's stopping a robbery in the lower Bronx." Her crystal blue eyes follow the bag of Doritos (product placement FTW), raising her thin yellow brows in surprise. Mostly in surprise that that's ALL that Pyre's eaten so far. "Well, maybe there's... something that can be done about that?" Not that she could think of anything outside of Pyre wearing the thermal suit equivalent of a ski mask everywhere. "The Justice League might have something or know some method. I'll talk to Kal next time I see him. Or Wonder Girl, I hear she's made friends with one of their members."

But when Pyre rises to get food, Kara's shaking her head quickly and reaching out to prevent her from wandering off in search of the waitress or going to the counter. "No, no! I'm fine. I already ate on campus. I'll just get something to drink whenever she wanders by. And don't worry," She offers Pyre a conspiratory smile. "We can just reflect her service with the tip."

The blue-eyed blonde doesn't pick up the atmospheric entry yet, mostly because she's not trying to detect it due to not expecting it. She doesn't have the visual angle, and is busy looking indoors anyway, and it's arrival noise is covered by the background noise of all of New York. So she turns to the side and begins digging through her enormous brown carryall.

"So what did you want to meet up about? We could have just met in your room, if you're that cold. We might have to see about taking you somewhere down south for the winter. Maybe the Bahamas or the Keys. It's warm year-round closer to the equator. And ice won't fall to the ground in the dead of winter."

Pyre sits back down and hugs her legs again when she is informed she doesn't need to go pick up a bunch of snacks that fill both arms and then some. She shrugs at the question of why here and not in her room, and looks away, out the window again. Red eyebrows come down slightly as she thinks quietly. "Hoh?" she says at the mention of the equator. "Sound like Pyre kind of place!" She smirks briefly -- even if her mouth is hidden behind a big fluffy pumpkin scarf -- and then focuses back on Kara. "Pyre... Pyre not is good at say things sometime. Stupid-dumb translator in brain has broke, but Pyre not always say right thing any-regardless." She looks down at the mess on the table and reaches out a gloved hand to poke through one of the ice cream dishes for a sign of any cookie dough chunks she may have missed. "Sometimes Pyre wrong. Kara keep teaching Pyre anyway. Kara keep being nice even when Pyre not nice. So... So..." Pyre's face is red as she tries to work out the mechanics of language needed to express gratitude. Not because of her translator, just because she so rarely thanks anyone for anything.

"So... Pyre has thanking you. Also Pyre has sorry for the being of a 'canine'." ...That's probably not the word she was looking for. "Pyre has inviting Kara for say this and also Pyre lonely--" She is cut off as a fast-moving object streaks down from above very quickly, trailing sonic booms in its wake, and then lands on the street just a block from the cafe. Yes, 'lands' not 'crashes'. At the moment before impact, it unfurls ten spindly, tentacle-like legs that then gain segments and become more spidery, only to absorb the full force of the landing without more than denting the street. Of course there are a bunch of cars on the street too, and the automobiles have a less of an easy time stopping than the alien spider-machine. Its main body seems to be some kind of large, smooth, silver-black sphere.

Pyre is staring at it from her seat in the cafe, clearly able to see it even from where she is. She frowns and yells out, muffled by her scarf, "Noh-meh-daa! Has Pyre not even time for heart-to-heart confessio--" Suddenly a trio of red circles appear on the surface of the sphere, coming together and aiming at the cafe almost as if in response to Pyre's words. The circles paint Pyre with a vivid bright-red bullseye that contracts to a point on her forehead.

Pyre pauses in the middle of her complaining, realizing something is wrong, but not having the reaction time needed to dodge as a pin-point of blue light builds up on the alien spider-sphere-thing's surface facing the princess.

"Hey, don't mention it." Kara murmurs with a small smile, looking up and to the side at Pyre, momentarily halting her digging around in the giant bag she had with her. "Us aliens need to stick together, right?" Or maybe it was just Kal's influence (though she preferred to think it was her parent's) that made her amicable and understanding towards everyone. Even people from the bottom of the ocean who were regularly threatening those who sailed through the Bermuda Triangle. Not that she'd met THAT particular redhead since their last encounter on the tanker.

"We're both fish out of water, and I took a little time adjusting, too. Not like I didn't cause my own bit of property damage when I first emerged from my ship."

As Pyre goes on, she takes her hands out of the bag, sets it aside, and folds her hands on the table in front of her, where there was room between some of the redhaired alien's discarded dishes. She figures since Pyre is obviously trying to say something important, she should probably pay attention to it! ...And then that thing lands.

Immediately, Kara stands up, scowling out the window through her glasses, wearing her best Supergirl expression, sending her chair skidding backwards across the floor. "Looks like we'll just have to talk later. After the beatdown." At least this time it didn't appear to be (ugh) MAGIC! But then the thing begins to draw a bead on Pyre. "//NO//!"

Pyre didn't have Supergirl's nigh-invulnerability, and probably didn't heal as well either, she didn't really know. Or want to find out. She wanted to go into the bathroom, or at least a handy phonebooth, and change, but there wasn't time. For Kara Zor-El the world slows down. For everyone else she simply becomes a barely-discernable blur.

The super-powered blonde smashes through the glass, moving forward faster than the shards could even fall or finish breaking apart, moving through them, both fists out as one of her favorite sweaters is shredded in slow motion. As blue as that dot is becoming, Kara's eyes glow just as red in opposition as she places herself directly in its path, setting a collision course. Either her fists were going to hit it, or whatever it was about to discharge was going to hit her.

And if this was some alien friend-finding ray of Pyre's home people come to rescue their wayward princess? Well... she'd have some 'splaining to do.

Wouldn't be the first time.

Pyre's red eyes go wide when she sees that energy build-up, but in the time that has happened, Kara already leapt up and smashed through the window while all the other people in the either clear the area like reasonable human beings or stand around and stare like total goonies, flown down the street, and gotten hit by a flesh-searing beam of blue energy -- right before then continuing on to smash through the sphere of shimmering metal. It actually has a hole through it and a bunch of its mass displaced every which way like it exploded from the force of Kara's impact. Was it that easy? She just destroyed it like that?

No such luck. As Pyre gets up off the bench of her booth and starts to fly out through the smashed window herself -- after leaving a huge wad of money that covers all she ate and then some -- she sees the metal reforming nearly like liquid. It just flows back together, and this time, the smooth surface starts to become indented and gain armor-like plates. But here's some good news! That beam that zapped Supergirl? It did... Just about zero harm. Infact, the worst it would have done is make her feel kind of chilled. It only zapped her for a fraction of a second before she pulverized the alien thing shooting the beam, of course, so maybe enduring a long-term exposure would be bad for the health, but at this point the blue beam seems to be ineffective against Kryptonians.

"Stupid-dumb no has attack Pyre's friend! Is BURN!" she calls out as she releases flamethrower streams from her hands at the robo-thing while flying in the air. NOW everyone is vacating the area. The flames strike the sphere and its silver-black plates turn red for a moment... Before then going back to black and turning liquid again in the location being bathed in flames. More targetting lasers appear from between the armor segments, while another few appear on the opposite side of the sphere, trying to track Kara's movements. It doesn't seem Pyre's fire is actually having any effect on the thing. And it's armed with some kind of cold ray. Heat-resistant materials? A cold-weapon? Targetting Pyre specifically out of a whole street of other people?

It's unlikely this is a coincidence. It was probably DESIGNED to take out Pyre, or beings like her at the very least. But it doesn't seem to be designed for fighting super-strong invulnerable people.

That was it? Kara would almost pause in complete and total surprise if she wasn't busy punching the ever-loving crap out of this thing that was trying to zap her and the Princess. Wait, scratch that, it was just trying to zap the Princess. She sees it beginning to charge another beam of focused energy at the alien, and puts two and two together. She may be blonde, but Kara was also a student of the Science Academy of Krypton before the planet succumbed.

"Pyre, take cover! It's shooting cold!" Cold like Kara's breath, and heat like Kara's laser vision didn't seem to have any effect, either. And punching it wasn't seeming to have too much effect if it could just reform. That left her with a few options, but none of which could be performed in a crowded city full of people.

She doesn't jump in the way, not this time, instead forming knife-edges with her hands and punching them downwards as she tries to land on top of the thing. She tries to just claw her way through the body of the ship or device or whatever it was using pure brute strength, to try and pry it open like an egg even as she activates her x-ray vision to attempt to see within, to find out whether it was a piloted craft, or remotely operated.

And somewhere in the back of her mind she fervently hopes there's no one around with a cameraphone who would take pictures of her fighting in her civilian disguise!

And then there were three. Two of them blonde. Wonder Girl comes flying down out of the sky, conveniently having been in the neighborhood when she heard all the sonic booms. She doesn't know what's going on, but she knows a potentially messy situation when she sees one. Kara punching the eff out of a big armor-plated sphere thing in civilian guise, Pyre shooting fire at something that seems to just be soaking the damage like a fricking Exalted, and a shout about shooting cold, all while people run away or continue rubber-necking like true tourists who don't know how dangerous it can get in this city. The psuedo-Olympian smashes a nearby fire-hydrant, causing it to spray up into the air and rain down on everything -- also obscuring visuals of Kara from nosey onlookers in the process. Not to mention if this thing shoots cold, maybe it will freeze itself or something.

"Any idea where this thing came from!?" Cassie calls out. She has no real idea what's going on, but it's clear this thing is dangerous if Kara is willing to risk exposing her secret identity in order to tear it apart with her barehands like this.

Pyre hears the shout about it shooting cold right as several laser beams converge on her location and more pinpoints of blue light appear. Her eyes are wide again, but now for a different reason as she starts flying every which way to avoid the beams that doggedly track her. Blue rays of cryogenic energy lance out, trailing frost on the faces of buildings, on the streets and sidewalks, and on one of those trees with the pretty colors that Pyre had admired. Unlike Kara, they all freeze really good from the exposure.

As Kara lands on top of the thing and starts scanning it, she'll find that the initial impact of her knife-hand strikes is very little. The armor plates crack under the impact but might actually hurt her fingers a little. But she DID do damage, and it's not reforming like before. Does damaging when it's hard harm its ability to change shape? X-Ray vision reveals the metal is very dense, but not so dense she can't make out the blurry, liquid-metal interior. There's no indication of it being piloted. Further, there are cracks that run deeper than the small fractures in the outer armor. Whatever damage the Kryptonian is inflicting while it's hardened seems to carry shocks through to the rest of it. Enough impacts, regardless of how tough the armor is, will likely destroy its ability to function.

The issue, then, is getting it to hold still and stop pulling out new tricks long enough to suffer all those impacts. Dozens of long, sharp metal spikes from in the spaces between the armor plates and streak upwards like a nest of living blades at the alien on top of the sphere, trying to dissuade her from staying there. Unlike the cold attacks, the blades may actually hurt. Though Kara is too tough to be impaled or anything, they may very well be capable of cutting her skin and drawing blood. The cuts would be shallow, but if this thing is doing what it seems to be doing -- adapting to its opponents as time goes on -- then who's to say it won't just make the spikes sharper or harder or something next time?

Cassie arrives then, and while most people were already fleeing, those who remain also take off when water starts spraying everywhere. The frost beams tracking Pyre hit the water and create long strands of ice that block the energy emitters. The sphere stands up on its spidery legs, and the legs resume their noodly, curly, tentacle-like forms as they reach out to try to grab Pyre out of the air while whipping at Wonder Girl to ward her off. Pyre manages to avoid for now, but the water is hindering her a bit too. She lets flame erupt from her entire body, making the water in her immediate vicinity turn to steam that further obscures visuals in the area... So that she can fly higher into the air, while calling out. It seems the machine reacts to Pyre's voice, so maybe it will focus on her and not the other two. "Pyre think she has know where is from! Talk later! Break stupid-dumb machine now!"

"The sky, apparently! Maybe LuthorCorp?" Because it WOULD be Lex Luthor who tried to kidnap alien princesses. Lord knows he spent enough time discriminating against certain alien races during his criminal endeavors. "Glad you're here though, we need to take this thing somewhere safer than the city to dispose of it!" She doesn't rend the thing as well as she had hoped this time. Damned thing. Then the spikes come out.

It's not really the sharpness, nor the density, of the thing striking her, it's the force per area that decides what cuts the ridiculously strong skin of a fully-empowered Kryptonian. Thankfully, this thing, whatever it was, didn't put forth enough to start stabbing into her limbs, but it does give some rather painful pokes. Enough to get her to lift off of the outside of the thing anyway.

"I have an idea!" The blonde lacking the big S on her chest calls out, hovering just low enough to grab the bulb on top that's loosing all those cold energy beams... and blowing on it. Not particularly hard, but COLD. Artic cold. Freezing cold. Let the damned thing try to cold-blast it's way out of a block of ice blocking its emitter!

"Wonder Girl, gimme a hand and lets show this thing what lower-orbit looks like!"

"...Uh, okay!" Cassie calls out. If Pyre knows where this thing is from that is attacking her but feels it's too important it be broken now to stop and complain and ridicule, then maybe it's really best not to question it. She hasn't been around Pyre as much as Kara has, so her mental image of the princess mostly amounts to her pouting or yelling or saying unintelligible things while expecting to be treated like royalty. When mental tendrils lash out at her, one of them gets her full in the face, leaving a bloody welt from her forehead down to her cheek on the opposite side. "OW! LIKE, SERIOUSLY OW!" she yells as she tries to dodge the lightning-fast whipping limbs with her vision unfocused from the pain.

When Supergirl calls out her plan, Cassie floats back enough to rub her eyes (accidentally rubbing blood into one of them, so now she has to keep that one closed. Ugh!) watches as the sphere is frozen all over, and then steels herself. "Ho-kay! Not sure if I can fly that high, but I'll try." Then she zips forward trying to get underneath the thing as Supergirl lifts the machine into the air, and tries punching its underside repeatedly, from various angles, trying to provide further lift without exposing herself to that spike trap that the other blonde got nailed with.

"What do we do once we get it there? Won't it just fly away? Or did someone actually just drop it from the sky?" she calls out between punches.

Pyre stays above the machine as the various cryogenic emitters scattered across its surface are frozen over. It starts using spikes to try to break through the ice, but it's already being lifted into the air, and though it tries to reach its tendrils up to lash out or even to attack Wonder Girl as she pummels the underside of the large metal sphere, she's doing damage similar to what Kara was doing -- though with more blows involved -- cracking the plating and limiting its ability to change shape. About half-way up, both the top and bottom seem to be 'locked' in armor form, and incapable of shifting to anything -- even spikes. But the sides are still shoving metal protrusions through the ice, and one of those protrusions produces other protrusions, which in turn produce others, branching out into a complex web of metal tendrils that then turn their tips as one towards Pyre high above. Pyre keeps yelling down to keep the machine's attention.

And that's when the tips of the tendrils start shooting themselves at her like darts. Pyre does not escape unharmed this time. A few of the metal darts strike her, only slightly slowed by the thermal suit she is wearing, and giving her painful wounds. Pyre shrieks out loud. She has never, not even once, been truly injured. She has been in danger before, but not really HURT. The pain is a shock, but as she stops flying higher she grits her teeth, narrows her eyes, and calls out, "Is can fly, yes! But only if has one piece! Kara, has throw hard! I burn! You freeze! Not-Fire-Proof-Girl punch!" Did Pyre mention she is doing a really good job at remembering names now too?

"It made some kind of controlled landing. We're gonna see how well it does on a Deep Impact-level crash!" Kara calls out as she and Wonder Girl take it higher and higher and... yes, higher. Sure, she probably could have taken it all the way up by herself, but it was a whole lot easier when there was someone else to distract the thing from trying to get her to loosen her handhold. She takes it up, up, and away, stopping in the lower upper atmosphere, just short of the altitude where Cassie would no longer be able to breathe.

"What'd she say? Burn, freeze, punch, throw?" Kara grabs hold of the alien space thing with both hands now, and starts to spin. Like a humanoid typhoon (without all the Love and Peace), she begins to twirl and twirl, around and around, fast enough to cause her own mini-tornado up in the air, maybe even fast enough to disorient a machine! Though this thing was suited for space travel, so maybe not.

But it's when she's reached her maximum velocity that she lets it go... hurling it with full super-force towards the Earth. Specifically towards an isolated and uninhabited portion of Greenland where the asteroid-like impact (provided it doesn't right itself) will do minimal damage to civlian and wildlife. And, just to make sure, she follows it back down to Earth at super-speeds, and is more than willing to give it a little pile-driving help if it proves reluctant to be at the center of a crater.

Wonder Girl calls out, "Well, actually I think she said to throw it so she could heat it up and then you could cool it way the eff down and then I could break it once it gets brittle or somethi--" Buuuut Supergirl is already spinning with the thing and then it's thrown way far gone far dead gone far away (far). Then she goes to chase after it at super-duper speeds, leaving Wonder Girl with Pyre. "...So, uh, was it really important it be destroyed in that way you said or is that other thing going to work too? Cause I'm not sure if I can get to wherever she threw it in time to help."

The machine is thrown. It flies all the way to Greenland, and its tendrils reach out and... Totally soak the impact like it's nothing. No crater. Then Supergirl smashes into it from above and NOW there's a crater as it is pushed down into th ground really hard and sends cracks spreading outwards. Cracks also have spread across the machine itself. None of it is changing shape anymore. But there's a suspicious red glow tracing the cracks now, all building up to a single point at the thoroughly caved-in peak of the once-sphere, now-squished-like-a-jelly-donut-sat-on-by-the-Hulk.

Back with Pyre and Wonder Girl, the princess hugs her arms to herself and shivers at the cold up here and then just shrugs. "No matter how break. If break, is okay. No problem of the 'O'. Just make sure no has can send distress signal."

And that's when a bright red beam of radiation of some kind lances up from the machine and high into the sky, and then out into space, carrying a transmission. 'Anti-Fire Hunter Probe failed to eliminate target.' Then the radiation condenses to a single point at the center of the broken remains, and the 'metal' starts burning and sizzling like bacon. Was it... Organic metal of some kind? Pyre said it was a machine, so it probably wasn't 'alive' like a person. Whenever Supergirl gets back, it will be explained, and any concerns assuaged.

And then, to both Supergirl and Wonder Girl, it will be explained that this machine was probably sent by certain assassins who are masters of genetic engineering... Assassins who have made attempts on Pyre and her family's lives before... And whose technology have let them track Pyre down. They're called the Assanti. And they are one of the only things Pyre fears. But right now, she has metal shards embedded in her body and she would like to get her wounds treated and in out of the freezing cold.