2014.09.06 - Church of Shadows

Eleven PM in North Gotham, in a small Eastern Orthodox chapel near Bowery, the caretaker responded to a silent alarm going off. Having noticed the culprit being what seems like a living shadow damaging the church property, he called the GCPD to report it. By the time the GCPD's responders can arrive, the walking shadow is in the process of breaking one of the statues in the chapel into small pieces.

Police Detective Del Toro is covering for the detective that covers the graveyard shift, her usual shift is second which usually ends about now. Still, being the most Junior detective, the strange and unusually tends to wind up on her desk eventually. She is not far after the first responders at the scene. Of course, the first responders are not having much luck. Bullets, nightsticks, and Handcuffs are not going to hurt a shadow.

The bullets just fade inside the shadow, not coming out on the other side, but not doing anything to hamper the shadow. At least the barks of guns firing, and possibly the impact of the bullets, are enough to draw her attention. The walls, ceiling and floor start screeching in a pitch and volume akin to someone dragging a knife across a classic blackboard. "Go away!" To back up this point, a spear made out of the same kind of shadow manifests in her hand.

Detective Del Toro tells the others, "Secure the perimeter, we do not want any civilians coming in. I will go in and evaluate what we are dealing with here." She walks in, a leather purse over her shoulder, but no visible weapons and both hands in plain sight. She says, "Hello, can we talk?"

That spear gets thrown in the Detective's general direction, but the shadow is aiming to miss, hitting the bench behind her instead. If it passes as close as intended, Del Toro might notice there's something off about that spear, despite missing it's got a brief, cold brush where it passes closest. The shadow replies in the same way as before, "No. Go away."

Detective Del Toro frowns, hoping she really does not need to get rough. She says, "Now listen, I am not exactly the person to talk to sbout christyian religion, but the church is in my beat. Id it too much to ask that you stop desecrating it? I mean, SOMEONE did a lot of work setting this up...and the church does a lot of good for the poor."

Black, shadowy wings unfurl, and the shadow moves to take off, using them to hover in mid-air within the chapel. At a higher volume, but otherwise in the same unnerving way, she replies. "I AM BLASPHEMY!" Which apparently is answer enough of its own, as the first spear dissolves while a second spear forms in Blasphemy's hand. She stabs at a nearby statue, toppling it.

Angela sighs, this is not going to be the easy way it seems. She steps outside and tell the others, "Since Gotham has not yet given us an SCU, better see about getting the SWAT team down here. I know the commissioner has some special rules about Vigilantes in these case, so I am going to go give one I have worked with a call. Hopefully that will be enough to do the job."

Angela steps into the nave, out of sight for both the Police and "Blasphemy", then pulls out an ornate wooden box from her purse and removes a Jade amulet carfed like the head of a tiger flanked by it's two front paws. She places this on her belt and her uniform transforms into that of the White Tiger. The White Tiger enters the room in an acrobatic blur and crouches facing Blasphemy, then growls, "This is my hunting ground, I do not allow other entities here."

This time, Blasphemy aims to hit. She casts her spear towards the White Tiger, trying to take into account the movements of this entity. "Begone!" She shrieks, a second spear forming while the first one is in mid-air, and she flies to increase the distance between herself and her newly found opponent.

The White Tiger is agile, and can easily dodge the spear. She is not sure about attacking, but she can defend herself against mist enemies...at least until she starts getting tired. She does need to see if she can figure out a way to strike back though.

Angela studies her foe. If bullets are useless, so too are likely to be most of her weapons. First, she needs to determine if she is fighting an animated shadow. That means a tiger paw strike to find out of the foe is solid. It is a blow that could be fatal to a normal human, but is not really any more devastating than a bullet, it probably will not really hurt...

Blasphemy just throws the second spear at another statue, taunting the White Tiger to stop her instead of attacking directly. The first spear vanishes, and another spear forms in Blasphemy's hands. She's using her flight to avoid getting too close to the White Tiger as much as she can. Then the tiger paw strike hits, though the shadowy stuff is solid enough to stop the blow, it definitely seems to push the flying shadow back a bit, it's kind of like hitting a stretched out piece of rubber. Blasphemy responds immediately, trying to use her fresh spear to hit the White Tiger from this close.

The White Tiger blocks the spear with a tonfa she pulls out of her belt, even as she drops back to the ground. Well, so there is something solid there, not just shadow. Now, experiment one...is that shadow hurt by light? White Tiger jumps again, landing on a ledge, and hits Blasphemy with a Flash-bang, followed by a sharp kick in the same area that the light hopefully weakened.

The tonfa isn't destroyed, at worst it's bent. The spear is fairly solid, but only the business end does any harm to non-living, non-magical objects. Blasphemy looks straight into the flashbang, it definitely doesn't seem to hurt her, though the kick does connect, pushing her back and into a wall. She pushes herself back into mid-air, and another spear starts to form, and she's trying to stab from close range. "BEGONE!"

Well, it was worth a try. Some shadow beings do have a weakness for bright light, according to reports. Time to try something else. The White Tiger stows the Tonfa and brings out a Monriki Gusari. Perhaps this thing is solid enough to be wrapped up and entangled.

As she misses again, Blasphemy turns to immediately trying to stab again, only to get too close to the Monriki Gusari before she can hit. The chain of the entangling weapon wraps around her left wing. It disappears and Blasphemy drops to the ground, she quickly manifests another one, and takes to the air again, increasing her distance. She casts her spear at the White Tiger, trying to get a hit in.

The White Tiger notes the wings are not entirely solid, and decides to find out how solid they are. She dodges behind a column and swarms up it. When she reaches the fancy carvings near the ceiling, she swings around and tosses a handful of Shirikin to see if they can damage the wings.

The wings are basically the wrong way to hurt Blasphemy, some of the shuriken hit a wing, and get stuck in there. This doesn't seem to affect her movement at all. Blasphemy decides to attack the nearby furniture instead of attacking the White Tiger, trying to draw the latter to close up and attack her from up close and prevent her from damaging more of the chapel.

The White Tiger measures things with her eyes and jumps out, holding one end of the rope while swinging the other to wrap around a pillar. The rope catches and swings her around sharply, bringing her into a curved trajectory that starts long and swings closer to the pillar with every twist around it...and catching the flying figure in the rope and catching her between the rope and the pillar.

The rope certainly catches Blasphemy, though she doesn't give up. She uses one of those spears, using the sharp end to help cut herself free. "You will not capture me." Her inhuman screeching comes from the building once more as she weakens the ropes. She's not showing any extraordinary strength as she struggles with the ropes, her every move designed to further weaken the rope.

Angels bluffs, "That rope is made of unstable molecules, it can not be cut by normal means, and adapts to the powers of anyone wrapped in it. You can only escape it by mortal means." Well, she in not entirely sure it is proof against magic, but she know it works on mutants...

Blasphemy doesn't give up that easily, whether the instability of the molecules creates a subtle flaw and she gets lucky, that the White Tiger is just bluffing, or that magic actually does work against it just fine, the rope eventually snaps, and Blasphemy is free again. She screeches, "LIES! Filthy Christian Lies!" And then she smashes a window by barreling into it, doing one bit more damage while trying to leave.

Actually, the reason that the White Tiger carries a large purse is so she can hide most of her toys in it, it basically turns into her utility belt, she has been bluffing to try to get Blasphemy to stop struggling. Sometime a bluff works, sometimes it fails.

It seems the only reasonable weak point is at the very base of the wing, the stress of the interaction of the wing and the robe, it has to make that spot more vulnerable. She will attempt to drive her blade into that point, it is the only chance she has to actually hurt this thing that she can see (though she does seem to be driving it off in annoyance).

The White Tiger manages to cut off the wing, and the shadowy wing fades away almost instantly while a new one forms. It causes Blasphemy to drop to the ground for a bit, but she lands gracefully and runs, now outside. Once the new wing has fully formed, she takes to the air, rapidly accelerating towards supersonic speeds.

The White Tiger has kept Blasphemy busy long enough for the Swat Team to show up, if not to fully deploy. As soon as she starts running she is subject to attack with high powered rifles with armor piercing shells.

Which do more than previous gunshots, in that they actually seem to force a reaction that implies pain judging by Blasphemy's movements, but not enough to stop her from taking to the air and speeding up. Being this dark in the night, and moving so fast almost certainly makes it very difficult to track her.

Angela moves back inside and out of sight before resuming her human identity. It is always hard to put aside he power of the White Tiger, and some day she worries she will not be able to. She eventually exits the building, after checking to see if there are any obvious clues left behind. She tells those outside, "The White Tiger was here and chased off the being calling itself Blasphemy. I tried to help, but could not do much. I wonder how she gets in and out unseen like that?"