A Charity Gala to End Whatever Important Thing

[ngm_miscellaneous]

New York City high society had been absolutely buzzing over this April's charity gala by a certain Mr. Tony Stark. It was seen as exclusive, or as exclusive as his 200 person guest list could be. Some invitations were a given, like Tony's daughter Alexa, whereas others came from what the party planners figured as the right people to make the party memorable or talked about.

The charity event was for the charitable arm of Stark Inc., Stark International. Despite being for charity, it was also seen as a good way for businesses to be seen and network.

The event was held at the Hudson in the Library and Private Park space. It would comfortably fit the people into its 2,600 Square Feet.

Comments

Re: Library Garden 3

[pyroprincess]

Stephanie went from being distinctly concerned about the state of arachnids inside her to standing up absolutely straight, stomping the ground madly and summoning forth her unholy wrath to face the foolish angel who had wandered so far down from Heaven. Insomniac's jaw dropped for a moment and went to an absolute manic grin as he realized his fortune. As for her part, she summoned a pyroplasmic jet which brought her roaring towards Alexander, burning off her clothes steadily as she didn't care about controlling that element of her power, eyes glowing-blue white and a look of bloody, murderous glee etched into her features.

Re: Library Garden 3

[iced_cherub]

Bobbi saw the attack and tried to draw enough water to at least try to deflect it. So what if the bug stung her, she'd freeze more to slow it. Because that sounded like it would work.

"Stop! Please don't hurt each other!"

Re: Library Garden 3

[light_as_a_rock]

Eva slowly stood up, mechanically scratching and brushing at her arms. Her conscious mind was still confused and foggy, the mental defenses placed by Professor Xavier when she was just a toddler and her own metamorphic nature attempting to fight Insomniac's influence. Wasn't this a party she was at? Why was there a naked woman on fire? She didn't go to those kind of parties, did she?

Meanwhile, part of her subconscious was trying to expel that scorpion. She grew denser and denser, cracks spreading along the paved walkway from her feet.

Re: Library Garden 3

[hellfire_empath]

"Stop." Brooke glared at Stephanie, pouring all of her emotion into that simple syllable. It was a forceful command. "Now." She turned her glare towards Insomniac and lifted the hem of her gown, stalking towards him, skirts rustling. "And you." Brooke raised her chin and locked eyes with Insomniac. "Go ahead. Throw your power at me." So she can tap into the core of his powers and throw it back at him, but he didn't need to know that.

[vesper_verde]

Marcelo was very aware what was happening behind him in the library. With hearing like his, he couldn't miss the hiss of smoke and the explosions. He was at one of the sets of doors out to the garden. He had two drinks in his hand, one for him and some good scotch for Stephanie.

He scrambled out into the garden to find...

... his naked and flaming girlfriend trying to fry Alexander.

"Stephanie!" He had no idea what was going on, but Steph using her mutant powers so blatantly was all kinds of wrong. He set both drinks in his hands on a small table as he tried to get himself between Stephanie and Alexander.

"Querida, stop!" He was only human, but it was the best he could do with the reflexes he had.

[soulstealingstark]

Alexa was quite glad that she didn't get overly blasted. She was still annoyed at the Goblin, though.

"Science is my thing, not just armor. But we should get Joe out of here. You wanna carry him, Remi?"

[frostfurlady]

"Och, now tha's just disgusting!" Danielle can't help but mutter in reaction to the emotional energies all over the place now. But she tries to pull herself together to exude calm.

[aqua_gambit]

Remi tried to put up shields to protect the civilians. He glanced at the Alexa with a slight smirk. "I float corrected."

He reached over to the unconscious man with an invisible shield. Carefully, he used to shield to slide under Joe and lift him up. The Atlantean glanced toward the floating green menace but decided that he was more use civilians than in the battle.

[avengingwarbird]

Roxie waited a beat, making sure that Joe was alright, before whirling back and around and shot through the air, heading for Goblin. She focused the energies swirling around in her hands and shot off a dual set of braided energy beams at the glider, both Kree and Olympian powers crackling as they mixed and melded with each other. "Not so fast, Goblin."

[stormy_skrull]

Mary transformed again, into a giant spider, spraying webbing at the Goblin.

[legacy_of_evil]

Green Goblin attempted a laser blast to keep Warbird from drawing a beat upon him but the glider was struck. Smoke issued forth from the glider before it spared and one of the motors blew out, sending the Goblin crashig to the ground as Mary's webbing connected.

"YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!" Green Goblin yelled.

[avengingwarbird]

Warbird dodged past the laser blast and scoffed at him. "Really? Because that was really going to get me?" She landed and stalked towards him, unsheathing her mace once again. "Green Goblin, yes. But let's find out who's under the ugly mask." She raised her mace and started bringing it down towards his head.

[call_me_phobos]

Alexander was quite focused upon finding Insomniac's fears in order to bring him low, so he didn't immediately realize that Stephanie Shaw was attacking him.

The proximity of her heat and flame caught Alexander by surprise. The heat itself wasn't an issue as Alexander had spent time in the forge of Hephaestus alongside his father in the past. The plasma itself seared through his clothing, however, leaving the (demi)God of Fear mostly covered at the present time.

"Stephanie...we've only /just/ met!" Alexander quipped. "Besides, I'm spoken for by my muse, who is also your dear friend. You're very beautiful and probably a lot of fun, but THIS...just isn't going to work out." he grunts as the plasma licks at his skin.

And with that, Alexander vanished and reappeared behind Insomniac, whom he would attempt to grasp by the neck and bodily hurl /through/ the nearest wall.

[ngm_rogues]

He was slightly off-balance with his attempted slash so deftly dodged.

"True, it can. But I want things that take a little effort to destroy." He removed his other hand out of his jacket with a loose-lidded jar. With his stumbling due to being off-balance, the lid went flying off. The "disappearing dust" inside the plastic jar sprayed out in a loose arc.

Whatever the dust touched started disintegrating.

[legacy_of_evil]

Green Goblin sees the mace coming down toward his head and tries to toss a flash-bang pumpkin bomb at Warbird in a desperation move as the mace comes down. The mace connects with the side of the villain's head, stripping away the mask...and revealing metal and wire beneath.

The flash-bang is mostly for disorientation, enough to create some distance between the Goblin and the Kree-Olympian hybrid.

"You DARE strike me! You will pay for this insult, harlot!"

[stormy_skrull]

Blinking her multiple spider eyes, Mary sprayed more webbing in what she thought was the Goblin's direction.

"Hey! I'm the only person allowed to insult Roxie like that!"

[notmadeofglass]

"Everyone back away!" Tina thought quickly and used her access to the library's various climate systems to turn on the fire sprinklers in an attempt to diminish the effects of the powder.

[encyclopediaofcrime]

All right, now this was kind of serious. Stella nearly danced backwards, arms out to shove anyone near her back as well.

[pyroprincess]

Stephanie, for her part, stared Marcelo down, in virtually total non-recognition of him. Her expression was one of cold wrath, one he'd never seen in her before.

"Your funeral." She spoke, lowly, in a voice that was not entirely hers, as she sprouted a blazing whip of pyroplasm that streaked towards Marcelo, warping the air around it with heat, cutting through a lamppost between them like it was made out of warm butter.

[ngm_rogues]

In the brief moment of distraction, Insomniac had managed to set up an alternate mirror of himself, which he watched Alex take down- rather brutally.

Well. Try to avoid THAT ONE.

He focused his energies on inciting the crowd against Alexander, like some Bacchic fury of destruction. Would they be able to actually hurt him? Probably not. But let him deal with a few hundred suddenly enraged guests trying to tear him to shreds!

He threaded his way towards the crowd to where Brooke was, handily disguised as a party guest bearing a glass of champagne, which he promptly threw into her face.

"Ooops! Sorry about the face-melting acid! I do that all the time." And then he tried his best to believe that instead of harmless moderately-priced bubbly, that her face was full of face-melting acid.

"And ... do watch for the monkeys.

Yes. The monkeys.

The monkeys will destroy us alllllllllllll." Added to the bits of blood caked from his nose were new drips, as a giant horde of monkeys began appearing out of virtually nowhere to harass the assembled guests in pretty much any way that a monkey could feasibly imagine.

Which was a lot, because monkeys were psychopaths.

That's why Mike liked monkeys so much.

[iced_cherub]

"I Said stop!" Bobbi screamed when she saw the monkeys going for her, bad enough she thought Brooke was hurt. The area around her dropped several degrees as she lost the fragile control she thought she had. The nearest fountain froze solid, catching two of them as she dropped to her knees covering her ears. She wanted to go home, at least she knew the pool could withstand her if she dropped much lower.

[vesper_verde]

"Steph, it's me! Marcelo. Your-" His eyes widened at Stephanie completely and utterly not recognizing him. What had he gotten into here?

Marcelo had put up a bubble of silence around himself and Stephanie to try to contain the sound, make sure it was only his voice she heard. Though basically all the bubble did was keep people on the outside of it not hear the yelp of surprise as Marcelo got out of the way of the super hot whip.

He couldn't touch her. He couldn't do... what? He was a vigilante, not a hero. Other people trained for this. He just had to wing it.

Marcelo dropped he bubble of silence and scrambled toward a fire extinguisher he had seen near one of the doors to the garden.

[avengeriniron]

Well, that wasn't a good development. Tony stepped closer to the cloud of dust and activated his force field generator, trying to contain its spread without getting himself disintegrated.

[hellfire_empath]

There was a moment - maybe three - where Brooke froze and believed that her face was ruined, that half of it was melting off and scarred, and that no plastic surgeon in all of New York would be able to help restore her to her former beauty. She'd be like one of those unfortunate Real Housewives, her face completely ruined and immovable, looking like a cheap imitation of true class and grace.

And then she remembered. She remembered the illusions that Regan Wyngarde had thrown at her, the illusions that her late aunt had thrown at her, the illusions that her grandfather had thrown at her. Years of training, years of lies, years of learning how to sift between them and feel what was real with her emotions.

She tapped into that, and she tapped into the fact that Insomniac was using his powers on her, directly.

With that, his illusory hold over her dropped and Brooke smiled her bitchy smile and stepped towards him again, connecting with him, tapping into the core of his powers and turning it back on him. She'd done it once before, with that imposter Lady Mastermind, and she could do it again against this nightmare of a wannabe supervillain.

"Do you see that?" Brooke asked darkly as she concentrated an illusion around Insomniac. "Those aren't monkeys. Those are elephant. Tall, regal, majestic elephants." Pause. "And they're all stampeding towards you right now, with acid spewing out of their trunks."

[pyroprincess]

Stephanie turned for the moment. The human fool had fled, and she could easily hunt him down later. The strangely resilient one had not yet reemerged. She turned and started walking towards Brooke purposefully.

"Cease your foul magic, witch." Her power formed into a blazing nimbus around her, a halo and wings of pyroplasm that made her hard to look at, much less be around. Every so often, she stomped the ground as hard as she could to gain more power.

Insomniac for his part, noticed the elephants. Well ... elephants. Elephants! Elephants could be dealt with! He could become very small and avoid them! He scuttled out of the way as best he could, the illusion incompletely taking hold even as the illusions he had spread amongst the others at the party had started to fade.