Arwen was thrown back against the wall by the Empress's hot pink wrath. Well, being that she was considerably heavier than the other villains heroes, she was actually thrown partway through the wall and ended up stuck there, embedded in the wood and drywall. It took her a moment to free herself,but when she did, her eyes were glowing bright green. Error 967: power management system malfunction. Surge detected. Recommended action: immediate shutdown to prevent dangerous electrical discharge. Secondary action: remove this unit from service and tag 'out for repair.' Warning: further operation of this unit can cause data corruption. To hell with that. Justice was calling. She didn't have time to take a dirt nap. Arcs of electricity danced along her fingertips and flickered between her antennae, like lightning rods. The car battery plugged into her charging port began to fizzle and foam, as if the battery acid inside was boiling over. Arwen pulled herself free of the crater she'd made when she was slammed against the wall. The others were trying to hack the imposter's magic chains off of the door. "Move. This one does not need doors," Arwen said and punched her fist through the wall next to the door. She reached through with both hands and ripped away the paneling, tearing at it like a mad beast until a hole was created, then she stepped through. The ruptured battery was spilling acid all down her side. Her false skin began to melt away in places, revealing the metal beneath. "You are resisting arrest!" she said, pointing an accusatory finger at the Empress. A flying couch slammed into Arwen, but she caught it with one hand and flung it at the raging mystic. "Stand down, villain!"
His men were still kicking at the door, joined by Albert, when Arden just made a hole through the wall. Abbadon chuckled. Well, this works just fine, he guessed. He went through, and immediately regretted it when he heard a very audible tearing sound. Bugger, that was an expensive suit. He struggled slightly with his suitcase, and managed to crawl in. The main office was like a hurricane. Abbadon barely avoided a pencil, aimed at his eye with the speed of a bullet. A sorry end for the former king of the pit, he'd say. Arden was in the middle of telling the Empress off. Abbadon took out his phone. "Oh please listen to her, transy," he said. "Unless you want the whole world to know your secret identity."
The couch that Arwen threw knocked the Ethereal Empress out of mid-air and sent him rolling across the floor. At the same time, the cyclone stopped and everything crashed back to the ground. But the couch continued to tumble through the air through the floor-to-ceiling window, shattering the glass into a thousand shards of death. The Empress stood on shaky legs, pink waves rolling off of him. The left side of his face was scowling hatefully and the right side was covered in bright crimson blood. "If you thought that would stop me, you are mistaken, robot," the Empress shrilled. "I have faced bigger and badder monsters than you. I have traveled back in time and studied with the greatest sorcerers in history: the Witch of Endor, Moses, Circes, Medea, and Akhenaten. I have defeated the Serpent in the Pit and slayed the Dragon of Time. I have killed Gods. Nothing can stop me...especially, an OVERSIZED TOASTER ON STEROIDS!" His voice suddenly became deep and gravelly, making the ground tremble violently beneath their feet. That's when the Empress noticed Abbadon was recording him. "YOU DARE?" the Empress barked. He flung out his hand and sent a blast of power in Abbadon's direction. It crushed everything in its path and knocked the demon off his feet. He flew across the room and slammed into the farthest wall. "FILTHY DEMON. YOU ARE BENEATH ME. YOU ARE ALL BENEATH ME." "Fuck this!" Stinger growled, and he started firing at the Ethereal Empress. But the Empress slapped each energy-ball out of his way and started walking toward him in slow, menacing steps. Suddenly, the door to the hall opened and in walked Ethereal Empress's assistant, a pretty twenty-something guy wearing nerdy glasses and a tailored brown suit. "Sorry, Ethereal Empress, but the League of Heroes sent a message!" the assistant stammered. He was out of breath, like he had just ran all the way up the stairs instead of taking the elevator, because he was in that big of a rush. "They said they're on their way because they have a feeling somebody is coming to take Morgana's artifact..." The assistant trailed off when he saw all the villains standing in the room. Instead of getting scared, though, the assistant raised his hands and they started to glow dark maroon around the edges. "Do you need help, Empress?" he asked without taking his eyes off the villains. "No, Diesel!" the Empress snapped in his normal voice. "I can handle this on my own, you aren't ready!" Diesel shook his head. "Sorry, but I'm staying. I've been learning magic from you for a year now, I need some live action experience!" "The wall safe!" Black Witch was shouting from where she was laying on the ground. "Somebody open the goddamn wall safe!"
Albert threw his axe down and scrambled through the hole the 'oversized toaster' had made. The Empress has my sort of humour, he thought, crawling over to the safe. Crushed furniture littered the room, and so he gained many splinters. Hands shaking from pain and growing age, he reached the safe. Either everyone would have to shut up so he could crack the thing or they had to get the upper-hand and coax the code out of the Empress. "What in hell's name do I do now?" he yelled into the chaos.
The blast was powerful, destructive, but was poorly aimed. Abbadon smiled to himself as he side stepped the attack. He really got under the sorcerer's skin. He walked around the room, edging towards the safe, his gun trained at the Empress. "Now, now honey, let us not get ahead of ourselves. You see, I took your picture in the room back there and already sent them to my fellas. So the only way your pictures will not be all over the world media is if I come out alive, with Morgana's artifact. Understood, emperor?"
The Ethereal Empress scowled at Abbadon, but he did not attack. He clenched his hands into fists and gritted his teeth, but it was obvious that he was conflicted. "Don't let them leave," Diesel snapped. "He sent your pictures to someone. They're out there. Even he keeps his promise and doesn't send the pictures, if you let him go there's no telling if he'll blackmail you in the future. We can't bargain with terrorists." "You're right," Empress said. A gray undertone came over his perfect caramel face. He didn't like it, but he wasn't going to bargain with Abbadon. "I DON'T MAKE DEALS WITH THE DEVIL," Empress continued in his grating demon voice. "ESPECIALLY NOT A SECOND-RATE DEVIL THAT LOST HIS THRONE." He flung out his arm again and this time he did not miss. Abbadon hit the back wall and went straight through it into the bedroom. "Yes!" Diesel cried in excitement. Then he started to wave his hands in complicated patterns. Dark crimson runes appeared in the air and then locked together in the shape of a long staff. "Runestaff, don't fail me now!" Diesel yelled as he swung the staff at Arwen with all his might. At the same time, Stinger tried once more to shoot at Ethereal Empress, but this time Empress slapped it right back at Stinger. The bug alien cried out and flipped through the air, landing on his back. "Not again," he groaned in pain, steam rising from his body.
Abbadon grumbled as he stood up. When he next entered the room his calm demeanor was abandoned. Now there was a dangerous look in his eyes, something inhuman, inherently evil. Whenever Abbadon had that look it meant that somebody was going to die horribly. He an his men went over to where Diesel was attacking Arwen. The two men pointed their guns at the assistant's head, while Abbadon shot at the young man's foot, aiming to injure, for the moment. "You have lost your reputation," he said. "Refuse to cooperate and you will lose your assistant. What is with that demon voice anyway? If I'd known better, I'd say we used to be old chums back then."
Black Witch watched as Abbadon and the Ethereal Empress faced down, but she couldn't get involved with that. No, not when the League of Heroes was on it's way in the SuperJet. "I can't go to jail!" Black Witch screamed at no one in particular. "I'm too pretty for jail!" So she summoned her telekinetic powers and focused intently on the safe, her eyes turning all black and her hair rising limply around her head. "Just...open...goddamnit!" she hissed through gritted teeth. Finally, the top corner of the door to the safe bent open enough that someone could reach inside and grab its inner contents. Inside, there were several stacks of money, a thong made of real pearls, a tiara encrusted with pink diamonds, a pink-diamond-studded choker, a few bejeweled rings...and what looked like a human rib bone. "The rib!" Black Witch gasped. She was sweating profusely and a trickle of blood was falling from her nose and from both her ears. "The rib must be the artifact!"
Albert took a double take, Black Witch was bleeding terribly. However, he plunged his hands into the safe grabbing the rib with one hand and a few sheets with the other. He jammed the rib and the money into his coat pocket and did the best smile he could. God, I need a smoke.
Arwen caught the magical staff with one hand and something strange happened: she didn't feel a compulsive urge to rid herself of it. Apparently magical staffs aren't on the pre-programmed list of things considered 'weapons.' Probably because there's no such thing as a 'magical staff.' Her grip tightened like a vise until the staff began to buckle and fold. She was about to snatch it from Diesel and give him a good whack over the head, but Abbadon's men suddenly surrounded the young lad. She knew they would do far worse.On the other end of the room, she saw Albert take something from the safe. "Mission Accomplished," Arwen said. "Attack mode disengaged. Defense mode, activated." She suddenly put herself between Diesel and Abbadon's men, at least as best she could. She was still gripping the tip of his staff, limiting his movement."Tell your master to yield, villain, and this one will leave peacefully. The League must be stopped. They are not the heroes you believe them to be. Even a toaster can see that."
When Abbadon shot Diesel, the Ethereal Empress gave him a look of death. "IF YOU KILL HIM, I WILL FIND A WAY TO BRING HIM BACK," Empress said slowly. "BUT IF YOU PULL THAT TRIGGER, YOU WILL FIND NO SAFE HAVEN ON THIS EARTH. YOU WILL HAVE NO REST. I WILL COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY DESTROY YOU." Then he turned to Arwen and listened to her with a deep scowl. "The League?!?!" the Ethereal Empress hissed. He dropped his booming demon voice and used his own as he pointed a trembling finger at Arwen. "This is waaay beyond them. You break into my house. You assault me. You take pictures of me. You shoot my Diesel. This is not about the stupid League anymore. This is personal." Speaking of Diesel, he was laying on the ground, holding his bleeding foot. "Die villains!" he threatened through gritted teeth. His eyes flashed maroon and the Runsestaff broke apart and became a swarm of glowing runes. Half the runes wrapped around Arwen and formed snakes that slithered around her body. One of them bit her chest and took out a huge chunk and spat it out on the floor. The rest of the runes covered Abbadon's men's guns, glowed intensely, and the guns melted into liquid metal. It severely burned their hands and they screamed in agony. "Black Witch, we need you to get us out of here!" Stinger growled. "I...need...to...rest," Black Witch replied faintly. She was laying on the floor, curled up in the fetal position, her eyes half-closed. "THERE IS NO REST FOR THE WICKED," the Ethereal Empress boomed. She waved her hand and four projections of the Ethereal Empress appeared in front of him, made of glowing pink magic. While the projections advanced on the villains, the Empress raised her arms and began to chant again. "RA UN NEFER NETER AH SAJEB!" Balls of pink energy appeared around him once more and began to seep into his blazing aura. "I...need...one...of...th-those," Black Witch said weakly. She pointed at the pink balls surrounding the Empress. "Bring...me...one...of...those." Meanwhile, high in the night sky above Dark City, a second moon appeared...no...it was a gold portal, sparking around the edges. Out of it emerged a sleek black jet, followed closely by a flying female with fiery red hair and a golden spear. The League of Heroes was coming.
Abbadon was seriously running out of options right now. It seemed as if nothing could threaten the Emperor. Now his men were completely useless, at least, almost. There was still something they were useful for. Die for him. Keeping his gun trained at the sidekick, he spoke to his men. "You heard the Black Bitch," he said. One of the men lunged at the pink balls, managed to grab one, and went back to the goth witch. The other grabbed the projection and began wrestling it. Abbadon then took his phone and speed dialed his security manager. A backup plan is always useful. "Need a chopper at the Ethereal Empress' tower, with renforcements, now. Oh, and please tell Carter to send out those pictures of the Emperor, with big FRAUD written nicely beneath it."
