The Deadly Dozen
Loki (The Reigning) (MU) -
superstrength/durability, shapeshifting, powerful sorcery including teleportation, invisibility, illusions, mind control, animation of inanimate objects, magical energy projection and shields, etc. Possesses the artifacts of Dr. Strange
The Magus (MU) -
superstrength/durability, energy projection, teleportation, phasing, flight, can steal souls and manipulate spiritual energy via the Soul Gem
Magneto (Pre-Fatal Attractions) (MM) -
controls metals and electromagnetism
Darkchylde (MR) -
teleportation, minor sorcery, magic-disrupting Soulsword
Vandal Savage (1 Million) (DR) -
immortal, enhanced physical stats, genius intelligence, various weapons and technology from the far future
VS.
B'wana Bet?
Baron Helmut Zemo (with Moonstones)(MU) -
The gravimetric Moonstones grant Zemo his own version of Cosmic Awareness and powers, including the ability to phase and to manipulate time and space, in addition to his own natural skills and prodigious leadership ability.
Ares (DU) -
The Olympian God of War, Conflict, and Death, and gains power from all three. Possesses vast superhuman strength and durability, flight, magical armor, the Staff of Hades (which devours life), and various mystical, devine and spiritual powers, including energy-projection and interdimensional teleportation. Injuries afflicted by Ares are difficult to heal.
Lightray (DM) -
Faster than light, superhuman strength and durability, energy conversion, and light manipulation. Lightray is highly-intelligent and possesses a Mother Box.
Batman 1-Million (DR) -
Gengeneered, flight, advanced martial-arts (psychic element), technopathy, Datarangs, avatars, tesseract technology.
Reed Richards (MR) -
Elastic supergenius.
Joseph Conrad (English novelist said:
It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog.
As he has done before each battle, Baron Zemo invokes the power of the Moonstones for a view of the future, skimming though the possible timelines in search of a course of action that will give his team an edge. But unlike every previous battle, this time Zemo sees the same thing in
every timeline. Fog. Impenetrable white fog.
By Loki's magic, the city of Asgard and the surrounding regions have been covered in an impenetrable cloud. It's a simple strategy, really, but one which puts Gog's team in an unfamiliar position. For once, they go into battle with no foreknowledge of what they will face. Nevertheless, the team prepares as best they can.
As, of course, does my own team. Loki recognizes his home of Asgard instantly, and immediately teleports to key locations, gathering up the most formidable magical weapons that have been left behind as the battlefield was relieved of its inhabitants. He also casts a number of useful enchantments on his teammates (which I'll reveal in the battle itself). The team confers to discuss strategy and size up their opponents, whom they remember well from their previous match against this team. The only new face is Batman 1,000,000, who of course is well known to Vandal Savage.
Finally, as the time of battle approaches, the team takes up strategic positions, and Loki summons a cloud of magical fog to cover the battlefield. Like all actions of my team, this is invisible to the opposition until the battle starts (except in Zemo's vision of the future, of course).
The Battle
The battle begins, and to Gog's team it is as if a dense fog simply blinks into being out of nowhere. Of course, they knew this was coming. What they couldn't see is the invisible field of electromagnetic interference pouring off of Magneto, jamming their communications and any technological scanning devices. This also scrambles Lightray's "photon webs", which are of course electromagnetic in nature (photons being nothing more than particles of electromagnetism). Magneto also creates magnetic vibrations resonant with the
gleaming metal walls of the Asgardian buildings, causing them to produce a deafening sound. (He's done this sort of thing
before.) This should prevent Gog's team from locating mine by sound -- as well as disorienting them. (My team has of course taken precautions to shield their hearing.)
The upshot is that Gog's team is going to have a hell of a time locating mine on the battlefield, whereas Loki at least should be able to easily detect his foes thanks to his magical senses and the Eye of Agamotto. (They don't call it the "all-seeing eye" for no reason.) The fact that everyone on my team can teleport (except perhaps Magneto, assuming his wormhole feat is off-limits for the mid-level version) makes them that much harder to find, while making it that much easier for them to ambush Gog's team as soon as Loki telepathically relays their coordinates.
(Gog will probably argue that Ares can similarly locate my team, but I'm not as convinced of Ares omniscience as Gog is. I'll address this more in my comments, below. Regardless, my team also has the advantage that Loki has centuries of experience learning everything there is to know about the battlefield and all its hiding places, while Gog's team has had one day.)
Magneto vs. Lightray
Magneto has done his part to help his team avoid detection, but it's quite possible he's revealed his own location in the process. Lightray is an energy-converter, so he may be able to trace Magneto's electromagnetic static back to its source. That's a bit of an assumption, but for the sake of moving the battle along, I'll give it to him.
Lightray charges straight for Magneto at maximum speed. Magneto of course has his forcefield up, Lightray hopes to disrupt it with his powers and batter Magneto unconscious before the mutant can react. What he doesn't know is that Magneto is completely surrounded by a whirlwind of magical Asgardian swords, born aloft by Magneto's own power. (It's well established that magnetism can effect magical uru metal.) The
reason Lightray doesn't know it is because Loki was kind enough to enchant the whole collection of weaponry to render it invisible and undetectable. (This is in addition to everything else my team has done to conceal themselves, of course.)
Colliding with dozens of razor sharp magical swords at light speed is probably enough to tear lightray to ribbons. At the very least, it breaks his concentration enough that instead of disrupting Magneto's forcefield (assuming he even can), he slams headlong into it. If somehow that fails to put him down, it at least stuns him long enough that Magneto can make the magical weapons swarm around him in a ball, and crush/skewer him.
(
Gog claims Lightray only has about class-50 strength and comparable durability. That's on the level of Rogue w/ Ms. Marvel's powers. Rogue by the way was once trapped in ordinary steel girders when Polaris magnetically enhanced them. Asgardian weapons, quite possibly uru, reinforced by Magneto's powers, should easily be strong enough to hold Lightray. He might try to melt through them -- again, unlikely if they're uru -- but an already stunned and wounded Lightray isn't managing that before Magneto crushes the life out of him or impales him on a dozen magical blades.)
Loki vs. Zemo
Zemo has his own way of dealing with his opponent's efforts at concealment. He creates a wave of gravitational force to drive Loki's fog away. To Zemo's surprise, the fog is unmoved -- or at least it appears to be. Loki has mixed real fog with the illusion of the same, and gravity is useless against illusions. Of course, illusory fog is no more transparent than the real thing.
This is as good a point as any to remind the reader of two explicit claims Gog has made about Zemo.
One is that his so-called "cosmic awareness" really just amounts to an ability to look through portals at the future. In Gog's own words, the moonstones left his perceptions "largely unaltered". The
second claim is that in order to use his powers on someone he has to know where they are or have a line of sight connection to them. This is in complete contrast to Loki, who on more than one occasion has located someone even when he was in another dimension and used his magic against them. (
Here is Loki magically controlling a missle even though it was on earth and he was chained up in Asgard. And
here we see he was also able to send an illusory dragon to menace Thor. Sending all that magic across dimensions is draining for him, but in the case of this battle all Loki has to do is attack Zemo from a safe distance away on the battlefield.)
So you can see why unless Zemo can find a way to locate Loki he will be in serious trouble. But before Zemo even has a chance to formulate a new plan after his initial attempt to dispell the fog failed, Loki mounts his own offensive. He attacks Zemo with a powerful psychic bolt. (This is another attack that Loki can use from a distance, even
across dimensional barriers. Note that in that scan Dr. Strange only barely managed to stop Loki's attack.) Gog wasn't able to show me any explicit examples of Zemo using the Moonstones to stop telepathy, and there's no real reason to think their gravity based powers would do any good against it. The diadem Zemo wears on his head provides him some telepathic resistance, but apparently it
has been overwhelmed before. Surely a force that could challenge Dr. Strange would be able to do it.
But let's give Zemo the benefit of the doubt and say he's still standing after Loki's assualt. Seeing this, Loki realizes that Zemo is wearing psi-protection. Furthermore, he knows it must be tech-based (since if it were magical Loki would sense it.) Zemo is probably still somewhat stunned from the psi attack, but to keep him occupied Loki attacks with some
illusory copies of himself, while the real Loki hangs back a safe distance away. While Zemo is fighting off his duplicates, Loki reaches out with his powers and fries the circuitry of Zemo's psi-blocker. (Loki has shown an ability to
disrupt machines before, as when he rendered a Soviet bomb non-functional. Zemo's tech may be more advanced, but if all else fails Loki can magically transmute it into ice cream, as he did to a car in that same scan.)
With his psi-protection down, another telepathic blast floors Zemo. Not taking any chance of him recovering, Loki teleports the unconscious baron into another dimension, separating him from the Moonstones and thus rendering him powerless. (Zemo has controlled the Moonstones without
touching them, but they were pretty much always still in his line of sight. I don't buy that he can control them from another dimension. Anyway, this is all overkill, since the psi-blast should take him out regardless.)
With Zemo defeated, Loki can proceed to aid the Magus against Ares. Even mighty Ares shouldn't be able to stand against them for long. But if all goes according to plan, Loki's help won't even be needed.
The Magus vs. Ares
Always too quick to believe that "size matters", Ares towers over the battlefield in collosal form, as the Magus floats in the air in front of him. Ares fires a massive energy blasts, and follows it up with a mighty punch. But the Magus can simply phase through physical attacks, or block them with a shield of spiritual energy from the soul gem, or even redirect them with his teleportational portals. One such portal now opens before Magus, and through it he attacks, striking Ares in the back.
Ares is immune to mortal weapons, but not so for immortal ones. The last time they fought, Magus took a magical weapon from his teammate, Darkchylde. This time, the battlefield (and Loki's knowledge of where to look) provided all that he needed. Magus hurls Gungir, the mighty spear of Odin, with its awesome power amplifying his own energies and those of the Soul Gem. Striking Ares between the shoulder blades, the force of the blow sends Ares stumbling forward, while at the same time a portal snaps open in front of him. Magus (who has some telepathic abilities, at least in terms of communication) had sent Darkchylde a silent signal to attack, and attack she did, her magic-disrupting Soul Sword striking straight between Ares eyes as Gungir drove him forward.
Ares is momentarily stunned, and that moment is all that is needed, as Magus slams into his legs and topples him straight into a large portal of Darkchylde's.
Shaking off their attack, Ares looks around to see where the mutant witch has sent him. His senses tell him this is Earth, and yet -- no, this can't be! That's the last thought that passes through Ares' head as he fades from existence.
[My team had noted that Ares seemed to grow stronger over the course of their last battle, and Loki -- who knows a thing or two about gods and magic -- surmised that he was empowered by conflict. (Plus, Gog was nice enough to tell my team as much in his description of the character.) So they figured it stands to reason that if Ares draws power from human conflict, then in a time
before humanity he would be powerless. Which is why Darkchylde sent him through a time-portal to
before the origin of life on earth. (Ares himself has
explicitly confirmed that if there were no life on earth, he would die.)
Vandal Savage 1,000,000 vs. Mr. Fantastic and Batman 1,000,000
While gods and beings who might as well be gods battle overhead, the regulars are left to search out their foes in the fog. Batman sends out his avatars to survey the battlefield, but thanks to a telepathic tip-off from Loki, Vandal finds Mr. Fantastic first.
Clad in his razor-sharp omicron knife suit, Vandal Savage chrages forward. A streched out fist slams into him, but Reed draws his hand back in pain and surprise. Blood! Few are the substances that could cut his stretchy tissues, but as Vandal has said the omicron knife suit "lives to be sharp -- almost spiritually sharp". Even fewer are the substances in the universe it can't cut.
As Vandal presses forward to try to finish his wounded opponent, Reed takes a new tactic. Stretching his muscles to enhance his strength, he grabs a large slab of stone and places it in front of him. Then wrapping his head and feet around tall stone columns on either side of him, he stretches himself out like a rubberband. The significance of this strange action only just dawns on Vandal when -- SPROING! Reed stretchy body snaps forward and launches the stone like a rock from a sling shot. It catches Vandal square in the chest and throws him backwards. The force of the blow is jarring even through his armor. A BOOM! sounds as the stunned Savage beats a hasty retreat via boomtube.
Reed has neither time to savor this mini-victory nor to track down his fleeing foe. He finds his whole body is suddenly in excrutiating pain. His normally cohesive form begins to stretch and sag uncontrollably in all directions. For a genius like Reed, what's happening is quite obvious, but it's hardly any consolation to realize you're being taken apart on the molecular level.
But just as soon as the attack begins, it subsides. "Nanites," Batman explains, appearing in the fog beside Reed. "But my electronic scramblers took care of them. I also tagged Savage with a datarang as he entered the boomtube. You stay here and regroup -- I can handle him."
Porting through a boom tube of his own, Batman arrives at coordinates close to Vandal's.
And comes face to face with the Magus (the future Warlock having just bid Ares bon voyage on his journey to the distant past.) Knowing how dangerous Batman 1,000,000 is, this was Vandal's strategy all along -- just evade him or keep him busy until the ubers could finish him off.
Batman reacts with lightning speed, attacking the Magus both physically and telepathically. Against the Magus's monstrous telepathic defenses and physical durability, he might as well have tried tickling him. The Soul Gem flashes and the Batman is reduced to an empty husk.
[Note: I'd orginally planned to have Vandal and Batman fight a bit, but at this point I'm willing to cut that part a little short in order to get my writeup done. Even if Batman beats Vandal there's no way he's beating my ubers, so I might as well skip right to that. Even though it's a slightly lame way to take him down.]
Magneto and Darkchylde vs. Mr. Fantastic
If Magus has finished with Ares that of course means Darkchylde has, too. Loki telepathically directs her to go assist Magneto.
Magneto has already finished with Lightray, and is now engaged in combat with Mr. Fantastic. Magnetically guided Asgardian swords easily shredded the weaponry Reed tried to use against him, and now the leader of the Fantastic Four is reduced to desperate dodging. Ripping hunks of metal of of the surrounding buildings, Magneto whirls them around Reed in an ever tighter spiral, and at last fuses them into an air tight prison, trapping Mr. Fantastic inside.
Reed stretches his fist into a spike and slams it into the wall of his metal prison, once again inflating his muscles for extra oomph. In spite of Magneto's magnetic reinforcement of the metal ball, Reed manages to punch a small hole, and stretching his body into a thin strand, begins to ooze his way out. Magneto counters by coiling the ball of metal into a noose around Reed's neck.
It is at this point that Darkchylde arives.
Darkchylde, it is worth noting, is one of the less evil members of my team. As Magik, she was a hero, and yet always struggled against her demonic side, to the point where sometimes her teammates had to hold her back from using lethal force. In this incarnation, the demon is fully ascendant. With her New Mutants teammates to help her, it could have been possible for her humanity to reassert itself, but after spending a whole season fighting alongside the evilest of men (including her former mentor in Magneto) her humanity is buried deeper than ever.
Killing, she has found, is really very simple. Far more so than she ever suspected. In this case, it's as simple as opening a portal, and shutting it again. In between, Magneto gives Reed's neck a tug, stretching it until his head passes through the portal. Afterwards, his neck snaps back, headless.
The Deadly Dozen Win
(or my best attempt at such...)
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