The Deadly Dozen
The Magus (Adam Warlock) (MU) -- superstrength/durability, energy projection, teleportation, intangibility, flight, hyper senses, Soul Gem (capable of manipulating spiritual energy and stealing souls)
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
Magneto (Pre-Fatal Attractions) (MM) -- controls metals and electromagnetism
Darkchylde (Inferno) (MR) -- teleportation, minor sorcery, magic-disrupting Soulsword
Deadman (DR) -- invisible, intangible ghost who possesses others
VS.
B'wana Bet?
Baron Helmut Zemo (with Moonstones)(MU) -- The Moonstones grant Zemo his own version of Cosmic Awareness and powers, including the ability to open warps through time and space, in addition to his own natural skills and prodigious leadership ability.
Ares (DU) (Bio link seems fairly suspect) -- The Olympian god of battle, conflict, and death, Ares grows in stature by the presence of all three. He possess superhuman stats, and is capable of producing various mystical and divine effects, including interdimensional teleportation, energy projection, dimensional and spiritual manipulation, and afflicting God Wounds, which prove difficult to heal. He now holds the Staff of Hades. A common piece of lore states no mortal weapon may harm him.
Lightray (DM) -- Powers: Faster than light, superhuman strength and durability, energy conversion, and light manipulation. Lightray is highly-intelligent and possesses a Mother Box.
Vixen (DR) -- Taps the Earth's Morphogenetic field to assume animal (and sometimes human) traits.
Reed Richards (MR) -- Elastic supergenius.
How this writeup will work: OK, so I had this rather grandiose idea of telling the whole thing from Zemo's perspective as he looks into different future timelines to try to find the way for his team to win the fight. (Of course, I have to have it turn on him at the end so that
my team wins -- but this is perfectly possible because his future vision is not absolute, he just kind of explores different probabilities.) I'm having a super busy work week, though, so I'm having to make it a bit more rushed than I'd have liked. I'm still going to stick with that basic framework, but the fights themselves are going to have to be fairly abbreviated summaries.
Without further ado . . .
Zemo vs. Magus
Magus charges through a portal, ambushing Zemo from behind and unleashing a massive blast of cosmic energy. In the nick of time, Zemo throws up a portal, shunting the blast away. Magus closes to hand to hand range to batter Zemo with his superstrong punches, but Zemo dazzles him with a blinding flash of light, causing his punch to narrowly miss the mark. Zemo hastily backpedals through a portal just before Magus can grab hold of him. Magus spots Zemo as he reappears about 30 yards away, and launches another blast, but Zemo generates a powerful gravitational field, bending the path of the blast to miss him. Zemo fires back with a blast of his own, but it harmlessly passes through the Magus as he phases.
Magus charges forward, but Zemo amplifies gravity around him, increasing his own weight by a factor of a thousand and driving him towards the ground. If this were real life you'd expect that big a gravity increase to snap his bones, but in comics super-strong/durable characters can lift thousands of times their own weight. Even so, Magus is pinned to the street beneath his feet. But whatever move Zemo had planned to finish him off narrowly misses the target as Magus escapes by falling through a teleportational portal of his own making. The other end of the portal opens right above Zemo's head, and Magus slams down on top of him propelled by Zemo's own gravitational attack. Zemo is only stunned for a moment, but it's all the opening Magus needs. The Soul Gem glows on his forhead, and Zemo's soul is forcibly ripped from his body, leaving him an empty husk.
Damn, Zemo curses, dispelling the images before him. He's already explored a hundred different ways this fight could go. In some, he manages to get the drop on Magus and employ one of various tactics the Magus can't readily counter -- trapping him in a timeloop, shrinking him into the Microverse, etc. But in other scenarios the Magus gets the advantage and ends up besting him with Soul-based attacks for which Zemo has no answer. It depends largely on who gets the drop on whom, and while you'd think Zemo's knowledge of the future would tip the scales in his favor, he's facing an opponent in the Magus who can locate Zemo with his "hyper senses" (his own form of cosmic awareness), and who can teleport or pass through walls. This means he's equally able to attack from any direction, and in Zemo's exploration of possible futures he finds many directions of attack to be equally likely. Ultimately, the battle is reduced to a guessing game . . . and that's not a game Zemo is willing to play with his soul on the line.
Instead, Zemo investigates a new scenario . . . having Ares occupy the Magus while he takes on Loki.
Zemo vs. Loki
Loki is a god of trickery and deception, who often prefers indirect manipulation over face to face confrontation. True to form, he starts the battle invisible and uses his magic to animate various inanimate objects (cars, buildings) sending them to attack Zemo. But Zemo readily crushes these with gravitational force or obliterates them with blasts of energy. Next, Loki surrounds Zemo with a dozen illusory copies of himself, so Zemo can't tell which is the real one. All of these fire illusory energy blasts, while simultaneously the real Loki fires a real blast of magical energy. Loki's magical powers are enhanced by the energies of the Eye of Agamotto, so the attack is even more powerful than it would otherwise be -- and Zemo doesn't know which attack to block. But he manages to teleport himself away a fraction of a second before the blast hits.
Zemo can try to keep dodging by teleportation, but he realizes that so long as he can't identify the real Loki, he won't know where to strike back -- and sooner or later, Loki will manage to catch him with a blast. So Zemo switches to a tactic perfected by those masters of warfare, the French. Taunting.
"Hiding behind illusions? What are you, the god of cowardice? No wonder Thor always defeats you so easily!" Invoking the name of Loki's hated step-brother proves to be the magic word. Loki flies into a rage and charges Zemo, attempting to slash him in two with a magical sword. It's an attack Zemo had anticipated. He now teleports himself directly behind Loki, and bends time around him. Loki is caught in a repeating time loop, destined to attack and miss over and over and over . . . .
Excellent, Zemo thinks upon viewing this vision of the future. My knowledge of Loki's psychology will be enough to let me win the day. But how will Ares fair against the Magus? He redirects his vision to another part of the battlefield . . .
Ares vs. Magus
(Do to time constraints, I'm not going to give a full blow by blow of the battle, just an explanation of why my guy wins.) Magus and Ares are a very even match. Both have substantial amounts of enhanced strength and durability, as well as energy projection. Magus's base level on these powers is porbably a bit higher -- he had an edge on pre-resurrection Thanos, meaning he may be close to the level of the current Thanos. Ares probably isn't quite at that level, but he draws additional power from the presence of destruction and death, which this battlefield certainly provides. So they're probably well-matched in raw power. Both can teleport. Ares is shielded by magical armor, while Magus can become intangible. The Soul Gem would give Magus the edge, but Thor has shown some resistance to its effects, so this probablyapplies to other pantheon-level gods like Ares.
So, a very even match. What makes the difference? Magus brings an additional weapon to the fight -- Darkchylde's magic-disrupting Soulsword. This weapon can neutralize the enchantment on Ares armor and pass right through to impale him and disrupt his magical essence. With Magus's colossal strength delivering the blow, it's all the more potent. Plus the blade is essentially a manifestation of Darkchylde's spiritual energy, and Magus can channel more spiritual energy into it via the Soul Gem. That ought to be enough to put Ares down for the count.
Wait a minute! you say. Didn't I just get done telling Gog (over in the Transactions thread) that at this point in the Soulsword's history it could only be wielded by Magik/Darkchylde (and occasionally by Shadowcat due to some weird spiritual connection she had with Magik)? How the heck is Magus using it? The answer comes from my prep-time, which I'll summarize here: Upon hearing the descriptions of their foes, Magus realizes that the Soulsword would be of more use to him against Ares than it would in helping Darkchylde fight the regs. He demands that she hand it over to him. Darkchylde explains that the sword is bonded to her soul and can't be wielded by anyone else. Magus says "Fine" and simply absorbs her soul into himself. (Souls that are stolen with the gem go to Soul World, but Warlock/Magus is linked to all of the souls in Soul World. I can elaborate with examples if anyone contests this point.) Anyway, if Kitty could use the sword because of her spiritual connection to Magik, Magus's connection to her soul should now be more than enough.
Of course, Deadman, being more honorable than most of my team, objects to this strategy. (He temporarily possesses Darkchylde's body so he can voice his objections.) But Magus tells him he can restore Darkchylde's soul to her body after the battle (which is true -- Warlock usually just steals souls, but he's also returned them to their bodies on occasion), and anyway they didn't really need a second reg, since Deadman will just possess one of the opposing regs to make it a 4-on-4 fight. But Deadman objects that they can't just leave Darkchylde lying unconscious on this dangerous battlefield, so Magus has him open a portal to Darkchylde's Limbo dimension and deposit the body there. Now that Magus wields the Soulsword the demons of Limbo recognize him as their ruler, and he orders them not to harm Darkchylde.
Anyway, no sooner has Magus impaled Ares on the Soulsword than Zemo shows up, having just finished taking down Loki. Before Magus can strike against this new opponent, Zemo attacks, teleporting the Magus away through space and time. Zemo knows better than to send the Magus to the past -- no matter how far he sends them, Magus would simply have to wait how ever many millenia it was before teleporting himself back to the battlefield and resuming the battle. (Magus has been around for thousands of years, and so far as I know he's immortal. Zemo doesn't necessarily know this, but he might guess, plus he can always use his future vision to explore what happens if Magus is sent to the past.) Instead, Zemo sends him somewhere where he's sure he'll never have to see him again -- a thousand years
into the future.
Perfect, Zemo thinks. He's explored all the possible ways this scenario can play out, and although Magus bests Ares he's never able to do so quickly enough to avoid getting stranded in the future by Zemo. Leaving Zemo as the lone uber left on the battlefield, with no one else powerful enough to oppose him. Only one outcome is possible -- victory.
Why Zemo's plan fails
Zemo follows this strategy, thinking it ends with him victorious. But he's made a mistake. The way his power works is he looks at different choices he could make and explores their possible outcomes, essentially tracing down the different timelines. But what he doesn't realize is that something Magus does
in the future creates a new timeline that branches back to the present.
Specifically, Magus opens a portal to Limbo and retrieves Darkchylde's body, restoring her soul to her. (Darkchylde's body is still around a millenium in the future because Limbo is outside time -- different points in time seemingly coexist there.) Darkchylde can teleport to any point in time, so she teleports Magus back to the battlefield. Zemo never found this timeline, because he didn't look far enough into the future -- not realizing future events would come back to affect the present.
Zemo is taken by surprise by Magus's sudden reappearance on the battlefield, and Magus rips his soul from him.
On to the medium and reg battles . . .
Magneto vs. Lightray
Lightray flies towards Magneto at lightspeed, firing energy blasts. But Magneto can deflect these with his forcefield. Really there isn't too much Lightray can do with his "light manipulation" to hurt Magneto, since Magneto controls all forms of electromagnetism and light is just an electromagnetic wave. But between his speed and the fact that he can teleport (using his motherbox to open boom tubes) Lightray is damn hard to hit. So Lightray flies circles around Magneto and rains down blasts, hoping to eventually break through his forcefield.
Magneto counters by magnetically picking up a ton of metal objects -- cars, streetlamps, hunks of buildings, and hurling them into the air, whirling them around him in a torndao of metal debris. Even though Lightray can move at the speed of light, I assume Lightray's reflexes aren't at Flash level or he really ought to be an uber. But even if they are, Magneto can put some much stuff in the air that there isn't space for him to move between it. If he stays near Magneto, Lightray is going to get hit.
So Lightray pulls back, opening a boomtube to teleport him out the path of Magneto's metal storm. He waits until Magneto has ceased the attack, and then charges in at lightspeed. This time instead of pulling up short and blasting him, Lightray flies all the way up to the edge of Magneto's protective forcefield. He hopes to drain the field away so that he can batter Magneto with superstrong blows. But Magneto can draw energy from the Magnetic field of the earth itself, replenishing the energy of his field. But I'll give Lightray the benefit of the doubt and say that he's draining faster than Magneto is replenishing, allowing him to gradually bore his way through.
But one thing that makes Magneto so hard to beat is that he can defend against one attack while simultaneously launching a counterattack of his own. In this case, Lightray finds himself grabbed from behind by a massive metal hand Magneto had formed from the metal debris. The hand pulls Lightray off of Magneto and tries to crush him, but he blows it apart with a massive release of energy. Yet no sooner has Lightray freed himself than Magneto is attacking again, hitting him with a tidal wave of magnetic force.
The wave of force washes over him, with Lightray simply absorbing the magnetic field as it hits him and dispelling it as harmless light. But too late he realizes he wasn't Magneto's true target, as Magneto's wave of force knocks out the structural supports on the lowest level of a tall building right behind Lightray, bringing the whole building crashing down on Lightray's head.
Deadman vs. Vixen and Mr. Fantastic
I'm in a rush, so I'll keep this short. Deadman is either going to possess Vixen or Mr. Fantastic, probably whichever one he finds first. Either way, the fight ends up being Vixen vs. Mr. Fantastic. Zemo has already looked at the future and seen who wins that fight. So he makes sure Deadman ends up possessing the one who loses, by giving them instructions on where to seek their opponents that result in Deadpool finding them first.
Personally, I think that Mr. Fantastic probably wins. Vixen get hit him with the strength of an elephant, but the blows just bouce off. She can copy a deadly poison, but can't break his rubbery skin to inject it. She can duplicate the speed of a falcon, but eventually Mr. Fantastic is going to ensnare her. When he does, he can wrap himself around her, either constricting her into unconsciousness or covering her face to block her breathing. Every animal needs to breathe, right? So eventually Vixen goes down, and Deadman along with her.
Magneto vs. Mr. Fantastic
After Magneto drops a building on Lightray, he's free to go deal with Mr. Fantastic. There's not much Reed can do against Magneto. Genius though he is, I don't really buy him whipping up a handy anti-Magneto gun in only a day, especially without the resources of his own lab. If it were that easy to make an Anti-Magneto weapon, then someone in the Marvel Universe would have done so by now, and yet they never have, even when Magneto was causing mass destruction in New York. If anything, Magneto specializes in destroying high-tech weapons, since they'd almost have to use some sort of metal or electricity. Besides, whatever weapons Mr. Fantastic brought to the fight were probably destroyed when he fought the Deadman-possessed Vixen.
So there's not much Reed can do against Magneto. Magneto ends up burying him under a ton of metal -- basically any random piece of metal he can find. He compresses it all so tight that even Reed can't squeeze out of it, eventually forming it into a metal sphere. He magnetically reinforces it and adds more and more metal to the outside, strengthening it until there's no way Reed can break free.
Magus and Magneto vs. Lightray I'm not really sure dropping a building on him would keep Lightray down, so by this time he's probably blasted his way free and come to resume the fight with Magneto. But Magus has probably also finished off Zemo by now, and there's no way Lightray is beating both of them. While Lightray is occupied with Magneto, Magus teleports in behind him and punches him in the back of the head. If Supergirl has KOed him, Magus does so easily.
The Deadly Dozen win
