Cold Theory [Ravager/Shining Knight]

[Copycat]

Gem hated the cold. She couldn't even say she preferred the warmth - given she was from Los Angeles and that place had as much chance of being soaked in rain as it did glorious sunshine - and her almost milky-pale skin was something of a testament to that. But she hated the cold. She'd hardly ever seen snow in her life before today; Maybe once or twice when visiting relatives out of state. But never, ever this much. Did this constitute a blizzard? She didn't even know - did they have systems of measuring that, like the speed, the amount, whatever? Again, she didn't know, but she was happy to consider this a blizzard. wherever the Hell they were. The Artic? The Antarctic? But she wasn't going to complain. At least, not out loud. She was, of course, working with Rose again, and she had long since learnt that complaining in the older girl's presence was pretty much pointless. So, she continued to trudge through the snow, leading the small team of around five N.O.W.H.E.R.E. troops and Rose toward their target, keeping track of their progress on a GPS. They were, according to this, nearly at the marker.

And... Yes. There it was. Perhaps the most conspicuous looking manhole cover-thing that she had ever seen right out in the middle of a blizzard. A large, round, thick black metal slab in the middle of nowhere. She tapped the screen of the device she was carrying, sending a signal back to N.O.W.H.E.R.E. that they had reached their destination. She took a charge from one of the troops, attached it to the edge of the cover, and stepped back, watching it get blown open. Gem smiled with satisfaction; As much as she wasn't entirely fond of all the duties she had to carry out as an operative of N.O.W.H.E.R.E., there was really something to be said for using explosives; She hadn't talked to Rose about it, given she knew the older girl had a longer career in this than her, and she knew for a fact that Rose probably didn't want to talk about such mundane things, but.. There was just something exciting about this. The sense of danger to it all. It really was like being in a film or whatever.

That, and she'd gotten some sweet custom gear out of it; A thick parka, gloves, boots - and all of it was in her particular custom shade of red. Gem loved it.

Again, N.O.W.H.E.R.E. could be buttering her up and basically just be giving her stuff to gain her confidence, but she wouldn't particular mind, Gem supposed, as she clambered down the access ladder the charge had revealed. Her nose wrinkled, unimpressed, as she hit the bottom and found herself in a surprisingly unguarded hallway empty and bare; It very much resembled the ones back at the N.O.W.H.E.R.E. home base, somehow. "Wow. Talk about unimaginative. Do all secret groups, regardless of like, what their focus is hire the same contractors to build their secret hidden bases? I mean, does this look familiar or what?" she asked of Rose, looking around at the plain surroundings again. Definitely not going to win any awards for 'Evil Base 2012' any time soon. Gem looked at the accompanying troops and carried out a set of gestures, ordering them to basically spread out and kill anyone they found whilst she and Rose secured their objective.

Again, it was just so weird to even be thinking in terms like this, but Gem liked to think she was adapting well enough; Watching the squad disperse, Gem began to move through the hallways as she followed Rose, ignoring the sounds of violence and death going on around them; This wasn't, after all, her first time doing this, and whilst she wasn't as hardcore as the girl who already had the codename 'Ravager' before she'd even joined N.O.W.H.E.R.E., Gem was adapting at a decent pace to life with the group; Retrieving the GPS-slash-datapad, she pulled up information on their objective; "Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Shining Knight supposed to be a girl? Says here this one we're defrosting is a guy." she remarked, glancing beyond her parka hood at Rose, slightly confused.

[Ravager]

Well, so far this mission had turned out to be boring as all hell. Not that Rose was in N.O.W.H.E.R.E. for a roaring good time, no, she was there because she wanted to know what had happened to her mother, but the least they could do was actually send her on missions which would be interesting. Trudging through snow, ice and whatever else there was buried under this lot – dead penguins? – wasn’t Rose’s idea of interesting or fun. Whatever was at the end of this lot had better be worth her time, she thought, or, at the least, she better be getting paid regardless. Her dear but not yet departed daddy had made a persuasive argument once about no free samples. Rose, much as she hated to admit that the old bastard had a point about anything, had to agree. And if her current bosses though she was waiving that for a long walk through this frozen wonderland, they were dead wrong. Possibly to be followed by just plain dead if they insisted. They were not exactly examples of humanity’s finest themselves, so the second they broke the deal, Rose felt she’d be entirely justified in killing them for one reason or another.

At the least, unlike Gem-chan, Rose knew where they were. The Antarctic to be precise, though she could probably be more accurate if it mattered. The place was just miles of the same, so she didn’t see much point in bothering as she marched along. Just like the others, she was all wrapped up although, unlike Copycat, she hadn’t bothered customising her stuff. It was just standard arctic camo-kit, most because Rose didn’t intend to keep it on any longer than necessary. The thick gear was necessary, because although her body probably could have coped with the temperatures if she’d been moving at her own speed, when she was tied down by a team, she went slower. A lot slower. And frostbite made it kind of hard to use a sword.

Still, at least they were nearly there, as far as she could tell when Copycat had the tracker. ‘There’ was, as it turned out, a black slab that stood out like a sore thumb from the snow around it. It was also not as tough as the people who’d put it there had hoped, not when the satchel charge blew it wide open. Gem visibly grinned at that, while the white haired girl just rolled her eye. Kids, she reflected. It wasn’t even that good a bang, really and she’d seen far better. Still, it did the job – they were in. Watching her partner clamber slowly down the ladder and the agents preparing to follow her, Rose smirked. Then she leapt into the hole and dropped to the ground in a catlike crouch next to Gem as if it had been no distance at all. Ladders were for wimps and those who weren’t genetically enhanced super-soldiers.

That said, she had to agree in one particular respect – the place was basically the same as the N.O.W.H.E.R.E. base. Blank walls, blank everything… At least it was warmer she thought, promptly shedding her parka to reveal the arctic version of her N.O.W.H.E.R.E. uniform she wore beneath, discarding the gloves and snowshoes too. She wasn’t going to be trying to fight in that lot, though Gem-chan seemed in no hurry to lose hers. Fine by her – Rose would be doing the fighting, obviously. Expecting Copycat to do it would be vaguely like giving a sword to a three year old and expecting good results.

“Pretty much,” She agreed, fixing her combat gloves into place and loosening her swords in their sheaths on her back. “You get used to it – this sort of group, they’re never really original thinkers. Plus do you really think it’s easy to get things built out here. Course, if they’d not bothered, then maybe they wouldn’t have been spotted. Setting up so near the Colony was terminally predictably dumb. Less gawking at the décor, Pettanko – let’s go.” She promptly smirked again and resisted a faint urge to pat the younger meta on the head as she gave out orders – ickle Gemmy was all grown up. It was kind of adorable. The white haired woman jerked her head at the team from behind her partner and watched them spread out – pointlessly, she could have done this job by herself – then turned back to Gem.

“This way.” Rose wasn’t even bothering with stealth today. She just turned to the appropriate corridor and marched off down it, confident in her ability to deal with a pack of geeks and whatever watchdogs they had with them. The cold just lent a nice edge to her senses. Around them, she could hear gunfire and grinned, drawing her swords in a single easy movement. This corridor ought to end at the main lab. “Does it really matter?” she threw back, not taking her eye off the corridor. “Wasn’t the old one practically a guy anyway? Even less of a chest than you, Gem… Anyway, who cares? Let’s just kill everyone who isn’t us, grab the guy and scram. We’ve got bigger fish to slice and dice than this lot.”

[Copycat]

Well, if ladders were for wimps and those who weren't genetically enhanced super-soldiers, Gem would argue that she should fall into the second category. She was, of course, no fighter - not like Rose - and had only built up some mild muscle at her partner in crime's demand, along with some 'comprehensive' (she struggled not to snort at the terminology there) fighting lessons that Rose has demanded she have, which felt like little more than an excuse to kick her around and put her in all manner of choke holds and whatever. But she was no wimp. She might not have had the kind of experience Rose did, but.. She'd done the kinds of things that would have most seventeen year olds locked in a padded cell for several decades, and was still going. That was, of course, not to say that Rose didn't absolutely impress her with the manner in which she just appeared next to her, almost without a sound, evidently having dropped the fairly short climb, but..

Well, again, as she constantly argued, Gem was built like Ellen Page and not Gina Carano, which meant that whatever she did was going to be extremely limited, unless N.O.W.H.E.R.E. suddenly invented a magical stretching machine one day that made her about a foot taller. Gem doubted that was high on their list of priorities, however, and nodded along with what Rose had to say on the décor in this place; She supposed it made sense that these places were more standardised - why bother with making the place look fancy when your budget had to go on your actual project, after all? But still, for people involved in like, capital letters and an exclamation mark SCIENCE!, this was terribly, terribly unimaginative. "I have to say I am surprised that we didn't just bomb the Hell out of this place and come to retrieve what we're after when everyone's dead," she muttered, "But I guess they want to make sure this Shining Knight guy's intact or whatever." As usual, she bristled at being branded 'Pettanko' by Rose, but had long since learnt she wasn't going to be able to do anything about it unless she suddenly developed MMA skills one night, and simply shrugged it off, in the end, before dishing out the orders.

They weren't, of course, trusting the others in doing anything complicated, and whilst Gem was fairly certain Rose could've just done this alone, she was happy that she was being useful, or at least felt like she was being useful. Kicking off some of the snow-gear she'd been handed, despite the fact the stuff was custom, Gem nonetheless kept the parka on as she followed Rose. Coming across a pair of scientists, Gem mind-hopped one and had him throttle his companion before snapping his own neck; She knew it wouldn't impressed her white-haired partner, but she always felt slightly satisfied about pulling off what was a fairly difficult move like that. Continuing along the hall, Gem scowled when Rose proceeded to mock the female Shining Knight and her in one fell swoop; "Y'don't gotta be mean about it," she muttered softly, but she actively agreed with the other girl; Entering what looked like a larger lab, Gem noted the presence of their objective - frozen solid in a block of ice, surrounded by about twelve scientists; Definite overkill.

Gem blinked, sighed, and possessed one of the eggheads, who promptly took the edge of his steel clipboard that he was holding and swung it violently at the throat of one of his coworkers, Gem looking like an unusual mime as she laid down his actions. She proceeded to let Rose handle most of them in the ensuing panic, although her guy with the clipboard took down about three of his fellow scientists with his makeshift weapon. Soon enough, however, they were all dead; "I never would've guessed you could make such a mess with a clipboard," she remarked as she stepped carefully through the sprays and trails of blood; Gem eyed the frozen figure of the Shining Knight carefully as she looked over the controls and the consoles; "Looks like we made it here just in time. These guys almost beat us to the punch in thawing him out."

[Ravager]

“There’re three good reasons not to just bomb this place,” Rose explained, always happy to point out holes in others’ knowledge as well as show off her own. “Not wanting to damage the package is part of it, sure, but bombing this place hard enough to kill everyone down here would bury it under a mountain of ice. That’s two – and three’s that both bombing this place that hard and then digging it up again would show up from orbit for everyone to see. This way, with the blackout we hit them with, nobody will even know we were here. Then we’ll set the charges on the way out and bury it so deep that nobody’ll find it again. No pesky evidence pointing back to us for whoever hired this lot – or meddling do-gooders like my old team – to trace back to us. This close to the Colony, the bosses don’t want to take risks.”

The trek along the corridor was more or less uneventful, minus the spectacle of Copycat murdering two scientists like the bloodthirsty little hellion she was. Frankly, it gave Rose a bad case of deja-vu sometimes though she was pretty sure she’d never been quite that vicious. These days, she meted out violence with impartiality cruelty really and the fights that were really worth her time were damned few and far between. She threw a glance back at Gem as the girl complained, but only for an instant, contemplating saying something but holding her tongue.

And here they were. One lab entrance, helpfully marked as such with a big sign saying ‘main lab’ in a way that showed how little this lot knew about subterfuge. If this had been N.O.W.H.E.R.E., Rose knew that any such signs would be either not there at all or lying. Admittedly, the place was supposedly impregnable, but it was designed to make either breaking in or breaking out as hard as humanly possible, with plenty of good points for ambushes and choke points where a handful of soldiers could hold up a far larger number of enemies. This place was… hopeless. Really, Rose could have done this job by herself, possibly with one arm tied behind her back. She led the way inside, to find twelve targets and a knight-on-ice.

Frankly, at that moment, Rose’s smirk was sharp enough that it could probably have cut ice by itself.

Ignoring Copycat, who was busy punching the air and looking like an idiot as she controlled a scientist, Rose promptly pounced on the largest group of scientists and proceeded to tear them to pieces. Most of them simply found a sword piercing a vital part of their anatomy, but several took elbows to the throat. She didn’t even need her precognition and not a single one of them even came close to laying a finger on the Ravager as she carved through them. In fact, the white haired woman looked decidedly bored as she tore them down. A final kick slammed one against the wall, Rose pinning him there for a moment with her foot easily, her superhuman strength just so much more than he could handle. The scientist just clawed uselessly at her boot for a second before starting the screeching for mercy, the I-have-a-family moan and all the rest of it.

Rose, sure that he didn’t have a moral leg to stand on, ignored him totally. She just kept him pinned there as she bantered with Gem, not even looking at him. “You’d be surprised what you can do serious damage with. Try a pencil sometime – stick that through the eye with enough force, it goes right into the brain. And anything with a good hard edge works for necks. Feet work too.” Rose shrugged, pressing down a bit harder. “Anyway, do you have everything you need or should I keep this one alive a bit longer?”

Again, they’d been keeping a man frozen and didn’t exactly look like they had been planning anything good for him. Rose didn’t care whether they lived or not, and she was being paid well to come down on the ‘not’ side of that equation. If Gem didn’t need him for the defrosting part, he was dead.

She forced her foot a little higher, still not facing him. Much further and she’d snap his neck. “So?”

[Copycat]

And this was why Rose was the leader of the squad and Gem got to play second; She had.. What, a few months of experience under her belt and was still being taught in a variety of fields - combat by Rose, tactics, survival, etcetera - and it was taking a while to soak in, even though Gem knew she needed it. She was, after all, pretty much fresh off the streets, and whilst she had a vicious streak - one that was pretty much nothing compared to Rose's - she had a long way to go before she fully shook off the attitude and the naivety that had been fostered and developed over just under twenty years as an 'average kid'; Although there were some rumblings from N.O.W.H.E.R.E. that suggested Gem had never been as 'average' as she had thought. But she still wasn't nearly as skilled as Rose - and as such, even though she knew the older woman was being slightly mocking as she explained matters to her, she nodded understandingly. It was a little difficult for her to fully grasp the full scale of what she'd been inducted into as a N.O.W.H.E.R.E. operative, to be honest, but she got exactly what Rose meant.

They didn't need to be drawing attention to themselves, and didn't need to be taking risks; Her gaze moved to Rose as the white-haired fighter spoke of the 'do-gooders' she used to be associated with; Were it anyone else, she'd ask the girl exactly what it had been like, being a Teen Titan, but decided against it. Gem pondered that at times, though; What it might have been like if the Titans had nabbed her, and not N.O.W.H.E.R.E.; She probably wouldn't fit in.

She was definitely too much of a freaking pettanko to fill out a costume like Starfire's, after all. Gem's brow creased bitterly at that mental image.

Grimacing still, she followed on after Rose, wincing slightly when the girl glanced back at her; She really didn't want to end up with yet another beating once they were done here - she was still nursing a bruise from the other night that had basically turned black and purple now - and as such, she kept silent, her eyes narrowing in a fashion that suggested she was distinctly unimpressed when the two of them happened upon the main lab, helpfully labelled in huge print for them. "Wow. Is it, like, casual friday here or something? Or do all the workers have some kind of learning difficulties? Maybe they're gonna open this place up to tourists, it's that obviously labelled. Perhaps they should put in a little cafe. Maybe a Starbucks. And a gift shop," she mocked. God. Again, she was a noob to this, but even she knew it was absolutely ridiculous to just slap labels and the like everywhere; She was surprised there wasn't arrows indicating the way. "At the very least, they should have a welcome mat, their security's that much of a doormat."

The following carnage, courtesy of Rose, was almost lost on Gem as she focused on controlling her hapless scientist, watching through his eyes as he helplessly hacked his comrades and fellow workers in the throat. She didn't much care - if it didn't require so much concentration, especially from those of a supposedly higher intelligence, she'd be yawning right now. Finished, she released control over him for Rose to hack to pieces, watching as she pinned the sole survivor down. "Ugh. Please. That routine's about as original as your décor. If you've got kids and a fammiwy and a wife, you shoulda thought of that before you came out here," she sneered cruelly, grinning slightly at the advice Rose had to offer. "You were showing me that weak spot just under the ear and behind the lower jaw, too. That's a nasty one if you jab it right," she replied thoughtfully, making it clear she had actually been paying attention to Rose when the girl had been giving her lessons on fighting.

She returned her attention to checking their processes over; Naturally, she knew nothing about it really, but N.O.W.H.E.R.E. knew enough that they could give her some instructions through the data pad; Eyes narrowing briefly, she reached out and pressed one final button on the console attached to the machinery; "Nope. We're all good. I'm afraid this sucker here's of no more use to us than my pointer finger," she remarked, giving the scientist trapped by Rose's heel a faux-apologetic look. "Sorry, science guy. You're today's red-shirt." Letting Rose finish him off, Gem finally stated "Like I said, they were almost about to go. That button I just tapped got the process going. Shouldn't be more than a few minutes, an' we get to appear as the heroic sorts rescuing him."

[Ravager]

God, Rose thought, didn’t Gem know when a joke was enough? Apparently not, given the way she just kept banging on about it, like she didn’t think that Rose had heard her the first time. Maybe that was it, which meant that by the last pun, which might have netted a snicker from the Ravager otherwise, Rose just rolled her eye. Serious overkill, and that wasn’t a term she threw around much. There wasn’t much point in calling the girl on it though. Unless she beat it into her with a hammer, the pettanko wouldn’t remember. And if she did that, chances were she wouldn’t remember either – thanks to brain damage. Rose snickered to herself. Now that was funny.

For those who’d been lucky enough to fight Rose back in the days when she’d been on Slade’s serum and survive the experience, they’d have noticed the almost total difference between the way she’d behaved then and now. She clearly didn’t care a cent for the man pinned under her boot heel like some fat, sweaty slug, but there wasn’t a hint of the psychotic glee that the Ravager had once taken in killing and torturing. Instead, there was just a cold nonchalance in the way that she didn’t even look down at him as she twisted her hips hard. Her foot, pressed on his throat, followed suit. So did his neck, just with the crunching finality of breaking bones. It was over in a heartbeat, the white haired woman crouching down to wipe the blood from the blades of her swords and returning them to their sheaths before she sauntered over to stand in front of the frozen knight for a moment before she cocked her hips to one side and leant against the console.

He didn’t look like much, she thought, leaving Gem to work the controls. They never did though.

“Nice of them to do all the hard work for us,” Rose agreed with the younger meta with a grin directly aimed at the man-shaped icicle before her. It was really, given that she at least didn’t have the patience for the sort of scientific stuff that would have been needed if not. And she definitely didn’t want to be stuck out here long enough for the Colony to ship out another load of scientists to do the work. Maybe if there was some decent chance of the organisation behind this lot sending reinforcement, then she wouldn’t mind. As it was, they’d just be like these ones and Rose got bored quickly with pest control and nothing else to do. Plus she wanted to go hunt down some leads on her mother once this was done.

Nothing, in short, made her want to linger in this frozen pit a second longer than necessary. Hence the impatient drumming of her foot against the ice as she waited, and certainly not patiently. The other teams checked in having finished their sweeps and Rose acknowledged them, ordering them to regroup to defend their exit route, before the tapping of her foot picked up again as she watched the slowly-thawing Knight.

“Leave the talking to me,” She ordered Gem. “I’m pretty sure the second you open your mouth, he’ll know we’re not the good guys and I don’t want to be stuck here two seconds longer than we have to be. How much longer anyway?”

TAG: Copycat/Shining Knight

[Shining Knight]

Sir Justin slept, centuries passed as Camelot's Shining Knight slumbered locked in ice. He should be dead, would be in fact, the Ogre Blunderbore's last act had been to bring an avalanche down on the pair of them a moving mountain of thousands of tons of ice. He should be dead if not from the avalanche at the very least from old age but trapped beneath the ice the mystic armour, a gift from Merlin himself, the armour preserved and healed him, slowing Justin's body down till his heart beat just once a year as the seasons turned. Slowly it even healed the Knight, undoing the terrible wounds inflicted in that final battle.

While he slept he dreamed, fleeting fragments of battles the world had long since forgotten or come to regard as mere mythology. As he slept Justin battled monsters, he built and saved and restored. They were not all good dreams he had some bizarre nightmares of metal birds full of people, of magic forgotten in favour of some bizarre technology. But now it was time to wake, on some level the amour senses the changes around it, the rising temperature, the weaknesses spreading through the ice and the Knight's heart began to beat with renewed vigour, his core temperature rising even as the ice began to melt from the outside. As the machines did their work melting away the ice so the armour began to restore Justin, to wake him from his deathless sleep and as much as the prison of the ice would allow he began to twitch and stir.

It took moments before the Ice was gone, Justin fell from the ice, his blade clanging down beside him. He caught himself enough to land on all four, he panted and coughed franticly, as his lungs took their first true breath over a thousand years. He had yet to open his eyes and in any case his tousled blond hair had fallen before his face. Slowly his senses returned to him though, before he had even managed a conscious thought though he smelt it; Blood and a lifetime of training and danger took control. Snatching up his blade Justin leapt strait up and backwards into the en garde position.

It was only then that he actually began to think. What was this place? So strange everything made of metal and strange bright lights but nary a window in sight. Why was he here? Friend or Foe? Where is Blunderbore? Where is Winged Victory? What in the name of the Lady was going on? All he could see was a room full of people in bizarre garb, most of whom were dead. So being ever the pragmatist he settled with.

“Who are you and what do you want with me.... Miladies?” He finished somewhat lamely, because a knight is nothing without his virtues one of which was curtsey. He kept his shining blade raised however; he wasn't an idiot.

[Copycat]

Gem was increasingly becoming used to the sight of bloodshed - or at the very least, bloodshed that Rose Wilson had a distinct hand in. And whilst Gem could be rather cruel and mocking in what were most definitely Science-Guy's final seconds, Rose seemed almost business-like; Gem, with a wrinkle of her nose, supposed that old cliche of it being 'nothing personal' absolutely applied here - And why wouldn't it? These useless science guys would've been left well alone if N.O.W.H.E.R.E. weren't as interested in the deep-freezy Shining Knight as they were. Glancing again as Rose stepped over to join her, Gem nodded along with the notion that it was good of these guys to do all the work for them; "Most definitely. I mean, this thing looks like child's play 'cause I'm workin' from N.O.W.H.E.R.E. instructions, but I wouldn't know my way around any of it, otherwise," she stated, tapping the pad she'd been given a few more times to shut it off, and replacing it in the bag she carried on her back. She didn't need it any more, since the operation was pretty clear from here on out - convince this guy to come with them and head for extraction.

Piece of cake. Easy as pie. Numerous other phrases that suggested the simplicity of the remaining operation which Gem had, of course, picked up from others in her time at NOWHERE, but was nowhere near cool enough to say without looking an idiot.

"I know, right? Because I'm the obvious bad guy here, what with the swords and the awesome eyepatch and that steel-toned hair, I'm so obviously a villain. Me. Tiny girl barely larger than freaking Ellen Page with a colour-based OCD complex. Obvious villain," she muttered, driving what could have been a joke into the ground again, but she hadn't really meant it as that much of a joke; She didn't entirely mind Rose's company, but there were just those times when, well.. Rose's words had the appropriate sting to them, which Gem was entirely certain was the point. "Anyway, it'll literally be.. Minutes. Less than five, given this thing's about as vague as the average Windows installation," she stated; It was, of course, clearly working given the two of them could see the exterior ice melting and the water being drained off, but clearly there were some manner of processes at work that she didn't understand entirely, and she would hazard a guess that Rose didn't either.

She glanced at the timer on the console as the thawing continued - a curiously quiet process, but then she didn't exactly know what she should expect; It was hardly going to be, like, Han Solo in carbonite or something, right? Watching in silence, the knight's form became clearer and clearly as the ice faded and melted away, Gem looked him over; He wasn't bad looking, she supposed - maybe a little Conan-esque, only with more armour, but not bad looking. She remained silent, however, not exactly wanting to test the subject of boys with Rose, although Gem naturally had some manner of curiosity as to what was Rose's type. Again, however, that kind of girl talk wasn't even Gem's cup of tea, let alone Rose's, she imagined, so she was going to be finding out any time soon, she supposed. And then, suddenly, he was fully defrosted, which was.. Well, a little weird, to be honest; Gem stayed back, not wanting to get in there and try and help him up in case he took it the wrong way.

And then when he was suddenly spry enough to take up his blade and adopt a stance, Gem cringed and actively moved to hide behind Rose; Naturally, she could sic her power on this guy, but not if she had a sword rammed through her gut. He then started to speak, and Gem looked up at Rose expectantly; Granted, she understood every word, but.. Why so archaic? "Okay, so.. No clue why he's talking like he's outta Braveheart, but that's your cue, boss..."

TAG: Ravager

[Ravager]

At Gem’s comment, Rose snickered and casually reached off to ruffle her short partner’s hair in what could possibly be mistaken as an affectionate gesture if circumstances were thoroughly ignored. “You’re a five foot nothing pettanko who’s cute as a button,” The white haired girl said, once she was done, “Which is all fine, but the second you start talking, you sound like the cute as a button psycho you really are. Good girls don’t make people beat their coworkers to death with a clipboard. Not that you need to stop, because it’s really adorable when you try to sound tough.” Rose chuckled to herself again, lowly. It really was. It’d been the same with a lot of the Titans, she’d found. They’d always talked a good game, but most of ‘em couldn’t back it up. Kill him, cripple them, revenge on this one… But when push came to putting a sword through the bad guy, they couldn’t hack it. Pun fully intended.

With that, the pair of them settled back to watch the knight defrost. It was a silent process, only interrupted by the occasional report from the other teams going about their search and destroy mission. The ice melted, draining away, showing a male form within, dressed in armour and with a sword. Nice sword. And he was handsome enough, she supposed. Not that Rose was looking for a relationship but… Hey, she had needs.

Then he was out, and Rose confirmed her initial opinion as he went, amusingly, straight from sleeping to awake. Oh, she liked that. Apparently being kept asleep hadn’t done anything to his reflexes.

And then he called them ladies. Rose couldn’t help it. She laughed. She laughed, throwing her head back in dark mirth because, if there was one thing that nobody had called Rose Wilson since she was a girl, it was a ‘lady’. It was just… No. In no way could she really be considered a lady, and she’d declare to anyone willing to listen that she took pride in that. Ladies were weak, feeble, relying on ‘big, strong men’ to protect them and doing what their fathers told them to do. Marrying who they were told. Rose wasn’t weak, took a disturbingly near-sexual pleasure in breaking any big strong man dumb enough to think she needed – let alone wanted – them to protect her and hadn’t done a cursed thing her father told her to do since he buried a lump of cancer-causing meteorite in her head. Alien cancer-causing meteorite at that, just so she could be part of his trap for Nightwing to beat Superman.

Marriage? Ok, that idea just made her laugh harder.

Gem’s comments didn’t help either (nor did the girl hiding behind her), and it took Rose a moment to gather her shattered self-control back together again. Braveheart? Hehehe. Well, close enough. Though, her understanding was that this guy? He predated Braveheart by a long time. Anyway, having managed to master her laughter, Rose stepped forward a bit, empty hands held out to either side, though she was perfectly happy she could get that sword off him if she had to. But people tended to think that unarmed was safe, particularly when it came to females, and she was never too bothered about using that little piece of idiocy to her advantage.

“My name is Rose,” she told him, “This is Gemma. We’re…” A snicker built in her throat but she held it back, even if she could stop the smirk spreading across her lips. “We’re here to rescue you, actually.” She waved around at the dead. “From this lot. Say ‘thanks’, Sir Knight. If we hadn’t come, you’d be dead right now. Or just wishing you were.”

TAG: Shining Knight