Stay Alive

"Can anybody move?"
"Kinda....might need another minute or so. Stronghold?" Sally asked.
"Barely."
"We won right?"
"It isn't moving."
"Good."
"What now?"
Stronghold closed his eyes. "Bullets?"
"We're out."
"That's just great."
"Can still fight?" Chandra asked.
"I don't think so. Everything hurts like hell.....we need to stay here for awhile longer. Rest, catch our breath, lick our wounds....all that stuff...and then we move on."
"Move on? There might be more of those things!"
"And we can't just stay here either, we'll be sitting ducks."
"For now....we rest." Sally said.


After waiting for ten minutes, they got up and moved on ahead

Stronghold was dragging the sledgehammer and moving sluggishly now. Everything hurt. It was getting hard just to lift the hammer, he felt sharp pain whenever he tried to take a breath or take a step.  The last fight...he was almost certain some of his ribs were broken now. He shook his head, fighting through the pain. The others were almost certainly on their way by now, they would survive this, they just needed to survive. He looked at the other three there with him. Sally's hair was a mess and she was holding her stomach where the creature had stomped on her. Jim hard marks on his throat from where the creature had grabbed him and his voice was raspy. His back was hurting and his wrist was broken. He had cuts and bruises from the fighting and beatings he had endured. Chandra wasn't much better. They had been beaten to hell and back. Reaching up with his free hand, Stronghold adjusted his mask and stood up as straight as possible. He was scared, that last abomination had nearly killed them all. If they ran into another one. Looking back at them again, Stronghold made a decision.

The four of them continued on until they came to a staircase that lead up to a doorway. It was a very long one. They cautiously walked up the stairs and tried the door. It was locked. Stronghold tried again and again. Nothing. "Dammit."
He heard Sally scream and turned around. There, entering the room, it's footsteps echoing around them, was a second monster, this one even bigger than the first, needing to hunch down as it walked through the door and then stood up to face them. Immediately after entering, the creature crushed the doorknob, trapping them inside the room with it.
The creature growled and advanced on them.

Sally attacked first, yelling at it and swinging her sword at the creature. However, the creature held up it's hand and grabbed the sword blade in it's palm. The blade cut it's palm a bit, making it bleed the same black blood as the last one but it took the sword from her hand and threw it away and before backhanding Sally away. She hit the wall behind her hard. Stronghold ran down the stairs and slammed the sledgehammer against it's forehead. The creature grunted but then hit him up into the air back up the stairs. Stronghold landed on his back hard and dropped the hammer. The creature then turned to Jim and Chandra who were already running forward and tried to stab it. Jim succeeded in stabbing into it with the sword but the creature just grabbed and slammed him against the floor and then tossed him into the wall. Chandra drove the daggers right into it's chest. Blood spurted from it's wounds but it didn't seem affected, picking up Chandra, slamming it's head against his and then flinging him away. He landed next to Sarah and slumped to the ground. Stronghold leaped at it again and threw his entire weight into a punch to the creature's throat. The creature stood still for a moment before punching him in the stomach and then flinging him away, throwing him away. Stronghold fell to the ground, bounced off of it and into the wall. He lay still for a few moments before slowly reaching up to the wall and pulling himself to his feet. "Not done yet." He gritted his teeth and rushed it again.

Artemis wiped the blood from her hands, Speed Devil would live and they had gotten the information they needed. "Last Leg Prison."

"I know that place!  It's pretty far in the woods and it was abandoned years ago. The place was closed down due to illegal torture and experiments done on prisoners." Ultra Girl said.

"That has to be where they're taking him. It would make sense for a place like to have underground levels." Carmella said.

"And the jammers are in the underground prison's roof." Ultra Girl realized.

Reaper was already calibrating her jamming device. "This should be enough to deactivate them once we're in. We just have to hope he's..."
"He's Alive." Artemis said firmly. "Let's go."
Dude and Carmella held out their hands. Reaper grabbed Dude's hand and Ultra Girl and Artemis grabbed onto Carmella and they super speeded off, blitzing through the woods to the very side of them, arriving at the prison.

No sooner had they stopped then the snipers placed around the roof opened fire on them. Ultra Girl held up her hand and stopped the bullets with a TK field around them and Carmella super speeded onto the roof and zipped around it, taking out the snipers and bringing the last one down to Ultra Girl. "Do your thing."
Ultra Girl grabbed his head and pulled him close. "Where is Stronghold?" She demanded and forced her way into his mind and got the prison's layout and the elevator to the underground level where Stronghold would be along with the location of the Game Master, the sicko responsible for all this. She telepathically ordered him to go to sleep and the thug collapsed on the ground, asleep. Ultra Girl gave them the layout.
"Alright, we're going underground. Saving Stronghold is prority one. Ultra, can you pinpoint exactly where he is?"
Ultra Girl reached out with her mind, focusing as hard as she could. She yelled in pain. "Damn, there's....interference of some sort...like...static. But...I got something. He's alive, but, he's hurting. Badly. We have to hurry."
They nodded and ran in. There were guards inside of course but the heroes easily plowed through them and fought their way to where the secret elevator would be. On Artemis's insistence, Artemis forced open the door, revealing the elevator. They ran inside and set it to go underground. "Hang on Matthew, we're coming."

Stronghold hit the ground again. The creature walked over and kicked him through the air. He landed on the stairs. Seeing the hammer, he crawled over to it and lifted it up and swung it around at the monster in desperation, hitting it across the face at least hard enough to make it back up a step. Stronghold then swung it at the creature again. This time the creature grabbed the hammer mid-swing. Stronghold leaped up and kicked at it's chest with both feet, more specifically, aiming at it's chest where the daggers were still imbedded, driving one of them in further. The creature didn't like this and swung him away, still keeping it's hand on the sledgehammer. Stronghold started getting up when the creature grabbed his face and forced him against the wall. It started to squeeze his head as hard as it could. Stronghold struggled helplessly, punching and kicking at it in vain. It lifted him up further, the monster preparing to crush his skull. It was interrupted however when Sally leaped up onto it's back and put an arm around it's throat and began jabbing a dagger into it's chest. The creature threw away Stronghold and dropped the hammer before turning and reaching back, grabbing Sally and throwing her away. Stronghold was barely getting up when Sally landed on top of him. Stronghold struggled to his feet and stood to face it.
Up at the top of the stairs, the door opened and several soldiers walked into the room. Game Master's security. They were prepared to open fire when they saw the creature thrashing them. They stopped and sat back to watch. The leader of the team sighed.
 "Damn, can't believe it beat us here."
"They still alive?" A second guard asked.
"Not for long."
"Hey, who do you think is gonna die first?"
"$70 on the chick."
"You're on. My money's on the kid in the costume."
"Sooo....what do we do if the kids do win?"
 "Yeah, that's gonna happen." A guard laughed.
"I know, but, you know, what if they do?"
"If they do, we simply fill them with holes. Problem solved."  The leader smiled.

The Justice Patrol arrived at the basement floor and the moment the elevator opened they took off running. The power nullifiers were already affecting three of them: Ultra Girl, Carmella and The Dude. However, Reaper's technology jammer was working also to deactivate them.

Stronghold pushed himself up, holding two bloody daggers as the creature advanced on him again. He leaped at it, yelling in defiance and slashed and stabbed at the creature but it just kept walking, barely affected by the cuts at all. The creature reached down, grabbing his blades and tearing them from his grip and then squeezed, crushing them in it's grip, destroying the metal blades and leaving only the hilts. The creature dropped them and punched Stronghold in the face, launching him through the air. He saw the creature still advancing on him and tried to get away, backing away from the monster. It reached him and lifted hi into the air, pulled back it's fist and began punching him in the face, hard, again and again.

"Reaper, isn't it ready yet?!" Artemis yelled.
"Almost!" Reaper worked with the technology jammer, struggling to get the frequency of all of the jammers in the underground prison as the heroes kept running through this hellish underground maze. Almost...almost ready.

Jim and Chandra attacked the creature, Chandra slamming the sledgehammer against it's ribs and Jim stabbing it with the sword. The creature paused it's assault on Stronghold to turn around and back hand them away before turning back to Stronghold who despite his utter agony and wounds, still punched at it helplessly.

"Come on....come on...just a few more seconds...just a few more...THERE! I GOT IT!"

The creature threw Stronghold down and stepped on his back. He lifted his head. Sally was down, too injured to keep fighting. Jim and Chandra could barely move, both of them beaten bloody. Stronghold tried to push himself up but the creature was too strong. "Noo....not....not like this...not like this..."
The creature took it's foot off and threw him onto the staircase. Stronghold yelled in pain. It advanced on him slowly. The guards laughed at his futile struggle. The creature raised up it's fist to finish him. "I.....won't....die."

Reaper activated the jammer, shutting off every power nullifier in the entire prison. The shutting down sound echoed throughout it.
"LET"S MOVE!" Carmella and Dude super speeded the five of them through the prison, Ultra Girl reaching out with her telepathy to navigate them to where Stronghold was.

The creature swung at Stronghold to punch him as hard as it could. He raised an arm to defend himself and stopped the punch cold with one hand. He was stunned for a moment and then felt it, felt new strength filling up his body and as the sounds echoed around them, Stronghold quickly figured out what it meant: His powers were back. He shoved the creature away from him, tossing it across the room with ease. Stronghold picked himself up and stared it down.

"My turn."

Reaching down, the creature picked up the Sledgehammer and swung it at him. Stronghold swung his arm at it and demolished the hammer with a backhand. He advanced on the creature. It roared and punched him in the face. Stronghold simply smiled and the creature tried again, accomplishing nothing but hurting his own hands. "What's wrong? Not having fun anymore?" He asked. It kicked at him his head but Stronghold just slapped the kick away, sending it sprawling. The creature started to get up and saw Stronghold winding up. Kissing his right hand, he raised up his fist and then punched the monster across the room so hard it not only hit the metal wall, it broke the wall. The creature fell to the ground, not moving. Stronghold wiped the blood from his face and then turned to the guards. They backed away. Even with the distance between them and the heavy wounds on his body, they took steps backwards. There was the sound of a gate crashing down and breaking.

"THE HELL?!"
Stronghold smiled.
 "What....what the hell was that?" One of them asked.
"That? That was the cavalry." They arrived seconds later and stood with him. Sally, Jim and Chandra looked up, almost unable to believe what they were seeing. The Justice Patrol had arrived. The team was back together. They were safe.
"Avengers Assemble, Assholes."