WHAT: Lena joins Alex out on a patrol shift and things go down hill WHERE: Vallo City WHEN: Backdated to September 14th WARNINGS: Some violence and injuries STATUS: Complete
It’s everything that lurked in the darkness was the problem.
Everything looked like it was draped in pitchblack - everything. Sunlight was gone, and your standard lightbulbs did little to cut through dark, and then there were these things that popped up. Monsters of every variation that thrived in the absence of light, and they weren’t deterred by a measly flashlight. Like in most Vallo instances, Lena would be outright fascinated if this wasn’t outright annoying or detrimental to the wellbeing of literally everyone.
Most of the time she sat behind a screen, fingertips punching away at a keyboard as she worked the technological side of problems; digital footprints and tracking and keeping records. But sometimes there was only so much you could do from that angle, and sometimes you just had to be out there.
She was technically Defense, after all. Alex was also Reserves, so - not entirely out of their jurisdiction.
“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with my footwear,” Lena argued indignantly, the heels she wore this time actually silent against the cement sidewalk - turns out that was a thing she configured, don’t ask. She didn’t want to be tracked by the sound of loud footsteps. Vallo City wasn’t going unscathed this time around, and she had actually had a spell that took form in orbs of light circling them for protection.
And to see, sort of.
“I can run circles around you in these,” she tacked on. Which wasn’t true, probably - but the point was that she could technically run in them and it would be fine.
“Don’t exaggerate, Luthor,” Alex scoffed. I can run circles around you was way overselling it. Yes, fine, Alex wouldn’t deny that Lena was in good enough shape, heels or no heels, to escape some of these gnarly beasts if it came down to it. She was fast on her feet, and after years of running from the threat of the week back home, she better be.
But the heels were still concerning. They weren’t exactly appropriate footwear for fighting in general, she stood by that. And even with the magical orbs she’d conjured for protection and to attempt to light their way as they helped patrol Vallo City, there was a higher than average chance they’d be up against one of these nasty, darkness-dwelling beasts sooner or later.
“I’m just saying sneakers exist, babe.” Not that you’d know it looking at your shoe collection. She had maybe one pair that she wore to the gym and spin classes. It figured even in the midst of another Vallo-brand crisis, she’d choose a pair of heels. “And this would be the time to have worn them.”
“Heels are part of my superhero get up,” Lena supplied casually with a shrug. She did not, in fact, have an elaborate costume like most of them had at home - kind of pointless when she was usually behind a computer screen anyway - but if she did, it would involve stylish and deadly looking shoes. Like these.
She didn’t outright arm herself with a weapon while they were out here. One hand held onto Alex’s (partly because she loved her, partly also in case something tried to snatch one of them) and the other was free, and she would refer to that as her magic hand. Her first rodeo trying to fight Vallo Things with it had yielded disastrous results, embarrassment and a deeply bruised ego. Serefin and Ostyia coached her through a lot, however - she felt more confident. More comfortable in her witch skin, even if her passion continued to be more scientific pursuits.
It at least gave her a more helpful edge when things hit, and she liked having a buddy system with her girlfriend to help make sure she was safe. “This is - very eerie, though,” she frowned. They could barely see anything in front of them even with the spell working so brightly; their steps had to be slow and careful so they wouldn’t bump or trip over anything. Or fall into a pothole. “The forest has to be a total disaster. We’ve had several reports come in saying that the city had been hit but it’s… quiet.”
Too quiet.
That was usually a bad sign.
Alex rolled her eyes fondly and chose not to keep pressing the subject. Lena Luthor was notoriously obstinate, and given they were in the middle of an endless night with horrific creatures terrorizing the forest, she knew this wasn’t a fight worth picking. As long as Lena didn’t trip and break a heel, they should be fine.
Right now, it was calm enough, after all. But she doubted it would stay that way.
“They’ve got plenty of people out there keeping the forest under control.” Just a glance in that direction and she saw a blast of blue-gold energy momentarily lighting the sky. “Like your ex,” she teased, giving Lena’s hand in hers a playful squeeze. There was no mistaking who that energy was from; the forest was in powerful hands, and not just the elder Danvers’.
What was - oh. Lena definitely saw that. A temporary beacon of light that was refreshing to see. “Oh, god, Alex - she’s hardly an ex,” she rolled her eyes. She and Carol had fun. The same kind of fun she had with Margo and Mazikeen and Ostyia back when she was sampling what Vallo had to offer and didn’t feel the need to be self-conscious over the gender she chose to fuck.
“Anyway, I just worry about the teams getting so spread thin when -” Something brushed up the back of her neck, a phantom limb reaching out to make contact and it made her shriek. She wasn’t one to lose her cool but that had been startling, and she jumped to spin around and be greeted with…
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Lena swiped at the back of her neck as if she was fighting to keep a bug off her. “Something touched me,” she said lowly. “I think we’re being followed.”
That shriek made Alex’s blood freeze, and she yanked Lena closer to her once she’d realized there didn’t seem to be anything there. But it was hard to tell with the pitch blackness surrounding them. It could be anything – there had been far too much of an influx of these beings over the past few days. Dealing with them never got any easier or any less creepy.
She had come armed, her gun holstered at her thigh, and the Hand of the Soldier wrapped around her wrist. The area was basically deserted – the dark had kept most of Vallo’s citizens from wandering for the past few days – but she wasn’t going to just shoot blindly, though her hand did find its way to the hilt of her gun.
“We can’t do anything until it shows itself,” she murmured.
Lena breathed in deeply to help settle her nerves. That was - unsettling. She wasn’t often on the ground where actual combat took place so she wasn’t as steely about it as she’d like to be but she was good at schooling herself into staying calm.
“Let me see if I can…” Biting into her bottom lip, she stretched a hand out to focus on expanding the light spell she had shrouding them. Maybe she could have it to where they could see more than just one foot in front of them, but she was also realizing the light was beginning to thin out - or dim, really - the more she did it.
It gave whatever was circling them (tattered robes over some ghoulish thing, easily over eight feet tall) the prime opportunity to sneak behind Alex and grapple its ghastly arms around her in a grip that could cut off her air supply - all to yank her back into the darkness with them.
The only thing Alex could do was let out this choked little gasp – because that tall, ghoulish thing did cut off her air supply, however briefly. With effort, she managed to break its chokehold, however briefly, prying at the long, gray fingers with her own until her head stopped spinning.
She staggered backwards to get a good look at it and recognized it from Talcott’s notes – a wraith. She had committed as much information as she could to memory about these beings, and she remembered this one: susceptible to ice, swords, and firearms.
She pulled her gun out of its holster and fired off a couple of shots. She knew it wasn’t going to hold it back forever, but it seemed to have an effect, at least temporarily. She turned back to look for Lena, the faint light just barely illuminating her face.
“Lena, how’s that light coming?” she called out, her voice a little hoarse. She fired off another shot as the wraith swooped in closer again, knocking her down on the sidewalk hard with a swipe of its long arms.
“It’s coming!” Lena shouted back, screwing her eyes shut to concentrate - heart racing, blood pumping in her ears because she could do this. She had to. There was a burst of magic that radiated from her, and the light did expand in both radius and brightness to cover more ground.
The wraith shrieked and recoiled, retreating back - and trying to bring Alex into the darkness with it.
That’s when Lena’s eyes snapped open and she reached out, digging her fingers into what she could reach from Alex’s arm. “Like hell you’re taking her - hold on, I’ve got you!”
Ice. Ice. Lena needed ice. She had mastered the accidental summoning fire, but ice - not so much, though she knew of a spell in her mother’s Book of Shadows that focused on it. She could pull it off. Summon it, considering she had no choice and it was either that or this thing would take Alex.
So she did it. Right as the wraith was summoning fire (green fire), the temperature around them dropped significantly. The pupils of her eyes went as blue as her irises - perhaps even a bit paler - and very long, very pointed icicles began to materialize.
Try as she might, Lena couldn’t both hold onto Alex and focus her energy on her magic, especially not when her opponent was something with supernatural strength. Its fingers had snagged Alex’s opposite arm and jerked her forward, causing the gun to spill out of her hand and skitter across the sidewalk, far out of her reach.
She tried to fight against it – to kick and punch whatever ghastly body part she could connect with – but that fire was enough to knock her back and knock her off her feet, head bouncing hard against the sidewalk beneath her. And while Eliza had always insisted she had a tough skull, that kind of force was too much, and her head lolled as she succumbed to unconsciousness.
Lena lost her grip on Alex, and a split second later the icicles shot forward and impaled the wraith in several spots, creating a layer of frost around every site of a wound. The noise it let out was the kind you’d make before death - and right before dropping into a heap of frozen ice, robes and skeletal bones.
“Alex,” she called out, locating her on the floor with the light spell around her shining bright - it was blinding, and that was the point. Lena was warding off every single goddamn threat there was right now. “Alex!”
Two fingers went to her neck and, good, she can confirm a pulse. A breath. After a quick assessment of injuries, she went to help Alex sit up right while she reached for her phone to call for extraction assistance. “I’ve got you,” she whispered, pressing a hurried kiss against her girlfriend’s forehead. “I’ve got you.”