kore_logs | what doesn't kill you makes you stronger

Entry tags:

what doesn't kill you makes you stronger

Who: The Hulk and you, IF YOU DARE
What: The rampaging Hulk is... you know, rampaging. Feel free to treat this as an open post kind of thing. Team up to battle him if you want, or come in to help rescue someone.
When: Day 50 (from here)
Where: Starting in the town, moving back out into the park (feel free to assume you're pursuing him out there from the town), then he flees into the woods.

There aren't a lot of conscious thoughts in the Hulk's mind right now. The only thing he's sure of is rage -- pure and unadulterated, it flows through him and feeds his strength, feeds his energy, but it's like poison, too. The regular Hulk, the calm one, would prefer rationality over this, but he doesn't have a choice. He doesn't get a choice like Banner, or like any of these other humans. He gets someone pushing Banner's buttons until the Hulk tumbles out mindless and angry and unable to turn it off.

So he'll rage, and he'll smash and destroy until he can bleed the anger out.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ivy hasn't been in Cape Kore long, only three nights - but she's spent all of them in the park. Although the possibility of this being an obscure form of imprisonment (or a lengthy hallucination) hasn't yet been completely dismissed, it doesn't take her long to form a connection to what's around her - the trees, the plants, the living earth under her feet.

The earth that's shaking. She's made her home in one of the taller trees to the north, weaving herself a series of vine 'mats' between the spreading branches, and it's from one of these that she's watched the progress of the green monster away from the town.

She's not fazed. After the freakshow that's an average week in Gotham - Clayface, Killer Croc, Bane - this comes as no surprise.

She watches from her vantage point as he runs into the park, doesn't flinch when his massive bulk destroys the gazebo like it was a house of cards. Fine, it was an eyesore anyway.

Now just go. Go.

But the Hulk doesn't want to go. That's the problem. The Hulk never gets out, and then he gets dragged out like this, so angry it hurts, so angry he hurts, and then all the little people come and they try to hurt him, too. They try to make him stop and restrain him the way Banner does, and it's not fair. What's he done? What's he done that they haven't made him do? He smashed this little house. Who cares? It's the humans who got in his way.

He lunges for a tree and grabs it, and it's an effort to pull it out of the ground; that's why he picked it. He wants to struggle to yank its roots free, and once it's free, he stumbles backwards and then swings it around, dirt flying. Maybe if he brandishes this, they'll stay away. They'll stop trying to come after him.

Ivy does flinch, then. She doesn't yet have the affinity with this place that she did with Robinson Park; she hasn't invested enough time or energy to feel like it's a part of her. But all the same she feels the echoed pain when the tree's ripped from the earth, tearing at the fine spreading roots of its neighbors. The entire park aches with a hot, fresh wound.

Back home, Ivy tries to be circumspect around the metahumans. Some are sensitive to her pheromones, some aren't; some of them she can fight off, and some not. Generally she has the benefit of other people's experience when she's going into a fight, but not this time.

Anything she grows, he could tear through, if the tree's any indicator. She knows the plants will spring to her aid in the defense of the Green but she doesn't want to make any sacrifices she doesn't have to. Better to try the silk glove before the iron fist.

Her biochemistry works overtime as she climbs down, clouding the air around her with dense pheromones. By the time her feet touch the grass at the base of the tree she could make a dozen men forget where they are.

She keeps her voice soft. "Hey."

He roars as he whips around, still holding the tree, but he pauses for a second as he sniffs the air. Something seems different about it, but he can't figure it out yet. And anyway, it doesn't matter. He's still annoyed, and Greenie's still bugging him.

"Hey yourself."

Well, the response isn't immediate violence, which can only be a good thing. Still, she feels the roots writhe beneath her in readiness for a fight, the vines wrapped around her forearms growing longer and thicker.

Her voice stays quiet, but it hardens, and her eyes narrow.

"You're hurting the trees. The park can't defend itself against you."

Magic. Look at Greenie with all these plants, and that change in the air? Probably magic too. The Hulk doesn't like magic; he can't fight it, he can't smash it, and people think they can weasel into his brain and make him do things. Magic's stupid. Magic's annoying.

"Trees are trees. So what?"

Ivy's heard this line of reasoning too many times to seriously rankle at it now. She holds her ground, hands balled into tense fists.

"Nothing is more than what it is. You don't have the right to destroy a living thing because you don't understand it. Now cool off or take your temper tantrum elsewhere."

He snarls and crouches down, readying his fists at his sides. Greenie and all her magic crap don't scare him. Even if the air's making him a little dizzy, he's not threatened. She can't do anything to hurt the Hulk; the Hulk is the strongest there is. He's also the coolest green person there is and she can just shove it, so there.

"Make me."

"Fine."

She spreads her hands in a quick, violent gesture, and the massing roots tear open a broad chasm in the earth beneath his feet.

Whoa -- hey! Magic is so stupid!

The Hulk scrambles to crawl out of the hole, and once he can get purchase against the side of the chasm, he can propel himself up and out. He lands and rolls until he can get back up on his feet, and then he whips around and growls. Oh, it's on.

He picks up a beam from the gazebo and swings it at her with everything he's got.

While he's huge and swings like a wrecking ball, he telegraphs his movements like one as well, and Ivy's survived enough fights that she's not going down on the first hit now. She ducks and rolls, taking cover, and when she reaches out to the consciousness all around her she finds it ready to fight. The plants around her reform and reshape at a thought, their genetic code rewritten to her will.

Thorns as long and sharp as knives burst from the earth, vines like barbed wire lashing out at him. Even if she can't put him down for the count, she might be at least able to dissuade him from sticking around.

Ow! Okay, this is really annoying. He grits his teeth and grabs one of the vines and yes, it hurts like hell, but he manages to yank one up and toss it back at her like a whip. His hand's pretty injured, but as she pisses him off, he gets stronger.

It comes quicker than she's expecting and lashes across her thigh as she turns away, grazing it badly and leaving blood trickling over her skin. Ivy hisses in pain and reaches down, fingertips brushing over the scored skin.

Fine.

She raises huge fern-like plants to give her some cover, and with her toxic chemical-cocktail blood mixed into the earth it's easier than ever to grow carnivores - huge, snapping green mouths that drool acid powerful enough to dissolve bone. A gesture and a thought are all it takes to sic them on him.

Oh. Plant dogs. The Hulk's gonna smash 'em.

He charges right at them in fact, bringing a picnic bench with him and swinging at the nearest carnivore.

The mutant flytraps are torn from their vines by the jagged wood, rolling and scattering, and Ivy winces. If this was Gotham, she could step up her game - she could drop the nearest thirty-storey building on top of him, see how he liked that. If this was all forest, she could bring its entire might down onto him. But all she's got is a suburb - not enough buildings for worthwhile ammunition, not enough plants to raise an army - and she's already learnt that the further she goes into the forest to the north, the less the trees listen to her.

A more rational person would consider running, at this point, but Ivy's role in life - her reason to exist - doesn't change just because of a new venue. She's not going to watch this place be slaughtered from a distance just because this dumb lump of meet doesn't know the breadth of what it is to be alive.

Vines the width of tree trunks swarm from the rift in the ground, arcing over the Hulk's body to try to drag him back, away from the park, away from her.

This green lady is so rude! The Hulk roars and tears at the vines, trying to fight them off, but they're big and pretty strong. Not as strong as him, in the Hulk's firm and biased opinion, but strong enough that he's having a hell of a time with them. He manages to grab another bench and smashes it against the ground, then takes one of the pieces and tries to hack at the plants, to show them just who they're dealing with here.

"Hulk stronger than stupid magic!" he declares for the record. Hey, wait. Magic. It's her stupid fault, the green lady. She's distracting the Hulk with her angry vegetables, but she's the one doing it. Snarling with renewed purpose now, he chucks the bench at her and tries to push past the vines to get back to her.

The thick leaves she's grown between her and him take the impact of the bench, but she can feel the strain he's putting on the vines - it takes very little concentration to work out that he's just monstrously strong. 'Could fight Superman to a standstill' strong. And if this behemoth even has his own Kryptonite, she has no idea what it is.

The vines start to stretch and snap; she fills the air with a mixture of poisonous spores and pheromones in the hope of weakening or at least disorienting him, but she has little hope that it'll be enough.

His Kryptonite, if you could call it that, is some kind of happiness or something, the Hulk doesn't really understand. Anyway, it's pointless because he's sure as shit not happy right now. His head is getting lighter, which means she's using some of her stupid magic again, and he shakes his head to try to clear it, to get back on his game. With an outpouring of strength, he struggles to free his arm so he can swipe at her and her covering of leaves. He wants to tear it apart, and then tear her apart. So there.

The leafy blockade gets swiped aside like it's not even there, but Ivy's far enough back to be out of the range of his arm's massive arc. She lifts the concentration of toxins in the air, so dense that a human would be dead in seconds, and steps back. She can't put him down but if she can make the park seem hostile enough? Maybe he'll go.

Maybe.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

what doesn't kill you makes you stronger

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject