Nothing to Cheer About (Diana)

Drooling on Danny's vest acting as the fourth or fifth thing wrong with the situation only served to remind Danny of how much trouble they found themselves. At least, Danny found herself in, as Diana drifted off into a metaphorical dreamland induced by a flashbang. "At least I didn't go down this time." Danny pressed her blade through the cracks on the door, prying it open, and forcing herself into a fight she knew she would find.

Her blade stumbeld forward into a spiral as someone grabbed her arm and pressed a bag over her head. A gas let loose around Danny's face, filling up her nostrils and temporarily blinding her- at least she assumed in the darkness of the bag. Slowly, Danny gave out before the same technique knocked Diana out as well.

"Wakey, wakey!" A hideous laugh bounced from wall to wall. Danny slowly lifted her head. She tried to bring her hands up to her neck to rub out the crink, but found her hands tied up at the moment behind her back with rope. She struggled with her chair, trying to give herself some wiggle room, but her torso and upper legs were taped to the chair. She did not need to check her ankles, but did so anyways. Yep. Taped together. "Diana? Are you there?"

She looked to her right and found Tsukimi. A wide piece of tape stretched from cheek to cheek with a smile drawn over the mouth. With no real information to draw from her gagged partner, Danny tried her other side, this time finding Diana. While examining Diana, Danny noticed a new component to this ordeal. One of the motherboards they tested previously was attached to the tape around Diana's torso and her upper legs. Danny quickly checked herself as well, finding the same tools of destruction. "Who are you?"

"I ask the questions." A woman with a white face with green lips and a bulbous blue nose leaned towards Danny, placing a finger over her mouth. Her outfit consisted of a red overcoat with a black top hat. Her belts all contained numerous explosives, but the hand grenade belt drew the most attention. "Who are you?"

"Whatever you plan on doing with these bombs- it isn't going to work. Our agency knows all about this." Danny told a fib. "You think they just sent the three of us in here by ourselves? Please."

"Oh, I'm so scared of the cheerleader." The ring leader would tremble, trying to hold back a laugh. "Agency? What agency? Wouldn't most spies die before giving up a source. You need to shut up."

Danny found herself coming up with an excuse for her fabrication just as the mastermind placed a piece of tape over her mouth, drawing a tooth filled smile over the mouth. "What about you? Are you from the same agency as the two cheerleaders here? Were you just changing into your dumb little outfit?" She moved away from Danny, having accomplished her objective. "I'll let you in on a secret, but don't tell the cheerleaders. Those computer thingies I taped to you, well, they're going to explode at half time. Then, the whole place explodes at halftime, pretty neat right. People know about Kovah, but they don't really know Kovah, ya know?"

Kovah looked behind her. A television showed the game progressing just below the five minute mark. Danny began computing the time in her head, with commercial breaks, the two minute warning, and three time outs, it could mean ten minutes. But she, had no way of relaying any of that information to Diana in her current state. "Pipe down cheerleader. You should have stayed on the sidelines. Then, you wouldn't be in this- oh wait, you kinda would still be in the mess. Well, it would be a surprise. Cause, you know, I did the worst thing by ruining it for ya. Toodles!" Kovah would laugh as she stuck a piece of tape over Diana's mouth and drew a smile over it. "Later losers. I'll be sure to watch how it ends for you on the security feed."

And with that, Kovah waltzed out the room.

No way could Danny just let Kovah do this, but first of all she needed to make sure these bombs did not go off. Actually, that would be second. First and foremost, she needed to get the tape off her mouth and out of this chair. After a bit of struggling, Danny finally got her thumb to rub enough of her bracelet to get a blade out. Now, she just needed someone to get their chair around to her so she could cut them loose.

A pair of balaclava wearing goons left in the far side of the room were looking over all the weapons they pulled off Diana, particularly her katana. "Can ya believe it? One of them is carrying a katana. A katana! The most impractical weapon in history."

"She probably thinks she's some kind of cool samurai-type hero!" The other goon laughed.

"This wasn't even what the samurai used in battle! It's for scaring unarmored peasants."

"Still, it's a pretty looking thing. All black, like a tac knife. Maybe we can sell it on the dark web?"

"Yeah. And all this other stuff. Makes you wonder how that girl didn't cut herself carrying all these shuriken."

Diana was mostly knocked out for the bad guy's monologue, stirred a bit when Danny called out for her, and was in a pissy mood when her equipmet was being dissed and deconstructed by a couple of talkative goons. Diana's ears were still ringing but she was mostly coherent now.

"...hmm mmm mmm?" Diana tried to speak, but found her mouth taped and her speech of the mumbling dialect. She leaned forward ever so slightly, to tip her chair off the ground and began hopping over to Danny. Even on her tip toes Diana proved adept at silent movement, being half ninja and all.

"Mmm mmm mm mmm mmmm... mmm! mm! " With her arm's liberation at hand, Diana seethed, psyching herself up for some head bashing.

Kovah took her leave, potentially dooming Tsukimi, Danny, and Diana all to very quiet, but also very boisterous, deaths. All three girls could only sit and watch from their chairs keeping their plans concealed behind a strip of duct tape meant to seal their dooms and their communication. Each line of tape was reinforced to keep them from breaking forward while the tape around their mouths stretched far enough back to keep them from forcing it off with their tongues. But, the entire time, none of those problems presented as much turmoil as the devices primed to explode.

Tsukimi squirmed around, trying to use her body weight to break the tape while wanting to get her mouth free to call for help. Once she turned her head, she spotted Danny's blade protruding from her bracelet. Her attempt to get to Danny was cut off by the ninja duelist who also found herself tied and gagged but not entirely helpless.

Danny helped move her blade to cut Diana's hands loose. In return, she found assistance in getting her own wrists cleared from the rope. Once Danny found herself free, the blade went up to sever the duct tape holding her body to the chair before cutting her legs and ankles loose. The tape peeled from her mouth easily, leaving all of Danny's skin and make up in tact. The former being the one Danny really cared about.

"These motherboards are going to blow up in less than ten minutes. We don't have time to- oh wait-" Danny took the tape off of Diana and Tsukimi's mouths. The turquoise blade made the same quick work of the duct tape around Diana's chair before getting Tsukimi just as free. "We can't find all the motherboards, so we need to find where she plans on detonating them from. Tsukimi-"

"On it. I finally got one of these things to examine." Tsukimi removed the outer shell from the mother board to get a better look. "I wanted to find one of these sooner."

"We wanted to do a lot of things differently and sooner. And with less duct tape." Danny looked to the security camera in the room. On one side, Kovah could attack them at any time, on the other side, this place was wired to blow. The six motherboards formerly strapped to the trio were all hooked into a desktop behind them, but no monitor. "I don't think we'll be seeing any goons bust in. I doubt they want to die with us-"

A buzzing came from outside the room. The door burst into shredded pieces of plexiwood, making the buzzing louder. A yellow smiley face appeared through the smoke, bursting into the room. Two more buzz saw covered drones shot into the room, seeking to cut right through Tsukimi. A hard turquoise construct deflected the drone, slamming it into the wall. It did not look to do much structural damage to the drone, but it gave Tsukimi time to plug her phone into the computer.

"Find where she is Suzy. We gotta get there in under ten minutes." A turquoise blade broke through the middle of the drone, this time doing structural damage. Severe structural damage. "And, I'm pretty sure Kovah isn't going to just let us do it."

Once a hand was free Diana greatly expedited the trio's freedom, and for good reason. Explosives tied to the self was a good reason to move quickly. The villain may have said the bombs were timed, but why not also make them remote? still, Diana took that risk, her heart beating fast. She hated these types who killed impersonally, and swore to herself to give Kovah a taste of the exhiliration of hand to hand.

Then came the drones. Murder machines, they sent murder machines! Not even humans with weapons.

While Danny wielded the more elegant weapon, Diana was still seething and frustrated, her armaments too far away and the drone too near. Improvising with what was at hand, she quickly vacates her thick cotton sweater just as the drone came in. The saw sliced through much of the body, and a bit of Diana's hair too, coming too close for comfort but the fighter's reflexes allowed her to dodge just close enough.

The sweater was dead and gone. It would be mourned, but it would also take its vengeance in its death; the thick cotton was ripped up, but it was drawn into the saw's internal mechanisms, enmeshing in them and making the saw stutter and stall. The saw drone was now just a drone.

"...JUST DIE!" Diana in a heightened emotional state grabbed all the explosive motherboards and tossed them at the drone, entangling the thing in the explosives. A boom was anticipated, but Diana went for her gear anyway.

The first swipe of Danny's blade rendered the first drone damaged goods. With whatever mechanism put in to monitor spatial recognition disabled, the drone did more damage to itself than anyone by slamming into the walls until it finally caught fire. The smoke began trailing up from the spark in a tiny pencil thin trail.

Two more drones flew through the air, one making a slashing spin towards Diana. The anger in its teeth tore through the fabric of the sweater Diana used in her defense. If her best defense came in the form of a sweater, Danny knew her friend did not stand much of a chance. Diana proved reseourceful and surprising though. The drone sputtered off with its blades slowly running out the motor, letting it drop to the ground in the same shape as the drone Danny dispatched. "Nice thinking-" After the fall of the drone, Diana chucked the assorted explosives the girls had strapped to them at the drones. "Oh, wow."

The motherboards burst, blowing out the wall behind them and causing Danny's ears to ring like they would never hear tenor again. "Maybe too much!" Danny yelled through the blasted room, holding her hands over her ears. "Wow, that could have been-" A blade just passed by Danny, smashing in to her turquoise blade. Smoke kept her from fully seeing exactly where the drone buzzed off, but she could hear the high pitch of his blades, even through the ringing of her ears.

Once the sound matched up with what she could assume a forward projection path would follow, she shot a turquoise bolt out of her bracelet, piercing the drone, but not stopping its forward progression. A shield materialized in her hand, allowing Danny to turn her back to the path of the drone and place the shield in perfect position to block the ram.

"I got it!" Tsukimi emerged from the smoke as the drone dropped from Danny's shield. "When the blast went off, I traced back the signal." Along with finding the coordinates to where Kovah planned on sending her charge to detonate the rest of the bombs in the stadium, Tsukimi also found a tube most likely styled for the travel and protection of paintings, but with enough damage to show the hint of a blade within.

"Suzy! don't touch that sword. You don't know what Diana's done with it." Danny looked over to Diana through the smoke and rubble. "No offense, but you do try to play up the dark goth kid with a sword thing all the time. I don't know how much of it is true."

The strength of the explosions shook Diana to the core, making her ears ring loudly again. She shielded her face from the dust and debris, and coughed as the irritants touched her sensitive nose.

"Cough cough... you guys alright?... cough... alright..." Diana shouted due to the ringing in her ears. She saw that her friends were shaken but otherwise fine. Diana could only breath a sigh of relieve once the last drone went down and her allies were safe.

Danny's comment got Diana to stop for a second as she reclaimed her weapon.

"You do know I used to..." Diana held back from going into angsting over the dark and trouble assassin past thing, instead turning to Suzy. These vile people had nearly killed them; and they could still kill off hundreds of innocent people. And for what? No explanation was going to satisfy that question.

"Alright, where are they? These clowns are monsters. Monsters that need putting down." Diana wasn't trying to be edgy, it just sort of came out that way...

Tsukimi did the hard work of pulling out the coordinates while it sounded like the  police began making their way to do their own heavy work. "If we get stuck here when the cops arrive, they'll at least want to ask us questions. Let's make like a leaf and split." While the room used to only house one door in and out, the new means of destruction gave them several paths to choose from.

"We need to go find Kovah. I think we should try to evacuate the stadium. We already blew part of one room up; it shouldn't be that hard for the cops to believe us." More smoke began to settle around the room. Danny did not want to mimic its current state. "Suzy, take Kovah to the warehouse. I'll try to smooth things over with the cops."

"I want a sword." Tsukimi kept her eyes on Diana's blade, not wanting to make it too specific who's sword she wanted.

"Don't you have a stun staff your sister made?" Oddly enough, Bliss began designing it as mosquito zapper. But, Danny did not want to push too hard on this discussion; they had a stadium to save. "Okay, ready, break!"

With her cheer put into action, Danny left the room on her way to the control room for the stadium. Even if it only saved a few people from an untimely death, it would at least do something beneficial. And that is what Danny set her mind to. Finding the best way of gettingt he attention of everyone in the Rose Bowl, and then putting into motion a series of turquoise bridges to usher everyone to safety.

Once Tsukimi found the coordinates, the warehouse would not be far. Getting out of a stadium never took long, the lines always moved in the opposite direction, so the duo could get to the warehouse with a few minutes to spare before the half time preparations would begin. "After the game clock hits zero, they immediately go to a long commercial break." Tsukimi kept up her running pace as she talked with Diana. "Someone wearing a ringmaster coat will be in this for the spectacle, they will wait for the cameras to come back."

STADIUM

The edgy swordsman nodded at the assessment. Cops were an unecessary distraction. "Agreed, they'll just slow us down... and we need to find the trigger on those bombs now."

Diana was perceptive, and heard Suzy's wish... as well as the weapon she carried.

"A stun staff? I could use that. With the sword I'm always holding back against people." She sheathes the Black Sword, and offered it- and the power it held- to Suzy. At least with a powered staff, Diana only had to contend with broken bones and internal bleeding on mooks.

WAREHOUSE

The warehouse was dimly lit and full of crates, machinery, lifting vehicles, and other typical warehouse fare. Diana used this to her good advantage, to see how many dudes there were to smack around. They milled about in groups of three, making sure their boss was left unopposed.

...Her plan mostly involved starting to take people down, using the stun staff to good effect, smashing in faces as only a martial arts master could. Diana drops down from a shelf of home tools and smacks a masked goon atop the cranium with a sickening "CRUNCH", gravity giving her at least a +2 extra to hit... ontop of her already like, +20 to hit in the first place.

She trips up and smacks another clown with a gun in the face, then smoothly counters the third by weaving past his knife, using the staff to squeeze his knife arm and head. "AAAH!" When he resisted, Diana rappelled off some crates to gain elevation, twisted around in midair and brought her full weight on the man's larynx with the staff. It was as unpleasant as described, and the man collapsed from the failure of his air hole.

The sound of the fight would of course, alert the whole warehouse, and armored boots were quickly converging to help their clown mates. "...Kovah! Come out here and meet your maker!" Diana bellowed a challenge, but didn't stay in place. She instead used her grapple to get out of sight, to choose her battles and take the mooks apart one by one... though Diana wondered if there was going to be stiffer resistance.

"A sword?" Tsukimi handed over her stun staff, taking up the blade in its sheath. "I can put this to use, but I need to find the mother of the motherboards to shut all of this off." With the sword in a good place by her side, Tsukimi took off, trying to use a tracker in one of the motherboards she hacked to find the host server. Diana could prove to be a valuable decoy.

It only took a few seconds for that theory to prove correct. A few punches, the sound of an electric discharge, and some cracked bones all met the criteria for a Diana fight. Good good, Tsukimi thought to herself as she edged closer to the central computer. One woman in clown makeup wearing a tutu remained steadfast as the rest of the goons cleared out. Wanting a clear shot at the woman, Tsukimi tossed the motherboard against the wall on the far side of the room, pulling the guards attention. With her attention diverted, Tsukimi took a clean shot to the back of her neck, incapacitating the woman.

Tsukimi stepped over her slumped body, to access the computer. The sheathed black blade rested next to her near her grasp. She only needed to disable the Internet access to disable the computer from sending a signal and she could rest easy on her victory. She disabled he computer, rendering the explosive devices innate, but her victory was far from complete.

A swift shot from Kovah's staff landed against Tsukimi's head. "What are you doing?" Kovah grabbed Tsukimi by the shoulders, lfiting her up, but Tsukimi's head slumped back. "Taking nap in the middle of a fight- and you turned off my bombs! I don't know how this stuff works! And you knocked out by tech support! Well, one of you better wake up and turn this back- oh, a sword! I guess I can just let you take a nap."

Kovah left Tsukimi tied up with tape over her mouth as she departed to deal with Diana.

"Oh other girl! Other Asian girl!" Kovah dragged the sword along the ground, letting the blade bounce every so often. ""I hear you calling! Do you want me?" Lifting the blade, Kovah stood over Diana from an elevated catwalk. "I bet you want a rematch, because you are supposed to be the badass girl with a sword, and getting tied up and gagged isn't very badass, so now you need your street cred back? Is that right?"

Kovah would slice at a line next to her, sending crates down to try and crush Diana. "Can you fight crates? You might need to keep trying til you are good enough to face me. I'm like the King Donkey and you're red Italian guy. I have a princess, but I left her in the back room after I stole her sword. It's a cool sword right? I was going to cut her open with it, but I need her. I don't think I need you." Another slice would cut a line sending more crates to try and bury Diana.

Crates were usually smashed by Diana's fists, but now the tables were turned and the Diana was about to be smashed. She sprints for the closest opening, rolling forward as far as she could carry herself.

She dodged them as best she could, but between the gunshots, the crates, and all the enemies, luck eventually runs out. Diana used that grapple like a discount Toby Mcguire spiderman but a lucky crate knocks her as ascended, messing up her aim. "AAAaah!" She finds temporary reprieve roofing frames, but at the cost of a gash on the back and a very badly hit arm. Bruised? definitely. Broken? Hopefully not.

The fighting did not abate, and Diana was forced to find the darkest spots of the warehouse's ceiling, as bullets whizzed past her, sometimes really close as to ricochet off the steel trusses.The air handling machinery for the warehouse proved some seconds of respite. Seconds, maybe, no more.

Wounded. Breathing heavily. Sensations Diana were used to, sensations that usually went away when the sword sustained her through the worst injuries. Even trained as she was, it was ultimately that sword that saw her fight another day. Its malignant power was a fraction of what it used to be, but it was still regeneration the envy of any mortal. Taking a deep breath, she peeked out from her spot, reacquiring her quarry, planning her next move.

Diana swallowed that fear, one more time, as adrenaline raced through her. To stop now was to die. "...You have the sword, but do you have the skill to use it?" she called out, her arm still flinching from pain. Like a ninja in the night, a shuriken dispensed from the same machinery that housed Diana's grapple, and with it she took aim to slice Kovah's unworthy hand holding her blade.

"Hey look!" Kovah put her leg up on the railing of the scaffold, looking over the warehouse floor. "She's not dead yet! Let's call her Blunderbutt! I say we call her that! I picked it." The shrieking laughter of the ring leader echoed out as she swung the sword around. Diana continued to fight her way through the hail of bullets, much to Kovah's annoyance.

"Hey! Stop trying to hit her! You can shoot at her, but some of you are trying way too hard to actually kill her!" Kovah sliced the railing in front of her in two. "I want friends to come play!"

Diana escaped to the rafters, throwing a shuriken towards Kovah's hand. The blade lodged in the back of her hand, but no blood came out. "Uh oh!" A burst of blood finally shot out. "There we go! Bleeding like a real girl!" Kovah laughed as she pulled the shuriken out and threw it back towards Diana. "Oh no!" Both of Kovah's hands touched her cheeks, funneling a low tone of an attempt at horror. "A hole in my hand! How will I ever fix this!"

Kovah kept laughing as she pushed the sword through the wall. "Come get your sword." Her foot tapped. "I'm waiting."

Diana was sure she hit Kovah. The shuriken connected, and she bled. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she showed no real pain, as she was kind enough to return Diana's shuriken. THUNK! "No thanks..." She felt the force of the blade cut into the air handling unit.

Diana closed the gap with the help of her grapple, rertacting the hook once she and Kovah were now on the same platform or catwalk. She kept her eyes on the strange leader, not letting her ambush Diana with any sudden moves.

"...Alright, before I get to slicing and dicing, you got me curious. What are you?" If there were no further hinderances, Diana would reclaim her sword for the showdown.

"Come on ninja girl. I can't wait til the second act. You ruined the first one, so I guess that means I need to have an explosive finale with just you. And maybe the cheerleader in the other room. And maybe the other one too. She looked like she needed to be blown up." The girth of Kovah's sleeves made ample places to hide every card up her sleeve. Once Diana landed on the catwalk, Kovah used card one. A thick foam sprayed out of a flower on her lapel. The foam would quickly harden, trying to immobilize Diana on the catwalk without a weapon or a way to defend herself from the next of Kovah's tricks.

Her second trick involved two electric joy buzzers in her hands. If Diana got free and attempted a grapple, the clown would be more than ready for her adversary, sending enough voltage into her to freeze her central nervous system with enough application. How much it took to charge a Tesla still had not been discvored as the Ringleader of Rampage could not spend too much time on trivial matters.

For her final trick, Kovah slid a strip of concussive explosives on the grip of the blade. Almost small enough to go completely unseen, the strip would detonate once Diana placed her hand on the grip, letting loose a small but potent explosive force.

All in all, Kovah would be ready for anything, and love everything about the fight, taunting and jeering Diana into hopefully making a mistake. The path for Diana would be perilous and make its way across the edge of a sword, a place Diana typically would be comfortable, but Kovah loved taking thee typical and creating the most uncomfortable situation out of it.

Diana was now on the same platform as Kovah, and eyed her sword, then the ring master. An enemy returning her blade to engage her in honorable combat? unlikely. This Kovah was no true warrior, but rather a treacherous and cowardly snake. Diana walked past her sword, intent on beating her with the electro-staff instead.

"That's enough out of you! This ends now!" Diana walked towards her menacingly. The second she made any move, any at all, Diana threw a handful of shuriken at her hand and face. No, she just went and did that- aiming to lodge a sharp piece of metal in her eye, neck and hand.

Once Diana began moving towards Kovah, the spray from her flower lapel would begin to shoot out towards Diana. In the same moment in time, Diana sent out a rain of shurikens. Some of the skurikens fell to the ground, caught in the hardening spray, while some of the spray made its way to Diana, hardening around the body of the little swordsmaster on the catwalk.

Two of the shurikens managed to lodge themselves in Kovah's right hand, springing forth a spray of blood again, while another hit her in the forehead. Blood ran down her forehead, mixing in with the make up around her face. "Now, you're stuck." More of the spray shot out to keep Diana in place. "I'm looking for some new recruits. Maybe you can be one of them. You might have to pass a test though."

"Stop right there!" Danny looked up to the catwalk with Diana and Kovah from the warehouse floor with a shield formed on the side of her body to repel any gun fire from the rafters. "You're done for now!"

"More cheerleaders. It's always cheerleaders." Kovah turned her head from looking at Danny to back at Diana. A stray shuriken poked out from her eye socket, pushing more blood into the mix around her face.

When Diana saw Kovah go for her coat, she thought Kovah had a weapon. No, instead, it was the flower that fired foam. Diana was embarrassingly caught, having tried to deflect the attack with her staff. Except sticky foam was not a laser beam.

Diana struggled, but she wasn't Dragon Girl so the foam held fast. Kovah taunted her, making this setback become a major embarassment. "...Sorry, I don't take contracts anymore. Hurting you though, will be personal." she retorted in spite.

"Ugh, get me out here! DAAANNYYYY!" Diana shouted, hoping Danny could at least give her mobility first. At least, if she could get her shuriken dispenser arm free, she'd use an explody shuriken.