Who You Calling Joker!? [Bliss/Nekro]

What could be weirder than a clown on the streets? That's right, multiple clowns on the street. Several clowns were scattered around the area of a certain building, and that certain building is a bank. Suspicious right? Well, what's not suspicious with a bunch of clowns in the streets. There were two clowns position on two balloon stands while the other clowns danced and performed various magic tricks, those which you can see performed by Clowns on birthday parties.

They seem harmless enough, handing out free balloons and pulling out handkerchiefs on their sleeves. People would think it's just another gimmick on the streets of L.A., surely there's nothing wrong right?

"It's almost show time boys, wait for my orders... Muhaheheh!" A shrill voice emanated from one of their ear pieces "Boss gave word, wait for his orders." Whispered one of the clowns on his ear piece. As each clown received the message, they all gave a faint nod as keep on doing their acts. It went on for a few more minutes of them performing tricks and giving off balloons until the shrill voice spoke once again on the ear piece of each clown. "Okay boys... Time for Act one. Muhaheheh! Muhaheheh! Muhahehehehehe....."

Across the street from the Bank, there was a Cat Cafe.

That's right, a cafe where you could sit around and pet the cafe's resident cats. They also served cat clients.

Now Shauna came here to check out the trend and found it equally amusing and enjoyable. Her cat, the honorable gentleman cat Ser Walter Purrington (because of his fur coloration under his nose that resembled a moustache and another on his eye that looked like a thick monocle) was happily lapping up a tuna and salmon snack on the table, while Shauna was enjoying a cup of coffee and some scones.

Walter ate his food with a look of contempt and scorn, as some cats were wont t o doing, but Shauna just looked at her cat. She took out her phone to take photos, but Walter's attention was on his food.

"Hey Walter. Look at the camera."

Walter continues eating his food in silence and contempt, refusing to pose for the silly metahuman.

Shauna sighed and sipped her coffee. Only then did she look out the window and noticed the clowns in the street. She felt a pang of discomfort in her mind, as she never quite liked clowns, despite all the smiles they brought to the children gathered outside.

"Move it clown. It isn't my fault you don't have any real skills to get through college." With a simple push Bliss made her way two clowns performing some sort of odd ordeal for people passing by. Bliss stepped by in a pair of shorts and a breathable track jacket to keep her cool in the terrors of the southern California sun. The rest of the street bustled with the business of Los Angles flocking to the outlets and boutiques around the block.

Bliss needed to pick up a few arrangements from a local flower shop before picking up a dress she ordered, but something sidetracked her. "Since when do clowns have bosses How many bad choices can one group of people make?" Lifting her coffee to her mouth, the sun bounced off her sunglasses. Whatever the clowns on this street hoped to achieve would no doubt be an annoyance to anyone over the age of five. Or, at least Bliss made an undervalued guess at the nature of the debacle.

Out of the corner of her eye she did spot a familiar face, but familiar faces typically held grudges, so Bliss just let that one slide by. A bell rang as Bliss slipped into the dress shop next to the bank. "Fukuyama, black floral, three inches above knee with a bounce."

"Size?" A grey haired woman with a spinsters bun and a tape measure as a necklace stepped out with a sheet.

"6."

"Ha. Maybe with more of that coffee you might be. I got you down as an 8."

Bliss spoke with her back teeth clinched. "Then why did you ask me my size?"

"You short changed me on all the expensive stuff, so I'm charging you with dignity." Sifting through a line of plastic bagged products, the woman emerged with a dress.

"Why are those clowns all over. I thought this was a nice neighborhood? Cause, I'm paying you as though this were a nice neighborhood."

"Eh, it keeps me in business, but I don't know about those clowns. Seem weird, but they aren't bothing me or any of my customers. Taking Bliss' credit card out of her hand, the spinster took her compensation.

"They're bothering me."

With a closed smile the credit card returned. "Have a good day and a nice wedding."

"I'm so glad I gave you my business." Bliss dumped her coffee in the trash to allow the aroma to spill out. Maybe not the best revenge, but it helped Bliss.

Bliss shoved past a clown on her way past the bank. "Move it John Wayne Gacey."

Some of the clowns got bumped by a seemingly rude woman twice, obviously, they were irritated. They wanted to kill her already, but since their boss hasn't ordered them to make a move just yet, they did their best to ignore it and continue on their performance. But only few minutes later, the orders came. "Heard the boss. We're going in." Ordered one of the clowns. Some of the clowns started entering the bank one by one as one of the clowns started rummaging through one of the balloon stands.

Now it's starting to get even more suspicious. That's when the gunfire started. The clown took out a machine gun out of the balloon stand and positioned it on top of the stand, firing at the innocent people around the area. Inside the bank, there were five clowns wielding rifles who had started shooting at the people inside, leaving only the bank's personnel to give them the money from the vault. "Move faster you bitch!"

Outside, the clowns kept firing their guns, now aiming at the neighboring facilities. "Good. Keep er go'in. This'll be a great show. Muhaheheh!" Said the same shrill voice in each clown's ear piece.

"You just gotta love the smell of fresh blood in the morinin... Muhaheheh! Muhaheheh! Hehehe...."

Her relaxing day at the Cat Cafe would turn into horror as a high caliber bullet ripped through the cafe's glass window, causing it to pulverize and fall to the ground. The bullet rips through the air and lodges itself in the head of a man sitting with his girlfriend, blood redecorating the wall and making the woman scream in terror.

Chaos erupted as the customers flee through the kitchen to the rear exit. The cats, startled, flee through the special cat doors to their sleeping areas in the restaurant, through which Walter followed. The entire street is quickly awash in violence, as innocent bystanders are ripped apart by a hail of machine gun fire. Men, women and children- innocent and minding their own business, lives cut mercilessly short by some maniac with a gun. Shauna watched all this unfold in front of her, as she was just drinking her coffee.

No more bullets ripped into the cafe, as a deflection field sends the bullets whizzing into the ground. The clown notices this and saw a lone figure in the cafe, standing her ground. He unfortunately came eye to eye with a lady in a dark green jacket and tight jeans, whose emerald eyes began to glow with swirling, technicolor energy, and then...

In a single instant the clown found the liquid in his eyeballs boiled away, his eye sockets becoming smoking holes in his head.

"AAAAAAAH FUUUUUUCK MY FUUUUCKING EYES! YOU BITCH YOU MONSTER YOU FUCKING MONSTERRRRR!" The Clown gripped his eye sockets in horrible, searing pain, as he rolled around on the ground, twitching and spazzing out from the brutal attack, screaming his lungs out.

Shauna walked up to him, and kicked him in the gut.

"Monsters we are, lest monsters we become, clown." She muttered, Then, she looked at the commotion in the bank. This was an extremely brutal method, no subtlety at all. She peered through the concrete walls and saw the people inside gunned down- not even taken hostage but just riddled with bullets. She singled out the clowns and prepared to start shooting.

The air around her grew hotter. And more noisy. A bullet hissed by Bliss, feeding the pavement. A quick blast from a spinning Bliss threw two men back into the wall. Their rifles fell to the ground only to rise again. A crossfire in the street would be dangerous and cause far more collateral damage, but the rifles themselves would make for great projectiles. Hard rifles struck both men in the head while Bliss began to walk closer to the balloon cart on the other side of the block. Bullets raining towards Bliss would break against  a telekinetic barrier until Bliss could hide away in the doorway of the bank. Both rifles she commandeered would fly towards the two clowns, aiming for their heads. Even if the rifles missed, Bliss would leap out and with a quick controlled motion would throw the two men against the wall.

Good enough for the outside. At least some of the bullets would be contained for the mean time, but more bullets came out towards the dress shop Bliss just came from. Before heading inside, Bliss wanted to do the dress maker she hired one last favor by pulling up a sewer lid and dropping it on his head. Some of the drops of blood from the man's head wound would start to traipse up to the window and spell out the number '6'. A small Japanese girl bolted out of the dress shop as Bliss headed into the bank. "Bliss Fukuyama?"

Furniture would start ripping out from around the central waiting area, both shielding Bliss and bank goers and assaulting the clowns with flying tables. Right now Bliss just needed to get a lay of where the clowns in the building took up their positions, so she could formulate a plan for attack. One of these guys acted as a leader of some kind, but she needed to know where the leader of a bunch of trigger happy clowns would hole himself up.

Then, almost out of nowhere, two girls appeared and started mowing down the clowns with supernatural abilities. The clowns focused at firing their guns at the two girls seeing how much of a threat they are. One metahuman is hard enough to fend off, what more with two of them.

"Hey uh.. boss. There are super freaks outside."

"Oh. Heroes came early this time huh, it's been a while. Muhahehe! Time for me to show up I guess." Luckily enough, Bogzy himself is a metahuman. He can at least keep up with these women.

It's been a while since he had to actually enter the scene. Most of the times, his henchmen were good enough to handle the situation themselves. Although this time, it looks like he'll need to go out and do some work himself.

Not far from the bank, a black van was parked. As the back doors opened, a clown dragging a gigantic hammer emerged. The clown gave off a big smile and stopped for a brief moment and looked down on his left. Beside him, there was a man, crawling away due to the wounds on his legs and body. Bogzy laughed as he smashed the man's head with his hammer, having fragments of his brain and skull scatter. "Ooops? Muhaheheh!"

Bogzy approached the woman who just melted the eyes of one of his henchmen. "Monsters? Muhaheheh! I like monsters. Maybe since am one myself. Wanna see how far I can launch your head? Muhaheheh!" He then swung his mallet towards the woman at full force.

Inside, one of the goons not yet attacked by Bliss, toted his gun around at some of the people in the bank who he had found hiding in a room. They were bunched up together, in fear of this maniac who was surely going to kill them.

"Heheheh... who wants to go first... The lady... or the gentleman... oh... let's start with the little boy!" He threatened, going to grab the youngest victim, until...

*FZZZT*

An emerald hued laser beam sliced through the walls with pinpoint accuracy and precision, relieving the clown of both his legs from the knees down. "GYAAAAH!" He screams in panic and surprise, falling down hard, his lower extremities now smoking stumps of flash cooked flesh.

"AaAAh... Aaaaah my legs... my legs... what the hell..." He rolled over to see the damage, having dropped his weapon. He looked up to see one of the would be victims picking up his rifle. It was a short Asian lady clerk wearing glasses, her hair a mess. Judging from how she held the rifle, was probably from Texas.

"Oh. shit. Hey lady, I was just kidding... I wasn't gonna kill anyone..." He pleaded, trying to crawl away from the administration of justice.

The lady took out her phone to call for an ambulance, keeping the gun trained on him.

Shauna repeated the intervention a few more times, standing right on the street, turning the killers into the victims. Laser beams shot tiny holes in the walls and maimed clowns, including a resourceful goon who was about to take Bliss from behind.

The laser beam cut right into him and he would scream in agony, giving himself away, as the intense heat flash roasts the skin on his side abdomen. One of his internal organs was also damaged, and would require immediate medical attention to save. "Gaaaahahah... aaah... Mommy! I want my mommy!" He reached out to Bliss, pleading for mercy, being alive and in horrific pain.

Death was too good, too merciful for monsters like these- let their victims decide their fates, she says. Shauna's eyes smoked with energy.

Bogzy made the mistake of killing one more innocent right out on the street. Shauna heard the commotion, and looked at him. "This guy is either nuts, or metahuman." She suspected, seeing that the man was coming at Shauna from the front. He swung a giant mallet with frightful ease and power, but Shauna saw it coming. She moves backward to avoid it, and lashes out with a laser sword coming out of her hand, trying to give Bogzy a Luke Skywalker treatment and relieve him of his weapon... then of his hands.

In the blink of an eye things went from worse to only bad. Furniture kept the remaining survivors sheltered from the onslaught. The barrel flew out of the machine gun, followed by feed and mechanism, finally the bullets sprung out one by one into the air. Bliss' hand pointed towards the gun, implicating herself as the engineer behind the dismantling of the machine gun.

"Um? I..."

A blast of energy breezed over the man's face, wiping away all of the clown makeup. "There. Now I can actually look at you." The barrel of the machine gun hovered over his head until it crashed down against the back of his neck, sending him into unconsciousness. Tables and chairs began to form a prison around the disarmed clowns while Bliss looked around the room full of dead civilians, dying civilians, and dismembered clowns. "What the actual fuck? What happened to laughing gas and boxing glove jack in the boxes. I'm blaming this on video games."

"Ugh..." One clown crawled towards Bliss until a kick made contact with his head and he stopped crawling.

"Um. Bliss? Hi." A Japanese girl with a cloth kit appeared from behind Bliss, keeping just low enough to avoid the elbow Bliss would throw in her defense. "I think I can be of some service here. I can make some bandages out of clothes that can, well, they will help."

"Yeah cool, you took first aid at some point in your life. Good job. I'm busy." A melee broke out in the streets between the woman Bliss met in Argentina and the man who looked like he was the ring leader of these clowns. "You think this is worse because they are clowns?"

"I don't know, but I need clothing to help..."

"Well, I'm not getting naked, so take some clothes from those dumb clowns and start patching people up."

"And the clowns?"

"Clowns are people."

The bank manager stepped forward with a shotgun to interject with Bliss. He gripped the shotgun with an angry passion seeping rage through his sweat laden hair and messed up suit. "Wait, you're going to waste time on these murderers while good people bleed out?"

"Prioritize the most wounded. If you throw away society for vengeance you get more murderers and at the end of the day you're no better than they are. You're just a villain fighting other villains." Feeling the situation deescalated nicely, Bliss turned to walk towards the street.

"That's a load of..."

"Shut the fuck up!" A harsh turn brought Bliss back towards the disgruntled survivor. "You'd be dead if it weren't for me and I didn't have to stop any of this from happening." The shotgun flew out of the manager's hands and knocked out the last clown on the ground before flying to Bliss' hand. "You should check that one for a concussion."

The crowd within the bank grew hostile towards Bliss, closing off her exit to the street with the metal drop cage. "I'm going to have to ask you to give me back the gun, miss."

Bliss turned back with a challenging glare to see the rest of the bank beginning to take the side of the manager.

The laser sword made contact, avoiding his mallet to be hit by blocking it with his very arm. "Ah fuck! My arm! My arm! Muhaheheh!" The blade sizzled in contact with Bogzy's arm. Being durable really is a great power to have, without it, he'll only have one arm by now. "That stings y'know, be careful with this thing." He held oh her laser hand sword with a tight grip from his other hand. "Nuts or Metahuman? You can say I'm all of the above. Muhaheheh!"

"Don't you think two of you against me is unfair? I mean these guys couldn't possibly count right? They are just normal humans with guns after all, how can they hurt you?"  So far, he knows that this woman in front of him can make fancy lasers and the other woman is capable of moving things with her mind, how fancy. Hopefully, they won't be tough enough. "On other notes, do you wanna know how I got these scars? Muhahehe! I'm kidding, I don't really have scars. I can't have scars. That's just, impossible! Muhaheheh!"

"People say I have bad breath, can you check it for me?" Bogzy exhaled, releasing a small cloud of toxic gas. The gas may not be lethal although it can cause some serious headaches and weaken you.  As they were covered with the purplish cloud of gas, Bogzy raised his mallet once more, planning on striking it down at the woman, hopefully, it'll crush her if it hits.

Shauna kept an eye on that hand and saw the appendage did not come off, much as Bogzy tried to act like it did. Shauna was getting ready to start whacking him a few more times when the Clown went and grabbed the... uh... let's call it Shauna's Psi Blade, to demonstrate his invulnerability.

The plasma Psi Blade was insubstantial of course, and sizzled Bogzy's hand as they came in contact. Still, Shauna was not amused. "So this one needs a few whacks. Don't worry, you'll be shishkabob when I'm done-" Shauna threatened, only to be cut short by Bogzy's poison gas breath.

"Nerve... poison gas?!" Shauna quickly backed away from the purple cloud, covering her mouth with her free hand and jetting off with her Particle wings. Even brief contact was disorienting, as she flew around in a random trajectory, coughing heavily, as she instinctively flew higher to get fresh air... and gain distance from Bogzy. She took a moment to refocus and breath.

"The police are coming in through the back. Do you think they're going to just let you start shooting unconscious people?" Still holding onto the shotgun, for the moment Bliss kept control of the lobby.

"I don't think they're going to hold any grudges."

"How do we know they're out? They could be faking." The woman with the rifle held the gun at the ready for too long. He arm shook as the barrel refused to stay steady. "I think I see that one moving!" All attention in the lobby shifted towards the incapacitated clown the fashion design medic started tending to. "Hey! Get away! He's still moving!" A round fired from the barrel, painting the girl with the bandages in a red hue.

A pool of blood began swelling up through the torso of her shirt. "Put it down!" The rifle dropped before Bliss even got through her sentence. "Get that door open!" The security guard almost tumbled over his poorly maintained dress shoes turning to roll up the cage over the front door.

"Someone get a bandage!" The manager fell to his knees over the girl bleeding out on the ground. His advice directed himself to pick up the bandage laying next to the downed girl. Once the bandage started turning the blood flow seemed to stop, but little could get the girl to wake up from the shock she took with the bullet. "I don't know if we have enough bandages for the clowns!" Knowing the ire of Bliss would fall upon him, the manager turned back and pleaded. "We're out of..."

"Shirt. Jacket. Tie." Once enough clothing donations made their way around the lobby, the survivors and downed clowns looked good enough, but the young Japanese girl still remained completely unconscious. "Get through the back door with everyone. Leave the clowns here. The cops can take care of them."

Muttering through a very unselect choice of words, the manager slowly pulled himself off the ground. "Fair. Fair. That sounds..."

"Go." Still holding her shotgun, Bliss pointed the direction while she began to move towards the door to the street. The survivors packed up their retinue and vacated into the safety of the police on the other side of the street, keeping as far away from the meta fight as possible.

The fight moved all over the street, but it stayed away from the backside of the bank where Bliss ordered the mass exodus. Holding her gun tightly, Bliss stepped out as Bogzy took a step to swing his hammer with a furious blow. A pull of telekinesis could change things a little. Moving in the same direction of his swing, Bliss added more momentum with her pull. She planned on it giving him the option of either needing to give up his mallet as it flew farther from him, or he could continue to hold on to the hammer as Bliss threw it towards the side of a brick wall. "Hi." With the shotgun trained on Bogzy, Bliss looked to cut him down if he tried anything to get close to her.