Villains Club Training Camp (5)

Outclassed

Raven

The requested riot was actually underway. The flood of water dampened the prisoners, floor and rocky ground surprisingly giving a lot of leeway to the otherwise incarcerated masses.

Guards running to intercept Charybdis and Metallo found objects appearing out the water in front of them, objects thrown at their heads by passed prisoners and in one graceful moment an almost magical slick of ice that kept everyone off their feet. At each cell in the path to Penny and our way in, the two big bruisers smashed everything in their path until a small crowd of running, fleeing or fighting bodies had amassed alongside the villains.

We initially followed at a leisurely distance, the plant kiddies walking hand in hand with their mother took longer to notice the magical protections starting up but even they responded with a "Oh no, that doesn't look good!" Before looking to us for advice.

"Hold on, I need to get a better look at this!" I insisted, flying up to the dome to look at the circles. On the ground, Jesse was letting his demon do the work. Of all the siblings my 'only a little older' brother had the most difficulty with actual spell-work.

On the flipside he could play the crowd like a boss.

"If you other villains wanted out, you should have had better friends on the outside. There was no bail posted by the villain's league for ANY of you!" he was roaring, in my vision the green aura of envy fuelled magic spawned and spurred through the growing crowds of angry and rioting prisoners. The feed of this power all flowed back through the air towards Crow with thin argumentative streams that would be unnoticed to them.

Uh oh. Realizing almost a minute too late that the circle I was looking at had just powered, I pushed myself through the dimensional rift and outside of time. Just in the nick of time! A barrier much like the one surrounding Penny had half-formed around me! Slipping out I made the mad Dash across the ceiling, using a pen and paper to annotate the spell. I wouldn't need to draw it later, so long as I could visualize it!

"Basic barrier spell! Looks similar to the one the Original was using!" I pondered out loud, then made a Dash for Penny. In a second Crow would probably follow, when I let a second catch up with me.

"Wait, didn't Sharkie push one of these shields?" Sitting in the drift of timelessness I thought. Meditated. Zinthos, zinthos. "By buff of wind, by hand of metrius I call raw force upon this space!"

I felt the magic grow, build, generating a quantity of something in the space between my hands and Penny's bubble. Dropping out of the dimensional space and into the real, I felt the rush of power that now stood between us and finished "Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" letting the wall of pure force drive Bad Penny's magical bubble towards the central spire!

"The shields that the spell is generating, can be pushed!" I called down, watching as the chain of magic Zantara had set up snaffled up each of the freed villains in their own ball.

"GOT CHA!" using a piece of one of the shelters, Charybdis rammed the nearest captured villain across the field. In a moment the entire prison was starting to look like a pachinko machine with bubbles bouncing around from pin to pin, some with enough force to cause damage!

Penny's ball smashed into the central spire behind me, dust spreading out and making me cough. When it cleared, my aim was shown true, having crashed it into the control room. The Audit was slumped on the floor coughing as an automated turret in the roof of the building, apparently running on a battery, shot Penny's ball!

"Mwa Ha Ha! Gimme a minute while we break your toys!" Penny crowed, an evil laughing emoji plastered on her face plate! The shots from the turret bounced off at weird angles and hit computers, technicians and guards. Each of them rapidly grew smaller in response to a Pim Particle shrink ray, just like the turret Penny had in her bedroom.

The one in Penny's bedroom was the one I'd smuggled out of that museum when my mission with Alinta and the others went south. They hadn't checked well enough and I'd been able to hide it and retrieve it later. Now I wish I'd studied it, or asked Penny how they worked.

Outside, Lucyfar sparred with Zantana, the two of them teasing each other out by using magical bows and arrows. As they did, Lucy was attempting to build a spell diagram on the ground.

"What's up Lucy! Can't Lucifer just disable the magic in my wards?" Zantana mocked, mucking up the design.

"AAAAR! You want me to play this card? Alright - !" the floating blades made of dark magic stopped their work, and re-appeared circling Lucy "HEY KIDS! Portal's going bye bye for a while! PLAN C!"

All movement on the ground stopped for a moment as Briar and Quin quickly starting filling their mother in on the plan.

"SIN CROW! PLAN C!" I called out, chasing down my brother, then standing and dropping all my spells. He'd fully forgotten himself in the fighting, nothing but a green eyed monster and struggled against my magic as I picked him up.

"JESS!" I pushed past his struggles, pressed my forehead against his and pushed calm into his mind. "Azarath Metrion Zinthos! SAY IT!" I pushed, breathing and willing him to breathe in time, "Brother, don't let him take your mind! Say it with me. Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" I repeated again and again, feeling him calm and eventually say it, repeating it with me.

"Change back, change back!" I pushed, "I want my dear big brother back!"

He returned to normal just in time. Above us Lucyfar cast her own spell, "Infernal pieces of distortion, drawing magic in, the bright star consumes all I see! Flow Break!"

The pulse of energy that flowed out from Lucyfar had no light or sound attached, but a shock wave pulled all the air in the dome towards her for just a moment as I physically felt every trace of my magic blink out. I'd pulled every inch of my magic back inside myself, even so I felt week for a while as every running spell in a huge area just straight up stopped. Crow blinked at me, confused for a moment before hugging me.

I sighed and hugged him back as the spell circles on the dome blinked out, freeing all the trapped prisoners.

"It's about to begin. You need to move quick, as soon as you can get out, get to the spell diagram. Get it running again!" I told him.

"Yeah, I remember. I'm not that far gone! Wait, aren't you coming?" I shrugged to my brother.

"There are way too many bad bad people free right now. Even if  this is just a distraction, or a disorientation." I gulped. "I need to make sure this doesn't go badly!"

The cracking and creaking of wood filled the air. Right near the center of the impenetrable dome, intended to stand against the strongest of Earth's supervillains, Briar, Quinn and Poison Ivy stood, holding hands in a circle as, near the base of the spire, a tree began to grow.

Wood quickly spread and grew, the base of the growing tree spreading until it was almost as thick as the central spire, pushing into the cement and steal of the structure and uprooting, buckling it and causing the foundations to shake.

A meter a minute, red wood and bark of a Sequoia sempervirens, hyperion redwood spread and grew, taking up part of the spire as it did and reaching up towards the dome to Push.

The whole dome creaked as branches, twigs and leaves pushed, growing, pressing, taking up more and more of the sky until it blocked out the sun, pressing. Pressing!

Inside the shouts and screams of the prison's directors and technicians revealed their panic! "ZANTANA! KILL THAT TREE!"

Slowly the dome of the Super Maximum detention center of Death Valley, very cautiously and creaking with every inch it gained, began rising into the air.