Everyone's favorite time traveling Slaughterfiend has decided that it wants some superheroes on it's tree. Heroes and villains from both DC and Marvel have gathered in the light of many of their number just flat out dying without warning, being perfectly fine one moment, then dropping dead the next, cut apart at the very basest levels, or even retroactively gutted like fish or kidnapped. After hundreds of such murders, the identity of the killer is known; a creature from another universe known only as the Shrike.
It cannot be reasoned with, it cannot be bargained with, it will not stop until everything it wishes to die has met a gruesome; painful end on it's blades as it buzzes across time and space, killing anything it sees fit. This is their last chance to stop it before the cosmics have to get involved to stop this time traveling menace from the ever mutating future.
The Shrike's abilities: The Shrike is capable of instantly teleporting itself anywhere in space and time that it wills through "farcasting". Through this ability, it can both engage in standard "teleportation" or at will time travel, seemingly without limit in it's choice of destination.
Fedmahn Kassad realized that he could kill them all - commandos, assault boat crew, all of them - and they could do nothing about it. He knew that time had not stopped - any more than it stopped while a ship was under Hawking drive - it was merely a matter of varying rates. The bird frozen above them would complete the flap of its wings given enough minutes or hours. The Ouster in front of him would close his eyes in a blink if Kassad had the patience to watch long enough. Meanwhile, Kassad and Moneta and the Shrike could kill all of them without the Ousters realizing they were under attack.
It was not fair, Kassad realized. It was wrong. It was the ultimate violation of the New Bushido, worse in its way than the wanton murder of civilians. The essence of honor lay in the moment of combat between equals. He was about to communicate this to Moneta when she said/thought - Watch.
Time began again with an explosion of sounds not unlike the rush of air into an airlock. The bird soared and circled overhead. A desert breeze threw dust across the static-charged containment field. An Ouster commando rose from one knee, saw the Shrike and the two human shapes, screamed something over his tactical comm channel, and raised his energy weapon.
The Shrike did not seem to move - to Kassad it merely ceased being here and appeared there. The Ouster commando emitted a second, shorter scream, and then looked down in disbelief as the Shrike's arm withdrew with the man's heart in its bladed fist. The Ouster stared, opened his mouth as if to speak, and collapsed.
Kassad turned to his right and found himself face to face with an armored Ouster. The commando ponderously lifted a weapon. Kassad swung his arm, felt the chrome forcefield hum, and saw the flat of his hand cut through body armor, helmet, and neck. The Ouster's head rolled in the dust.
Kassad leaped into a low trench and saw several troopers begin to turn. Time was still out of joint; the enemy moved in extreme slow motion one second, jerked like a damaged holo to four-fifths speed in the next instant. They were never as quick as Kassad. Gone were his thoughts of the New Bushido. These were the barbarians who had tried to kill him. He broke one man's back, stepped aside, jabbed rigid, chrome fingers through the body armor of a second man, crushed the larynx of a third, dodged a knife blade moving in slow motion and kicked the spine out of the knife wielder. He leaped up out of the ditch.
-Kassad!
Kassad ducked as the laser beam crept past his shoulder, burning its way through the air like a slow fuse of ruby light. Kassad smelled ozone as it crackled past. Impossible. I've dodged a laser! He picked up a stone and flung it at the Ouster manning the tank-mounted hellwhip. A sonic boom cracked; the gunner exploded backward.
Behind her, the Shrike moved slowly through the chaos, choosing victims as if he were harvesting. Kassad watched the creature wink in and out of existence and realized that to the Pain Lord he and Moneta would appear to be moving as slowly as the Ousters did to Kassad.
Generally this is put as it going from trillions (low end) to quintillions (high end) times the speed of light depending on just how slow that laser was to Kassad.
The Shrike acts at incredible speeds due to acting in "fast time", where it manipulates the flow of time relative to the rest of the universe to give it the impression of having impossible speed on top of it's teleportation abilities. Most of it's victims are slaughtered before they ever knew the Shrike was there when it doesn't deign to just kill it's enemies backwards in time. Through this ability, the Shrike can also create temporal clones of itself to mob an enemy. The Shrike is known to be able to utterly speedblitz faster than light enemies who can outright laser light, going from merely "blurring" to outright invisible depending on how much it's playing around. An example of it showing these speeds is shown in the above quote from page 166 of Hyperion.
The Shrike's blades are capable of cutting things that are not physically able to even be damaged according to the laws of reality as understood by mankind, such as planar fields; which are otherwise entirely invulnerable to everything thrown at them, even FTL impacts. There's no real describing it's sharpness other than "planck length, maybe sharper", being able to cut through constructs that beings quadrillions of times more intelligent than humans believed to be invulnerable.
The Shrike is next to invulnerable, conventional weapons are known to be entirely useless against it even if they do hit. Starship grade weapons do nothing to it (it doesn't even flinch from these impacts), and it has only been harmed by beings on the same spacetime phase as itself.
It has only ever lost when it was destined to do so, but as it simultaneously exists in all possible timelines, it knows the result of any potential action.
It is going up against the following:
- Thanos
- Zoom
- Flash (Wally West, Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, most recent versions that apply)
- The heralds of galactus (Surfer, Terrax, Firelord, Air-walker)
- The earth based green lanterns
- The Rogues
- Captain Marvel (current)
- Shazam and Black Adam
- The Cull Obsidiax
- The super family (Superman, Supergirl, Power Girl, Superboy)
- The Thor corps
Rules:
- The Shrike is out to kill them all. The Team is out to survive and avoid getting cut into bloody ribbons or stuck on the tree of pain, which means getting rid of the Shrike before it slaughters them.
- The team is in character, but is fighting to survive, and have identified the Shrike as the murderer of most of what they cared for.
- The battle starts in Times square, deserted as the Shrike killed everyone in the city before the team arrived, leaving their guts out to see.
- The team gets a split second to actually see the Shrike before it engages all out murder mode.
- Thor and the Thor corps have been granted their time manipulation again. Assuming they can react/throw their team mates at the Shrike fast enough to use it.
Round 1: The Shrike feels sporting and is not making time clones of itself.
Round 2: The Shrike isn't feeling merciful and is spamming clones of itself as much as possible.
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