First Impressions (Kardus)

"You'll never catch me, Titans Fake!" Control Freak said, running down the street and firing a few clicks of his remote at Rico's surroundings. She was doing her best to keep up with him, but he kept animating things in front of her that she would have to handle. He turned a lamp post into Sirenhead, for fuck's sake! She drew La Reine Tueuse and cleaved it in half, and when she got further, she punched a discount Autobot out of the air in front of her.

She soon rounded a corner after him, and found a street full of innocent civilians being attacked by his creations. She drew Pistolet et Fleur, killing three... she didn't know, she wasn't as much of a tv nerd as Control Freak was. She danced forward, reloading her gun, and then spun out of the way of a giant, Godzilla-like thing trying to step on her, running up its foot and punching it in the face with her projected giant arm, riding atop his head down to the ground as she killed two more tv creations. "Get out of here!" she shouted at everyone, and they would listen as Rico drew the attention of his creations. She cursed lightly, keeping her last shots in the chamber as she looked at all the beasts left. Some horror, some action movie, some were shows she didn't even know existed, just... weird. Wait- was that a fucking pony? BLAM.

Wow; who knew that armfuls of groceries would be so much lighter if you must magicked them to be so. Who needed a car when you could just easily carry everything with one hand! Rose found this out the easy way, having only just started her half-hour stroll when she noticed something calamitous this way came.

That looked very much like a type of magic Rose had never seen before. What was this? Some mad lunatic creating strange monsters from the environment? Looked like chaos. Wait a minute, Rose was part of the environment. Was he going to be transforming people, or just objects? So far it looked like just objects. Either way, Rose quickly dove away into an Ally in order to try to avoid whatever it was that man was doing. She needed to think.

Okay...so there's a madman making chaos out there. What should she do about it? How should Rose respond? Well whatever she was supposed to do, holding bags was going to make anything harder.

//Teleport//Items//To//"Greg"//

And with three and a half words, she no longer had to deal with them. Greg couldn't really do anything with those, but at least they were someplace safe. Maybe someone else was home to be able to take care of the groceries for her. In the meantime, the timid demon poked her head back out to see how things were going.

It wasn't until then that Rose noticed someone else actually fighting the horde of creatures.

Rico quickly reloaded as the kaiju beneath her feet slammed into the ground, jumping forward and holstering Pistolet et Fleur. She was glad she had a moment to reload; that pony needed to die immediately before it converted her with the power of friendship or some crap. She saw a slasher villain, a gun-toting action hero, and... a guy in a trenchcoat. She was going to guess he was some kind of investigator and stick with that. She revved the mechanism on La Reine Tueuse, and suddenly spun forward as if on some kind of rollerblades with the sword propelling her. She hopped up over the fire of the gun-toting action hero, lifting off into the air and kicking downward, bringing him to the ground and sinking her sword into his stomach, the tv creation fading.

She left her sword pinned into the ground as the slasher villain closed in. She took up a stance of Wing Chun and quickly parried his arm for each knife blow, delivering a rapid series of strikes into his chest and then striking him in the throat, before disarming him and tossing him over her shoulder to slam him into the street. She stomped down on his shoulder and dislocated his arm, and he would fade out as well. That left the sleuth guy. He pulled out a silver rod. "Wibbly wobbly timey wimey!"

Rico stared at him for a moment, waiting for something to happen. But nothing did- aside from a weird sort of theme song playing. "Okay." She interrupted the theme song by blasting him in the head with her magnum as he faded away. She spun the gun lightly and put it away, looking around for Control Freak. Dammit. She saw a girl poking her head out from a nearby alley. She blinked when she saw the horns, but smiled lightly. She was sort of kind of related to demons as well.

"Hey there. I think we're safe now." She took another look around just to be sure, before leveling her gaze on the girl again. "Did you see an obese ginger run by here? He had a tv remote in his hand. I need to catch him so he doesn't hurt anyone."

Wow, they seemed to have a handle on what they were doing. She must be a full time warrior or something, skillfully dispatching the entities summoned to cause havoc. When the last of them was gone she turned towards Rose and- Oh gods; please don't think she was one of those creatures!

Phew, that wasn't the case. But Rose wasn't able to help the stranger, and she realized this as she turned her head to look around. In the event of hiding, she hadn't really been paying attention to the man in question. She hadn't even seen what his name was. Rose had to shake her head to Rico, speaking to her in an alien language.

//Enhance//"Rico"//Speed//Stamina//Luck//
Spell effect: Increases Rico's speed, stamina, and luck by 25-100% each for up to 20 minutes.

The words were just words. No obvious visual or auditory effect came with this spell; but maybe she would feel the effects instead. She'd notice them eventually either way. This was unfortunately the best that Rose could do in order to help the stranger find her target.

Rico bent her knees, crouching down to be level with Rose when she started chanting. She blinked as she listened to the words. "Dammit. I thought they just used human languages in hell. How does dad ever work down there?" But something felt... different, when Rose was finished chanting. She felt somewhat... invigorated. "Did you just-"

"Karma! I thought you were supposed to be smart!"

Rico drew her gun, taking Rose and shielding her with her entire body as she whipped around and aimed for someone that wasn't there. She blinked and looked around, aiming out into the street this time. Still no one. "Where the hell are you?"

"In your pocket, I am!"

Rico holstered the handgun, and took out her phone. Just as Control Freak claimed, he was on it, talking to her. But Rose would be able to see, since Rico didn't physically need to block her from him anymore. "What, you're in phones now?"

"They all have streaming services now! Good luck catching me!"

He then vanished into a huge fantasy cult series, the One Ring. She groaned and rolled her eyes, turning to Rose.

"I think you should be safe from here. I'm going to have to follow him." She verified that she would be able to by pushing her finger against the screen of her phone, and it would fall through. "Sorry for bothering you. Can I get you home alright?"

Rico blinked as Rose had little to no reaction other than a look of growing concern. She wasn't sure whether the little girl could understand her or not. But then, when she expressed interest in following Control Freak to the virtual land that he had left open for her, Rose grabbed her arm and shook her head, tugging on her. At least this part, Rico and her could communicate clearly on. Because every concern Rose had, Rico had herself.

"But I have to go," she said, frowning. "He may be very childish, but if I let him do whatever he wants in his favorite shows, he'll just come out later when he's bored and hurt someone else. He's the kind of loser that attacks rental places just because they don't have his particular nerd movie." She looked back at her phone. "Besides, I actually know quite a bit about this series. It was one of my favorite books."

She frowned. The girl seemed very uncomfortable at the idea of Rico continuing on into Control Freak's own playing field. And, well, it wasn't like Rico needed her to like what she was doing. But she didn't want the kid to worry. After a moment on contemplation, Rico straightened up. "Okay. If you have a better idea, I'm open to suggestions."

Even Rico had to admit that she was prone to error sometimes. So she would listen to Rose. Or at least, try her best to interpret whatever her ideas on the situation were. She fastened the clasp on her holster to keep her gun inside, and waited for Rose.

Rico blinked, straightening up as Rose took out a pad with paper and began writing onto it. Whens he turned it around with the advice that she wanted to give Rico, she found it very hard to argue with her. "Don't go in without backup," she read aloud. It was sound advice.

Well, this was embarrassing. In retrospect, Rico found what she was trying to do moments prior rather emotional and not well thought out. Of course she should get back up! The last time Control Freak pulled this kind of stunt, the Teen Titans had to handle it with their entire team! It would have been entirely foolish to just jump in there without a plan. For someone so smart, she had been quite reckless lately. She knew why. She was trying to get away from the reality of-

She shook her head briefly, looking down to Rose. "You know what? You're right. I should get some help. Thank you, genuinely." She peeked outside the alley and around the street, making sure the coast was clear, before turning back to Rose. "Let's get you home, then."

Rico noticed that Rose turned off her phone, and she found herself agreeing with that notion, turning hers off as well. She could at least manage while she thought of people that she could bring along to assist her in the TV world, though she was sure that he would be plenty enough distracted with ruining the fantasy world that she had read about as a child, and still cherished in her mind today. Rose scribbled a note, and then handed it over to Rico. Rico took the paper from her, and then read it.

"He's called Control Freak. And as the nerd he is, he'd probably be harmless outside of harassing people on the internet that don't agree with him. The problem with Control Freak is he has that remote that can bring things from TV into the real world, and animate electronics. In addition, this works for bringing him into the TV world, like you just saw." She held up a finger. "Because he's able to travel between the two that frequently, he can take items he struggled to get in the TV world and creatures that he found, and bring them to our world to do his bidding. For example, in that series he went into that we saw on my phone, the One Ring, he'd likely be some powerful warrior of legend, or an extremely wise wizard. He could bring any item from that universe here. Some of which I could see causing trouble. And then he could use that on anyone who doesn't agree with his headcanons or some crap. When I tried catching him earlier, he animated all those objects into TV creations and they were starting to attack innocents."

"Either he's incredibly ignorant or he's about as much of a villain as he claims to be. Which he never stops talking about. I think it stems from how much he idolizes the Teen Titans, and wanting to be part of their sphere of influence."

She smiled lightly as she walked along with Rose. The people had all been able to get away from the area safely, and while Rose had no way of knowing, they had suffered little damage. The same could not be said of the property around them, like the cars and power lines in the street, and the storefronts. But overall it didn't look like everything was too damaged. At least, when you were using all of the events that had transpired in Jump City as a reference.

When they had traveled a few blocks on foot, Rico led Rose to a blue Dodge Hellcat that she had paid for herself. It was entirely in her name. It was no superhero spy car type, but it did help her get to a place whenever she needed to. Provided there wasn't heavy traffic. She pulled out her keys and unlocked it, allowing Rose to get in. When she did, it started up, the engine growling loudly as a Hellcat's engine usually did, and then Rico would activate the GPS. "Here. Type in where I should take you." Once they were on their way, Rico would ask, "So, what's your name?" She would only look at whatever note Rose wrote, if any, when she was at a red light or otherwise able to stop, though.