#but yeah of course I gleefully enable them both in trying to kill each other's characters this is bonding time for them

[robininthelabyrinth]

continuation of Star Wars Wangxian AU - on ao3 or tumblr

-

The way of the Sith is the dyad, the rule of two: always two, no more, no less.

A master and an apprentice – one to represent the allure of the Dark Side of the Force, the other to serve as the baited, walking willingly into a trap. A pair of magnets, the moth and the flame; without each other, they were incomplete, unstable, and only together could they be considered complete.

Perhaps, Lan Wangji reflects, he should have considered this fundamental precept more thoroughly.

Certainly earlier.

If he had thought about it earlier, he could have taken steps, measures, something. Anything, really, as long as it wasn’t…

“Hey, Master! You’re back! Did you have a nice trip? Kill lots of people?”

…this.

“No,” Lan Wangji said, in the tones of one who knew suffering. The Dark Side rippled around him, thickening as he poured his frustration and annoyance into it – a complaint shared with the abyss, in a world where rage and despair only made the abyss stronger. “No deaths.”

The Sarlacc didn’t count.

Anyway, Wei Wuxian had been the one to kill it in the end, in order to enable them to escape. He’d almost looked like he’d felt bad about it, too.

Silly fool, Lan Wangji thought with far too much affection.

Though, speaking of silly fools...

Xue Yang grinned at him, his little tiger tooth making the otherwise vicious expression significantly less intimidating. 

Lan Wangji had observed that fact early in their acquaintance, and had resolved never to tell Xue Yang so as to let him continue to be frustrated by the apparently inexplicable fact that people never seemed to take him seriously at first glance. If Xue Yang ever figured it out and confronted him about it, he could even theoretically, at a stretch, justify it as additional Dark Side training.

“Sounds like a wasted trip, then,” he said. “I killed five.”

Lan Wangji met his gaze with a steady one of his own. “I do not recall instructing you to go on a mission.”

“Aww, but Master –”

Lan Wangji was newer to the Dark Side of the Force than Xue Yang, but he had the rigorous training of the Cloud Recesses behind him: he did not even need to reach out deliberately through the Force to oppress Xue Yang, driving him to his knees.

“It was a continuation of an earlier mission, Master! I wouldn’t disobey you intentionally –”

Lan Wangji released him. “Of course you would.”

Xue Yang looked up at him, grin back on his face. “Well, yeah. But not that obviously. I wouldn’t admit it to your face.”

He would, if he thought he could get away with it, and Lan Wangji permitted a look of skepticism to cross his face, though he did not comment aloud. 

“What mission?” he asked instead. Knowing Xue Yang as he did, there were very few missions that he had given in which murder was permissible, much less multiple murders. They were trying to keep a low profile, after all.

Xue Yang bounced to his feet. “I invaded another Hutt palace!” he announced gleefully, his eyes shining like stars. “Dressed up as a bounty hunter and everything!”

Xue Yang had once been a slave on a planet controlled by the Hutts, a dirty sandy place with little compassion for the young and none for the weak – and Xue Yang had been both. He had been bartered from one master to another until one careless owner had crushed his hand and his spirit at the same time, rendering him even more useless and condemning him to a terrible fate. No one wanted damaged goods, no one but those who wanted to break them further.

How Xue Yang went from that to being the apprentice of a self-styled Sith Lord, Lan Wangji was unsure beyond a basic understanding that Xue Yang had somehow risen up from his dire circumstances to massacre the entire clan of that particular owner. They had met only when Xue Yang was already in the midst of his training, a slightly gawky teenage delinquent who’d long ago learned that murder was the first, best, and only answer to all of his problems.

He’d tried to kill Lan Wangji, of course.

The circumstances had been admittedly been rather unusual. The Sith tradition called for dyads, a master and an apprentice in each set (though of course there could be more than one set of Sith, though rarely if ever on a level or in an area where they could challenge each other); the typical way of things for the Sith was that the apprentice struck down the master, rising to take on an apprentice of his own, or that the master tired of the apprentice and lured another promising would-be apprentice into Falling, with the typical test of a new apprentice being the slaughter of the old one.

Lan Wangji was strikingly idiosyncratic in that he had Fallen entirely on his own, without a master to guide him to the Dark Side. 

This did not mean he was without knowledge: the Lan sect, which prized learning, of course had a rich collection of treatises on what the Dark Side entailed, although they were meant to be read as warnings rather than guides. After he had had the Force vision of that terrible future, the future he would Fall to the Dark Side, had Fallen, rather than permit to take place, Lan Wangji had stolen several before departing the Cloud Recesses.

It was little surprise, then, that Xue Yang’s old master had put such effort into recruiting Lan Wangji as his own apprentice once he had discovered him.

Lan Wangji had had no patience for such nonsense. Rather than slaughter Xue Yang, who had clearly been incited against him, he had followed the traces back to their origin and killed the Sith master that Xue Yang followed instead.

Unfortunately, per the rule of two, that left Xue Yang without a master and Lan Wangji with the horrible realization that would-be Sith masters would be crawling out of the woodwork to attack him on a regular basis if he didn’t put himself in a dyad at once to prevent it. In the interest of not being harassed, and thereby distracted from his plans, he had recruited Xue Yang as his own apprentice, skipping the apprentice step entirely and becoming a master.

Perhaps that was why Wei Wuxian had called him a Sith lord, he mused. Wei Wuxian was sensitive to the Force, talented in it almost to extremes; maybe he could tell that Lan Wangji was in a position of dominance, rather than growth.

“ – it was great. Even with all the warnings from previous incidents, they were so arrogant, thinking it would never happen to them. Rotten slugs! The leader had a rancor in the dungeon under his throne, too; the thing was kept half-starved so that it’d turn on anyone that got dropped into its nest – wretched little space, I could barely move, much less a rancor –”

“I take it from your explanation that we now own a rancor,” Lan Wangji said, feeling somewhat pained.

Pained, but also gratified: he had been working on teaching Xue Yang the concept of empathy, reasoning that the truly psychopathic would never truly be able to connect with the rage, suffering, and pain that powered the Dark Side of the Force.

Only once Xue Yang understood love, understood it and lost it, could he truly understand the Dark Side as Lan Wangji did.

A pet was a good start.

“Uh, maybe? I mean, rancors are from Dathomir, which is pretty steeped in the Dark Side, so it’s almost like they’re a natural ally of the Sith –”

Rancors were semi-sentient five-meter tall reptiles that resembled boulders, with armored hides that could resist blasters and even light sabers at times, and while it was true that their home planet was rich in the Dark Side, home of assassins and Nightkin and murderers of all sorts, rancors themselves were actually quite friendly and non-combative as a general rule.

Not that Xue Yang knew that. 

“You will care for it yourself, without disturbing me,” Lan Wangji instructed, not wanting Xue Yang to dwell too long on whether or not what he had done was appropriate. Some people could only be coaxed, not coerced; Xue Yang’s former master had very nearly ruined him, teaching him all the wrong lessons about divesting oneself of emotions (the Sith way, of course: no emotions but hate) without any of the necessary context, and any future education needed to done cautiously to avoid Xue Yang becoming utterly consumed by the abyss, capable of nothing but lashing out, a rabid dog in need of being put down.

Lan Wangji was not in the market for another Sith apprentice.

Xue Yang, at least, was easy to manage: as long as he was permitted to vent his more murderous inclinations in the way he liked the most, pursuing the vile Hutt clan wherever they had set up their gangster dens full of corruption and rot, his attempts to overthrow Lan Wangji were half-hearted and disinterested, and the worst Lan Wangji would need to put up with was a bit of back talk.

“Of course,” Xue Yang said, grinning with teeth. “Wouldn’t want to keep you from your boy, would we?”

…not that the back talk wasn’t annoying.

“You are not permitted to speak of him,” Lan Wangji said coldly, but that never worked for very long. Xue Yang was an extremely disrespectful apprentice, although Lan Wangji supposed it was his own fault for rejecting the rigid hierarchy of the traditional master-apprentice relationship – of the entire concept of the Sith lord and the classist structure generally associated with it – and encouraging Xue Yang to similarly reject such things in favor of the anarchy of self-determination. “He is not yours to even think of.”

Perhaps a wiser man might refuse to let Xue Yang even know of such a weakness, but Lan Wangji was moderately sure that in an even fight – or even an uneven one – Wei Wuxian would have no difficulty putting Lan Wangji’s unruly, unwanted apprentice in his place.

“Yeah, yeah,” Xue Yang laughed. “I know: hands off, no touching. I still don’t get it. What’s so great about this one guy? The universe is full of people, even force-sensitives; if you’re so hung up on having a Jedi, why not go find one that’s a little more compromising?”

Because there is no one else like Wei Ying. There will never be anyone else for me, not ever – only him.

“One day you will meet someone who moves you,” Lan Wangji said placidly, a touch of his old talent for Force visions shimmering in his soul in confirmation of the dimly uncertain future. “And we will have this conversation again, when at last you understand.”

“Sure,” Xue Yang said, clearly disbelieving. “Whatever. Let me tell you about these two bounty hunters I met on my trip – a matched set, one in white and one in black - fuck, they were so annoying, you wouldn’t even believe –”

[robininthelabyrinth]

Countless Roads - Chapter 23

Fic: Countless Roads - Chapter 23 - Ao3

Fandom: Flash, Legends Pairing: Gen, Mick Rory/Leonard Snart, others

Summary: Due to a family curse (which some call a gift), Leonard Snart has more life than he knows what to do with – and that gives him the ability to see, speak to, and even share with the various ghosts that are always surrounding him.

Sure, said curse also means he’s going to die sooner rather than later, just like his mother, but in the meantime Len has no intention of letting superheroes, time travelers, a surprisingly charming pyromaniac, and a lot of ghosts get in the way of him having a nice, successful career as a professional thief.

———————————————————————————

"I hate this plan, boss," Mick says.

"I know," Len says.

"I really hate this plan."

"If they think about betraying us, you can rip their heads off their spines," Len says comfortingly. He knows it's not much, but it's what they've got.

Mick grumbles, but seems appeased.

Killer Frost glares at them both.

"You are going to behave," Len tells her. "You're going to drive us straight to Zoom's trap and then you're going to let us go, and if you do anything that threatens any of us, I won't give you to Mick, I'll rip the still-twitching spirit out of your body and add you to my army of ghosts."

Killer Frost sniffs in disdain and stalks away, but Len can see that the threat is effective. She'll behave.

"Can you really do that?" Caitlin asks in a murmured undertone.

"Obviously not," Len replies in a similarly low tone. "How many times do I gotta tell you? I ain't a necromancer."

The look Caitlin gives him is less than entirely believing, but whatever.

"I can't believe we're going up against Zoom with nothing more than a guy who controls ghosts, his ghost sidekick and a purely theoretical ghost army, an inferior version of Cait, two kids and an old man who used to be a speedster," evil-version Ronnie grumbles. Len refuses to call him by his stupid alias - Deathstorm or something ridiculously metal like that. Just - no. Firestorm is at least thematic.

"It'll come back," Jay says mildly. He doesn't take offense easy. Probably for the best, since Mick's looking like he's considering breaking Ronnie's nose for that 'sidekick' comment.

Len kicks Mick lightly in the shin. They don't have time for that.

"And you're forgetting we have the team at STAR Labs," Wally says. He's holding hands with Jesse.

Given Harry's almost painful over-the-top paternalism and somewhat (somewhat) reasonable over-protectiveness, given that she'd been kidnapped and everything, Len is in favor of letting their little fledgling flirtation go on just long enough for Harry to react to the fact that the Earth-1 team he's so fond of disparaging not only saved his daughter, but got her a boyfriend in the process.

Oh, sure, there's the Earth-1/Earth-2 gap to consider, but Wally’s already said a few vague things about how he’s sure Cisco can come up with some sort of cross-dimensional pen-pal system. Len's sure they can sell it enough to get the horrified expression he's hoping for.

It won't last, of course. It's very cute and all that - very Florence Nightingale style get-together, right out of a romance novel – but there's no chance of it going anywhere other than a handful of dates. Not only is cross-universe dating probably unwise, but he thinks Jessie's interest is likely to die a quick death once she has a chance to see Wally and Jax do their ridiculous pining-and-sighing-and-always-talking-about-each-other-but-never-manning-up-to-ask-the-other-out mating dance in person.

Actually, maybe this whole sudden girlfriend business will finally be the thing that gets them going and, with luck, put all the adults in their general vicinity out of their endless misery that is their teenage drama.

By adults, Len mostly means him and Mick. Lisa does not count - she likes drama - and Team Flash doesn't actually have any responsibility for the Junior Rogues, since they're on Team Villain instead of Team Hero. Not that Team Flash is without its own ridiculously juvenile relationship drama...

(Len can say, very definitively, that he was definitely not this bad as a teenager, Mick’s snarky comments about the necessity of near-death experiences for certain confessions of feelings aside. He would totally have gotten there regardless, Mick.)

"Oh, yeah," Killer Frost drawls. "Team Flash at STAR Labs. How could I forget? A speedster Zoom's already beaten, Reverb's duplicate except minus most of the powers, another kid and a dying half of Firestorm. What joy. We're definitely going to win now."

"Don't be so hard on yourselves," Mick says pleasantly. "We got you two, too."

"Screw you," evil Ronnie replies. "We're going to be the first ones Zoom kills, that's what you mean. He hates traitors."

Len rolls his eyes. "Stop whining. First off, he was planning on murdering everybody, you included, anyway, so stopping him is really your only option here. Second, it's not like you're going to be walking up and spitting in his face or anything. I already told you, your job will be to get Caitlin, Wally, Jesse and Jay into STAR Labs; that's it."

"I don't like that part of the plan," Wally offers.

"Yeah," Jesse chimes in. "We can help you fight Zoom, really we can."

"And you will," Len says. "By going to STAR Labs and letting the other guys know our plan so that we ain't the only ones going up against Zoom. We're gonna need Barry and everyone there."

Wally and Jesse still look disappointed.

"Besides," Mick grunts. "Bet there's lots of anti-speedster guns at STAR Labs. You need to go there to pick 'em up."

The disappointed looks vanish.

Len snorts. "Did you think I'd go into a battlefield against an overwhelming enemy without using you on my side?" he asks. "I ain't that nice."

"You're the best, boss," Wally says gleefully. He's going to use this as a defense when Team Flash predictably starts suggesting that maybe he and Jax should stay behind, which is just what Len intends. He may've promised Jenna to keep Jax out of trouble, but there's promises and then there's not using what you've got, and between the two Len will always pick survival. "Just, uh, y'know – try not to die. Please."

"I'll do my best," Len says dryly.

"I won't let him," Mick promises.

"Good luck," Jay says. “Is there anything I can do?”

"You, you just get your power back asap," Len tells him. "And worst case scenario, just show up at some point; maybe you can distract Zoom with the realization that you're free. It'll probably piss him off, but even a temporary distraction might be helpful."

"I'm on it," Jay says. He even salutes, what the hell.

Mick and Len exchange looks of disbelief. Len might be planning on commanding an army of ghosts, but that doesn't mean that he has any actual military or command experience of the sort that would get people saluting.

Earth-3 must be so weird.

They drop their crew off near the edge of the mob of metas surrounding STAR Labs. The initial burst of curiosity from the metas rioting there is dampened, and quickly, at the sight of Killer Frost emerging from the car, sneer firmly fixed on her face. After that, no one even bothers to look at the people she's escorting with her and Ronnie.

It's good to have a reputation, and Len knows just how to play with one that’s based on fear.

The rest of the group dropped off, Len and Mick head to McFeeny Commons, and Zoom's machine.

The ghosts come with them, like a flock of pigeons that is endless in number. They say nothing; they don’t need to, not anymore. They know where they're going, and they know what Len's going to ask of them, and they're focused on storing up what energy they can for the upcoming battle. They’re eager for it, too – regardless of how militant they may or may not have been in life, many of them have forgotten what it was that kept them there originally, what small fears or loves or regrets they had in life. Now all they want is attention, and life, and maybe a small bit of revenge against the living for having what they want, and Len has promised all of that to them in exchange for their help.

He wouldn’t order them into battle, not like Cabrera would, forcing them to go against their own desires – but he’s asked, and they’ve consented.

For whatever consent is worth when you’re that desperate, anyway.

Len isn’t a necromancer, master of the unwilling dead, but sometimes it feels a far too much like it for his taste.

He comforts himself with the fact that he offered to give them life regardless of their participation in the battle, and with the thought that this battle will likely enable most of them to pass on – one last glorious action that means something, that makes a difference, is likely enough satisfaction for the majority of them, and between the life he’s going to give them and the power stored up in Zoom’s machine, the rest should be able to go make their goodbyes or whatever it is that they’ve wanted so much that they refused to pass on – but it’s rather a cold comfort.

He doesn't even have it in him to smile at the pun.

He is not a necromancer, damnit.

"You sure Zoom'll draw away his army from STAR Labs to protect the machine?" Mick asks, distracting Len from his gloomy thoughts. It's not doubt that makes Mick ask it, since he already knows the plan backwards and forwards; no, he knows that Len prefers to talk things over a few times in the immediate build-up, and he prefers not to let Len brood.

He's the best partner a man could ask for, really.

"He's gotta," Len says, shaking his head to dispel his thoughts. He needs to focus, or else he won't be able to do this. "Or else all that effort to build this machine is for nothing. This whole thing is a trap - STAR Labs, the army, everything, and it's almost certainly one that he had to accelerate, or may be even come up with on the fly, ever since we found out about who 'Jay Garrick' really is earlier than he'd probably hoped. Accelerated plans mean mistakes, no matter how good your strategic planning is."

"An army goes a long way to mitigate any mistakes."

"True. But that's why we're bringing our own."

"Which is going to drain you real bad," Mick says, and here, at last, his voice shows traces of real concern. "I know it's necessary - we don't got anything else that'd work against an army - but I don't like how it's going to affect you. And with you being drained, that makes you vulnerable - I'd rather be at your side the whole time, protecting you, if I could be. S'why I don't like that the plan has me going the other way."

"I know."

"Boss. I'm serious. If there are unquiet dead out there, that's when they're gonna strike."

"I know," Len says again, not unkindly. It distresses him too, the thought of sending away his oldest and best protector. If there was any other way, he wouldn't do it. "But we don't have a choice. Zoom will figure out eventually that I'm the one at the center - sooner than that, if he's really working with Cabrera, since Cabrera would've already told him who I am and what I can do - and after he figures that out, he'll come for me. You're the only one strong enough to keep him from actually getting me."

Mick nods jerkily. "I can hold him off," he says. "At least until Barry comes."

"Until then."

They park not far away from McFeeny Commons. "You know what's one thing that really gets me about this Earth?" Len asks, studying the unfamiliar sign bearing the familiar name.

"What?"

"This place. Goddamn McFeeny Commons."

Mick arches an eyebrow. "Okay. McFeeny Commons, yeah, same as what this place used to be called back on our Earth. What about it?"

"The name. According to the ghosts, the whole city gets leveled and they rebuild the whole damn thing from scratch, starting all brand new, and when they do, they deliberately decide to keep naming things after that cow-fucker, of all people? I mean, seriously. Have some dignity, Central City."

Mick laughs, big belly laughs, and Len smiles.

They get out of the car, guns in their hands, and they start walking.

They make it all the way to about a hundred yards from the machine before they run into Zoom's perimeter guards.

"You can't come here," the guy at the head of the group says. The others behind him have sticks and nasty grins, like they're just waiting for an excuse to use them. Thugs and vandals and assholes, the bread and butter of any violent group. "Don't take another step."

Len shoots the leader point-blank with the cold gun. "Yeah?" he asks with a smirk, looking with pleasure at the frozen statute. "Who's gonna stop me?"

The others howl in rage and charge right at them.

Right into the blast of Mick's heat-gun.

Then the ones still alive are charging straight the other way, screaming and patting down their clothing to try to put out the fire.

"Soon," Len tells Mick, who nods.

They keep going forward.

They make it nearly two-thirds of the final distance when there's a crackle of blue lightning and the man of the hour himself appears before them.

Zoom.

Len's only seen images until now, videos and stuff – his fight with Barry, his threats. The real thing is –

"Is that a discount scarecrow mask or something?" he asks, keeping his voice as cool and disdainful as he can. And as many people would attest, he can do pretty damn disdainful. "Rob a Party City, maybe?"

"You're friends of the Flash," Zoom snarls, his voice guttural and slimy. “He sent you to die, did he?”

Len rolls his eyes. “No,” he says. “We’re here to blow up your little Lego project.” He nods at the machine.

Zoom laughs. “All you will be,” he says, “is dead.”

“You talk like a bad movie villain,” Len says, and waits for Zoom’s jaw to work a little, signifying that he’s opening his mouth for a retort – it’s hard to tell under the weird jagged Oogie Boogey slashes he’s got instead of a mouth, but it's still tight enough that he can make a decent guess – before firing straight at him with his cold gun.

Zoom hisses and staggers back, hands flying to his belly where the ice still lingers.

Len smiles. “Oh, and this?” he says, hoisting his cold gun. “This I use against the Flash. They work real well on speedsters - of all colors.”

“Time to play,” Mick says, and fires his own gun, this time aiming at Zoom’s feet.

Zoom zips backwards, but the smears on the ground indicate that Mick and Cisco’s modifications to amp up the heat have worked – the speedster's boots are starting to melt.

“You dare challenge me,” he snarls.

“Oh, I don’t just dare,” Len says. “I’m gonna kick your ass in front of all of your buddies, half of which already got their phones out and are texting the rest of your so-called army that the big, bad, scary Zoom can be beaten by a pair of non-metas.” His smirk widens. “Hope you liked your five minutes of fame, Zoom-Zoom. No one likes a loser.”

Mick starts firing his heat gun in a horizontal line in front of them, cutting off Zoom’s approach before Zoom even starts running forward, forcing him to dart backwards instead of rushing forward the way he'd started to.

Half of fighting a speedster, Len’s found, is predicting in advance what he’s going to do, and Zoom is even more predictable than Barry.

The bit about the cell phones isn't even a lie, either; Len can hear the local lieutenants shouting on their phone for back-up.

Perfect.

“Zoom-Zoom,” Mick says thoughtfully, without ceasing his defensive line of fire. “Ain’t that a car commercial or something?”

“You’re right,” Len says, delighted. It hadn't even occurred to him. “It is. Well. It was. It got old and tired, and the company retired it.”

“A lot like how we’re gonna retire this guy,” Mick quips back.

Len and Mick have always known how to play off each other.

“You won’t be able to stop me,” Zoom hisses, his eyes literally crackling with lightning and rage. It's a pretty cool effect, actually; Len will have to remember to recommend it to Barry. “Your deaths will be slow and painful just for considering going up against me - I will make you pay!”

“Sure you will," Mick sneers. "You're never gonna get the chance."

"We’re gonna kick your ass,” Len promises. "And then we're gonna take your stupid little machine apart."

Zoom laughs, that slimy almost auto-tuned quality to his voice particularly grating on the ears. “You? You, the mere two of you, take apart my great work?” he says disdainfully. “You and what army?”

Mick groans.

It doesn’t matter, though. Len’s never been able to resist a set up like that one.

He reaches deep within himself, aiming for all the life he's got, all the power, anything he thinks he can use up without actually killing himself in the process.

“This one,” he says, and flings the power out, pouring it out in the widest possible stream. He’s never done anything like this before, not intentionally – the closest was when he was facing the black hole, when his desperation made him over-extend himself, when he tried to get everyone to help and did. This is different. This is a deliberate over-extension, a deliberate effort made to ghosts that aren't even of the same Earth as he is, a different harder-to-use frequency, all of that life handed out not to one or two or even a dozen, but to hundreds.

To an army.

And then they’re all there, visible for all to see.

The dead.

The ghosts.

Hundreds of them, thousands of them, even, as the hundreds which received the life directly from Len share it onwards and onwards, stretching it to its breaking point, all of them floating around the battlefield. Each one of them as silent as the grave, the vast sea of the dead that washed in upon Len’s feet when he entered Earth-2. A city – a country – a world deprived of people like Len, life-sharers and dead-speakers, a crowd of ghosts so hungry for life that they would give Len anything: their obedience, their loyalty, their strength, their viciousness, their rage at being deprived of the life they so eagerly covet.

Len’s never met a ghost that wasn’t, deep down, furious at their life being cut short, whether or not it was their natural time, and that rage, when unleashed, can turn even the kindest ghostly apparition into the most malicious poltergeist.

Their rage spills out before them, palpable in its intensity, their faces twisting envy into anger as they snarl at their prey, eyes avid with jealous greed for the life of the living, and they stand there at Len’s beck and call. He can’t help the feeling it gives him: like a general before his men, a king before his subjects. These are his people, his, and they obey him. They will fight for him.

His army, to match Zoom’s.

To overwhelm Zoom's.

For unlike Zoom's army of metas, his is an army of people who cannot die, for they are already dead.

Even Zoom takes a step back, his hooded eyes gone wide. His minions all stand slack-jawed.

Len points forward, ignoring the weakness that already runs through his bones. “Get them,” he says, and his voice echoes with the power of the dead, “and destroy the machine.”

Thousands of mouths open, then, and scream- howling and shrieking with unearthly rage - and the ghostly army advances in a charge that easily be compared to any of history’s greatest infantry charges.

His army charges.

A good half of Zoom’s minions just drop their weapons and flee right then and there.

“You!” Zoom exclaims. “The necromancer!”

Len scowls, because he’s not a goddamn necromancer, but, perhaps more importantly, because that rather abruptly makes that lovely heady feeling of ultimate power go away like having a bucket of water poured over him. Zoom knows who he is, he knew to expect him - that confirms Len's fears, insofar as they weren’t already confirmed. Cabrera is in fact working with Zoom, feeding him intel. Zoom knew something of the what of Len, but he didn’t know what he looked like.

Not until now.

Zoom’s lightning flashes and he’s charging straight at Len.

He gets within three feet of Len before Mick intervenes, charging him straight on like a bull, head-butting him right in the chest.

Mick always did have a hard head.

Zoom staggers back and Mick takes advantage of his momentary disorientation, seizing onto Zoom’s arms and wrapping himself around the speedster like a bear.

Zoom snarls and grabs at Mick’s neck, snapping it in a sudden twist.

“Nice try, bozo,” Mick snarls. “I died long ago.”

He doesn’t let go.

Just as they’d hoped, with his primary approach to dealing with people down, Zoom doesn’t take the time to think about how to fix this. Instead, he goes straight to his secondary approach.

He runs, lightning crackling, trying to shake Mick loose.

Mick is very, very determined not to let him, as the only thing that’s keeping Zoom from actually dealing with the root of the problem – namely Len – is Mick’s efforts at distracting him.

Len can hear Mick’s laughter fading as Zoom speeds off into the distance.

Going in the direction of STAR Labs – and the bulk of his army.

“Get as much of the machine deconstructed as you can before he gets back here with the rest of them,” Len orders, and the ghosts obey gleefully.

Meanwhile, Len takes a moment to steady himself on his feet. He’s feeling –

Well, he’s not dead from over-extension. That’s a point in his favor. He’d been half-afraid that’d happen if he tried this, not that he’d mentioned that fear to Mick, but apparently he judged the amount of power just right.

The rest of the signs, though, are not so good. He’s nauseous, light-headed, and his vision's gone a bit blurry; his knees are a bit shaky, and he doesn’t want to even think about powering up another ghost for a good long while. He’s almost certainly managed to become both dehydrated and starving in the space of a few seconds.

Even though it offends his sense of drama, Len pulls out one of the energy bars that Mick had insisted on swiping for him and a bottle of water and starts to snack. In the middle of a battlefield.

Wow, that really just kills the drama and mystique of the whole thing.

Heh. Kills. Kinda funny when you're talking about an unkillable army.

Len tries to pull off an aura of ‘I have so much nonchalant disdain for this whole business that I’m taking a light snack break’ instead of ‘wow I’m really hungry right now I’m going to eat my lunch early’, but he’s not sure how well it’s working. If anyone's even looking, that is.

He manages to finish two energy bars and half a bottle of water before the army of metas pours out of the side streets, their hands flashing with all sorts of bizarre powers, and he decides maybe getting the hell out of dodge is the better plan.

Despite not ever having strong opinions on the subject of war prior to this moment, Len’s decided that he’s a big believer in the whole concept of leading from behind. Or the side. Or anywhere that isn’t the front of the army, really. Armies of untouchable ghosts really do not need to be led in person by their squishy entirely-too-easy-to-harm human leader.

Luckily, the ghosts don’t bother looking to him for directions - a handful of ghosts have taken some form of command almost automatically, including the man and woman in green from earlier - and they're doing just fine. The ghostly army just swings right back around and hits the onrushing metas like a shockwave.

Len takes the opportunity to head to higher ground. In this case, there’s a garage right across the street with a roof on the second story; he’ll be able to look out at the battlefield there. Maybe shout out something helpful without being in anyone’s direct line of fire or something like that.

He has literally zero clue if that would be a good idea, but he’s seen it done in movies before, so - maybe?

Probably a sign that it’s a bad idea, come to think of it, since Hollywood isn't exactly what one would call accurate, but what the hell, he’s already picked the lock on the garage door; he’s committed to the plan now.

Besides, once he’s on the roof, he can sit down and take a break.

The roof should be safe enough.