<div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/TxRLbsD.jpg)</div><strong>NAME:</strong>Lor Zod<br/>(Optional)<strong>WEARING:</strong>Kryptonian Battle Armour (House of Zod)<br/><strong>DAY:</strong>Aug 15, 2020<br/><strong>TIME:</strong>Pre-Dawn<br/><strong>LOCATION:</strong>Vlatava's Northern Border<br/><strong>CONTENT:</strong>Super-Powered Geo-Politics<br/>(Optional)<strong>MOOD MUSIC:</strong>Lord of the Lost - This War (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kge8o00d6M8)<br/><strong>TAGGING:</strong>Count Vertigo, Vlatavan People's Army, Rocket Red Brigade, Lex Luthor & Mercy Graves(m)<br/><br/><hr/><br/>"I am pleased that you are here, my friend." Count Vertigo said in English that retained a Vlatavan accent despite the Count's long absence from his native homeland. It was also cultured and aristocratic, although the one addressed had no capacity to discern the refinement with which he was addressed. "I apologize for doubting you. I had concerns that our contract was . . . binding."<br/><br/>The Count looked over at the alien. Lor Zod stared across the horizon, and brief muscular flickers around his eyes betrayed to the Count that the alien was tracking troops that were still kilometers out. Around them, the Vlatavan People's Army lay huddled in foxholes, grasping weapons that were obsolete by several years. They were, however, the best that the Count had been able to procure for this endeavor. It had been a bitter pill for the Count to swallow when he was turned away by international arms dealers, or else quoted deliberately and outrageously inflated prices that he could not pay. Luthor had even had the gall of having the Count dismissed by his glorified maid, Mercy Graves! So now the Count's men grasped weapons that were older than some of the men holding them, relics of the era when the Soviets had made Vlatava part of their Iron Curtain.<br/><br/><strong>"None of the Red Shadows. Only tanks and Rocket Reds. Different models than we encountered Chechnya. More advanced."</strong>Lor Zod said with a certain detachment as his eyes continued to make subtle, almost imperceptible movements.<strong>"I trust that you will have no future doubts about my word, Count, or the honour of the House of Zod?"</strong>The alien asked softly, and he was swiftly meet with an affirmative response.<br/><br/>"Of course! You must understand-" Vertigo began before Lor raised a hand.<br/><br/><strong>"Yes. Your only metric was the son of Jor El."</strong>The tall alien replied dispassionately. Slowly, Lor blinked and turned to face the Count.<strong>"They are within Vlatava's borders now. Are you certain you do not wish for me to engage them now?" </strong><br/><br/>The Count shook his head. "Our friend from the U.N. would, I think, take that as damning proof corroborating claims that I am a domestic terrorist rather than a freedom fighter." The two looked over at a man who was not armed and wore a powder blue helmet with upper case 'U' and 'N' letters stamped on the side. He wore military fatigues but he was not a fighting man himself. Lor barely perceived the man, and Vertigo regarded him with mild distaste.<br/><br/>And so they waited and in short order the hostile forces arrived. Six members of the Rocket Red Brigade, clad in advanced powered armour equal to anything that the West had to offer, and a column of two dozen T-14 Armata main battle tanks. Lor detected the fear of the men in their foxholes but paid scant attention to them; they were far beneath him and Vertigo's concern.<br/><br/>The leader of the Rocket Reds raised a hand, bringing the tank column to a halt. He and the rest of the Rocket Reds hovered some feet off of the ground, looking down over the paltry opposition they faced. Lor could hear the chatter between each of the Rocket Reds and the tanks - none of them knew him for who he was and although the leader of the Rocket Reds advised caution, several junior Rocket Reds were dismissive and some of the tank commanders had entirely too much faith in the capabilities of their main guns. They did not show any respect to the son of Zod, nor to Vertigo. In unequal measures, this offended Lor, and the corners of his lips curled downward slightly at the insult.<br/><br/>"Werner Vertigo - you and your followers are hereby ordered to surrender and come peacefully under arrest. We are here at the invitation of Vlatava's internationally recognized government to put an end to rebellion." The leader of the Rocket Reds broadcast from his suit. "You have three minutes to comply or we must conclude that you intend to resist. Any resistance will be met by force."<br/><br/>"General Hafza is nothing more than a puppet of Moscow, guilty of immeasurable human rights violations! There is so much Vlatavan blood on his hands that they are more red than your armour!" The Count fired back, shaking an outraged fist at the men in power armour. Their armoured face plates revealed nothing of the men behind them, but it was all too easy to imagine their indifference to the suffering of the Count's countryfolk. The members of the Rocket Red Brigade were not drawn from great wellsprings of compassion, but from men who excised all compassion from their hearts in order to perform the blackest of deeds in the name of their country's agenda.<br/><br/>"This warning constitutes a final call to surrender!" The leader of the Rocket Reds broadcast, and Lor heard the weapons systems in their armours engaging. The lead tanks' turrets swiveled that their main guns could be brought to bear. Those in the back were disengaging from their positions in the columns to assume fighting positions. The Rocket Reds raised their arms and took aim with mounted cannons. The men in their foxholes raised their ancient weapons, but did not fire. They were under orders not to fire first and to their immense credit, they held to those orders, despite their fear. Lor vacantly noted this fact as the leader of the Rocket Reds fired the first shot of the engagement.<br/><br/>Lor moved faster than the unaided human eyes could perceive. He took the blast meant for Vertigo and it phased him not at all. Lor heard the instruments within the Rocket Red armours compensating for his speed - and soon found himself flying into a volley of blasts. At his back the Count unleashed his Vertigo Effect, but the Rocket Reds were equipped with countermeasures for his specific ability. The Count's men fired, but the 7.62mm cartridges lacked power to do anything but make noise and add a brief, marginal load to the Rocket Red armours' processors before they discounted the flying shells as no danger. There was no point in the armours that were vulnerable to these cartridges.<br/><br/>One of the men had a FIM-92 Stinger MANPADS, and fired it at one of the Rocket Reds. The armoured soldier juked out of the missile's path and fired a counter-measure that killed the missile as it passed far enough that it posed no further threat to the armour's operator.<br/><br/>Lor struck the leader of the Rocket Reds with a right to the chest, and the armoured soldier was sent careening down to strike the turret of the nearest Armata. As the turret was unmanned, the damage to the tank's human operators was negligible, but the man inside the Rocket Red armour was out of the fight. The armour simply lacked the protection needed to keep a human fighting after being struck by a Kryptonian. The man inside was still alive, but barely, and the armour's systems were working to capacity to keep him that way. And Lor had not employed his full strength. Vertigo wanted to recover as much materiel as possible, and so Lor held back. The Kryptonian was struck by shells fired from several Armatas, but the impact did little but jostle him in the air. Other tanks joined in, and the Rocket Reds cleared the tanks' lines of fire. Each of the tanks fired three rounds from their big guns, and Lor made no effort to dodge. The equipment that the tank commanders had at their disposal made it clear that their guns had no effect - Lor's armour was not damaged.<br/><br/>It was, however, smudged, and Lor looked down at the crest of his beloved house. He wiped it clean with the palm of one hand, and then raised a bored gaze to the armour arrayed against him. His eyes blazed blue, and Lor engaged his Arctic Vision. Twin beams of freezing cold swept over the tanks, encasing whatever they struck in a foot of solid ice. Lor's target was first the barrels of the Armatas' main guns, and then their tracks. Super-speed allowed him to have three quarters of the tanks so afflicted before the Rocket Reds bodied him, slamming him to the ground with their weight of numbers. Their armours strained with the power needed to do so, and fists rained down liberally on Lor's exposed head.<br/><br/>Lor pushed himself up off of the ground, and the armours of the Rocket Reds worked overtime. He heard one of them disabling a safety limiter on his armour's system, but none of that mattered. Lor got up to his feet and threw them all off him. The five Reds flew in different directions, and Lor pursued at inhuman speed. The suits were completely sealed to provide hazardous materials protection, and Lor briefly sighed because removing a helmet would mean violently compromising the suit. He glanced over his shoulder at Vertigo, who seemed frozen in the moment, and then back at the Rocket Red in his hand. Lor violent smashed the armour into the ground with enough force to cause the ground to shake and rattle the nearest tank slightly. He moved on, and struck the Rocket Red armours violently in turn in such a manner that the suits themselves were relatively undamaged compared to the men within. The men within the armour would be crippled for the remainder of their lives. For some, that time was measured in minutes, before the current conflict no longer held any appeal for Lor.<br/><br/>Lor came to a halt after disabling the Rocket Reds, and those tanks that could were opened and their crews disgorged. Vertigo's men were jumping out of their foxholes and shouting for the tank crews to surrender. The old rifles proved sufficient inducement for the tanks' crews to surrender, although Lor taking to the air and looking down on them may have also factored in. The crewmen were gathered into two lines, disarmed, and then made to kneel with their hands behind their heads. More than one of the kneeling men chanced a look up in Lor's direction, and they were filled with terror at the floating alien.<br/><br/>The corners of Lor's lips quirked up, just a little, for just a fraction of a second.<br/><br/>"Zod!" The moment ended as Vertigo called out to him. Lor looked for a moment more, and then flew unhurriedly to land before the Count. "Many thanks, my friend." The Count was elated. "This . . . this went well beyond my wildest expectations." Vertigo's blue eyes swept over the billions in materiel that was now in his possession. "And with only one casualty. One terrible, tragic casualty." Lor followed the Count's gaze and found the U.N. observer lying face down in a pool of blood. The injuries would be bullet wounds, and the slugs would be linked to the sidearm of one of the tank commanders. Footage would be taken from the Rocket Red armours to corroborate the narrative that the U.N. observer had been murdered in cold blood by these invaders in a bid to discredit General Hafza.<br/><br/>"Of course I must consider our debt settled, but in the future, may I call upon you? I admit at the moment I have nothing to offer you beyond my good graces when I come into my throne . . ." Vertigo broached the subject of working together in the future, and Lor gazed off indifferently. "Er, my friend? Did you . . ."<br/><br/>Lor did not turn his head to meet Vertigo's.<strong>"I heard you. You may call upon me in the future, if you wish."</strong>Lor cocked his head to one side.<strong>"We are standing on a mass grave. Hundreds of Vlatavans beneath our feet . . . discarded like refuse."</strong><br/><br/>Count Vertigo began to tremble with rage and denial. He fell to his knees, and a sob wracked the blond man. Lor ignored the emotional outburst, largely out of a lack of empathy, but also because he preferred not to see the Count that way. In a commendable amount of time, the Count mastered the sudden upswelling of emotions. Wiping away tears, Vertigo mastered anger and turned it to purpose. "You have my thanks, my friend. I will bring U.N. investigators here, and we will unearth my murdered countryfolk, and then no one will be able to deny the crimes of the oppressors! We will have to arrange for proper burials . . . but how to identify hundreds . . ." There was some despair behind Vertigo's voice, but this, too, was turned to purpose. He meant not only to avenge his people, but to see them<em>properly</em>remembered.<br/><br/>At last Lor flicked his eyes to regard Vertigo. Then the alien nodded, slowly. His gaze turned skywards.<strong>"Farewell."</strong>Lor said to the Count, and took to the skies, his purpose fulfilled.