The Magic War: Blood and Iron

Disclaimer: I do not own any other intellectual properties in this story. This is pure non profit fanfiction. Rebecca Sugar owns Steven Universe, Games Workshop owns the dark Elves and DC Comics owns Hugo Strange.

Author's note: The following is a failed collaboratoin between myself an another author on Deviantart. In his original crossover work, the world of the mundane and the Magic Collided. Naturally I took this time to build on the world he created, but it didn't pan out. However the story is still dear to me and I won't let it die.

So setting a few ground rules, this story will mainly follow Lars Bariga and Jasper; with elements from other fantasy properties. Message me if anything confuses you.

His name was Lars Bariga. Once upon a time he worked at a doughnut shop and was a human. Now he woke up to a world of fire, death and blood.

Lars woke with a cough and shoved a steel I-beam off of him. "Oh, holy shit!" he cried out, looking every which way; his pink skin shining in the firelight. "Pacifica! Pacifica! Oh fuck, please don't be dead!"

"Lars!" cried out the young girl who once upon a time had the money to look pretty. The young girl gripped a gun like she'd used it before and dropped her machete to help Lars clear the rubble off of his bright pink body. Crying out as nails and shards of glass tore from his flesh, Lars knew that such wounds would heal in time.

"Move it, Lars," cried Pacifica, "The Dark Elves have hit New Orleans and the federal government is sending Armoured Tiger Divisions."

Lars cried out as he felt up his worn and cracked wooden ear plugs, satisfied that they'd live to fight another day. "Oh man, fucking elves. I wish I hadn't left Homeworld."

"Self pity, later," said Pacifica. "I got a hit on my secure email, our contact is going to meet us at the Seabrook Floodgate. They'll take us to Dipper and Mabel from there."

Lars nodded before reaching his hands into the shattered masonry and withdrawing a tattered gym bag. "Let's get going then."

The duo ran out of the burning wreckage of a sleazy hotel where the deceased owner didn't ask question or remember guest's names. Like the rest of the city it was burning and the citizens shrieked to the heavens for any god that would save them.

Running down the I-10 Service Road, Lars and Pacifica spied the Black Ark of the Dark Elves. The vast floating fortress was a waking nightmare of blackstone spires, blackwood masts and innumerable weapons installations opening fire on New Orleans with napalm and eldritch flame.

Catapults delivered payloads of Greek Fire that could not be put out with water or any non magical means. Ballistas launched bolts that split into hundreds of needle thin arrows that massacred the crowds of densely packed fleeing humans. From the waterline of the Black Ark, iron grates opened and allowed mutated, rabid sea monsters to overturn boats, destroy buoys and nautical markers and crawl on the land to serve their masters reign of terror.

"Watch out!" Lars cried, grabbing Pacifica and pulling back on her tattered trench coat. From out of the sky, an army helicopter fell in a burning spiral. The olive green army machine struck the side of an apartment complex and detonated with bone rattling force. Overhead, a zombie dragon filled with superfluous bullet holes soared; crowing triumphantly over the mortal flying machine.

They'd hardly taken in the sight when a juvenile kraken snatched the burning chopper with its tentacles and dragged it into the sea. Running through a never ending nightmare, they only saw what Dante did upon stepping through the gates of the inferno.

People cut to pieces in the streets where they stood. Piles of burning corpses, most of them thrown into the fire while they were still alive. Manticores grabbing cages packed with captive humans and air lifting them to the Black Ark's slave holds.

Those were the dual purposes of the Druchii, or Dark Elves; cause terror and gather slaves. From the looks of things they were monstrously successful.

Close to their destination, or at least closer than they were when the bombardment started; Lars and Pacifica spied the last of the New Orleans Police Force making their final stand. The cops hid behind makeshift barricades, cradles automatic weapons and tried to make peace with their makers.

The pair stopped as a hailstorm of crossbow bolts cut through the night. Lars and Pacifica threw themselves to the glass covered ground. Overhead, crossbow bolts punched through police riot shields with their force and buried themselves in solid concrete. Men who caught even a glancing hit of the dark shard projectiles fell screaming with fatal and satanically agonizing poison damage.

The Dark Elf mercenaries made their way up the street like columns of metal, razor and hate. Sturdy, lightweight shields blocked gunfire thanks to protective wards. Spiked, pitch black armour took further bullets and strikes that their shields failed to stop. Behind the line of shield and pike bearers, the fearsome Dark Shard warriors fired automatic crossbows at the police; their glowing red eyes shining with psycho sexual delight.

Then from out of the darkness and smoke, came figures lithe, sexy and filled with the hunger for murder. Dressed like scanty whores, the Witch Elves of Khaine made up for their lack of armour with impossible speed and the favour of their patron god.

Sinuous, faster than the human eye and armed with poison coated daggers and meat hooks, the melee based Dark elves began to cut into the human defenders with rage that was beyond rage and the purest lust for blood.

Blood, guts and bone fragments sprayed a bomb going off in a hamburger factory. The Witch Elf cut up men as effectively as a wood chipper.

An exploding napalm shell from a catapult landed in the street nearby and the fireball darkened everything before blanketing the area in suffocating CO2 mist. Pacifica began to wretch and cough in the heavier than air gas, though Lars was unaffected.

Benefits of being a pink zombie, he reasoned; picking up his travel companion and hoisting her over the dense, suffocating cloud. Sprinting through gunfire and crossbow bolts, Lars took them to a street that only slightly looked like hell on earth.

Putting her down, Lars gave Pacifica a chance to clear her lungs free from the weaponized carbon dioxide. The girl coughed and sputtered, before suddenly pointing her handgun straight at Lars.

Firing her gun three times, Pacifica downed three dark elves wielding giant cleaver like swords; striking each one in the narrow eye slits of their spiked helmets; dropping them like a bad habit.

Then a high, reptilian shriek cut through the Stygian night. A squadron of Dark Elf cavalry was cutting through the streets armed with cruel, barbed lances. Proud and high on blood-lust, the elves rode armoured velociraptors into battle and their much abused mounts were hungry.

Outlaw life had given Lars and Pacifica honed reflexes and the ability to use their skills in deadly tandem. From under her trench coat, Pacifica tossed glowing orbs with strange symbols: a lama, a star, a pine tree.

The orbs struck the pavement and exploded into ice spikes, blue flame and a writhing hydra's nest of snakes. One of the a velociraptors shrieked as ice pillars tore into its guts and through the iron plate armour around its flanks; tossing its rider off in the process. Another beast howled and jumped back with a nimbleness no horse could match. The third rider hacked at the enchanted serpents with a short sword while his mount greedily stuffed its fanged maw with snake flesh.

Lars jumped into action as the unit of dinosaur riding elves closed for the kill. Reaching into the tattered bag, he drew the one tangible thing from his old life in Beach city.

The Elf rider gave the scream of the damned as he was cut in half, and his reptilian mount as well.

Elf and saurian guts spewed all over the street as Lars re-positioned with the sword of Rose Quartz; the blade that Steven Universe had entrusted him with. A spear as sharp as a scalpel and as deadly as a sniper's bullet went for Lars's throat, but he parried the diamond hard lance with his sword.

The pink boy narrowly ducked as the raptor's razor armoured tail nearly took off his head and its fore limbs raked across his chest. It hurt and if he were still human, several major arteries could have been opened. Yet as his pink blood slowly oozed from his wounds, molasses like, Lars could only look at his target with laser focus.

The pink sword cut right through the side sabre of the Dark Elf cavalryman and shiskebabed him to his dreadful mount.

The Cold one riders pulled back, their raptor mounts hissing and foaming with barely controlled psychotic hunger. The Elves themselves were hardly better, incensed by the felling of their own but also fevered with aroused blood-lust. Lars and Pacifica had gone from being mere prey to being true threats.

Helicopters.

The sound of Helicopters filled the air. Not just one or two and not just an evac chopper or a news bird. There were hundreds of armoured assault helicopters filling the sky, all with the Logo of the KIRA Pacification Forces. Following behind, transport helicopters ferried scores of troops in their holds and carried nuclear powered tanks on sky-hooks.

One such thirty ton vehicle dropped from the helicopter carrying it. Jet thrusters deployed beneath the craft, slowing its fall. When it landed, the tank still had enough mass and impact to create a mini earthquake; knocking Lars and Pacifica to the ground once more.

The tank's turret swivelled, servos and hydraulics whining. Without warning, the computer system locked onto a target and fired; striking a squadron of Dark Elf Corsairs. Dozens of elves were blown to pieces by the initial explosion; while the pressure shock wave killed twice as many humans who's been running for their lives or cowering in the rubble.

Ariel gunboats opened fire with chain-guns on the burning city, driving back the Dark Elf slavers and massacring the few survivors. The main goal was to drive back the magical invaders and restore the hegemony of the Non-Magical Government. All other priorities were secondary.

Then something fell out of the sky along with the jet dropped tanks and armoured troop transports. That something jumped off a chopper with no parachute or jet assistance and landed almost on top of Lars and Pacifica.

Two giant, booted feet cracked the concrete where they landed. Lars looked up, clutching his sword as he beheld a massive, female looking individual with sandstone coloured skin.

The giant woman's mane of white hair billowed in the smokey, sooty breeze; her eyes were cold and where her nose should have been was a polished and carved stone.

"Jasper!" Lars gasped.

The Towering, muscular figure turned to focus on the retreating squadron of Dark Elf Dark Shards. In the light of burning buildings, greenish discoloration marred the left half of her face. Her gem glowed and the alien being formed a dense crash helmet shaped like a battering ram.

Jasper slammed her fist into the palm of her hand, her voice thundering out. "You want to dance with the devil? Well, here I am!"

She roared like a maniac possessed as she charged at the Dark Elves. Their warded shields provided them no protection as her speed and mass crushed them like insects. Their two-thousand feet per second crossbow bolts bounced off her dense, hard-light body. Jasper stopped in the mass of Elves and began to rip off heads, arms and legs like they were dolls. She roared with rage and pleasure as he licked the blood and offal that splattered on her face.

The gem alien from a distant galaxy began to spin like sonic the hedgehog, her long, whipping hair cutting through the Elves like wire through cheese.

"Let's get out of here!" cried Pacifica as she shook Lars out of his shock.

Lars got up just as the tank began to spray heavy machine gun fire over the area. Pacifica threw herself to the ground to avoid being shot to pieces while Lars lunged at the tank. He screamed through the air as his great strength launched him.

Like a character in the corny animes he used to love, the sword of Rose went through the tank's armour like butter. Planting his feet on the treads, Lars pulled and drove it back with a glass shattering, tooth shaking shriek of metal.

The pink zombie boy jumped back as the Tank's Americium reactor went critical, turning the tank into a white hot flaming shell.

The boy turned, spotting Pacifica who was saying something, pointing and shouting. He didn't get to hear what she had to say because at that moment, Jasper thrust a a sharp piece of two by four into Pacifica's throat.

Her face went pale with disbelieving surprise as the jagged end of wood ripped open her arteries, blocked her airway and punched through her spinal cord.

Jasper pulled back the jagged, splintery piece of wood with devilish glee, he eyes gleaming under the protective plate of her crash helmet.

Lars froze as Pacifica fell, her life's blood gushing like a burst pipe. He couldn't move and he couldn't look away from his dead friend. Tunnel vision turned the entire world into the single visage of Jasper lording over Pacifica Northwest's twitching body.

What broke him out of his PTSD afflicted trance was the sight of Jasper taking her pointed board and thrusting it into Pacifica's corpse. Laughing with ghoulish delight, Jasper raised her spear and stabbed in and out of Pacifica's body like a savage maniac. Only when the two by four broke apart into a dozen pieces did she step back from the girl's mutilated body.

Jasper cocked her head, arms spread wide to make herself a bigger target; inviting Lars to strike her down.

The pink boy lunged with the sword, all finesse and skill with the blade forgotten. Pure adrenaline and naked animal terror drove his weapon. Jasper could smell the rage and terror on him and she wanted more.

Pivoting at the last minute, Jasper dodged the blade, which swung wildly where her neck was. Playfully, Jasper pivoted again, moving with the balls of her feet to evade Lars's desperate strikes. One of her hands glowed and shape-shifted into a pair of dull shears.

Lars thrust his sword towards Jasper's face, trying to destroy the gem on her face which was her true body; not the hard-light illusion that passed for a body.

He screamed as Jasper's scissor hand clamped around his elbow, stopping the pink sword only a finger's width from her gem. Lars squealed with pain and the shears slowly tightened around his ligaments and bones before suddenly clamping shut.

Crudely, his arm fell to the ground, bits of connective tissue and skin hanging off of it; the sword clattered to the ground next to it. Lars fell to his knees, tears streaming, unable to stop crying. He looked up at the savage gem before him. Off in the distance, the Black Ark was setting sail; its crews largely returned and its slave holds packed to capacity. The sails filled with the winds of magic and mages called down lightning strikes to drop helicopters and fighter jets out of the sky.

Jasper leered down at Lars with an expression of pure, bottomless, animal hunger. "Hey sexy," she boomed, "Wanna drop by for dinner?" She clenched her fist and drove it into Lars's screaming face.

The boy saw black and then there were flashes of vision interspersing the void.

He saw Hugo Strange's elite Tiger troops approach.

He heard but didn't see Jasper say something about a change of plans. He saw but didn't hear the KIRA soldiers being torn apart like fish in a shark's maw.

He saw, heard and smelled Jasper lean over him before licking her lips.

More darkness. No way to judge the passage of time.

The Black Ark sailed into a fog bank and vanished back to Naggaroth, Land of Chill and Ice.

He heard Jasper's rumbling laughter.

Darkness again.

Lars opened his eyes groggily, Jasper was dragging him by one foot across muddy ground. In her hand she carried a black garbage bag which was constantly leaking blood. She was taking heading towards an old slave owner's mansion deep in the bayou. Lightning crackled across the sky and the rain began.

Lars fell unconscious again, unaware of the horrors that awaited.