Avenger Assembled

Wander and Harrier raced out of the burnt-out shell of a building that had once been the Earth Corps headquarters and straight into a scene from the depths of Hell itself. What had once been a beautiful state park had been blasted down to the bone by a conflagration that still smoldered here and there amid wrecked buildings and murdered forests. The blacked remains of dead trees, the burnt-bare skeletons of dead animals and dead people reached up towards the red and bleeding sky overhead like the fingers of the world reaching up to pull down death. Bones and ash were piled atop each other in heaps that must have been shelters, charnel remains of the world. If it was like this in a sparsely populated national park, albeit one that had been a destination for refugees in the last terrible hours overhead, what must it have been like, what must it still be like, in the larger cities? It didn't bear thinking about. Besides, Harrier had seen worse. He went invisible as they ran, fiddling with his pike after warning her first, the better to cut down her profile to any staring eyes. Though he knew that there were plenty of beings in the Terminus who could see an Omegadrone. They kept to the dead forest to avoid any eyes in the sky that might be monitoring the roads, which had now cooled down after being melted to liquid tar earlier in the last days, the seared-black trees forcing Wander to slow down a fraction in their run, just enough that they didn't plow into something solid as they went. Harrier kept a careful track of their route as they went, and finally as they raced down a dead streambed towards what had once been a waterfall, he said in his tinny armored voice, "Here. We should-" Suddenly, just as he spoke, his arms tightened around her. "DOWN!" And no sooner had he done so than Wander heard a great choking roar from the valley beneath them, and saw, rising on a massive column of fire up from the valley floor, obviously having just lifted off from the remains of the Bryce Canyon complex, a great black skull-headed vessel as large as a commercial airliner, its VTOL jets burning with the same black and red fire that marked Harrier's jetpack: a Terminus vessel!

Edge studied the ghost for a moment, taken by surprise at the sight of the unquiet dead before him, but didn't look too disturbed at the specter of a spectre before him. "Thank you, Millie," he said with a little wink at the ghost. "It's good!" he made sure to add after taking a sip, not wanting to seem rude. Focusing on Nick after that, he went on, the driving force of the young man's personality coming through as he spoke. "I don't know how familiar you are with African geography, so I'll provide some background here. São Tomé and Príncipe is an island state off the coast of southern Africa. They're a former Portuguese colony, they got their independence back in the 1970s. They're better off than some of their neighbors; they've had coups but no real civil wars, and their dictators have been more interested in being in charge than persecuting their citizens. They're not rich, but they're not poor, either, and they have a lot of hopes now that they're finding oiil. They've had elections for about twenty years now, and the opposition party has started actually winning them in the last ten years. They've had some coup attempts over the oil money, but the government's always held up." He put his hand on the table before him, still drinking the lemonade, and said, "A few weeks ago, an oil prospecting team near the Great Dog Peak, the biggest volcano on Sao Tome, stumbled across something that could tear the country apart. A mass grave, holding what the local doctor counted as at least fifty human beings; men, women, children. No one knows how they got there, and no one knows who they were. The local opposition party is accusing the Portuguese of carrying out a secret massacre before they pulled out, the Portuguese are denying it...if something doesn't happen soon, and if the populace gets sufficiently outraged, the government may have to 'detain' the Portuguese still living on the islands for their own safety. UNISON thinks that'll cause a domino effect; European investors will pull out, the oil money will dry up...and the country will tear itself apart. We need someone who can make the bones speak and tell us who they were and how they died." For all that he was only nineteen, the sheer power of Edge's personality came through as he spoke, and Nick could sense the urgency in his words, the threat to the peace and stability of a country that had just barely managed to avoid the many crises of the continent. "We need your help."

With the hulking monster actually defeated, one of the guards, the commander who Gal Vanic had seen talking to Cobalt Templar earlier, actually pulled off his full-face mask: the man underneath the blocky helmet bore a slight resemblance to an older Sharl, though his dark hair was cut in a short, military style and his eyepieces looked more like pilot's goggles than Sharl's mirror. At his move, the other militia officers did too, and as one they snapped off a perfect military salute to Gal Vanic: pounding their fists on their chests and extending it in the air. "Gal! Gal! Gal!" came the chant! "Four cheers for Citizen Gal!"

You don't need to spend the HP to stunt the extra duration (since he passed the Concentration check). Instead, having consulted with Electra, I'll put that HP towards buying up his power rank by 2 so he can get through Xevon's impervious. With Koshiro's Autofire, that's actually a DC 15+8+4+2=29 tou save. Which means he fails, which means he takes a bruise and is dazed. 23 Given their unique circumstances, I'll throw in a power complication for everyone in the hold: Papercut, Wraith, and Xevon will all be slowed for the duration of this fight. That'll limit them to one standard or two move actions, unless they spend an HP to take extra actions in the round without fatigue. Have an HP, Papercut and Wraith. Wraith is up.

The decor wasn't Mark's taste at all, rather the opposite, in fact, but he more than understood the idea of heroes, particularly mystic heroes, who chose to live among the signs and trademarks of their art. "Certainly," he agreed, following Nick that way without hesitation. He didn't blink at the strange sights of Parkhurst, and made sure to make appreciative noises at some of the more impressive pieces of necromantic objects d'art. "If you have lemonade?" It wasn't really lemonade weather, but a cool summery drink seemed suitably incongruous given the style of decoration. "I'd have gone to Adrian Eldritch," he added, making sure the necromancer knew he wasn't dealing with another ignorant UN bureaucrat, "but he prefers to be an independent agent."

Underdeck Papercut: 20 Wraith: 8 Xevon: 7 Papercut can maintain his Create Object effect while using other powers in his array if he makes a DC 17 Concentration check. He needs to make that check every round he's using a power from the array other than Create Object. (He can also pick up the origami box and hit Xevon with it, but that might make Wraith a little unhappy...plus there's a bomb in there!

"Good evening," said Edge seriously, reaching out to give Nick a solid, professional handshake. When Mark was on, he was on, and for all that his mind was wandering as freely as an unmoored ship, his attention was focused on the mystic before him like a laser. "My name is Edge, I'm a special agent of UNISON, the United Nations International Superhuman Oversight Network. You must be Nick Cimiterie. Mr. Cimiterie, the United Nations needs the services of the best necromancer in Freedom City for a potential humanitarian crisis. May I come in?" he inquired, looking up at the Parkhurst from the front door that they'd walked their way up to while talking. "Or do you prefer to do your business outside?"

Five rounds'll get 'er done. Give me a Sense Motive check, Fox.

The two of them, going alone into a Terminus-overrun world, near a site assuredly as well-guarded as doomforge sites tended to be, was frightening to Harrier, as it would be to any rational being. But this is no common forge. And the idea that the Terminus had found a way to speed up the breaking and remaking of human beings into Omegadrones was enough to wipe away any fears for himself. He felt a distant, phantom ache in what had once been his bones, an echo of agony indescribable as he said, "Even if they are finished, destroying the site may discredit the experiment." agreed Harrier. He feared for Erin, the young woman with the young man she occasionally spoke of, but knew that this was the slayer of Omega: surely this would be a task doable with her at his side. He took her aside, taking a little space from the others, as they spoke as privately as the narrow space allowed. "I saw a map of the region on the wall in Samson's command post. Best to proceed on foot; dragons and Omegadrones will be in the air, looking for targets to bring down. If they are hunting for resistance, one or two survivors may not be made a group target. After all, soon it will no longer matter." He took a breath to steady himself. "We go, we scout, we destroy it if we can. We do not allow ourselves to be taken. We do all we can to make sure no one else suffers at the hands of the Terminus." He nodded, and turned to the elevator. "The others may not understand, but they should know where we have gone." - Having cured a victim of dragonfire and getting a handshake from a big-eyed little girl, Jill could have ordered the people around the stretchers and hospital beds to stand on their heads and call her Your Majesty and they'd have done so without hesitation. There were a few smiles from the kids, and people clapping her on the back in congratulation, though not the raucous celebrations she might have gotten in other circumstances. These people had been through too much to really celebrate, but she'd certainly made them a whole lot happier. Eventually the line even began to fade as people were cured and took the places Erin and Harrier had marked out for them earlier, leaving only those still sleeping like Heartbeat and her baby near the hospital beds: Heartbeat herself hadn't stirred a wink during all the fuss. "Looks like you don't need me anymore," said Lieutenant Hudson with a faint smile of his own for both Jill and her new best friend, giving Jill a firm handshake. "Thank you. From all of us." And he wasn't the only one with thanks, between Harold and his wife and the other new arrivals, the crowd had moved from wanting things from Jill to giving her all they had: human love and compassion. - The first time Dragonfly tested the dimensional teleporter for Samson, Blue Steel, and Tress, the hastily-cobbled together equipment functiong perfectly as hundreds of thousands of uranium-derived volts poured into the carefully arranged rare earth probes and focused energy matrixes, the three locals exchanged a look. "Leave it down here?" said Blue Steel questioningly. "Take people down in small groups, ones we can control one-on-one, so we don't have a panic." "No," said Samson, with more authority. "We should set it up again up there, so everyone can see what we're doing, and they know what's happening and where they're going. If we're worried about crowd control, it'll be harder to have a stampede in a room as large as the Vault." "Good work, Dragonfly," Tress added in a murmur to Mara now that the work was done, the tech evidently not having a comment on the argument the men who'd been her bosses in another life were having. Her voice a soft confession. "I've got to admit, I wondered...I wondered if this was just something that would dump people in the void, at first. Don't get me wrong, I'd have gone too, anything's better than staying here, but...this is good. Thank you. I can live with this."

Parkhurst was amply protected against intrusion, but Edge lacked the magically enhanced senses that would have shown him any of that. He'd done his research about where to find the most powerful necromancer around Freedom City with no criminal record (and man, that was a long list! Cemeteries took breaking and entering pretty badly) and simply gone looking for the man, and by great good luck had walked up to Nick Cimiterie's headquarters right when the other man was looking for him. He'd come in costume, blue and gold a little incongruous given the setting, since this was a professional call, popping into being at the foot of the driveway and walking up with a spring in his step. This was a serious matter, but Mark couldn't find it in himself to be too worried about it. He'd find a hero, they'd solve the mystery in Africa, and he'd be back home in time for the midnight movie.

20, and with the demon's weaknesses vs. holy attacks, that'll destroy it. Giz, even with the demon gone, Jack can still sense hellfire in the basement. It also occurs to him that they still haven't seen the older bartender who headed downstairs right when the ruckus started...

19 does not, in fact, hit, so Cobalt Templar is currently exhausted with 1 bruise. 1. 20: staggered and dazed 2. 15 I'm not prepared to have her be unconscious at this point in the fight, so I'll reroll that. 32, so she's unhurt. 3. 26 All right, so Rogue is bruised, staggered, and dazed. I'll go ahead and post Citizen's actions, as well as start the fight in the deckhouse, later.

That'll do it, Giz: As near as Jill can tell, this unfortunate man is decaying from the inside out. He's in very bad shape and will probably be absolutely and awfully dead in seconds if nothing is done. As for the cause, he has what looks like mild burns on his hands and face, and she remembers what Heartbeat said about dragonfire. The mood around her has suddenly gotten tense, so this has to go right!

I could use Medicine + Notice from Ellie. if you want to start on your Inventor checks, Fox, now's a good time.

In the depths of the reactor room and its adjoining computer systems, the three engineers went to work trying to build the machine that would save everyone. It wasn't easy with their programmer gone; Tress was a great mechanic and Kurt (aka Blue Steel) an excellent engineer by all accounts, but wiring through the old computers without Green Screen around was another step for them all to work around. The Vault reactor was powerful, a big, overbuilt fission plant that could indeed have made a tremendous explosion if Samson had gone through with his plans to blow it up. The two survivors followed Mara's orders without complaint, even when building supertech machinery for which they obviously had no particular intuitive understanding, working without a break to build the machines that just might save everybody. While they worked, Tress did venture to ask one question of Mara. "Are women in charge of your world?" she asked curiously in the few minutes before Kurt arrived in the reactor room to join them. "I mean, that's great if you are, but you're obviously in charge of your group, Erin looks very tough, that doctor girl is tough, but Steve up there does whatever you and your friends tell him to do..." - There were lots of injured people who needed Ellie's help, and thanks to Lieutenant Hudson and a few other survivors, as well as the order Erin and Steve had imposed on the group as a whole earlier, there managed to be no riots as people got their lives saved by her over and over again. It wasn't until near the end of the line that Ellie ran into her first serious problem, a pale, sweating man covered in a ratty blanket that looked like it had come out of the back of someone's car, smelling faintly of nothing less than decay itself. "Don't need help," he was saying even as someone who looked like his wife was anxiously pushing him towards the healer. "Save the...save the kids...." Suddenly, he collapsed and his wife screamed "Harold!", and as the others looked on black, stinking bile began leaking from the man's mouth.

"Mandragora's dragons are taught from a young age to feed on the flesh of human beings," added Harrier, the hard facts to Wander's grim assurances. "Prisoners who he seeks to truly punish are left with five or six young hatchlings, each as large as one of your great dogs. They play like cats." And despite the anger he'd felt towards this man moments earlier, despite the fact that without the other heroes there he might simply have removed Green Screen's implant with his bare hands whatever the others around them felt, Steve knew they couldn't leave him there. No man deserves the Terminus. Whatever his crimes. He couldn't approve of the choice to sell out the hopes and dreams of others to buy more time, more life, but he could understand it. When there was nothing left but survival, some people chose to live. Even at the cost of their souls. His eyes bored into Green Screen, who under the pressure of his own ally's weapon and the formidable presence of Harrier and Wander, finally broke. "Two, uh, two hours," the defeated would-be traitor said, his eyes on the floor. "After that, he'd send in a dragon squad and they'd burn their way through the rocks. It was either pick the ones I wanted to live, or watch everyone burn." "Oh, Kashi..." Samson put a hand over his face, the look on his face like a parent who'd lose a child, and said, "Kurt...Kurt, take him away. Get his armor off, make sure that transmitter stays active. Lock him in storage and we'll bring him with us. If we can," he added. "Then, Kurt, you go help Dragonfly. Between the three of you, you can get something done..." As Blue Steel dragged his teammate away, Green Screen too beaten down by the stares of his allies and the furious looks from the civilians who'd been close enough to hear what was going on, Samson suddenly rounded on Harrier and looked at him like he'd seen a ghost. "You are one of those things. Or used to be. I didn't believe it till she said it," he added with a look at Erin. "How were you freed?" he whispered urgently as noise roiled through the still-active crowd, the news that one of the Earth Corps had betrayed them enough to frighten everyone. Guilt flashed across Steve's face, and he looked away. "...a stroke of fate." He forced himself to look up and meet this man's eyes. "None have yet duplicated the accidental discharge that severed my connection to the other drones. I am...I am sorry." Samson stared at Steve and seemed to take a long breath, his voice briefly choked with tears. "My brother's family, and his kids, they were in San Francisco. Drones got them, not dragons. I was hoping..." He took a breath again and said, "But even if we can't save anyone else here, that's...that's good news." He seemed to be trying to convince Harrier as much as himself. "If one can be free, all can be free. Just don't tell anyone here, for God's sakes." "Samson..." Steve swallowed hard. "Thank you." He blinked, then, added, his voice returning to its usual almost mechanical tone. "Where exactly is Bryce Canyon?" "Twenty miles. It's...it was our nearest teleport station. Kids at the college ran it, and had a little skatepark on the side. They were on the surface and had no defenses; we lost contact with them on the first day."

Tou vs DC 30 20 He's out, sports fans!

Down below in the hold, the knifebodied monster continued to prowl among the trapped Tronik civilians, who had rallied from their fear now that their hero Citizen was there to see him. When room and paper walls allowed, Papercut and Wraith could both make out Sharl fighting through the wall of blue fire cast over the opening in the cargo hold by Xevon, and he was still on his feet for all that his situation was looking increasingly dire. Suddenly, Papercut looked up to see the animate blade-thing staring at him balefully, eyes burning with blue fire like two gas lanterns! The monster advanced on him, fast, and threw a spiky punch that whizzed by bare inches from his head! - Up above, Citizen looked up gratefully at the streak of blue fire in the sky that meant Cobalt Templar was coming to the rescue. Bad idea, as Armorcat moved fast and drove a powerful fist directly into his midsection. Sharl doubled up as he felt ribs crack, the stink of alien meat in his nostrils as the cat-creature leaned close to whisper, "Pretty boy," she hissed at him. "Rogue didn't let me play with any of the pretty boys here, but maybe she'll let me make an exception for you..." At the touch of a raspy tongue to his ear, Sharl snarled in return and jerked to his feet, grabbing the cat-monster by the throat and raising her over his head one-handed. She was strong, damnably strong, enough that she could hurt dozens, thousands of people in his city. No more. "Playtime's over," he hissed in reply and he threw her at Rogue as hard as he could, the one-handed toss carrying all his strength behind it as Armorcat became a squealing blur of fur and metal as she rocketed helplessly towards her erstwhile boss. Rogue dodged, as fast as Sharl could have, but there was nothing to stop Armorcat from slamming into the nearest bulkhead at nearly supersonic speed. There was no crack, there was instead a BOOM as the monster hit the wall and simply fell apart; without the programming to mimic biological functions, Armorcat simply disappeared in a mass of collapsing code as her avatar imploded into nothingness. Wobbling, but still on his feet, Citizen pulled back his lips into a fierce grin as he faced down Rogue. "You're all alone in this. You have to know that. Stand down now, and maybe you can tell Talos that Tronik's not as helpless as you think it is. We're strong, and we're free, and we're nothing like you!" Her earlier calm gone, Rogue screamed and threw a wild punch at Citizen, her eyes red as Sharl just dodged a blow that might have taken even his head off. She let the punch carry her through and landed next to Sage, a look of murderous fury in her eyes as she stood near the badly-injured psychic. "Maybe you've stopped me today. But I can still hurt the enemies of our people more than you can protect them. Your little friend here might survive me overloading the rest of her suit, but I bet she won't like the memories of her body burning down to the bone!

Underdeck Xevon sees what's going on with the annihilation sphere and heads over to attack the heroes protecting it. (Have an HP, Wraith and Papercut! His energy powers are tied up maintaining the firewall, so I'll say he's stuck in melee for this fight. He'll go for Papercut with his knifey body. 21 That's a miss! Xevon's initiative: 2 --- Ondeck Go ahead and roll initiative for next round, Cobalt Templar. Armorcat attacks Citizen. She knows she's out of her league vs. Sharl, so she'll Power Attack and hope that's enough. 24 Ouch, a good roll for her! Luckily it's not quite a crit, but it's still a hit. Tou vs. 30 18 ...yeah, OK, I'll take that. Citizen is bruised x2, staggered, and dazed. I'll spend Sharl's last remaining HP to clear his daze. Citizen: Power Attacks Armorcat 24 And that's a hit too, waddya know! Sharl's grapple check is still +31; hers is currently +16 (since she's been flying fast after getting tossed around so much. 42 A roll she can't beat on a natural 20 Sharl throws Armorcat at Rogue. He's used this manuever before, so I'll say Rogue gets +2 to her Defense for this, awarding Citizen an HP for the fiat. He misses anyway Armorcat hits the nearest object. 9 And she's down. Rogue knows she's in trouble, but she just can't pass up a chance to hit Sharl when he's down. 7 She moves directly over Sage.

With one last coughing hiss, the cockroach swarm collapsed like a thousand strings had been cut, collapsing down and out so fast the heroes had to retreat, sometimes right up onto the machines, to avoid a small, incredibly disgusting tidal wave. Edge found himself standing on a big blue rectangle shaped like a telephone booth, watching the swarm disperse. The cockroaches were still twitching in that really horrible way cockroaches had, Mark noticed, but they all seemed to be alive. That's good, I wouldn't want to kill anything that can think and talk...even if it's thinking and talking supervillain stuff, and is really really gross. "Everybody okay?" Mark called. "Cannonade, you take any hits from that thing?"

As Jack's blade skidded off the glass-bodied demon, the Lord of Broken Dreams laughed in terrible tinkling triumph, for all that it was still vibrating like a leaf in the wind thanks to Gabriel's thrumming sonic powers. "Humanity hasss not changed ssooo much, then! There are alwaysss foolish heroesss who dare sstand againsst the forcess of darknesss and pain, but there are NONE WHO CAN SSSURVIVE OUR POWER! I am the firssst through the gate and I will rule thisss world as itsss dark king! Your headss will adorn my palace!" He swung his blade at Harrier again, this time the stroke skidding off Harrier's raised pike, Terminus steel proving tougher than hellishly empowered glass. "Stop. Talking." said Harrier, his eyes flat and voice hard as he returned the demon's stroke with his own, extending his left leg and driving the pike forward hard, the shrieking tip burning with Terminus fire as it shattered the demon's midsection like glass, making the creature howl in tinkling agony as sizzling liquor poured from the massive hole and still-vibrating glass spilled everywhere.

The hacker began to sweat. "I, uh, it's not like that! You've got to understand, you've been down here the whole time, you haven't been up there on the surface! It's the end, man, it's the end of everything. God, in Bryce Canyon, they were throwing them in this machine goop, and they were coming out with the armor bursting through and they were screaming..." His ashen face paled. "That's where I hacked into their comm systems and I had a little conversation with Mandragora, I-" If not for the force field, Harrier would have been on him right there; as it was, Green Screen suddenly found himself with Blue Steel's long bladed weapon pointed at him as well as Wander's bat. "He said he could use smart people like us on his team! Y'know, to help with all the tech they'd grabbed from this world, so if I got all of us to surrender without any more problems, he'd take some of our people back to his planet..." He fell silent, and in the room you could hear a pin drop. "Others have made the same choice," said Harrier suddenly, his fury replaced with a dawning, terrible pity. "Mandragora is a creature of his word. You and your loved ones would have survived. And if you ever were a good man, you would have regretted that survival. If you choose to leave him, do not allow him to be taken alive. No one deserves the..." He blinked, suddenly, and his eyes narrowed, the hacker's would-be treachery forgotten. "Wait. They were doing what?" Unsure of himself, but with all the eyes on him, Green Screen spilled out a story of what he'd seen: helpless civilians dragged into what sounded like a nanite infusion and hurled in by faceless Omegadrones, only to emerge with the armor erupting from their bodies as they changed. It was clearly no lie. "But nanotechnology is restricted in the Terminus..." His eyes widened with sudden, terrible knowledge. "...by Omega's law."

"He's crazy!" spluttered Green Screen, taking shelter behind the force field. "He's some kind of Terminus double agent, I bet, sent here to bring us down from the inside! C'mon, Sam, you know me," he pleaded to Samson Powers, who'd been watching the confrontation with wide eyes the whole time. "Kurt and I, we were out taking out the teleport beacons, he took the western half and I took the east, that's all! Check my suit if you want, I'm on total lockdown here!" He was all injured innocence, looking to the still-frightened crowd for protection. "C'mon, he's an Omegadrone, I saw what they looked like with the armor off when I was clearing out the base in Bryce Canyon, there was an injured one out there! Who the hell are you going to believe?" Harrier's face was stone, but his eyes burned with fury as he stared through the force field at Green Screen as if he could set him aflame by sheer force of will. "He is transmitting a Terminus IFF signal on a frequency only monitored by Omegadrones and Terminus starships." His hands closed into fists, slowly, then released. "The implants are given to Annihilists and their lackeys so that they will not be accidentally targeted by Omegadrones during conquest missions." He spoke with flat, dead certainty. "It uses entropically-infused neutrinos." He pointed straight up through the ceiling to the burning world overhead. "They can hear it. They know."

There was another flash, three blue lights over the green-screen monitor, and Samson relaxed a fraction. "Good, they made it in ." He looked up at Dragonfly and went on. "Green Screen and Blue Steel. They were shutting down our teleport network, making sure no one could pop into the Vault unannounced. The last two survivors of Earth Corps." He actually smiled a little before adding, "The finest computer hacker, and finest engineer I've met. I'll see about rounding up some people who might be able to help you, luckily most of my support staff was in the building already..." He rose to his feet, studied the perimeter alert for a moment, then shook his head. "I was tempted to go up and see what we're up against...but it doesn't really matter. We've got to get the job done." He led the way back to the elevator the group had taken down to the Vault, stopping to pick up another engineer to help them, a mousy woman with red hair and blue overalls, who pulled goggles down over her eyes as she went, carefully ducking her way through the assembling crowd. "This is Tress, she's one of my best nuclear techs," said Samson, "Tress, this is Dragonfly. With her, Green Screen, and Blue Steel, you shouldn't have any trouble." - The soldiers murmured their gratitude to Jill, some of the healthier ones even getting up to make sure their still-wounded comrades didn't turn her away and try and steer her towards others who were injured. "You need to get better. These people need us if we're going to help them get to Jill's homeworld." The first soldier she'd helped took over as something of her bodyguard, introducing himself simply as "Lieutenant Win Hudson, miss." Having Hudson there helped when Jill turned around and found that her display hadn't gone unnoticed: less exhausted, there might have been a riot, but instead she was faced with mothers with hungry children, walking wounded with bandages and severe burns, and others who hadn't needed the hospital beds but were certainly badly hurt. Heartbeat, for her part, had fallen asleep in a corner, her baby carefully propped up and nursing at her breast. "You're the healer from another dimension," said Hudson seriously as he stood between Jill and the crowd, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to keep her from being trampled. He was as tired as anyone else, but on his feet for all that. "How much of this can you take?" - With her new best friend clinging to her mutely but firmly, no one seriously questioned Erin again as she and Murdock got people lined up and as packed as they could muster, in seated rows all across the Vault floor like people waiting for an airplane to Heaven. Most people were shaken up enough that some gentle physical movement was enough to get them to go where they were supposed to, which was a blessing: so far the people of this world had held together without panicking. The unattached children were the hardest, but most of them could be persuaded to stay with an adult they recognized, particularly one of their rescuers. The sight of living heroes seemed to be an inspiration to them. Erin could see she'd been right to be concerned about quarantine; hygenie had not been a priority over the last few days, and between the smell near the small row of overloaded restrooms, the people who looked pale and sweating for reasons besides shock, it was clear everyone here would need to see a doctor on the other side. Erin caught Murdock looking unusually tense as he went about his work, and as he gently handed a weeping little boy off to a park ranger who held him close, Murdock leaned over and said, his voice a quiet whisper. "There is a force landing on the surface within a few miles. Omegadrones and...something else. I can't tell more closely than that. And there's something else, there is..." His eyes widened as the elevator doors across the room stepped open, and two armored figures stepped out. Green Screen and Blue Steel turned out to be wearing industrial armor similar to Samson's; Green Screen's a bit more like printed computer circuits, Blue Steel a bit more like smooth, polished chrome: Green Screen was an Asian man in his late thirties, while Blue Steel was a tall blonde man with Nordic features. Surprised by the new people, they both looked eager to help. "All the teleporters are out, everywhere from Gem Mountain to the Action Force base," reported Blue Steel. "They won't be following us in here that way. So you're an engineer too-" Green Screen and Harrier saw each other in the same moment, Green Screen's eyes widening briefly as Harrier closed on him, the former Omegadrone's eyes burning with fury. Realizing the peril he was in, Green Screen suddenly shouted "OMEGADRONE! That man is an Omegadrone spy, I know what those marks mean! He's one of those killer cyborgs" He raised his armored arm, lasers mounted on it glowing, as Harrier shouted over him, a look of almost apocalyptic fury on his face as he advanced heedless of the weapon in his face. "Your transmitter! Where is it!?" And now there were screams in the crowd as suddenly they saw their hero threatening their newly-arrived savior. "Tell me now, so these people do not see me take it from your body!"

Up close, the bags under her eyes and her thin frame showed how the healer had been simply working herself to death in the days since the end of her world began. She leaned against the wall, bracing herself on one hand and looking like she was about to fall asleep standing up. "Heartbeat. Thirty-seven patients," she said almost robotically, as if reading the report of a disaster that had happened to someone else. "Injuries ranging from heart attacks to mass blunt trauma to energy weapon burns. Lost ten so far, including all dragon casualties. Massive internal necrosis. Nothing I could do." Her baby stirred and she began rocking back and forth, singing almost to herself. "Sssh, sssh...worst injuries are over here," she went on in an almost singsong voice, pointing to a small, silent group; a group in tattered uniforms who looked practically sewn together from what the Claremont-trained Jill immediately recognized as the aftereffects of multiple Omegadrone pike blasts. "National Guardsmen and Tarantula forces saw schoolbus under attack by the park's perimeter. Rescued fourteen children. Lost half on the one-klick return trip." - _Don't think. Don't feel. Just act._ The words echoed in Harrier's mind over and over again as he went about his work, doing his efficient best to round up the terrified survivors with promises of safety and rescue. He could, at least, make glowing promises about Freedom City. "A dimension protected from the Terminus, a place where you can be safe and they will not harm you." Most of the people were simply too shell-shocked to reply, packing up what pitiful possessions they'd managed to salvage of their old lives and lining up dutifully, but others had questions: children cried and clung to ashen-faced adults , begging to know where siblings were, where their parents were, and adults did the same, families torn apart that would simply never ever be reunited. He was gentler with them, telling them simply, "It's time to go." He had the idea that some of them, eying him in their torn sweaters, their eyes glassy yet with shock, thought they were being taken to be euthanized. He couldn't blame them. The scarred-face Harrier was obeyed more than listened to, but Erin, a girl in her teens and looking more approachable, was the subject of more curiousity and open questioning. "Are you with Teen Action Force? Did anyone make it on the East Coast?" Evidently this world was different enough that there was no Freedom City; a blessing and a curse all in one. The press of the crowd was so thick that Erin didn't even notice the little girl coming for her until there were small arms around her leg. Her face smudged with ash and blonde hair burned short, she couldn't have been more than six as she clung to Erin and stared up at her with deep eyes. "She hasn't talked since they brought her in," murmured one of the other survivors to Erin, an older woman in her late forties. "They found her by the freeway, after the monsters had passed over. Nothing else was left." Near Erin, Harrier felt the hairs go up on the back of his neck, and peered up at the ceiling with a look of carefully suppressed alarm. - "I'll show you what I can," said Samson, who pulled Dragonfly away from the cramped shelter to the small amount of technical gear that he'd managed to bring down: sure enough, there wasn't much. "Most of our high-tech stuff is up in the command post, so we'll have to go back up for raids. Guess I should have thought of that. Stupid..." He rubbed his eyes. "I, uh, what's down here is mostly the fission reactor and its control systems, the backup computers, our old powersuits..." They'd come through a tight steel door to enter the small wing full of machinery, and now Samson stared at the supercomputers in the room blankly, his bearded face reflected in the glass dials. "Your world...you fought the Terminus, didn't you?" he asked quietly. "And won, or you wouldn't have all your technology, and you wouldn't know what they are. God, we must look so pathetic to you," he said, his voice a sudden curse. "Rats hiding in a bolthole, waiting for the end. Everything we are, dead inside of a week." He put his hands on the plastic keyboard before him, fingers tapping as he called up schematics of the reactor room just beneath their feet, the cramped equipment bays all around the shelter that held what they had down here. Even in despair he wasn't giving up. "If my life's work can save one life here, one memory of our world, I will gladly give everything of myself to see it done," he told Mara frankly. "When you get your portal done, I will be the last to leave." As he worked, suddenly a red light began to flash by Samson's monitor. Shooting a glance back at the busy Vault behind them, Samson looked up at Dragonfly and said simply, his voice haunted, "That's the perimeter alert. And since everything else I've heard of on this planet is dead...that means they're coming."