Electra

Paige opened her eyes at Stronghold's words, but she didn't seem to notice the hero's arrival at all. "Bad news, guys, I found him. He's in the Atomcraft, he already took out Chase and is mind controlling Whatsername, Tessa, into doing something with the plane we're probably not going to enjoy. We've got to cut him off before he gets his hooks any deeper into her. I could use your help," she told Aura, studying the projection of her still-restrained psychic niece. "Stopping him is the only way to save Josh." Belatedly, Paige looked up and noticed the new arrival to their little powwow. "What the heck are you doing here?" she demanded of Stronghold.

"Thanks," Fleur said, her face white and pinched but resolute as she headed for the stairs. When she reached the bottom of the stairwell, she tossed out a seed, and in moments a tall, thin vine was growing up the center of the stairwell, shooting rapidly skyward and twining itself around railings for support as it went. "Just one minute," she told the others, closing her eyes to concentrate on the vine's progress. It was a bit dizzying to let her consciousness travel upwards at the speed of plant, but she didn't take much in, just checking to see whether there might be anyone alive near the stairs. There was nothing, and she tried not to notice what might have once been alive. At the stairwell on the 85th floor, she tied off the vine with a number of sturdy runners and let a clutch of large zinnias bloom while she returned her attention to her own brain. "Okay, we'll have to walk the last two flights because I don't want to teleport blind, but it'll save us some leg cramps. Everybody gather round and hold hands." In a blink, she'd moved the entire group up the stairs, where it wasn't any more pleasant, but at least there were a few less bodies.

Nicholson School Family Village Port Regal, Freedom City 3:59 am The noise of the garbage truck going past jolted Paige from her concentration for a moment, the muffled clang and thud drawing her attention to the window, and then to the clock. "I'm too old for this stuff," she muttered with a grimace, then turned back to her laptop and notes she was making. Clip shows were great for the budget and allowed for a hiatus in the slow days of winter, but the research for them could be a pain in the ass. They really needed more interns. As she made notes on a possible clip from 2006, she sang under her breath, "New York is cold but I like where I'm living, there's music on Clinton Street all through the evening..." When the garbage truck rolled on down the street, she lifted the remote and restarted the episode she'd been reviewing. She made a few more notes before distracting thoughts of Holly's holiday party at school cropped up. She opened a to-do list in another window, then a shopping list, then her calendar program. By the time she looked up at the television again, it was to see the last lines of the credits rolling past, and the cheerful chirping of the production company logo. She ought to rewind, but Paige figured she probably hadn't missed anything too terribly vital. And she was probably too tired at this hour to be thinking clearly anyway. She began saving and closing her work, only to be jolted again by the brassy notes of an unfamiliar theme song blaring from the television. She looked up in confusion, then remembered that this was a VHS and not a DVD like their later seasons. Back when SuperCrime! had been a series of specials instead of a series, the only way Paige and Richard had gotten copies was to have friends tape them from TV. But since when had Discovery Channel ever broadcast sitcoms? Head cocked to one side, Paige watched the credits and tried to remember what show would've been following theirs, or anything about this show at all. She could swear she'd never seen it before, though it was very much like dozens of other sitcoms. White-bread family of five including three stair-step children, an open plan living room anchored by an oversized sofa, actors whose names she didn't know but whose faces were vaguely familiar. The music pegged the show as most likely from the late eighties or early nineties, with a female vocalist who sang with a voice both plaintive and optimistic about the challenges of being a family. It was decently shot, Paige decided, even if it ran a little long. The perils of having a large cast, she supposed. Just when she expected the credits to transition into the first act, however, the vocalist seemed to get a second wind and started in again, as another group of characters made their smiling appearances. The grandparents, Paige cataloged automatically, the blowsy, nosy neighbors from next door, the... the traveling life insurance salesman? she guessed, with his too-wide smile and briefcase full of documents for Grandma. That wasn't exactly a stock main character for a sitcom. An adorable baby, this one apparently belonging to the teenage daughter and her boyfriend, who showed up on cue for his credit with a half-sick smile. Very edgy for the early nineties. Paige tried to open the video timer to see how long these credits were running, but it just showed 00:00. She'd have to show this to Richard next time he made noise about lengthening their opening sequence. The song looped into yet another verse, and Paige found she couldn't look away. This had to be some sort of parody. More characters who were probably relatives, an ethnically ambiguous second family of five whose connection to the first wasn't clear, the proprietor of the local grocery store. Grandma fainting in line at the store, and the proprietor's comical look of horror. A hospital room with a credited doctor and nurse, a funeral home where the credited priest smiled for his intro and took a pie to the face. Grandpa, alone at home and falling down the stairs, the singer trilling about sometimes knowing loss as the camera panned over his look of agony. The life-insurance salesman again, this time with the family in the open-plan living room, giving them a check and pushing another set of documents to dad. Paige gaped at the screen. She wasn't even surprised this time when the music took on an edgier beat and looped again. Older daughter at college, apparently, neither baby nor boyfriend in tow. A perfectly-manicured best friend, a Hollywood-ugly nerd friend, a trio of sporty guys all credited together. A party, a car accident, another funeral, no pie this time. The parents clinging to each other as the hollow-eyed second daughter held the baby and the little boy picked his nose. The life insurance salesman at graveside this time, again pushing his documents. His eyes, Paige thought, were not quite the right size for his face, a little too big, a little too black. The mother ran away weeping. Loop music. A tight shot of the children walking in the front door, still wearing their black clothes. The ambiguous second family sprawled around the living room, obviously dead and with enough blood that it would never make it past Standards and Practices for any network. The floor littered with documents, laying like snow over the furniture, red where they soaked up blood. The little girl screamed and dropped the baby, who landed with a thud audible over the music. Paige came up half out of her seat, swallowing expletives and bile. Back to the hospital, and now the music had slowed to a dirgelike pace, not as though it had been written that way, but like the sound mixer had turned a dial way too far. The life insurance salesman was there again, but this time he'd traded in his briefcase for a semi-automatic, and his eyes were larger than ever. The camera focused lovingly on him as he stalked the white corridor, potshotting into rooms, but heading straight for the family the camera panned to at the end of the hall- "Mommy?" Paige jumped and muffled a shriek at Holly's voice, fumbling with the remote till she hit the Stop button and blacked the screen. "What is it, baby?" she asked, trying to keep her voice normal as she turned to her little girl in the doorway. "It's late-late-late and you have school tomorrow." "You gave me a bad dream," Holly told her, accusation in her voice. "You had nasty things in your head." "I'm sorry, honey," Paige replied automatically, layering another set of shields over her thoughts. "Didn't you put on your bracelet before you went to sleep?" "Yes," Holly pouted. "It didn't help." "Okay," Paige told her, getting up and turning Holly back towards her bedroom. "We'll talk to Dr. Johannson about getting it adjusted tomorrow. In the meantime, how about I sing you a song to get back to sleep." "I wanna watch TV," Holly replied, sleepy but still ready to pout. "That's really not a good idea," Paige said with one glance back at the dark television. She was definitely going to have to talk to Richard about this one.

"We don't know how Father did what he did," Paige pointed out at the top of her lungs. At the back of the plane they were out of range of the hole's suction, but it was still making a godawful amount of noise. "Or how he managed to suppress Josh's mind and jump in. But I suspect that if he did it once, he probably had a backup plan going as well. Maybe it was posthypnotic suggestion, maybe it's just what happens when you train someone's mind since birth, but if he did it to Josh, he can probably do it to someone else as well. Maybe any of you, maybe even from a distance. Josh was the body he wanted, maybe because he was least loyal, but probably because he's male and Father's always been a sexist bigot. While he's got Josh, he won't take any of you unless he thinks he's going to die. If you go after him guns blazing, all bets are off." Paige shrugged one shoulder. "Plus he's got that teleporting thing, no reason you're going to get within half a mile of him between that and his telepathy. You can't do this on your own!" ~I don't know why the Atoms constantly have to make everything so damn difficult,~ she groused in her head to Richard, even as she carried on her conversation aloud. ~Let me see if I can get in touch without them completely freaking out and shooting the plane. Speaking of which, are we all about to die with the plane in the shape it's in? I'm feeling kind of lightheaded, and we may need to deploy oxygen masks if we can't lose some altitude.~ "One second, girls, gotta make a call," she told her nieces, then closed her eyes to concentrate, searching for minds in the newly-decloaked ship.

~Richard, get in touch with whoever is in the Atom ship down there, let them know what's going on. Make sure they know that Jump is their only target, and they goddamn well better be aiming to capture.~ "Where the hell are you planning on going, Frances?" Paige demanded of her niece, after a moment of locking eyes with her husband. "You know you can't go home, not anymore. You've got no contacts that don't come through him, and you know whose side they're going to take if you try and tap them for help. You've got no money, you'll be a wanted fugitive, and he just told you how much he values your life. Father was never one to leave loose ends untied if he thought they might cause problems later. It took me a decade after I ran just to feel safe at night again. And when I ran, I was homeless. I lived in a shopping mall. I had nothing." She took a step towards Ember, trusting the cuffs and the paralysis to hold Aura for the moment. "He'll come after you. You, and Gwendolyn too, just because she wanted out. Josh is worse than dead if we don't help him. And what about the little ones? You think he's got his eye on Gimel for his next new body when Josh's wears out? This is family, Frances, just like you were talking about. If you want to help them, you've got to play ball with the heroes. They'll help us stop him, help us get Josh back. If you stay, you get to be a part of that, even if it means you have to spend some time in jail. If you run now, well, I can't really stop you, can I? But you're running out on your family."

"Frances Psion!" Paige snapped in an extremely mom voice, "You get your uncle back in this plane right now! That's not how you fight in a moving vehicle!" Turning, she grabbed hold of Aura before the paralyzed telepath could start sliding as well. Snagging a set of handcuffs from one of the still-sleeping security escort, she briskly cuffed the young woman to the nearest seat, arms behind her back. As she work, she cast about with her mind for her father's distinctive mental signature, wondering if he'd dare teleport back to the plane for a second go at his "rescue" mission.

Fleur shot Gabriel a pointed glare for his condescension, but obviously chose to bite back whatever other response she might have made. "How much are we going to publicly disclose?" she asked instead, looking at the assembled heroes. "The last time we had a planetary threat from space looming, it was visible to the naked eye, but this one is different. Do we keep it under our hats to avoid a panic, or do we try and keep ahead of the news by telling people something before some basement engineer with an especially good comm array learns something and starts spilling the beans?"

"I haven't got a lot of details at the moment," Miss A admitted, "though I'm hoping the Freedom League or some of the spacegoing heroes will be able to tell us more soon. What we know at this point is that the Communion came into Lor-Van space and overpowered its defenses, which prompted an evacuation of the planet. During the evacuation, a large contingent of Star Knights attempted to hold off the Communion. The Communion then proceeded to unleash a planet-killer style weapon approximately the size of Earth's moon which overwhelmed the Star Knights and annihilated most of them, perhaps four or five hundred, in a single shot. It then recharged its battery for several minutes, during which time my colleague Citizen, who was visiting the planet, was able to escape by transmitting himself back to Earth. I don't know exactly what that weapon did to the planet, but there was no one fighting back at that point, and no defenses left to be mustered. My preliminary analysis of the weapon suggests that a single shot would have been enough to at least wipe out life on the surface and possibly rupture the planet's crust entirely."

"I'm afraid nothing so well-documented," Miss A replied, though she could sympathize with Midnight's reaction. She wondered idly if he had connected her to his comrade on the trip to the ringworld, decided it was probably better if she didn't know. "A group called The Communion, a large fleet of extremely fast ships and at least one staggeringly powerful weapon. I have learned from a reliable source that they destroyed the planet Lor-Van approximately one hour ago. At this point I know nothing of their plans or the extent of their capabilities, but we can assume that if they choose to target Earth, they are more than capable of doing so."

"Midnight, this is Miss Americana," Miss A began, seeming quite unruffled by the commotion on the other end of the line. Apparently the black-clad hero's name did match his habits. "I"m sorry to bother you while you're working, but I've just received news of a disturbing new threat to Earth. Do you still have access to the spacecraft you provided for the trip to the Curator's ringworld, and does it have any advanced long-range sensory capabilities?" From what Gina recalled, the ship had been equipped with decent sensors, but the whole thing looked as though it had been made fifty years in the past by beings from a hundred years in the future, so it was something of a technological hodgepodge. She didn't want to make an uninformed guess about what it could do.

A minute later, Miss Americana opened her eyes and looked around. "Okay, I'm good for a few more hours now. You get in touch with the Interceptors?" At Sharl's nod, she rose from her chair and went back to the wall station. "Good, that's good. I won't try Cavalier just yet, if he's still alive he surely has a lot better things to be doing. Midnight, then," she decided. "He's got a team and a spaceship, that's efficient." Tapping into one of the Liberty League's comm channels, she sent a page to Midnight's communicator. "You'd think with a name like that, he'd be up even at this hour."

"All right, here we come." Fleur returned her communicator to her belt, then reached her hand out to Arthur. :"Don't worry, this won't hurt a bit." With a touch of her fingers to the flowers in her hair, they were off, traveling through a world of green that seemed to Fleur to be buzzing just a little (or perhaps that was just her overactive imagination.) In seconds, they were stepping out of a flower almost exactly where she'd left from. "All right, the bad news is that Freedom City is overrun in all directions, sea and land, even overhead and underfoot," she told her friends and Comrade Frost. "The worse news is that apparently the bugs have been planning this for decades along with some human collaborators, so this isn't just some alien invasion we can scare off and go home. The good news is, I found some of the resistance. This is Arthur Daniels, and he told me that some of his friends may have already wired the GBN tower to blow, if we can set off the detonators."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Fleur agreed. A wave of her hand disintegrated the vine and collapsed the portal, leaving them alone in the clearing. "Don't worry," she assured Arthur, "they're safer if I don't leave that door open here. I'll make a new one after we've zapped the bugs." Lifting her communicator from her belt, she thumbed it on. "Freedom League, this is Fleur. I've got a survivor who has some valuable information for us, but I'm not sure how secure our communications are here. Where should we meet up with you?"

Fleur bit her lip at the news that this invasion had apparently been long-planned and comprehensive, but set aside that bad news in favor of immediate action. "All right, then. The first order of business is to get you guys someplace safe. I have a holding area I can send you to, it's not fancy but it has food and medical supplies and it's far away from the monsters. Any of you who want to help us fight and have more information we could use are welcome to stay and help me and my friends." She tossed a seed to the ground and grew a long green vine that looped over itself and made a portal the size of an average door. Looking around, she saw skepticism she wasn't really used to dealing with as a hero of Freedom City. "Look, I know you don't know me and it might sound a little crazy to do what I say. But you know you can't stay here. I've looked all over the city, and it's entirely overrun. Please let me help you."

"What are we supposed to do?" Fleur demanded, fear she couldn't quite hide putting an edge in her voice. "How do we prepare for something like this if it arrives? Five hundred superheroes gave their lives and only managed to slow it down for five minutes! We don't have an evacuation plan and a fleet of starships to prepare; most of our heroes don't even go to space except maybe for meetings!" She would've waved a hand to indicate the room, but her fingers were numb from too much clenching. "If they can't stop this thing before it gets anywhere near us, do we really have any sort of fighting chance against something that can take out a planet in one shot?"

Paige's reflex save is a 21

Fleur rested her hands on the table in front of her, fingers knotted so tightly that the tips were bone white. "Is there anything we can do?" she asked the assembled heroes. "Lor-Van is so far away, but maybe we can send supplies, something. Those people have lost everything." She opened her hands, turned over the acorn she'd been playing with, then folded it back between her palms. "Do we have any idea what the Communion is going to do next? Could they come out this far?"

"I'll keep you informed," Miss A promised. "I'm sure the League probably knows through their own channels already, and I don't really have any connections with anyone there. I could call Midnight II, I suppose. He has his own spaceship, he must get up into space sometimes. And Earth is unfortunately a little bit low on spacefaring vessels these days. Call me if you come up with anything, or if you need anything. All of ArcheTech's resources are available till we get this figured out. Talk to you later." Disconnecting the call, Miss A rubbed her temples delicately with one hand. "I'm going to need to disconnect to get some more fuel into me, but we still need to rally the troops. Why don't you go ahead and contact the Interceptors and tell them what you know," she suggested to Sharl. "I've got their contact information in my database. Send them whatever information you think is relevant. I'll be back in five minutes." She sat down in her desk chair and closed her eyes, seeming to go to sleep all at once.

Stesha dropped the barrier of vines when the shooting stopped, lowering her cowl and removing her mask to look at the survivors. "Listen, all of you! I'm not here to hurt you. I'm Fleur de Joie, I'm with the Freedom League." There was a moment of silence as the people regarded her with utter incomprehension. She sighed. "Right. My name is Stesha Madison, and I'm not from around here, but I want to help you. Do any of you know anything about where these giant insects came from, or if there's anybody out there working to try and get rid of them?"

"You always suggest black," Erin pointed out with a grin for Trevor. "I'm with you on the no pink costumes," she told Nina, "but if you want it to be a secret identity thing, you might want to avoid the national colors too. And you'll need at least a mask." She'd shed her own salt-sodden mask as soon as she could get her fingers to cooperate, but then, Erin had very little in the way of secret identity to protect. She pushed herself to a sitting position, very carefully. "So are we done here for tonight? Can we go home?"

"I'll send you what I've got, the rest will take awhile." Data began flowing over the connection, a very large amount of data already. "Decoding data is its own special challenge when the receiver is as close as a computer can possibly come to simulating a human being. I have protocols in place to access Sharl's visual and audio memory, but the rest is much more tenuous. I imagine you'll want to talk to him eventually, but he's very shaken right now." The audiovisual data was easy to access and play, though nauseating to watch for the first minute or so. The recording was binaural and near panoramic, eyes and ears seeing and hearing in real time and space, the ultimate shaky-cam experience. "He's on-planet and running most of the time, so unfortunately the angle is not good for seeing a lot of the fight. Check out the cyberkinetic baddies at 14:33:12 as well, they're some nasty viral pieces of work."

"I don't know from unreasonable," Miss A shot back impatiently, "but I've downloaded Sharl's memory files and watched whatever that weapon is disintegrate what had to be five hundred Star Knights in one shot. Which might be burying the lead, come to think of it." Mara could hear her blow out a breath over the phone line. "Sharl evacuated through their Vox before it could take a second shot, but he said it was undamaged and recharging fast, with nothing there to stop it. The Lor were jumping off-planet like fleas on a hot griddle, but there wouldn't have been time..." She was silent for a moment. "I didn't know who to call," she finally admitted her voice softer, almost abashed. "That thing is entirely beyond my scope, and not many things are. But you know weapon tech, and you've been to space a few times. Can I send you the data, at least?"

"You're not an easy woman to get ahold of!" Miss Americana's dulcet voice piped over the speakers. "And if you're getting calls at..." a momentary pause, "quarter after three in the morning, I think that's grounds for more than purging a database. But not tonight." Despite the natural polish in the genius CEO's words, the speed of her voice and the slight edge in her inflection gave her nerves away. It was enough to remind Mara slightly of the dumpy, frightened young woman who hid behind the perfect persona. "We've got big trouble. Sharl just data-dumped back from his trip to Lor-Van, with news that there's no Lor-Van there anymore. Some alien fleet came along and blew the whole place to kingdom come. Do you know anything about a group called The Communion?"

Stesha shuddered a little as the transporter beam dropped her off on the deck of the Lighthouse. Space always felt a little strange to her, as though her feet weren't quite touching the ground even in the earth-standard artificial gravity. Lost her roots, she supposed wryly as she stepped off the pad, one hand going automatically to the crown of flowers in her hair. It was more vivid than usual, dozens of tiny pink and white flowers braided into and around her intricately plaited green hair, and the effect was almost jarringly innocent and joyful. Even in her uniform and cowl, Fleur de Joie looked more like she was ready to decorate a maypole with ribbons than face an intergalactic menace. But when one prepared for battle, one stocked up on weapons, and she was no exception. She walked into the room and smiled at everyone already there, then went to find a seat in an empty section of the room. She waved to Velocity, glad to see a more familiar face in the group of their colleagues. "Do you know what's going on?" she asked the speedster, moving closer for a private chat. "I just got an urgent summons back to Prime and to come here."

"Yes, I worked with him once, I think I have his contact information tucked away somewhere," Miss A said absently. "Though god knows if he's going to be available for consultation, under the circumstances." She ran a hand over one of her many screens, enhancing a section of text she'd been scrolling through. "Here's one hero currently local to the area who's at least been talking about the Communion. I'm going to try and get in touch by email, send over what information we've got and see if they can help. No phone calls to strangers in the middle of the night, not yet anyway." She stepped away from the screen, ran both hands through her blond hair and dislodged a half-dozen silver bobby pins. "God, I can't believe I don't know anything about space! It just didn't seem that important at the time! Dragonfly," she decided suddenly. "She's been to space, she should know about this anyway." Jamming her hand down on the comm console, she fed the phone number directly into the system with a crackle of energy, trying all the genius inventor's contact numbers at once.