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March 20, 2015 It wasn't that Erik Espadas was expecting trouble, not really, but he subscribed to the idea that it paid to be the one carrying the biggest stick. Or to be friends with the people carrying the biggest sticks, anyway. When they'd worked out the rough schedule for Min's pregnancy nobody had been particularly surprised to find her due date landed on the vernal equinox. After the unexpected 'visit' by his extended family in the House of Swords for the birth of his first daughter, though, a whole different sort of planning had seemed in order this time around, just to be safe. Stesha had offered to host them on Sanctuary, of course, but even with one or two super-powered healers on hand the idea of being in a whole different reality from the closest modern hospital made Erik a little nervous. If he were being completely honest with himself there was also the fact that he wanted his second child to be born in Freedom City's West End just as he had. If was their home and he wasn't about to let anyone chase them out. That said, even if they weren't going to an earth goddess, the earth goddess could still come to them. A good section of the first floor of the Espadas School of Self-Defense and Swordsmanship (!) was covered in toys where Stesha was keeping watch over Eden and Amaryllis laughing and playing, chatting amiably with Gina. Nearby Mara and Liz were engaged in an animated discussion of tweaks and improvements to the building's security over a folding table covered in computer equipment including a laptop displaying Vince's neon-green suit wearing avatar. They'd sent Chris out to get food mostly because it seemed like the only way to keep him from standing watch on the top of the building in full costume while Steve had insisted on standing guard, gargoyle like, outside of the second floor apartment where Ellie was making her sister-in-law comfortable. Yolanda had taken up a position across from Steve, solemnly following the taciturn bald man's example. It was, all told, a small army of love and support. Not that that stopped Erik himself from pacing back and forth with nervous energy, his gaze jumping back and forth between the stairs, the clock and Eden, hands clasped behind his back.

15th April 2005 "So are you sure this is the place?" said the young woman, looking skeptically at the building in front of them. It hardly seemed the place to go for a biology consult. Hell, it looked like an apartment building. The man beside her checked his email on his smartphone. "Yuuup. Sharl said it was here. Something about a fake front to the building" After they'd got in contact during the problem with the Communion, Geckoman and Sharl had stayed loosely in contact. Being a member of Young Freedom was, while really only a big deal during school, still a thing. They'd all presumably come running if one member sent out an SOS. Or help out if one came asking around. "You ready to go in?" Liz Lawlett sighed. "Well, we've tried a bunch of stuff, Kenzie. This'd hardly be the weirdest place we've asked about this. Come on." She strode on into the gym, long black coat whipping around her ankles as she went. Chris hurried after her, until they hit the door. "How do we get in?" "I don't know, you know the weird digital guy." "He's not that weird! Ummmm." Geckoman reached out and pressed a buzzer down for a few seconds. Then the one below it. Then another below that. "Hit the buttons until someone answers?"

A pair of Masks in civilian guise casually strode through the doors of HAX's Hanover headquarters, each with a small arsenal on their person. The male was a tired-looking twentysomething, with a couple of day's stubble and a mop of sandy brown hair hanging to the nape of his neck. He wore a loose, baggy black coat over a thick sweater and cargo pants. Beneath them, he wore a belt with a small arsenal of shuriken, a collapsible four foot long taser, and a handful of more advanced items. The female was slightly shorter and less disheveled looking, dark hair pulled up in a ponytail. She wore a plain white blouse over black slacks, with a battered looking leather jacket atop it all. She was less heavily armed, with nothing but an extendable metal rod tucked into one of her boots, and a belt around her waist with a control panel slung off to the side and hidden by the jacket. "I think this is where she works..." pondered Chris Kenzie, casually looking around the foyer. "Think, Kenzie? Could you be somewhat clearer?" came the exasperated reply of Liz Lawlett beside him. "Does she even know we're coming?" Geckoman waved one hand airily. "Maybe. I've been busy." At which point, unbeknownst to them, their hardware triggered the alarm systems.

After long years of negotiations, UtiliTek, a proud subsidiary of the Grant Conglomerates, had been granted permission to bring Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, the legendary Grasscutter, from Japan to the United States for analysis in their Freedom City-based facilities. Part of the Imperial Regalia, the longsword had surfaced a handful of times in more recent history as the focus of various supervillainous plans and at least once as the instrument by which a particularly close near-apocalypse had been averted. It's impossibly shard edge had garnered it a reputation as perhaps the finest example of its kind ever forged, and piqued the interest of a variety of groups. UtiliTek hoped to discover the process through which simple steel could be made cut diamond, to be applied in any number of industrial capacities. The Japanese government had not surprisingly been reluctant to agree to the loan, and Grasscutter's arrival in Freedom was nothing short of the publicity coup for the company. As such, before the test were conducted, the blade was being put on display to the general public for one weekend along with an extensive collection of other cultural artifacts on the ground floor of the UtiliTek head office in Hanover. Amid the crowds of viewers was Erik Espadas, a young man from the city's West End with a particular interest in all things related to swords and their use. Wearing a wool lined brown jacket against the February cold and with a knapsack slung over one shoulder, the fencer studied Grasscutter from the other side of red velvet ropes and a glass case. Hm. Doesn't feel magic... at least, I don't think so, he mused to himself, extended his metamagi senses outward with a faint frown. I should really practice this stuff more.

And then the kids were elsewhere. They were gone from the false reflection of Freedom Hall, standing instead on the lawn of the Lucas family house, standing among the rubble of the battlefield that had killed Mark just a few hours earlier. Except he was alive, standing there amid the group of teens, and Rick and a shell-shocked looking Martha were standing there just a few yards away. "Dad!" Mark broke from the crowd and ran to his father, just as Martha called her husband's name and ran to him. But even as they did so, the teens saw the black, inky shapes beginning to break away from Rick, flaring up into invisibility like rising soap bubbles as they left his body to flare upwards and vanish in the sky. "I'm sorry, I can't stay," he was apologizing over his family's pleas, arms around Mark and Martha both as he slowly, inexorably vanished elsewhere, some place beyond even James's dimensional vision. "The universe can't survive two reality warpers, not and let humanity keep its freedoms." He hugged Martha. "I'll see you again soon. I promise. I love you so much, heart of my heart..." He hugged Mark, his body now so thin as to be translucent. "I love you, Mark." He pulled back, on the edge of vanishing. "You've always been my hero, Mark! Always!" And with that, with a single, devastated cry from Mark's mother as she collapsed into her son's arms, Rick Lucas was gone.

A wall of black, whirling dots of ink exploded over everything, battering through James' dimensional barrier an instant after sweeping away the whole world around it. And then... - James Prophet woke up to the gentle beeping of his compu-alarm, the whirring of his electro-bed a gentle reminder of the very pleasant way he'd fallen asleep. He sat up wearily, listening to the hum of the stabilizers that kept his flying saucer in orbit of Earth. Rising to his feet, he caught sight of his face in a reflective surface of polished metal and paused. Wasn't that right? He was Hell-Ion, the half-blooded son of the crown prince of Lucifer-1, the biggest planet in the Antares system whose inhabitants had evolved red skin and ionic-wielding powers to protect themselves from the sun's red radiation. But he'd sided with his mother's people, not his father's, and become the guardian of the planet he'd once hoped to invade. Was that right? No. No, because when he looked in the mirror, he saw who he was. He was James Prophet, prince of Hell. This other life was patchy, with elements of his backstory hard to recall exactly, as if no one had ever bothered to write the story down completely, but he could remember his lives enough to know which one was real. - "Raven." Chris Kenzie woke up in a sitting position, peering through his mask at a very familiar face. His adopted father, Duncan Summers, was looking down at him with one of his characteristic indulgent smiles. "You fell asleep in costume again." Poking him lightly with his cane, he said, "Get upstairs and get some breakfast before your mother has my hide." The laughing acrobat was soon on his feet, running up the steps of the Ravencave to join his adopted mother, Jasmine Summers, for a hearty bacon and eggs breakfast. It was over breakfast, sitting with his new family and laughing and talking, that he caught sight of his face in one of Jasmine's highly polished plates. And the new life suddenly half-melted, as fast as it had come. He could remember patches; his adoption, his home, his family with Duncan and Jasmine, but other things were less sure, as if they'd been changed in an awfully fast hurry. He was Chris Kenzie, Geckoman, and he remembered that much with perfect clarity. - Erin fell thirty feet, landing on her feet in a lush, luxurious lawn. Coming to her senses, she realized she was standing beside the old Freedom Hall, the massive old mansion that had stood there before the Terminus Invasion and had once been the headquarters of the Freedom League. The sound of traffic was loud in her ears. Peering through the giant hedge between her and the street, she saw a scene like something out of an old movie; classic cars, men in suits, and women in needleskirts and pillbox hats that reminded her of pictures of Jackie Kennedy. But she hadn't traveled in time, she saw, not when she saw a young man walking along and listening to his iPod. The last thing she remembered was the end of everything. - Trevor Hunter woke up with a feeling of great loss, the way he always did on the anniversary of his parents' deaths. But Travis was there to comfort and steady him, as always, the greying-haired champion of justice a rock as they carried flowers to the graves of Ted Hunter and Janet Pryce-Hunter. Behind them was Margery, his grandfather's never-failing secretary, who'd stayed young and vital as long as Travis had thanks to their infusions of the Infinity Formula Midnight had taken from Wilhelm Kantor. It was raining just a little, enough that the smooth, polished marble reflected Trevor's face back at him as he and his grandfather recited the oath they'd taken to avenge any unjust killings like those that had taken his father and Travis' son. And it was then he remembered that his parents were alive. They'd abandoned him for Paris, left him in the care of an old man who lived alone, his favorite secretary long since dead. Patchy as the false life was, he could remember details of it, but there was no doubt in his mind about which story was which. He was Midnight II...but not this Midnight II. - Eve woke up as her cousin threw a pillow at her face. "Eeeeve! Wake up! Wake up you silly sleepyhead!" Faith gave her a big raspberry. "You'll be late for your recital!" "Fine, fine," grumbled Eve, who'd never been a morning person. She slid out of bed, headed for the bathroom, and started brushing her teeth. She looked in the mirror, saw the toothbrush blocking her mouth, and remembered. She was the hottest teen musician in Freedom City, she was a powerful psychic teen hero, she had a cute boyfriend with a nice smile. But that was a lie, wasn't it? She was Sage, and she remembered everything.