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Late December 2020 A beach south of Freedom City It was a time, Sea Devil had assured everyone, of great importance. Hydra in her wisdom had provided a great blessing here in the coldest, darkest time of the year, a gift of food, and light, and shelter. Aquaria had guided her people to the site and with a little help from the Freedom League, the nearest tribe of Deep Ones had eaten well - and without conflict with surface-dwellers or Atlanteans. But most of that tribe was gone now, migrating out to the deep waters off the coast that stayed the same temperature in any season. So it was just Aquaria, her friends, and a few straggling Deep Ones to commemorate this rare blessing for her people. She had begged, pleaded with those she loved to help make this occasion a truly special one, and with a few promises of cleaning here and quiet there, she had won the help of important allies for a rare, glorious holiday amid a site made holy by the occasion. The best part was - it counted as community service hours, just the thing after the last time she'd gotten in a little trouble with the law of the Surfacers earlier in the year. Come to think of it, Indira had been there for that one too - maybe why she'd come along this time? It was hard to say. And so it was in late December that Sea Devil and Singularity crouched inside the almost completely skeletonized remains of a beached whale that Aquaria had assured all her Surfacer friends had been dead before her arrival there a couple of weeks before, Sea Devil wearing a crown of teeth and other bones and not much else to mark the role she played in the ceremony as Dagon, Jessie wearing - well, Jessie had preferred her own garb for the celebration and Aquaria could hardly blame her, the traditional Hydra garb not really being suitable for a great many reasons. Still she was here, making a sacrifice out of love, and as usual Aquaria was touched by emotions too profound for words. Crouched inside the skeleton, Aquaria laid a wet hand on Jessie's and hissed "You are the best friend anyone could want." Then she began to sing; a short, ponderous song about the blessing of the cold dark sea, and how in certain very special times of the year, Dagon and Hydra awarded their children special tokens of their esteem before she popped her head out of the rib cage and bellowed at the top of her lungs before adding a translation for the benefit of the humans in the audience - mostly a few volunteers from local communities and a couple of students from Claremont: AUSPICIOUS SEASON! Back inside, she turned a joyful smile on Jessie, an impressive sight indeed, and raised her two thumbs high to encourage Jessie to take her part. - Outside, Nightscale's extra credit project was certainly giving him something interesting to talk about. He was the oldest student there for once, a few first-years there in the company of Mr. Sadler, a parent volunteer who'd been a hero back in the far-off days of the early 1990s, being his Claremont escorts. There'd been music, and food already - hot apple cider brought over from the nearby small town, all of it locally caught fish fried over hot coals, though the 'locals' on the scene here were scaly fish-frogs that looked like they could bite his head off. The Deep Ones he'd seen in Claremont lectures had been fearsome beasts laying waste to Freedom City and fighting superheroes; the half-dozen here (besides Aquaria, the Deep One hero) didn't seem interested in much other than eating fish and watching the ceremony - though he was conscious occasionally of big black-and-gold eyes cast his way.
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December 2019 Dutemps Tower I AM GOING UNDER THE SEA. I WILL BRING YOU A FISH. Aquaria considered what else to say, then added HAVE FUN AT THE ART GALLERY! It was only a day trip out to the art museum with the glass with her other friend, but Jessie had been looking forward to it and that was good. She didn't want to spoil her good time, so she added a note on the refrigerator that said CALL HELP IF I AM NOT BACK SOON. With her job done, Aquaria headed to the closet where she kept her armor. She climbed inside and throbbed with satisfaction as the space-metal closed around her, the warm liquid that emerged from every crevice inside immensely more satisfying than the cold, dry air of their apartment. She and Jessie had special windows that actually opened, something Eve had said was the "superhero" model and because sometimes the claustrophobia in this little dry space was terrifying. With her armor on, she hung her trident over her back and began climbing the sides of the building, up towards the castle. Was anyone home today? She certainly hoped so. December 2019 "Would Heroditus Stylianos please report to the headmaster's office? He is being picked up." The rather odd PA announcement seemed to make Heroditus' art teacher very worried, and right in the middle of watercolors no less. Heroditus had never actually heard that particular phrase said over the intercom before, at least not when it came to him. "Oh dear, oh dear, well, ah, Mr.Stylianos, we'll take care of everything," said Ms. Zinzendorf. She walked him to the door, a sympathetic expression on her face. "Don't worry about a thing."
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The DuTemps Building July 10th, 2018 10:59 AM Before the sky bled, Temperance was taken in by the city below. Things were tranquil, and she wasn't quite sure where they'd go next. She and Sharl were still happy in their relationship. They weren't necessarily making any moves towards any particular destinations, but they were okay with standing in the middle ground. She had just graduated from college, and while she was putting herself out on the job market, she was still experiencing that difficulty of having a good - but not incredible - GPA and some internship experience. Maybe I'll put my "night work" on the resume and see how many heads explode. There was peace. There was quiet. There was a city below, remembering what was lost and celebrating the victory that had been gained through great sacrifice. She stood on the lip of a castle in the sky, wondering how her life had gotten to this point, and where it might go next. Then the screaming began. In a hundred different voices, from boiling asphalt to sparking power lines. Her phone went off in her hand. A message from her father. THE CITY IS GOING MAD. RUN. Before she could even more, a great red rent was torn in the sky, and a swarm of steel locusts descended. She ran to the lip of the building, struck dumb for half a second, before she got a good look... No. Oh, gods, no. She ran back into the building, reaching for her phone to send out a mass blast to the group. UNDER ATTACK. TERMINUS.
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GM "I do mean to apologize, again," Doctor Browning was insisting - for about the fourth time, by Indira's reckoning - as he stood there wringing his hands. "I really simply do not know how the alarm went off like that, much less falsely. It's the budget cuts, you see; we don't really have many maintenance staff left...." The building had certainly seen better days. At some point in the past, the Hanover site had been some manner of large research and development facility, with the footprint of a warehouse and the multi-story brick design of an office building. As recently as a few years ago it might have been a bustling center of the sort of science that came accompanied by mad laughter and lightning bolts, but from what the ghost and the alien had seen on their way up it now housed sheet-covered machines and abandoned labs, the outside keeping up appearances while the inside was slowly claimed by dust and entropy. Not that foreknowledge of the metaphorical rot in a financially collapsing research institute would have kept them out, of course. Kimber Storm and Indira Singh had been in the area on other business, but they weren't likely to ignore a piercing shriek of an alarm, nor an old man rushing down the sidewalk shouting about assailants and his "precious findings". Which, unfortunately, led them to their current predicament. "Problems of the past, surely!" chimed in Doctor Whale, before anyone else could - a recurring problem. He was thinner than his portly companion, and clean-shaven to his partner's mustache, with only slightly more optimistic hand-wringing as he circled their prized possession. Clear on the top floor of the building, they'd found the object of their concern sitting exactly where it had been left yesterday: a curious sphere, pulled apart into two halves, wires and devices trailing out of it and into the monitors and unnameable science paraphernalia. "Why, we'll be back on the map with this, in no time. You'll see. No false alarms will stop us, no sir, no how, and then we can get this place right humming again, with all-new alarms and better security and new labs...." The only person not wringing his hands sighed - a larger, better-dressed businessman with close-shaved hair, briefly referenced to by the others as a 'Mr. Bole'. "Please pardon them," he said in a light accent, offering Ghost Girl and Wraith a sympathetic look at the severe lack of polite disengagement they'd been offered so far. "I don't want to waste any more of your time. They're brilliant, but...excitable. It's the sphere, you see - some military and government groups are starting to offer 'safe' alien or extra-dimensional technology out to some of us for research, if they can't make anything of it, and...well. I guarantee that what happens here will finally pull this company back out of the red, but you don't need to be here for that. If you don't mind, I'll show you out myself, before Doctor Hitch bursts in and completes the trio, and you never esca--" The door to the lab burst open, a severely winded man in a lab coat gasping for air after apparently sprinting his way up the building - a scene the heroines had seen three times, now, in ever-diminishing levels of impressiveness. "I got the - t-the alert!" he shouted, too much volume echoing around too much space. "Is...is it okay? Did anyone break in and t-take it?"
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OOC thread for this thread, as we'll need it sooner or later.
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Dutemps Building December 2016 It was unusual for a groups of people who lived in the same location to gather together to throw a Holiday party, but Dutemps wasn’t the most normal of places. First it was a castle high above the skyline of Freedom City, looking like it was from a fairytale or a cartoon but then again so did a lot of Freedom City. And this fairytale castle in the sky was home to an amazing bunch of female misfit heroes. And today they were having a party. One of the smaller halls had been prepared for today’s event with a incredibly well stocked buffet table and a fairly impressive sound system for hopefully a fruitfuls night partying.
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CN: Date: Late July, 2016 Location: The Beach, Port Regal The Atlantic might be colder than the sea that Leilani had grown up loving, but the waves held a familiar rhythm and even if the sand was darker, the beach more rocky, working it with Kimo held a certain strange familiarity. It wasn't home - not quite - but it wasn't utterly foreign either. Which, perhaps, made it an appropriate place for a not-quite impromptu celebration of sorts. At least, with having begun to shift her things out of the League headquarters and into the Dutemps building, Leilani had accepted and acknowledged that while her powers remained concerning, they weren't actually out of her control. Her good-natured nephew (Leilani couldn't call him her great-nephew still with a straight face) had been all for an evening of surfing and beach barbecue, not to mention meeting more of the super-hero community and the off-hand invitation had been extended towards the rest of those calling the castle home. Leilani had traded her life-guard swimsuit for an off duty alternate. With a sarong knotted around her waist, she set about setting up the wood with the intent of setting up a proper bon-fire, pausing to wave over the guests she recognized when they arrived. "Kimo, watch yourself, yeah? Gonna put up some bumpers," she paused in her building of the small wood tower to gesture, mounding up the sand and rock to form larger banks to provide at least a little bit of visual privacy from the rest of the stretch of the beach. "Remind me to put that back afterwards." Leilani added in a mutter as she returned her attention to stacking wood.
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November 1, 2015 The DuTemps Building While the machine intelligence briefed the superheroes on relevant global events she'd gathered from observing the planet's news cycle, Tarva, her head on her hand and shoulders slumped as usual to disguise her great height, was in the process of making notes on her yellow legal pad, the heavy black ink of her pen scratching quietly as she worked. NORMAL MOVIE FOR KIMBER - 2001? CLOCKWORK ORANGE? AN ANDALUSIAN DOG? She didn't really understand the appeal of any of the bizarrely sanitized movies that people on Earth-Prime enjoyed watching, but after some consideration (and careful scrutinizing of their plots), she'd selected a few that she thought would make for an enjoyable evening. When Bluebird paused to change topics to recent interstellar news, Tarva nonchalantly put her hand under the table and rested it on Kimber's thigh, giving her lover a warm smile as she locked eyes with her. They'd have an evening all to themselves yet. Nobody's going to come between us, she thought comfortingly. Nobody.
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tarva, ghost girl, temperance, crimson tiger, dutemps, wraith, blue fox
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"Okay, so what do you think about this?" Erin rested her back against the front passenger door of the Maserati convertible and studied the binder in her lap. She addressed her question to Trevor's legs, since they were the part sticking out from under the car. "We have the wedding in May, on the grounds here, over by that pond Aquaria's been mucking out. We get a trellis and a little platform built, rent a bunch of chairs, and have a florist do up a whole pile of flowers and cattails and stuff so it looks nice out there. Then we clean out the second floor ballroom, get a serious waxing done on the floor and have the bulbs in the chandeliers replaced, and have a reception in there? Easy, and we don't even have to go anywhere."
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July 11, 2015 Kimber finished etching the last rune into the surface of the ice with a telekinetically controlled chisel before floating a few meters into the air to survey her work critically. After the better part of two years of preparation and careful work she wasn't going to let the arcane ritual equivalent of a typo ruin everything now, especially now with so many of her friends on the way to help pull off her plan. Indira and Eve were already waiting on the bleachers on the other side of the plexiglass, the latter having been convinced to rent out the indoor ice rink for the day with only a minimum of pleading. Kimber had asked Tarva to head up to the announcer's booth so that she could double check the complex circles of inscribed sigils that made up the first step of the day's undertaking. Satisfied with the results, the poltergeist nodded and turned to her friends, hands on her hips. "Good to go! Just in time, too! Everybody should be getting here pretty soon!"
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The OOC! To start off with the DuTempts Building crew are already at the ice rink with Kimber any everyone else can begin arriving! Nick, Equinox and Frost should all have a general idea of what Kimber's been working on since she'd have asked them for their professional opinions along the way. I'll leave it to each of you how complete a picture of the final goal you think they'd have. She'd have likewise let Temperance know she needed help with something involving Jotunheim and made a weak attempt to coach the whole thing in technobabble for Citizen's peace of mind. Papercut and Revenant may only know that Kimber asked for their help and that there's a non-zero chance that there's going to be some monster fighting involved. Kimber's friends from True North are stuck dealing with another Igneous (lava men) crisis, which Frost and Blue Fox would certainly know about, if it comes up.
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April 20, 2015 It wasn't that Kimber didn't think Eve would have agreed to fly them all out to Thunder Bay if the poltergeist's hometown hadn't also been where their fearless leader had met her girlfriend but it had certainly made pitching the trip easier. She had an errand to run in the woods outside of the city and while she could have probably performed it alone she had little desire to do so. Accepting that she had died and everything that came with it was one thing, actually visiting the resting place of her corporeal remains was something else entirely. The harder sell had been getting Tarva included in the outing. The trick wasn't so much convincing Eve - the Martel heiress wouldn't have let the sorceress work for her in the first place if she hadn't believed Tarva was worth taking a chance upon - as it was negotiating the paperwork involved in transporting an Annihilist defector across national borders. Ultimately while the Freedom League may have had their politely unspoken doubts about just what Eve and her Claremont classmates had done to earn the Furion's regard they couldn't argue that that regard existed and that made her more or less the de facto authority. If she said they'd keep an eye on Tarva in Canada, then an eye would be kept. The flight, meanwhile, gave Kimber an opportunity for a conversation she'd admittedly put off for too long. Floating over to Indira in the spacious cabin, she folded her translucent legs beneath her and cupped her chin in her hands. "Hey, so, I know I've been kinda acting weird since we got back in space. S'okay if we talk?"
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Amazri IV, formally Lor Space March 1, 2015 (Terran Calendar) Amazri IV had long sat well inside the boarders of Lor space, many light years from the contested area with Khanate space. The planet had long been a colony for the Lor, established in the early years of their expansion from Lor-Van. It had developed into one of the Republic's primary centers of industry and manufacturing, with vast automated facilities that covered the northern and southern landscapes of several of its vast continents. Most of the large cities on Amazri IV had been located around its equator, where lush green forests spread out around the cities before giving way to high mountainous zones. Now more than half its surface had become silver colored metal, and even from space it appeared as if veins of the silver metal were continuing to spread towards the rest of the planet. Amazri IV was one of the most recent Lor planets to fall to the Communion, the cyberforming of the planet still underway. A group of the Coalition's top scientists had determined that the cyberforming process provided the most direct access to the Communion's central data centers, with the least protections in place to prevent unauthorized access. In short, if the Coalition was going to learn the whereabouts of the Communion's mothership, it would be by gaining access to one of the central relays on a world being cyberformed. So a small group of Coalition forces were aboard a Grue stealth ship, making their final approach to Amazri IV. "We will be at our target location within ten microcycles." Stated Gur'ul, the Grue Metamorph in command of the stealth ship, turning back to look at the odd collection of beings that he had been ordered to transport to Amarzi IV.
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The Terminus High above the Silver Tree, deep in the cold red space of the Terminus itself, darkness billowed from the nothingness. It formed first into a black crescent that glowed with an impossible black radiance, then from the crescent there swelled a long spear with a pentagram at the tip. From the crescent resolved the figure of a pale-skinned woman, the spear in one hand and the crescent of shadow billowing behind her like a cape - her eyes deep voids of blackness as she looked down at the world of the Furions beneath her. Clutching her weapon, which was Starkiller, the slayer of suns in her hand, she waited in the void until the Furions came for her - and when they surrounded her, weapons glowing, she threw aside Starkiller and declared in a booming voice that resounded even in the true vacuum of the Terminus. "I am Tarva the Terrible! I bring grave tidings from the streets of Nihilor. But I will speak only to the Fleet-Footed!" --- March 1, 2014 As happens more often than you'd think, a swirling dimensional portal opened above the Martel Castle suspended itself a full hundred stories above Freedom City. Out stepped a man, if that was a man, all in black - the darkness of his garb marred by silvery lines that criss-crossed his muscular body in an abstract pattern and by his facemask - a white goat's face like that of Baphomet himself! Wielding a staff that glowed with searing red flame at the tip, he folded his arms expectantly and awaited in cold silence the arrival of his host and her escorts - for this was Scavros the Scarred, darkest and most terrifying of the Furions!
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There you go.
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Rio Branco Avenue Rio de Janeiro, Brazil December 25th, 2014 5:25 PM local time Nick Cimitiere's jacket was tempered for heat and cold, meaning he didn't need to forgo protection - or mystique - based on the temperature. But the humidity of the Rio summer was still getting to him. The whole city was strung out for Christmas, but the tilt of the earth meant it felt more like the height of July back home. Speaking of back home... he'd told his family he'd be out of town for a few days, but would be back for Christmas. He always hated to lie to his family about these matters. Four years home from college, eight years as a superhero, and he still hadn't come clean about meddling in the affairs of life and death. But some matters of death were more important than matters of life. There had been a number of disappearances in Rio over the past few weeks. People from all walks of life had left messages for their family and friends, saying they were going to "a better place," and then had vanished entirely. Fortunatus, a local seer and fate manipulator who Nick had partnered with on a particularly tough job years ago, had given him a call about the matter. "The path is clouded to me," he had said. "I see that they are gone, but I cannot see where they have gone and who led them there. I fear this may be more your department than mine." "Anything else you can tell me?" "Just one thing. There are a number of 'great bumps' on the horizon." "Great bumps" was Fortunatus's term for a confluence of random factors that could spell either windfall or disaster. Nick had no idea where it came from. "I have one that I must handle myself, as it involves plucking the threads of chance like a harp. But I can see that these disappearances will not stop soon, and may breed a catastrophe of their own if unimpeded." And so, after spreading the word amongst the community and walking the back roads of reality, Nick had found himself walking a beat in paradise. Those who had gone seemed to be truly gone - after visiting their residences and the local cemeteries, he could find no trace of the vanished having left ghosts. Then again, he wasn't the only one on the beat. "How's it coming on your end?" he asked over the comms relics he'd handed out.
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GM November 11, Monday, 4.50PM the city of Algeciras, Cadiz province, Spain Algeciras is easily one of the world's busiest ports. Connecting the shipping of Africa, the Americas and Europe meant the city was a hive of activity, and the three newcomers from America had seen plenty of evidence of that just from the plane. Down on the streets that feeling was compounded. The air rang with voices from a dozen nations, the roads hummed with traffic racing across the metropolis, and along with the sharp smell of the sea were the deep scents of petrol, metal and lots and lots of cheerfully sweaty people strolling, jogging, running and generally moving on the long trek of their lives. The coffee house Corbin's contact, an archaeologist with an at least cursory knowledge of the arcane world, had asked to meet them in was hardly a respite. It buzzed with the chatter of its patrons, the strong, thick coffees made every breath aromatic and the intricate carvings that passed over every corner of the ceiling, the myriad of pictures and beautiful sea view from the windows ensuring that if you bored of the people, the place could still entertain. It had been only around ten minutes since Tia Rojas had been late, and the minutes flew by regardless of what she was here to tell them. Cobalt Templar was always on the search for the rest of the Seven Rings of antiquity, in part to make sure they found worthy bearers in the present, and that nobody would abuse their power. Tia had heard rumors that something uncannily like the Indigo Ring had just appeared in Spain, somewhere in southern Iberia. Its wielder was impossible to make out, a patch of inky darkness that vanished into the night it never dared leave, leaving behind people stricken with lost memories only able to recall a flash of purple light. Thus, the presence of his former team mates Indira Singh(Wraith, of the shapeshifting metal species Kinigosi), and Kimber Storm(Ghost Girl, world's happiest poltergeist). Whatever this new bearer was about, it was hard to look at favorably.
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OOC thread for thread. Adventures in Spain!
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November 17, 2013 Port Regal Providence Asylum Dotted with cheerful statuary of frolicking cherubs, its rose-and-sandstone facade visible from miles away, the warmly lit and well-tended Providence Asylum looks like nothing more than a giant strawberry wedding cake - it's an excellent place for Freedom City's mentally ill to recuperate from the challenges of their disease - what kind of person puts an insane asylum in some Gothic hellhole, anyway? Between Claremont training, patrolling, and the occasional help with a mass breakout, the heroes Wraith, Crimson Tiger, Blodeuwedd, and the second Foreshadow were all familiar indeed with the building and its contents - which made a summons to the rooftop for a meeting with the ever-mysterious Raven all the more intriguing! The night was dark, and cold, but dry for Freedom City in the fall, with a crisp bite in the air to mark the cool weather to come. Though security at the Asylum was famously tight, making breakouts almost impossible, sure enough (just as promised in the message conveyed to them by the Dark Detective's agents) it seemed particularly light tonight - there were gaps in the spotlight coverage and the cunningly concealed electric fence was actually deactivated, thus making it possible for a canny foursome to make their way not just to the building but to the very angel-dotted rooftop at its summit!
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Here is the OOC
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January 24, 2013 It was just after beginning of lunch period on Thursday, January 24th, 2013 when a holographic dog appeared in the common room of the Claremont dorm that had recently been the home of Sharl Tulink, the young hero who had given his life to save his home world, and much of Earth, from the ravages of the Curator earlier in the month. Claremont's students had been hard at work rebuilding their damaged campus and making new connections with friends who had been falsely accused of being Terminus replicants, or had in fact turned out to be evil robots from beyond the depths of space. Lora, Sharl's familiar electronic German Shepard, woofed at everybody a moment before Sharl Tulink himself simply appeared in thin air with a faint electrical hum. Standing right in front of the TV, and in fact seeming to be partially projected from it, he was hard to miss. "Uh, hey everybody," he said with a little wave. "I'm back!"
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The Morning of January 15, 2013 The Wonderbus roared through the skies of the Northern Hemisphere almost impossibly fast, the extra-dimensional construction of the craft shunting away the excess heat energy from its hypersonic flight enough to keep it undetectable in the air. They were flying thousands of miles, but the fantastic speed of their craft would get them there in less than an hour. Trying to keep his mind off the crisis of Erde-Tronik, the bioweapons, and the advanced plasma weapon that had nearly killed them all, Sharl had pulled up situation monitors from the computer inside the Bus, trying to keep track of what they'd left behind. "The good news is, the chaos seems to be limited to Freedom City, so it must be something there...I don't know, that bomb was extra-terrestrial, but I didn't recognize the maker. Maybe it's something with the Grue again." At least what they hoped to do with the Sanctum was easy enough. "I'll connect Erde-Tronik to the power supply there and keep it safe until Miss A and I can get it protected. As for the bioweapons, we can just drop them in one of the stasis fields there. It's not a long-term solution, but it'll last long enough for us to keep things safe. We-" A distant beeping interrupted Sharl. "That's the proximity alarm. Maybe there's somebody from the League there already." He tapped a few buttons on the bank of monitors they were all sitting around, the black and white screens looking as much like something from a 60s sci-fi TV show as the high-tech pieces of super-science they were. "I don't understand, there's something on top of..." The great grey vessel squatted over the Sanctum like an anteater scooping out ants, tentacles rising from its lower half scooping away huge chunks of ice even as they watched. The three eyes and slight horn at the rear echoed the face of the Gorgon, but Sharl knew that face well enough from his studies and his nightmares. He saw the details in an instant; the great digitizing towers driven into the icy Arctic landscape like tent spikes the size of buildings, the glowing red 'eyes' that bespoke an active subspace connection across the galaxy, and worst of all, much, much worse, were the smaller tentacles already buried in the exposed roof of the Centurion's Sanctum. His eyes wide with horror, Citizen managed to form the words: "It's the Curator."
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the climactic struggle of the Day of Wrath saga
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When the battle was done and the commandos defeated, Citizen floated out of the warehouse with his precious cargo tucked beneath one arm. "I've got it, guys!" He had both the truncated Erde-Tronik drive and the gold boxy storage medium from Earth-Prime in the same big black case. It would be up to he and Gina over the next few months, (probably as what would incidentally count as his graduation project) to integrate the Troniks together successfully but for now the backup was complete and the City of the Future (as he still sometimes thought of it, the very old motto that Tronik had kept even after the Exodus) was safe from the National Socialists. Assuming they got out there in time! "Wow!" He wasn't so focused as to not be impressed when he saw the battle with his own eyes; the smoking helicopters, the fleeing commando, the crack Nazi strike team that Young Freedom had taken apart with all of the skill and power of a master artist painting a portrait. "Nice, you guys," he said with a grin before disappearing into the Wonder Bus. "Now let me get the systems in here rebooted..." As the lights inside the Bus came back on, the other machines came out, Rogue in the lead in a humanoid body that looked like a human woman cast in the featureless nude, like something from a German Expressionist movie. With no explanation for the new shape, she cast her gaze from the scene of the battle to the heroes, back and forth, and for the first time seemed almost uncertain. "You did this. All of this, when you could have taken your Sharl and that city and..." She opened and closed mechanical hands before saying, decisively, "All right. All right, maybe you're right. Maybe there is another way to prosecute our war against the National Socialists." The group of robots behind her, which did not include her Sharl (who was in that system his counterpart was carrying) startled at that, but Rogue pressed on. "If you can fight the Nazis like this, teach them _fear_ without destroying them all, maybe we can try it ourselves. At least once, anyway. But you'd better take the Ragnorak with you. If we're not going to prune the humans back, it'll just look bad if we have it in our possession."
