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"Good morning. Freedom City. Thank you for tuning in to WXAD Channel 5 News At Noon. I'm Charles Maxfield, filling in for Summer Gleason. Our top story today: Defense Secretary Robert Gates has yet to comment on the mysterious extraterrestrial attack on America's heartland a scant twenty-four hours ago. Sources say that no telescopes or satellites picked up any aircraft, alien or otherwise, in the vicinity, and no parties have yet come forward to claim responsibility for the energy beam which shot down from the sky and carved its way across a hundred miles of Nebraska farmland. Our- Excuse me. We have just received words of an emergency here in Freedom City..." Whatever its origin, 24 hours later, at 12:00pm exactly, the skies darkened around Freedom City as a 600ft-diameter cylinder of white-hot fire poured down from the sky, blasting a crater in the Wharton State Forest. The beam persisted, carving a trench as it raced along the ground toward the ocean. And in its path stands Freedom City. "Mayday, mayday, this is Captain Aaron Crichton, Flight 89 from Los Angeles to Newark! We just saw a bright flash of light, and whatever it was sheared off most of a wing! We are going down! Repeat, we are going down! And unless we get a miracle, we're going down in the middle of Freedom City!"

It took some doing, but if there was a student unaware of the end of the year party at the new AEON building, it wasn't for lack of trying. Now, while some students had... concerns over Alex being the entire decorating committee, when they arrived at the large ballroom near the top of the luxury building, those doubters were pleasantly surprised. The entire room was decked out in creams and dark blues, gold serving as the accent. It was both a nod to the school colors and an elegant color scheme for the high quality linens. There was a dance floor, of course, and a dj set up in the corner along with a small stage. In another corner, a photographer was set up to do professional photos. It was staffed with AEON personnell who had been gently coached to look the other way at any sudden displays of power. Alex had been over seeing the set up for much of the day, but she did vanish to her office to change and reappear shortly before the doors were scheduled to open. As tasteful as the ballroom was, it was no surprise that Alex was a bright spot of color in a dress that started in a butter yellow color at the neckline and slowly deepened to a deep red at the fluttering hem around her ankles. She was standing in the center of the dancefloor, looking up at the net of balloons attached to the vaulted ceiling, making certain that it wouldn't drop away early.

Some sort of mix up (which a good half of Young Freedom blamed Next Gen's antics for), led to their time in the training room being taken up. With some grumbling, they'd headed out to the quad for team manuevers instead. Thus, they were arrayed on the field debating the merits of touch football versus capture the flag for training time. After some debate, capture the flag was decided on. With the gold team comprised of Hellion, Psyche, Wander, and Edge on the gold team and Zephyr, Breakdown, Phalanx, and Geckoman on the blue team. Each one went off to hide their flag to the best of their ability and discuss tactics. As usual, Mark had left the rules confined to 'good sportsmanship' so really, anything went. Psyche trailed after the other three after they'd hidden their flag, leaving it up to Mark to plot out the strategy while she scanned the quad for the other half of the team's and their scrap of blue.

Late at night in the girls lavatory, there was no one to hear as Alex blew her nose on the toilet paper and let out a sad little hiccup. With her pink backpack hanging on the inside of the door and her sneakers drawn up under her ontop of the toilet, it would be nearly impossible to tell she was even in there. Except of course for the occasional sniffle. As if the results might have changed since the last time she'd poured over them, Alex smoothed out the crumpled papers and ran her fingers over it again. She hadn't made a mistake. For the thousandth time, she hadn't. Mike was still sleeping soundly. She'd locked down her sheilds so tight that nothing would leak and Alex was glad for that small mercy. Otherwise he'd have been up here fretting and then she'd have told him and she could hardly do that. Really, there was only one person to reach out for at midnight on a school night. Her mental voice drifted out forlornly to her best friend. 'Erin? I need help. I don't know what I'm going to do!'

Zöe noticed that Erin was still walking with her as she left the Admin Office on her way to the dorms. "Look, do you get it now? I know theoretical temporal physics isn't exactly your cup of coffee, but I don't know if this is a closed loop or not. Stuff that happens here might affect me, or I might be effectively outside the timestream and ripple-proof. I dunno yet. So if Mom and Dad never hook up, maybe I'll stick around, or maybe I'll disappear. And if I don't exist anymore, then I can't figure out how to save them thirty years from now." "But if I just tell them they have to be together, I'll kill the spark and make sure they never fall in love. So I gotta play this cool. Please, please don't rat me out. Mom didn't want me to worry about this kinda stuff when I was 16. It's not fair if I do it to her." As they were walking, a brightly-colored flier caught Zöe's eye. "Huh. Bandmates wanted..." She tore off one of the perforated strips of paper, studied the phone number, then crumpled it up and shoved it into her bag.

Z-Day Ten hours after Zephyr's departure from 2039 The big Dakanan hovership powered its way through the massive black rain clouds like a bull in a china shop, the huge daka-powered engines cutting through the massive turbulence in the middle of the atmosphere. There was good reason for the clouds. Not too far away, all things considered, all that was left of Freedom City and all the land for miles around was burning. A powerful nation, more powerful now that a chunk of the American east coast had been blasted and irradiated, Dakana had sent a fleet of ships to help with the relief efforts in America in what promised to be among the worst disasters of the heroic age. Without planning or thought of his own hardship, one man had come with his sole companion to help save the day. There was no time to land; as the great ship lowered itself down to within a few hundred yards of the Manor's roof, Mark Mason Lucas rappelled down a grappling line to land firmly on his feet. At fifty-six, Mark's face was lined with cares, more so now than on perhaps any day of his life. His wife joined him a few seconds later, Argent Psion-Lucas flying down under her own power. The teenage psychic had gone from one half of a "creepy-twin set" to a mature, responsible woman in her early sixties who had adapted her grandfather's philosophy to an understanding that one day the superhuman would simply supplant the human. Arthur, her son with Mark, was watching the family house and Mark's younger kids, the ones he'd brought with him from his marriage to the late Tess Atom. They were far too young for such horrors. This was a place for family. And maybe, if they were very lucky, for one family member in particular. "ZOE!" Mark put his hand to his lips, walking away from their landing site in the browning front yard, his unstable moleculed costume protecting him from the dangers of fallout as surely as Argent's force field protected her. "ZOE HARRIS! It's Uncle Mark!" Overhead, the Dakanan ship pulled away, speeding towards Freedom City and the relief efforts there. Mark was confident they'd be able to find transportation there. Surely his luck would hold. "And Aunt Argent!"

It was, of course, Alex's turn to pick the location, which was how the kids ended up in the library in the first place. When one's cute boyfriend shows up on a Saturday and says, "So, where did you want to spend today?" and follows that up with a far too handsome grin, very few girls at Claremont would have promptly responded with "The library!" Alex really wasn't quite like any other girl, so not only did she want to go to the library, she had no ulterior motive of necking among the stacks. No, of course she wanted to trade in a truely large stack of books for a different and equally large stack of books. They were halfway down the stairs when Mike's somewhat desparate mental plea had come through. He'd come up with some reason - as yet unfathomable the motivation behind it - that he was bound and determined to ask Erin out. "On, like, a thing. A going out thing. With, you know, us." Alex's best guess was it had come out of some conversation that was probably all mangled with the other boys. But, being a dutiful friend, she'd agreed and then corralled Erin to help with books. Which is how they found themselves standing in front of the courthouse one sunny morning, in the very first place.