ic (IC) Against All Of Me: Barren Immensity

[Electra]

There were indeed two figures on the roof, standing nearly nose-to-nose as they snarled at one another. The second Aquaria spoke, though, they spun with identical speed to face the threat side-by-side. Each raised a long, slim bat that crackled with electrical energy, one blue and one red. "Who the hell are you?" Blue Bat demanded in a voice that was clearly used to being obeyed. That was the voice Jessie's sister used, never Jessie. 

 

"Forget who, what the hell are you?" Red Bat chimed in. "I didn't know they had Frogzillas around this place!" Her voice was almost exactly the same, just a little more snide. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Aquaria stared at the two of them, blinking - the green glow of her armor mixing with the red and blue of the glowing bats to cast an eldritch light on the rooftop confrontation. She hadn't ignited her tridents on the leap up here - possibly wise, given how quick to temper Jessie and her sister were. This is neither of them - the voices are not quite right and they do not smell right. What is happening? "I am Sea Devil - and you are not who you look like," she croaked suspiciously. "One of you has been taking things and now my friend is in jail because she looks like you." 

 

She thought. She doubted she could defeat Jessie's sister, even in her armor, if they were fighting on the Surface - but these did not look to be friendly sisters. She crouched low, limbs spread apart, and croaked defiantly, "You will tell me what you have done and you will tell people what you have done so that my friend can go home!" 

[Electra]

The two not-Jessies looked at each other. Blue Bat's bat dropped a little bit. "Your friend is Wander?" she asked, though it didn't sound like it was really a question. "Or something similar? Looks like me, like us," she corrected when Red Bat cleared her throat. "I'm really sorry if we've caused any problems, but honestly, a guarded prison cell's not the least safe place for her to be right now. As I keep mentioning," she added, an aside that was clearly directed at Red Bat. 

 

Red Bat scoffed. "Only thing a prison cell's going to do is hold us in place long enough to get dead. Anyway, it's not like you've ever been able to lock me up before, right, Wonder?"

[Avenger Assembled]

What's happening now?! What's happening to the world?! 

 

"Something bad is happening," she croaked, trying to puzzle out their words. She was struck by the realization that a great part of her did not care for what they said and wanted to simply drag the red one (who she was fairly sure was behind Jessie's imprisonment) away (perhaps with the blue one's help) so that Jessie's name could be cleared and she could go home. Another part of her, the one that remembered being in prison herself, held her hand for now. "There are powerful beings here who can help you. But you must help my friend." 

[Electra]

Red Bat and Blue Bat were clearly paying a lot more attention to whatever they were arguing about than any threat Aquaria might pose, to judge by the way they were turning to face off again. Blue Bat at least seemed a little apologetic about it. "We'd love to help your friend, I swear, but there's just a lot going on right now that you don't understand. Tell your Wander to sit tight where she is; this universe is the safest one we've found so far. Tell her to talk to Miss Fantastic, she'll be able to explain things, um, probably?" 

 

"Your powerful friends aren't worth jack against what's coming down the pike," Red Bat sneered. "If it can eat us for breakfast, what's it gonna do to anybody less invulnerable? You probably wanna get back under the ocean for this one." Without any further warning she tensed her legs and bounced like a loosed spring, taking off across the rooftops with her glowing bat leaving a faint trail of light behind her. Blue Bat muttered a quick curse and went after her the same way. 

 

[Avenger Assembled]

Aquaria said an oath about their dietary habits in a language that fortunately neither of them spoke and leaped after them herself - then took to the air when it was clear that (just like the Erin they were duplicates of) they were faster than her. But even this way, they eluded her, with perhaps an apologetic look from the blue one.

 

In older times, when she'd first come to the Surface, she'd have pushed her armor to the utmost in hot pursuit - but against these faster foes, she would be a clever hunter. She had recorded them with her armor's sensors, their words, their movements, things about their bodies - things that those wiser than her could use to track them down in whatever place was their lair. She considered heading back to the Castle to speak to Bluebird, but decided that Erin and Trevor's lair was closer. Perhaps they had returned from their business in other realms; and even if not, the talking female motorcycle that Trevor rode sometimes would surely be able to help. Sea Devil flew off into the night, her armor glowing, trying to remember all the things her armor could do when it wasn't whispering lies to her. 

 

When she touched down in front of the Manor, she was surprised to see she wasn't alone; there was another Erin - or was it? The colors were right and the body looked the same, but Aquaria's eyes and her hearing told her different things. The other Erin raised her hands as Aquaria approached, a look of recognition and what she knew well was grief on that strangely-familiar face. "It's all right, Aquaria. I'm not going to hurt you." 

 

"...you're not Erin! Or Jessie!" said Aquaria, the look on the other Erin's face mixed with the empty place she occupied strange enough that she ignited her tridents. "What is wrong with you?" 

 

"I'm sorry, Aquaria, I know this is frightening for you," the not-Erin went on, her voice tight. Her bat was a lighter grey, one that Aquaria recognized as a metal that had come from the Sea of Stars in the war there. "But this is an emergency - and I can't get past Redbird's security systems right now. Are your Midnight and Wander home?" 

"Why should I tell you anything?" she asked, sounding more afraid than angry even to her own ears. "You're...you're like Redbird or Bluebird, but you are different. You are not alive!" 

[Electra]

Grey Bat looked at her hand almost reflectively, flexing her fingers before sliding her bat back into its holster. She really did look very much like Jessie's sister, but her hair was a little bit shorter and, as Aquaria noticed upon closer inspection, streaked through with dark blue. "I suppose it's a matter of your definitions," she allowed, her lips tipping up ruefully. "We are all created beings, just not all of organic materials." She raised an eyebrow, now giving Aquaria a sardonic smile. "If you prick me, I do bleed. But I'd like to avoid that." She jerked her head towards the house again. "Are they home?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

Aquaria was still nervous - but Grey Bat's words - or rather, her tone, were familiar enough that she lowered her tridents. "They are away," she croaked. "in another place. I do not know where they have gone," she admitted. Circling around, she listened to the tiny sounds coming from the other Erin - the one made of dead things like her armor, as she moved around - too tiny for a Surfacer to hear, and barely audible to her. "I know it was not a surprise; they have the other one with them, with the great power, who has the spawn. There are other Erins here," she croaked. "There was a red one who was causing trouble, and a blue one who was chasing her, and neither of them helped me. Can you help me? My friend is in trouble." 

[Electra]

"They're gone?" Grey Bat seemed uncertain for a moment, staring up at the locked house with an incomprehensible Surfacer expression on her too-familiar face. It was not dissimilar to the look Jessie got sometimes when talking about her not-sister in Seattle and that family, an understanding that one will forever stand outside of the family unit they were once part of. She turned her head to face Aquaria. "I guess I have some time on my hands and no place to go," she observed ruefully. "What's going on with your friend?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

"...and then, I landed here and saw you!" Aquaria finished a few minutes later, having shared the story from the moment of her return home several days earlier to when she'd arrived at the Manor. "Jail is a terrible place! She thinks she is happy in there but she should not be in there because she has not done anything." What she would have done if Jessie had been guilty, Aquaria was not actually sure, but her faith in a material thing like Jessie had had  more immediate rewards than her faith in immaterial things typically did so she was content to take all of this as a victory. The other Erin did not seem moved by Jessie's plight but that wasn't unusual for Erins, Aquaria was beginning to suspect. "If I take you to the police in the morning, that will prove that Jessie was innocent and-gah!" 

 

A fast-moving blur hit Aquaria from behind, smashing her into the brick gateway at the edge of the Midnight property. She knew from her work on the grounds that would trigger silent alarms; if Redbird was there and not with Midnight and Wander, she would certainly soon know they were there. But there was no time for such thoughts as she heard a strange double-cry and turned to see Grey Bat Erin holding off another Erin, this one wielding not a bat but a sword - one that gleamed with golden Atlantean orichalcum. The other Erin's eyes were black and gold and her skin a distinct shade of mottled green, though her hair had been dyed a bright shade of white. "Deep One! What the hell are you doing, there's a Deep One right there!" she was yelling, her voice wracked with unmistakeable fury. 

 

"Dammit, stop and listen! Aquaria is a friend! Don't you know who she is!?" Grey Bat called out, sounding as confused as Aquaria felt, but Sword spat a furious syllable at her before saying, "You're weak! Dammit, not here too! Good thing I know where I can find some _real_ help!" she said before turning and leaping away, running faster than even Grey Bat seemed able to follow. 

 

Grey Bat said a word about mating that Aquaria knew was a curse. For her part, Aquaria croaked, "...that was strange. That was not the Erin from here. Or the one with the blue bat, or the red bat. Are you all from the dimension of monsters?" 

[Electra]

"No, of course not," Grey Bat said. "I'm not from her dimension at all. I imagine if you've seen other Wanders, they're here for the same reason I am, though. There's strength in numbers, and your dimension is a stable nexus in our timelines. We all diverged from here, maybe it makes sense we make our last stand here, too." She smiled, but not like she thought it was funny. "I better go get that one before she does anything reckless or stupid. See if you can get the AI to open up the house, would you? We could really use a base of operations." With that, yet another Erin bounced off into the sky, this one with an ever-so-faint mechanical whir. 

[Avenger Assembled]

As yet another Erin vanished from the view of even her impressively huge eyes, Aquaria took a moment to reflect on the gods below and how through sacrifice in their name, she was walking the crooked path of virtue here on the Surface. But there was no time for deep spiritual reflection now, not when there was a deep crisis. Bounding over the gate, she bellowed the codeword she used to avoid Redbird's retaliation, running on all fours as she bolted straight for the front door. 

 

"Redbird!" she called over the motorcycle's greeting; "there is trouble! Jessie is in prison and she didn't do it - it was one of the bad Erins! The city is full of them!" She didn't quite crash through the front doors so much as they bounded open at her approach. Inside the manor, she ran for one of the passageways that she knew led down to the cave below. "They have some kind of problem," she said as she scampered along the passageway's wooden walls, the better to move quickly and not rip the carpet off its tacks, "and if we help them, maybe they will help us get Jessie out of jail!"

[Gizmo]

"Focus your fervour, starswimmer!" Redbird's terse voice came from a speaker concealed in some unseen corner. The autonomic machine intelligence felt a sort of materteral responsibility toward Bluebird's charges but Aquaria's attention seemed to bounce about as much as the amphibian herself. "Get below and we shall speak!"

 

The grandfather clock slid away from the secret entrance with a soft click, revealing the descending staircase. In the chamber below monitors flipped between scenes faster than an organic eye could parse the information while Redbird's holographic avatar stood with her muscular arms folded before them. While most of her attention remained on scouring the feeds for better views of 'the bad Erins' she had the avatar's head turn to acknowledge the Deep One's arrival. "Now, tell your tale from the first and leave nothing unsaid!"

[Avenger Assembled]

"Ohhhh, it was terrible!" croaked Aquaria once she was down in the chamber below. She crouched at Redbird's feet the way she was particularly upset; back legs curled behind her for the spring, forelimbs folded before her. With her big eyes and perfect hearing, she was one of the few beings Redbird knew who could follow the displays from all over the city; even if the images were like ghosts to her sensitive eyes. 

 

"The police came and they took Jessie away and put her in Blackstone! I went looking for her and they told me she had been stealing things, but that made no sense because Jessie would not steal things! She does not even like to get things as gifts!" Aquaria struck the ground with her front limb for emphasis for that last one. "And so I went looking for help so she could be free! And I was right - it was not Jessie stealing those things at all, but another Erin - a red one! And then the red one fought with the blue one, who acted like she was good but wouldn't help!" She bellowed the last, throat sac bulging. "So I came here and I saw the Erin like you, and she was going to help, but then the..." She hesitated for a moment, not sure how to describe the Erin who was obviously a hybrid. "The hy-hybrid one came, and the Erin who is like you fought her when she hit me." Her head still hurt a little, come to think of it, but there was no use dwelling on that. 

 

"But I am okay and I do not think she can get me here." She looked up at Redbird and croaked "You have to help me! If we can get enough of the Erins to come here, we can find one that will come with me to Blackstone to show that Jessie does not need to be in prison! She thinks she likes prison but it is not good for her." She struck the ground with her back foot for emphasis this time. "They have a problem; I think something is chasing them. If we can help them with that, maybe they will help us with Jessie." 

[Gizmo]

Redbird had little trouble taking in the steady stream of exposition or reconciling it with what she'd been able to observe via the Manor's monitoring network but responding to the distraught Deep One's emotional distress was less in her wheelhouse. Her avatar lowered a hand awkwardly and patted the air over Aquaria's head with a massless palm. "Ah. There there? We shall liberate your soultwin soon enough, on my honour!" She pumped her fist in what she hoped was a reassuring manner and turned back to the monitors. "From past experience such a confluence from across time and space heralds a killer bent on the eradication of all interactions of Mistress Hunter-White. Which would include Jessie. Worrisome." She glanced guiltily over her shoulder as she mused aloud, quickly clearing her throat in a social maneuver which involved several layers of artifice on her part.

 

The autonomic machine intelligence began broadcasting on the frequency Erin's communicator had used since her Young Freedom days. "Attention myriad shieldmaidens! If you seek aid in your plight make haste to the following coordinates! Here you shall find mighty allies and fresh, seasonal produce! Should you see a shieldmaiden unable to receive this missive, you would do well to relate it. Perhaps establish some manner of 'buddy system'." Redbird paused for a moment in thought before adding, "Should you possess a villainous disposition, come regardless! There will almost certainly be a tremendous amount of violence at some point, speaking frankly."

[Avenger Assembled]

The next question was - what could Aquaria do with herself? She had little interest in facing down against an army of Wanders, especially since of the four she'd met only one had been interested in help and another one had been hostile to the point of immediate attack. Though it was another sore trial on a day of sore trials, she chose to park herself down in the cave for the moment, watching and listening to the scene up above through the eerie ghost-images of Surface television. Normally she could watch it without a complaint but this was all a serious matter; there was Jessie's freedom to be gained, and whatever monster could hunting Wanders to deal with. That last thought made her gulp down the whole can of sardines that Redbird had pointed out to her - and open another one. 

 

The first of the new arrivals arrived unexpectedly; through fire. There was no other way to describe it, at least as far as Aquaria could tell; there was a flash of red like someone cutting a line across the air and then a foursome of Surfacer females stepped forward. Blinking her great eyes, Aquaria leaned forward in the seat where she'd perched, trying to understand what she was seeing. One of the Wanders looked familiar enough; her costume an almost perfect match for the Wander she knew, albeit with colorless hair. Another wore a costume she didn't recognize at all; but was carrying something on her back. The third was the one who had cut through space to get them there; and indeed her weapon looked for a moment like a long staff with a black blade on the end before she shook it to dismiss the blade. Red seemed to be her color, with red replacing the purple on Wander's costume and her strangely-wrapped hair a bright shade of red on Redbird's monitors.

 

The fourth was someone Aquaria didn't recognize at all - it looked like a young female in a uniform Aquaria knew belonged to the young people with special powers in Freedom City. She had a bat too, and seemed to be in the middle of the group along with the one with the bag. Wait, no, was that a bag? 

 

The Wander that looked familiar stepped forward and called out, "Redbird! Redbird, this is Wander! We need your help; we have civilians who need shelter!" 

 

"I'm not a-" protested the young female with them, a protest she stopped when the trio with her all shot her a look that Aquaria couldn't define. 
 

 

[Electra]

"Stay quiet," the Wander with the scythe instead of the bat told the young woman. She looked oddly familiar to Aquaria, someone she'd seen before, but not another iteration of Erin or Jessie. "We don't know if this is a safe place." 

 

"This is Midnight Manor," White-Hair explained to her compatriots. "Midnight is a good friend of ours, we should be safe here. Though I don't know why Redbird is putting out the all-call here and not Bluebird at the Castle. Maybe the Wander in this universe isn't around right now?" 

 

"I don't really care where we go as long as we get somewhere defensible, and soon," the burdened Wander snapped, shifting from foot to foot. "We can't just run around Freedom City all night." 

 

The weight on that Wander's back shifted, a small face suddenly becoming visible as what Aquaria had thought was a bag resolved itself into a small human, clinging with arms and legs. "Mommy?" the small human whispered, almost too softly for even the sensitive security pickups to catch. "Can we go home now?" 

 

"Not yet, baby," Mommy-Wander murmured soothingly while the others winced. "Soon as we can, I promise." 

 

"We could go to Claremont," the young woman suggested hopefully. "My friends there and I could-"  The others all told her "No" simultaneously, with various degrees of firmness. She folded her arms over her chest and sulked. "This is getting ridiculous." 

 

[Gizmo]

"I approve of the red one's aestheic!" Redbird mused aloud taking stock of the initial wave of arrivals. "Another biological offspring, that was eventful last time. And a version of Megan White, extrapolating for frame and fibre enhancements! ...oh dear." Her avatar grimaced slightly and placed a hand to the side of her face. "That shall be emotionally fraught. Starswimmer, I'm going to give you directions to a pantry with fructose rich produce and frozen confectionary in ample supply. There should be preserved crustaceans, should you like!" She turned her attention back to the monitors, instructing garden lights to blink in a pattern that would lead their guests toward one of the hidden headquarters' back entrances. "Best to retrieve the baked goods as well, I think..."

[Avenger Assembled]

Sea Devil was waiting for the foursome outside when they arrived, having stocked one of the shiny worktables in the cave with unboxed pies both chocolate and key lime and bowls filled with various fresh fruits ranging from bunches of grapes to tomatoes. Aquaria didn't really eat any of these things but she'd done her best to stock the table as she could. She kept her helmet and armor on, and the former opaque, for this meeting - there was no use frightening these people if they didn't know what a Deep One was - or who she was if they did know what Deep Ones were and had the wrong idea about them. She hung back behind the table as the foursome entered, not sure what to expect from them. 

Expecting all the conversations to be between Redbird and the new arrivals, she was immensely surprised when one of them, the white-haired Erin, immediately approached her with a relieved smile on her face. "Aquaria! Thank God. You have no idea how nice it is to see a familiar face." Turning quickly to the others, she said, "Aquaria is a Deep One, but she's a friend." 

 

Only the Erin in red seemed to know what to make of that, smiling slightly as she tapped her staff (its blade now invisible) against the ground. "Just remember, this is a deeply deviant dimension. Keep your eyes open, Erin." The look she gave Aquaria was not a trusting one; neither was the one she gave Redbird. "So the Midnight of this dimension, does he visit the Terminus often? I know there are multiple entropic signatures from this city alone."

 

Aquaria blinked inside her armor. "You know me?" she croaked to the Erin addressing her. Meanwhile the other two, the girl Megan White and the Erin with a small, tired-looking Surfacer girl-child, were crossing the floor, looking around at the cave which it was evident they'd never been inside before. Redbird was talking to them, but while Aquaria could hear the conversation fine she was fully focused on her conversation with this other Erin. Meanwhile, Erin fetching a piece of fruit for her daughter, who looked interested in eating it despite what was obvious fatigue on her face. Megan, for her part was looking around with an impressed look on her face before addressing Redbird. 

 

"I never thought I'd get to be inside Midnight Manor for real. Hi, I'm...Survivor." Her super-name seemed to produce a certain hesitation from the young woman, but she did her best to shake it off. She looked fearlessly at Redbird, carrying with her a certain poise that certainly matched some of the iterations of her sister Redbird had met. 

 

"Yes, Aquaria, in my dimension, you're roommates with, ah, with Singularity. Is that true here too?"

"...Yes!" croaked Aquaria happily, feeling immediately foolish when all eyes turned her way at the noise. More quietly, she added, "Yes, you know her! That is good! When we have solved your problem, you can help me. They have her in Blackstone even though she did no crimesss." 

[Electra]

"Ah, protective custody?" White-Hair guessed. "The Singularity in my world didn't seem to be a target, nor did the native version of us, but it's smart to be careful. Hopefully we can figure this out soon and we can all go home." She sighed and raked a hand through her pale hair, a gesture she had in common with the Erin and Jessie that Aquaria knew. She looked around as though about to say something else, then startled slightly as Charlie slunk into the room, looking both nervous and put out. "What's Charlie doing here?" 

 

The question caught the attention of the little girl, who happily abandoned her bunch of grapes. "Kitty!" she cried enthusiastically, racing across the room much quicker than most children her age could manage. Charlie seemed to decide that this was more than enough and booked it for the door, his tail a bottle-brush puff. The little girl began to cry. 

 

"Hey now, Clara," Megan soothed, reaching down to scoop up the little girl before Clara's mother could break off from her conversation with Redbird. "It's all right, kitty was just surprised! Do you want to say hi to the nice frog lady?" 

 

Clara thought about that, one small hand tugging her own strawberry blonde curls. She looked adorably pathetic. "Yes," she finally sniffled. "Hi, Frog Lady." 

[Gizmo]

"Hail Survivor and well met if you share your dimensional-sheathe sisters' talent for battle! It seems Singularity was mistaken for one of your less altruistic iteration and blamed for her crimes! An injustice to be rectified, indeed," Redbird corrected the white haired Erin's more optimistic assumption. "The noble beast resides here with his mistress, naturally." A bit belatedly the Furion intelligence considered the framing of the question then glanced to the colour of Clara's hair and the staff wielding Erin's wary stance. "Which none of you... do... ah. The Terminus! Aha, yes!" She not-so-subtly attempted to change gears. "Are the Annihilists targeting you?! On my honour we shall beat them back again this day as we have before, with such fury the skalds shall compose epics! Would anyone like coffee? Tea? Wine?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"That was my first thought. They've been sniffing around my realm for years now, ever since, oh, about when I graduated Claremont. But nothing like this. Not a lot of things can just come along and kill me," said Erin, patting her chest, "but I woke up in my bed with a giant hole where my heart was supposed to be." Expecting a reaction to that, she smirked and added, "What can I say? With my lifestyle, there's only one place I'd go. Not like it was the first time that's happened." As she spoke, something flared briefly in her elaborately woven hair - a half-visible circlet of fire shaped like a tiara. It would flicker in and out of view as she spoke for the rest of the night. "By the time we got back up to the surface, there was no sign of what had done it." 

 

"We had signs," said Erin, running a hand through her hair. "We actually had warning. One of the other Erins came through a giant portal to tell me she'd been attacked in her home dimension and the attackers had said they were looking for all of us, everywhere. But by the time we could get out to the park to see her, they'd hit again and they took her out the same way they took out, uh, Erin here - right through the heart." Erin shook her head. "God, that was disturbing. Kimber managed to get more from her ghost, that _she'd_ been warned too, and that's when I knew I had to move. I'm not going to paint a target on my family's back, not again. I stayed just long enough to make sure she was interred, then we got on the move. Turns out some of us had already been hit; some had gone to ground or were sheltering in place. I met Clara and her mother a few dimensions over, and they joined us."  

 

The other Erins all had stories of the same vintage; stories of either warnings to move or deadly attacks by either old adversaries impossibly empowered or by fast-moving, invisible antagonists who gave no quarter and accepted none. 

 

"It was the same for me," Megan added over in the corner where Clara had turned up to to sleep in a white emergency blanket, clutching a stuffed bear that she'd produced when it was bedtime. "Except they hadn't hit us yet. Ugh, I was going to stay and shelter in place, but I couldn't put my friends in danger. I'm supposed to be deciding which boy I hook up with after graduation, not dealing with this! I haven't even graduated." 

 

"Yes, it has been a difficult day," croaked Aquaria in sympathy, who had decided that helping care for Erin's daughter and her not-sister was the best path to getting someone's help to free Jessie. "Did your males not want to come?" 

 

"They did! I mean, uh," said Megan, her skin turning a distinct red and heart rate accelerating to Aquaria's ears. The Deep One quickly decided not to ask any more questions about romance. "They were gonna, and Fred and Robin and Cathy too, but..." She looked around and said quietly to Aquaria. "Enough people have suffered for me." 

 

-

 

Gradually, over the next half hour or so, more Erin Whites entered, some heading straight for the mansion's many secret entrances, others needing to be directed by Redbird and the volunteer services of Clara's mother, who seemed happy to have a job that let her sit down with her daughter nearby while contributing. There were, by the end, quite a few of them - and from what Redbird could tell, there were others out in the city tonight too, but they either hadn't gotten the signal or had chosen to ignore it. 

 

"Huh, so this is what it's like here!" commented an auburn-haired man in purple and black once he was safely below. Aaron White wasn't exactly relaxed, but he seemed more puzzled than anything else. "So they're _all_ from gender-reversed parallels?" Like most of the other Erins, Aaron didn't actually have a Redbird where he was from, but like many of them he was trying to pump her for information. 

 

"Tell me about it," said the Erin with white hair, having made her way through the growing crowd with a reluctant-looking Megan in tow to join the group congregating by Redbird. All the Erins were shooting a look Megan's way, though some of them were better at hiding it than others. One of the former had first appeared to be Redbird's master returned when she'd arrived through the cave's roof access, until first her feminine outline and then familiar voice patterns revealed this Midnight to be none other than Erin White. She didn't seem interested in conversation, heading straight to one of the Mansion's computer stations to call up access to information on dimensional incursions. She'd rebuffed everyone's attempt to get to know her, even when the baffled Wander with the cowboy hat and the out-of-place accent had tried to strike up a conversation about them being the only ones there with hats. 

 

The largest group to make it back were another foursome, most of whom were quite familiar. The Erin with the blue streaks in her hair and the cybernetic soul had lost her aquatic quarry but gained another - she was helping the Erin with the blue bat muscle a deeply unwilling doppleganger of the latter down into the shelter of the basement. "This is police brutality!" she was yelling as she came in, "aren't you supposed to be heroes!?" The last member of that little foursome grinned at those last words, cutting a striking figure herself in blue and white body armor and carrying a bat that ended short, curved blade like a scimitar. 

 

"Yeah, heard that before. Huh, so the place is still here..." she muttered audibly. 

 

-

 

Upstairs in the living room, an exhausted Mark Lucas pulled himself, Erin, and Trevor back to Earth-Prime. He was tired enough that he'd aimed for the area of the Manor generally rather than trying to hit a particular target, and tired enough that he noticed the being in front of them well after Midnight and Wander had readied their batons and bat respectively. He was, however, given the taciturn nature of his allies, the first to speak. 

"A swan! You're a giant swan!" 

 

The black swan, her bill a distinct shade of auburn, leveled her bat at Mark and squawked, "A monkey! You're a naked monkey!" 

[Gizmo]

Midnight took in the anthropomorphic swan for a long, unblinking moment before straightening from his defensive stance and concealing his escrima sticks with a flick of his wrists. "Swan Wander," he observed, pointing to the unexpected visitor's familiar weapon. After a beat he added, "...Swander." He pinched the bridge of his nose, pained by his own portmanteau. "Redbird?" he called to the walls.

 

"Ah, it's the usual you this time! Excellent!" the autonomic machine intelligence greeted, a harried note of strain cutting into her characteristic enthusiasm. "We're going to need additional pear slices and miniature croissants without delay! And you have another one with you! I shall consult my databases for information on avian nutrition!"

[Electra]

Tired as she was, Wander had lost no time in spinning her own bat to full-length to face the intruder. Then blinked, her weapon faltering slightly as she got a load of who they were actually dealing with. She'd thought she had lost the ability to be surprised by her own doppelgangers at least a half-dozen universes ago, but this was a little beyond the pale. "Swander?" she repeated weakly. "Jesus Christ." 

 

Redbird's words didn't make her feel any better. "The usual me this time? As opposed to... another one..." She looked closer at the house, where there were a lot more lights burning than normal, even if Redbird had been expecting them to come home. "Redbird, is Jessie having some kind of party in there?" 

 

[Avenger Assembled]

"No!" came Aquaria's unexpected bellow over the comm system. "Jessie is in jail for innocent crimes! This has been a difficult day." 

 

Another voice broke in that sounded exactly like Erin's, albeit with a firmly tolerant tone. "We'll all talk about this later, Aquaria..." 

 

"Well at least someone here sounds normal!" squawked Swander as she reluctantly put away her bat. "Listen, you...people, I got a distress signal that someone was targeting all my dimensional doubles. I went to Magpie America, she talked to Dragonfly, the two of them figured I had to go as far outside my sheath as possible to get some answers. But I didn't expect...this!" She stared at Mark and said "Is that you, March? And Trevor? Listen, I'm not much for diplomacy in the best of circumstances and believe me, this is _not the best of circumstances_..." 

 

Introductions were made in the short trip downstairs via elevator; Swander saying something about March Hare and Mid-Kite, before the elevator reached its destination and they were confronted by a suddenly silent crowd that had to number a solid score or more of Erins. 

 

Across the room, figuring that Erin might need a minute or two yet, Aquaria broke in with a "Hello! Look at all of you! And one of you is a giant bird!"