ic (IC) Against All Of Me: Barren Immensity

[Electra]

"This is it," Erin murmured to Trevor, staring around at the crowd of herself. "I always figured one day I'd just crack under the pressure,  but this isn't really how I saw it going down." Her grip on his arm was implacable as stone, just shy of painful. 

 

Most of the other Erins were obviously able to hear her, but they seemed to be a taciturn bunch overall, most of them watching at best, glaring at worst. Every defensible corner of the room had been staked out by at least one Erin, while the rest milled about more or less aimlessly. White-haired Erin stepped forward from among the throng, giving her counterpart a crooked smile. "I'm gonna guess from context clues that you're probably the Wander who actually lives here. Sorry for dropping in on you like this, but I guess that's what happens when you live on the dimensional nexus; you get all the weird relatives dropping in every time there's an emergency." 

 

"What kind of emergency are we talking about?" Erin asked, her focus sharpening. 

 

"Y'know, the thang that keeps hopping dimensions and ripping our hearts out, or tryin' to anyway," This came from a Wander who seemed to have traded the usual spandex or tac pants for riding chaps and whose reinforced vest had a silver star on it. Erin was absolutely sure she had a cowboy hat somewhere nearby. "You ain't heard anything round these parts?" 

 

White-haired Wander didn't seem surprised by Erin's obvious incomprehension. "Dragonfly, our Dragonfly, theorized that whatever it is got started away from the dimensional nexus and has been sweeping its way inward, maybe because it came from that direction, maybe because it wants to hit the nexus last. Either way, that's what got me headed in this direction." 

 

"We need to get a plan together to face this thing." Here was a Wander who looked quite similar to Erin herself, but much tireder and wearing a flash patch on her shoulder that looked like a flag with flowers, a crown and a Latin saying. Erin racked her brain and came up with "I live free and die," but suspected that was wrong. Flag-Wander had a little girl clinging to her leg, but Erin was very deliberately trying not to look at that right now lest she have that mental break for real. "Is this going to be a secure base?" 

 

"Depends on how many of you guys show up," Erin pointed out ruefully. "But yeah, I want as much info as I can get about the threat. Have you all been talking with each other?"

 

"No offense or anything," a new voice piped up, "but I still think we'll be better off at Claremont. They'll have room and enough security to back us up." Erin felt her brain briefly white out as Megan pushed her way into the conversational circle. Not just Megan, but Megan three inches taller and with fifteen extra pounds of muscle from the last time Erin had been to Seattle. A Megan wearing a Claremont uniform like it was familiar as her own skin. She just stared. 

 

A few feet away, another clot of Wanders near the control board shifted around, apparently in the service of finding some bedding upstairs. Four or five Wanders left the room, leaving the way clear for Trevor to at least see his command center. There was a Midnight there already. That would've been surprising enough, but a second look revealed that this was almost certainly another Wander, judging from height and the way the costume fit. Midnight-Wander was already facing him, motionless and silent. After a moment she reached up and pulled off her mask, revealing an Erin who was staring at him very much the way his Erin looked at Megan: like the ghost of someone lost and bitterly grieved. "Trevor?" the unmasked Midnight asked, voice thick. 

[Gizmo]

A sharp inhalation could be heard faintly from behind Midnight's mask as a recognizable version of Erin's sister made her presence known. In the beat he waited to gauge his wife's reaction another emotional crisis presented itself. It wasn't difficult to infer why that alternate Erin was wearing his costume -- or what had been his costume, in the same way it had once belonged to his grandfather. Neither situation was going to be easy and with tremendous reluctance but no outward hesitation he prioritized and delegated.

 

Trevor placed a hand on Mark's shoulder. "Her sister. Buy a few minutes," he requested quietly, using his other hand to undo his mask so that it hung about his neck. "Don't be weird about the little girl." He took a half step closed to his Erin and still softly promised, "Will be right back."

 

Walking over to the black clad Erin he exhaled slowly. "I'm sorry, he consoled without preamble, corners of his eyes crinkling in a pained look. He took in her uniform with a small gesture. "He would have been honoured."

[Avenger Assembled]

Mark inhaled, then exhaled. It had been a long day already but this was his job on the League, wasn't it? "Claremont's a good fallback location," he said as if he and Megan had been friends for hours, "but it's too risky for right now. You'd be putting all the faculty and students there in harm's way, and even if they did that for us-" and Mark was reasonably sure they would, "once the precedent was set, you'd have the school crawling with outside people every time there was a major crisis." 

"Sounds like the damn Freedom League's no help in _any_ universe," said the armored Erin, wearing vaguely Arabic-body armor that it took Mark not even a second to recognize as a descendant of the armor of Typhoon's personal guard. "And I guess Socatra's out too," she confirmed a moment later. 

"Well...my wife and I aren't exactly welcome there at the moment," said Mark carefully, not exactly sure what that armor signified - but having a feeling Nina would probably want him to ask. 

 

He felt a sudden weight on his leg and looked down to see the little girl tugging at his pants. "Hi Daddy," she said sleepily. Mark blinked a moment and looked up at the Erin the little girl had been attached to a moment ago, and thinking back to a visit to another world suddenly told him who this had to be. 

 

"H-hello there!" he said, keeping his eyes on the little girl and not on the other Erin. "I'm Mark. I'm not your daddy, I just look like him. You're very pretty. Do...do you want a teddy bear?" he asked, producing a brown plush one from behind his back. 

 

"I already have that bear!" she said in a small, frustrated voice. 

[Electra]

"Clara, be polite," said the Wander with the flag on her arm, even as she reached down to scoop up the little girl. This Erin watched Mark with wary impassivity, an expression more carefully schooled than what he was used to seeing on Erin's face. "Remember that this isn't our home, and the people here aren't the same as the ones you know, even if they look familiar." 

 

Clara's little face (it was hard to tell her age, but she didn't look more than four or five) screwed up as she thought about that, then smoothed into a polite little pout. "No thank you, Daddy," she tried again, "but can I have a unicorn with rainbow hair instead?"  From next to them, Megan muffled a snicker. 

 

The brief moment of byplay was enough to let Erin finish staring and recover her equilibrium. She knew Megan had caught her staring, but the younger heroine seemed resigned to it by now. Erin was hardly the only one in the room doing so. Before she could say anything, though, another pair of Wanders joined the group, one a dead-ringer doppelganger except for the blue streaked hair, the other sporting a spiky auburn cap and a uniform that seemed to be about 85% pockets.

 

Pocket-Wander grinned at Erin. "Hey, long time no see! I'm Wonder," she added helpfully. "We were Disco Freedom last time you dropped in on us, but we're over that now. Remember? You helped us beat Breakdown so hard he pissed himself?" Erin nodded, she did indeed remember that. "Anyway, me and my kind-of evil doppelganger are both here. Wander here and I stashed her in your holding cell, hope that's okay?" 

 

"Ah, yeah, that's fine." Erin said, trying to make her voice strong enough to at least be audible. "Do we know if there are any other evil or evilish Wanders running around?" 

 

"I saw a Deep One Wander about ninety minutes ago," Blue Streaks volunteered, "but I couldn't catch up to her. She seemed kinda pissed. And I guess your Jessie's still in prison, or in prison again?" 

 

"Who's Jessie?" asked Cowboy Hat. 

 

On the other side of the room, Midnight Erin stared at Trevor for another few moments, then blew out a long breath. "Yeah, I hope so. It's what Travis said too." She rested her hand on the edge of the console, pressing down with her fingertips in the deliberate way Erin had of controlling her strength when she'd rather be crushing or punching or smashing some hapless inanimate object. "Feels strange to be here like this," she admitted. "Haven't seen other people in the house for awhile." 

 

[Avenger Assembled]

"She is Erin's sister from another place," croaked Aquaria as she hopped over to join them, fixing her goggle gaze on the Wander with the hat before she focused on the Erin who lived here. She could tell from the smell. "Jessie is in prison," she hissed throatily. "It was terrible." She peered at the Wander with the blue bat, the one she'd seen before, then turned her head to look back at Erin. "The bad one that looks like that one was doing crimes, and Jessie took the blame. So she is in Blackstone and thinks she is a robber but she is not!" She didn't yell as loud as she felt like yelling, not when there were Surfacer children about, and many Erins.   

 

"...yes, yes I can!" said Mark, snapping his fingers and summoning a giant plush unicorn with a fuzzy rainbow mane just long enough to be brushable but just short enough to be really snuggly, shrinking the thing down slightly when he mentally measured it against Clara's size. Clara smiled at the sight of the unicorn and hugged it so tight Mark was briefly worried a button eye would pop out. 

 

"Thank you, Daddy!" Her smile made him feel better; but worse at the same time. He suddenly had a painfully vivid image of Richie growing up with just one parent around, and he wondered if Nina would give him the kind of look Erin was giving him - oh no, come to think of it, if anything he'd heard about that dimension was true, Nina would kill him. He badly wanted to go see his wife and son but the mission was a little important right now. 

 

"You should call me Mark," he said with a smile for the little girl, earning him a smile in return. "Would that be okay?" 

 

"Okay, Mark," she said with a tired smile as she buried her face in her unicorn.

 

"...so all I need is to borrow one of you so that we can go show the police that there is more than one Erin, so that Jessie will be free. She will be a good help with your problem, she is very strong and tough, and I gave her a magic shield," Aquaria was finishing her story to one of the Erins. In response, the latter bobbed her head and said, "I can't believe they'd lock her up in a cage underground! But I don't really think I can help, Stretch; I'm not going to convince your cops of anything other than maybe they've taken crazy pills?" Swander shrugged her wings eloquently. 

[Gizmo]

Trevor said nothing, following the Midnight-Erin's gaze out into the unusually crowded cavern. He knew better than to ask what had happened to his counterpart; even ignoring how easily such knowledge could backfire he suspected this version of his wife blamed herself for his death. Instead he watched the proceedings with her in companionable silence for a minute or two before speaking up.

 

"Leave you to organize sleeping arrangements? Know the layout." It also gave her something to do other than drown in self recriminations. A transparent gesture but hopefully better than nothing. "Need to help with that." He gestured with his chin to where Mark was doing an admirable job of dancing around another thorny situation and his Erin was doing her best not to stare at a version of her sister, hale and hearty. Aquaria's situation was going to need attention soon as well but he hoped he could at least leave her for at least a little while without risking an explosive fallout.

[Electra]

The Midnight Erin nodded at Trevor, angling her body so she could look at him from the corner of her eye rather than head-on. "About half of the Erins who've arrived live in the Manor on their worlds. Some of them have gone to collect bedding so we can set up a barracks in the trophy room, maybe one of the garages if people keep arriving. Maybe Mark can whip up some cots. Under control, do what you need to." She turned away and raised a hand to run it through her hair, stopping when she remembered it was covered, then headed back to the wall of security feeds. 

 

Across the room, Erin made the same gesture but managed to complete it, disordering her auburn hair with agitated fingers. "Right, yeah. We should get some kind of plan in order here, and somebody really should get Jessie out of jail." She looked to Mark. "You've probably got the best legal contacts, can you find somebody at Project Freedom or the Freedom League and tell them what's going on? We can send somebody over to pick Jessie up and get her back here, but nobody should be traveling alone if something's gunning for us." 

 

"We should mount a watch," the Erin in blue and white suggested. "The surveillance here is not bad for a private residence, but nothing beats the personal touch.  And lay in some food supplies. Do you have Big Star Pizza in this world?" she asked hopefully. "God, I miss real Freedom City pizza." 

[Avenger Assembled]

It was a busy night, especially for heroes who had already been busy with their own interdimensional crises. But when did crime, or even disaster, ever really take a break?

 

After first stopping to produce a room full of emergency supplies right out of a high-end camping store, Mark disappeared with Aquaria for a good long while, reappearing after a while with Aquaria and Jessie both, the latter carrying a bright metal shield on her back adorned with what looked like an off-center, five-pointed star. After that he temporarily made his goodbyes, reassuring Erin and Trevor that he'd be back after he had a chance to sleep and check in with Nina and Richie. 

 

By the time Mark disappeared, there were about thirty Erins around the mansion. And more kept arriving. An Erin with dark, kinky hair and a vaguely Egyptian costume; an Erin with truck-sized power armor that she parked on the lawn (where the two Redbirds conversed), an Erin in a translucent helmet with a large, high-tech blaster at her side that turned out to contain a blue ring of power, and even an unsettled Erin with the green skin and big staring eyes of a Deep One hybrid, who stared widely but didn't seem interested in saying much. Aquaria and Jessie were checking the defenses on the lawn, anyway. 

 

That night the house was full of people who only slept when they wanted to and who habitually drank large amounts of coffee. The house was full of wakeful, watchful people; with the little girl and the teenager upstairs one of their prime guarding targets, but by no means the only one. They collectively talked tactics; it seemed likely that there was not a power in the dimensions that could fight this many versions of Erin White at once; was this a plan to herd them all together for some terrible purpose (or even a large bomb)? But what could pass the wards of a hellqueen, a Furion machine intelligence, and more? 

 

The next morning, while many of the Wanders were at breakfast, a private signal alerted the Erin and Trevor who lived in this dimension that there was an emergency. When they reached the rear access gate they'd been looking for, they found one of Erin's counterparts with her heart torn out. 

 

With her blue-streaked hair and her nigh-familiar costume, she could nearly have been Erin's twin if you ignored the concavity in her chest that leaked bright red fluid, puddling on her costume and down onto the grass where she was sitting, leaking past where her hands were pressed together over the gaping wound in her chest. Trevor had seen these before. And so had Erin, in pictures. 

 

"Not...not what you think..." the Curator-duplicate said, haltingly. "Went looking for more..."

[Gizmo]

Trevor stiffened with a barely audible intake of breath. On most days being reminded of the Curator's deception would have sent him reeling with lingering shame and undirected frustration but just then he'd walked among too many what-ifs to succumb to one more opportunity for second guessing himself. "Redbird, prep everything we have on Preserver tech, specifically the Curator," he called tersely, voice somehow flatter than usual. He gestured for his wife to pick up her damaged doppelgänger before jogging ahead to ready the equipment down below. Bringing an inconspicuous cufflink to his mouth he spoke over the manor's sound system. "Anyone with knowledge of robotics, technopathic, ferrokinetic or similar abilities downstairs. Now." There was a brief pause before the etiquette ingrained into him for hosting required he add, "Please."

[Electra]

The fact that Erin was able to pick up her leaking robot doppelganger without a qualm was merely testament to what kind of night it had been already. The robot Wander seemed to be edging on some kind of failsafe or powersave mode, reciting strings of code under her breath or trying to tell Erin about the Deep One version of themself that she'd been trying to track down. "Yeah," Erin assured her, "that one's come in too, there's all sorts of people here. Don't talk anymore, it's making you leak faster." 

 

Jessie had scampered ahead to hold open the clock, then followed them down the stairs to the workshop. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there weren't a lot of Wanders answering the call for technical support, but one Erin did show up wearing circuit-patterned gloves and a pair of goggles that obviously had a built-in HUD, as did Midnight-Wander.  "Ouch," Goggles commented as Erin laid the robot on the worktable. She glanced around at the others. "So I'm guessing the nexus might not be as free of heart-destroying dimensional abominations as we might have hoped." 

 

"Still strength in numbers," Midnight-Wander pointed out brusquely. "We need to get her operational again so she can tell us if she saw anything. Can you do it?"

 

Goggles blinked, her eyes big behind the glasses. "I dunno," she admitted. "But I can probably do something. Tech isn't actually my specialty, it's just that this universe is so backwards, no offense, that anybody could be a hacker." She pulled a kit of tiny but sophisticated tools from a secondary holster next to her bat and unrolled them. "First thing's probably to stop the leaking." 

[Avenger Assembled]

While Goggles Erin went to work, occasionally sending Jessie outside to retrieve something from the large mech-suit she'd arrived in, other Erins arrived on the scene - after all, they all knew a distress call when they heard it. There was some muttering from the group as it became clear exactly who, or what, Erin was working on. It was, of all of them, the cowboy Wander who spoke up about this.  "Wait a minute...you had this happen here too, didn't you? And in all of your other worlds?", she asked, seeming to be demanding something of the others. "Those blasted space robots came and they turned good people into those infernal machines! If she's one of them, maybe she's the one behind this! I bet they'd love a lot of robots like us across the cot-danged multiverse!" 

 

"That doesn't seem likely," opined the white-haired Erin. "Even on my world, the Curator's never had a particular grudge against me - and this was never his style anyway." 

 

"Still, we should at least come out with any other secrets," opined the Erin in blue and white. "Anyone else holding something back they'd like to share with the rest of the class?"

 

A few chimed in at that, though most were confirming guesses Trevor and Erin had already made. The Erin in red ruled as queen of the 72nd Realm of Asmodai "but we'll have elections any day now, really,", the Erin in blue and white was part of Typhoon's personal bodyguard on Socotra, Aaron was "uh, definitely a guy," the Erin with the big eyes and greenish skin had been partially transformed during the Archevil attack (she spat on the ground at his name), Swander was just "trying to make some sense out of all this nonsense!" 

 

When the group fell silent, the Erin in red stopped and stared at the Erin who'd spoken first. " I think it's a little hypocritical of you to stay silent now, don't you think? Trust me - confession is good for the soul." 

 

"What in the goddamned hell are you talking about?" Everyone was getting tense now, with the partial exception of Goggles Erin, who was doing her best to stay focused on her work despite whatever intimate revelation she was about to make. "It's not mah fault!" she finally growled. "And it don't got nothin' to do with rippin' out hearts - not like this, anyway!" As Socotra-Erin snapped open her scimitar-tipped bat, the cowboy Erin finally said, "I ain't exactly a human being no more. But you ain't gonna stand there and judge me, cause you don't know what I goddamned went through on that trail." Her voice was a low growl; with a tone like Erin's when she was angry, but with a deeper rumble behind it.   "I ain't never killed nobody that didn't deserve it, and if you girls wanna scrap about that, we'll scrap."

[Gizmo]

"Wendigo, yes. Very dramatic," Trevor interrupted as he shouldered his way though the tense knot of Erins, hands full of equipment and tone dry enough to dehydrate the Deep One hybrid as he passed. "Have recommendation for herbs to aid in meditation, before you go." He paused and gestured toward the workbench where the Curator replica was being treated. "Attacked making sure rest of you were safe. Can at least be civil with each other. Talk about cats."

 

He set down the tool box he was carrying and handed the Erin in goggles the epoxy applicator she'd request before sharing a look with the Midnight Erin and his wife. "Need to find common enemy before 'sisters' do its work for it." 

[Electra]

"What's a wendigo?" Jessie asked. She was staying well back from the main action, hugging a wall and watching everybody carefully. 

 

"I dunno, whatsa' wendigo with you?" Goggles muttered absently, now up to her wrists in the robot Wander. "Okay, I think that'll patch the leak, that's a good start. No idea what it is though, some kind of coolant? You got any antifreeze laying around?" 

 

"It's a magic-adjacent creature kind of like a werewolf," Hell-Queen Erin explained dryly. "So basically very much like any of the rest of us except that if she becomes really angry, she's even more violent and deadly than usual." 

 

"Oh," Jessie said faintly, looking as though she were trying to press herself through the wall by osmosis. 

 

"That's completely oversimplifyin'-" Cowboy Hat began, then subsided at Hell-Queen's raised eyebrow, "but probably good enough for now. I've got it under control most of the time, ain't killed anybody since my first year at Claremont. We've got bigger fish to fry here." 

 

"She's right," Megan said, making her way through the crowd with the ripple of strange tension that always marked her passage amongst the gathered Erins. None of them ever seemed to know what to say, which would've been almost comical if it weren't so tragic. "We all need to work together, no matter what difference there are in the worlds we come from. Losing my sister once was enough," she entreated the group at large, "I don't want to see any more of you die!" 

 

The silence in the room was total and deeply uncomfortable. Finally Erin cleared her throat and looked back to the work table. "Right, yeah. Working together. Is she gonna be all right?" 

 

The robot on the table opened her eyes, twisting her neck a little in a move that looked like it hurt. "Functional," she reported in a wheezy voice. "Could be worse." 

 

[Avenger Assembled]

"It was one of us," the robotic Wander said after a moment of hesitation. "None of the ones here," she said, as a gasp came from Megan and Jessie. "The biometrics were different from anyone else here - but it was an Erin Hunter-White." 

 

"...how do you know it was a Hunter-White?" asked the red-haired Erin, her grip tightening on her staff. The wendigo Erin had taken Trevor's advice (and Megan's pleading) and settled down in a nearby chair slightly away from the group, under the big, watchful eyes of the other monstrous Erin. 

 

Erin smiled thinly and raised her hand, pointing to the fourth finger on her left hand. "I recognized the ring." This Erin was herself was not wearing any such ring. "Thanks," she said after another moment, turning back to the Erin with the goggles. "Back home I'd have had to go to Daedalus for that." 

 

"...that doesn't necessarily prove anything," said the white-haired Erin, but she sounded like she was trying to convince herself of that more than anything else. "We've seen attacks on other worlds - hell, I saw them with my own eyes. They weren't coming from duplicates." 

 

 

[Gizmo]

Resisting the urge to surreptitiously take inventory of the jewelry in the room Trevor instead strode purposefully to the cavern's main computer bank and began pulling up the more exotic monitoring options at their disposal. "Different how?" The range and coverage of the equipment that could detect specific bandwidths of radiation or harmonic dimensional frequencies were far more limited than the video feeds he could access by borrowing camera feeds from across the city but if they knew what they were looking for they might still get lucky, particularly once Mark returned. The suggestion that it took an Erin to hunt down Erins did not seem to surprise him in the least.

[Electra]

"Surface level biometrics are identical on most human-organic versions of Erin until you reach the very edges of our probability sheaf," Robot explained, her voice growing a little easier as Goggles began carefully adding the antifreeze Erin gave her. "But I noticed that the Erin and Jessie on my world had subtle biometric distinctions due to the years they spent apart. It's not an exact science, it's the shape of the face, the length and color of the hair, skin temperature and the very faint scarring they tend to keep after fights. The one who attacked me had more of those scars than any of the Erins I've encountered, and her hair was jet black." 

 

"That doesn't sound like anybody we've seen so far," Erin agreed, just a little doubtfully. There were already more of her around than she could keep track of.  She leaned back against the work table, well out of the way. "Did she say anything to you?" 

 

"Not so much," Robot replied, "but she seemed really pissed when she figured out I wasn't what she thought. I- my memory isn't entirely clear, but I think she went through my stuff." She gestured vaguely to the coolant-splattered backpack laying next to the table. "Broke my dimensional transit machine." 

 

Aaron picked up the backpack and began looking through it, careful to avoid the stains. He pulled out a badly damaged piece of equipment that looked a lot like a sonic screwdriver cosplay. He blinked. "This is exactly like mine. Tricia got ahold of it somewhere a few months ago." 

 

Robot nodded. "Trevor had it, but they gave it to me when they decided to take Jessie and hunker down in the Manor." Her smile was a little twisted. "I wasn't exactly welcome, but they didn't want me to just die,  I guess." 

 

"Mine looks like that too," White-Hair said, frowning. "But Dragonfly had it, not Midnight. I don't know where she got it from." 

 

"Same here. She told me wanted to analyze it when I brought it back, so i guess she probably didn't build it herself," Cowboy agreed. 

 

"One of my friend on Next Gen gave mine to me," Megan offered, "but I don't know where they got it." She held up an intact version of the same tool.

 

"Don't look at me," Hell-Queen put in laconically, "I got here by magic." She looked around. "But it's interesting how many of you happened to come across the same tool that you could use to get to a more central dimension even though dimensional travel isn't part of our traditional skillset." 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hang on a minute here," said Goggle, frowning. She took one of the 'screwdrivers' and looked it over herself, peering at it through her goggles with a critical eye, then cast it aside to look at a few more. "This is standard dimensional shunt technology," she said. "As far as I can tell, they haven't been tampered with at all. They aren't about to blow up, they aren't leaking radiation -  what's the point of seeding the multiverse with this?" 

 

"It's a trap!" croaked Aquaria from the ceiling, a moment before adding in a bellow to the sudden sea of bats and blades beneath her, "Sorry! Sorry! I didn't mean to frighten anyone but Baxter is finished with his eatings!" She patted the back of her head nervously, then hopped down and landed on the opposite side of the group from the hybrid Erin. "If the trap isn't in the sea, it's on the rock with all the fish...right?" 

[Gizmo]

"Need to speak to your Midnights about handing off found gadgets," Trevor muttered largely to himself as he pulled three different utility belts down from their mounting points on a wall of equipment. He deftly wrapped one about his waist and the other two across each shoulder like bandoliers. Pulling devices from pouches without looking he began assembling something from the modular components. "Practically signed invitations. Wanted all of you here. Ready access to dimensional translocation technology, motivated to destroy any and all Erin Whites." The vaguely diving rod shaped sensor array he'd put together hummed to life with the flip of a switch, its utilitarian display lighting up with clusters of dots. "Short list."

[Electra]

"Well it can't have been just to pick us off," Goggles reasoned, "that would be too complex even for your average supervillain's stupidly complex plan. It would've been child's play to engineer a dimensional portal generator that worked fine in every test, but when it detected our genetic signature, transported us into the yawning void between universes-" 

 

"It ain't actually a void," Cowboy Hat interrupted. 'S more like a big clock, or one of those antique things where the planets spin around on wires." Several other Erins nodded in remembrance, including Erin herself. 

 

Goggles thought about that for a second. "Huh. Well, whatever it's like, you guys could've gotten dumped there, or on any of a million deadly universes, but instead you came to where you intended to go, right? So the question is not only who wants to destroy us, but why they specifically want us all together more than, or at least before, they want us dead?" 

 

"Terminus has magic-users," Midnight-Erin put in. "Could be some arcane power in killing a bunch of us at once." 

 

"But that would mean one of us was actually working for the Terminus," Erin protested. "Can you really see that happening?" 

 

Midnight-Erin shrugged. "Better people than us have been corrupted. We're not special." 

 

"What do you think?" Megan asked Robot worriedly. "Did the one who attacked you look like she was working for the Terminus?" 

 

Robot blinked at her a minute. "I don't know," she finally said. "What would that look like?" 

 

"Um, evil, I guess?" Megan answered hesitantly. 

 

"Well, she did rip my heart out," Robot pointed out. 

 

"Right," Megan said weakly. She looked over at Trevor. "What are you doing?" 

 

 

 

[Gizmo]

"Had means to locate Erin in dense population," Trevor explained matter-of-factly, lining up the ports between the device he's already constructed and a ribbon cable leading to a curved rectangular dish about the side of a business card. It was a little more complicated than that in practice but he wasn't in a mood to explain that he had a half-dozen separate plans for such a contingency ranked between reliability and time to implement. "Modifying based on biometric data." The dish was clamped onto the meeting point of the two prongs, resulting in something that wasn't particularly pretty but would probably hold together. He finally actually looked over to Megan, glossy red and black eyes meeting her own. "Also thinking of ways to refute claim wife isn't special in room full of extra-dimensional duplicates. Trickier part."

[Avenger Assembled]

Midnight's detector took some time - but it helped when Goggles-Erin offered some helpful advice, and when they hooked the whole thing into Aquaria's armor to give it more power. The Erin they were looking for, charged with entropic radiation and with the particular signature that Robot-Erin's sensors had detected, was in a familiar spot for this universe's Trevor and Erin; and from the looks on their faces, several of the Erins in the room. She was holding steady, as long as they were scanning, somewhere high enough above the "surface" that she had to be standing on one of the bridge supports. 

 

"...The Pramas Bridge?" asked White-Hair Erin, who like Erin the Hellqueen didn't seem to understand the significance of the spot. "Well, that puts the bulk of the city between us, I suppose, but unless the architecture is very different here, it can't be a permanent bolthole for her. What would she be doing there?" 

[Electra]

"Taunting us," several of the Erins said in unison, and the situation was grave enough that they barely bothered to glare at one another over the inadvertent chorus. Erin continued on alone since it was, after all, more her hometown than anybody else's. "The Pramas bridge is a, um, a special site for Trevor and I. We went there on our first date, and now we go there for, you know, important occasions and stuff. That Erin must know that." 

 

"She's callin' us out," Cowboy Hat said grimly, her face dark. "But it cain't be just her against all of us, that's suicide. It's gotta be some kinda trap." 

 

"Could it be some kind of electronic mirage?" Goggles asked Trevor. "She could be trying to draw us away from the manor and leave it open to attack. She could be trying to pick off the most vulnerable of us first." 

 

"I could go look," Jessie offered. "I'm not really an Erin, so maybe she won't want me." 

 

Midnight Erin had snorted laughter over Trevor's claim of difficulty before turning her attention back to the larger conversation. She gave Jessie a funny look. "Why would you be any less an Erin than the rest of us?" 

 

Jessie paused at that. "I... I don't know," she admitted, blushing. 

 

"I could go," Megan volunteered. "I am absolutely not an Erin." 

 

"No!" came a chorus from all around the room, and this time all glares were directed straight at Megan. 

[Gizmo]

Trevor's face was a particular shade of impassively blank that a few of the Erins in the room could recognize as marshalling his considerable capacity for patience. "Too many would get in each other's way against one Annihilist," he offered with enough volume to regain the attention directed at Megan. "Small group attacks directly as distraction, stealthier group disables likely trap? Remainder stay here, reinforcements if needed." He looked to his wife, making it clear he was deferring to her judgement on the matter. They couldn't make too many assumptions about their foe but he trusted her insight, both regarding the plan and how to convince the assembled versions of herself to fall in line.

[Avenger Assembled]

The easiest thing to figure out was who wasn't coming - the robot Erin was still too injured, her self-repair systems still in the process of repairing her internal damage. Megan wasn't coming either (despite her protests) and Clara's mother was staying with her daughter. 

 

The Midnight-Erin took charge of the stealthier group of Erins, who'd approach from below the bridge, the Deep One Erin coming for her watery expertise along with a few others. With a few parting words, and a touch on the shoulder that spoke volumes, she headed away with her group, one of their versions of Redbird providing stealth as they approached. 

 

The actual group who came with Wander and Midnight included Singularity, the white-haired Erin, the red-haired one with the flaming scythe, and the one being there who probably wasn't included in plans about various Erins and Trevors - Aquaria Innsmouth, the Sea Devil! It was easy enough for them to find their way to Pramas Bridge, which they found looking innocently packed with summer tourist traffic, with hardly a sign of intruder or strange device. 

 

At least until they spotted Erin, standing on a bridge support tower well within leaping distance for those given to such things, the wind ruffling her short black hair as she stood with bat extended, looking at the city across the way. From close inspection, she looked like any other Erin - albeit with the scars and dark hair that the robot had identified as her assailant. She seemed to sense them coming, and turned.

"So. Here we are."

 

"Is that all you have to say?"  demanded the white-haired Erin. "Who the hell do you think you are?" 

 

Erin, the fundamentally wrong Erin, cocked her head and stared at her counterpart. "I'm you, idiot. And most of the rest of you - including whichever ones are about to backstab me." 

[Electra]

"Backstab you-" Erin began, but any combat banter was interrupted by Singularity leaping forward and attempting to tackle the Evil Erin to the ground. She'd been expecting something like that, but was just villainous enough to expect the heroes to allow her to gloat just a bit more. White Hair and Hell Queen lost no time in exploiting the moment of distraction, and suddenly Evil Erin was fizzing with red light and trying to keep her balance with White Hair throwing super-fast punches and Singularity attempting to wrap herself around her legs. Erin glanced at Trevor for a half-second with a "what did you really expect?" shrug before diving in as well. 

 

It was a much more pitched battle than any of them might have expected. Even among doppelgangers, the Evil Erin was notably stronger and insanely fast, and she was not at all averse to fighting to kill. In a one on one or one on two fight, it was easy to see how she could've killed her doubles, especially with surprise on her side. But this fight was four on one, with some support from Aquaria and Midnight as well despite being relegated to the sidelines as entirely too fragile for this sort of brawling. Even then, Evil Erin managed to eel out of the scrum long enough to jump off the bridge support... and straight into the other group, with the first set falling behind her like extremely dangerous precipitation. Once the fight was eight on one it was essentially over, it just took longer than it really needed to because Erins are terrible at working together. Finally, though, the Evil Erin was subdued, neatly hogtied with a rope Cowboy Hat apparently kept with her at all times and gagged by something that looked suspiciously like a sock. The other Erins stood around, bruised and bloody, catching their breaths. 

 

"What the hell?" White Hair finally asked, speaking for all of them.