At the Mountains (IC)

[Cyroa]

James shook his head. "I'm pretty sure she's gone. Trevor took care of her I think. She surprised us. Next time we'll be ready. She won't do that again." He looked at her for a long moment, despite her trying to look at anything but him. "Besides, I told you once I'd never leave you in a place like this. And I never will. Now lets get out of this place."

[Electra]

"The others could still be in danger," she admitted. James was stubborn enough to hang around indefinitely if she didn't go back, and that might be a distraction they couldn't afford. Erin closed the distance, just far enough that her fingers brushed his, but it was enough. With a quick pop, they were back where they'd started, with the mist dissipating and Trevor attending to Mark. She stood back against the opposite wall and watched, trying to analyze her mind and make sure she wasn't going to lose it again.

[Gizmo]

"Medea," Trevor confirmed, helping Mark to his feet. Given the dent in the wall he'd have been considerably more concerned about the upbeat youth's skull if he hadn't been chatting away cheerfully. Trevor could only assume it was Mark's nebulous power-set at work once again, providing him with a lucky break, or lack thereof as the case may be.

When Erin and James reappeared, he turned around in what was a rather abrupt movement for the usually composed teen. Concern and relief clashed with guilt and shame in his tumultuous expression. Sparing one last look to make sure that Mark wasn't going to collapse again, he walked hesitantly across the room to stand next to her, unsure what to say.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hi, Wander!" said Edge, waving vigorously to show he was unhurt. Well, relatively speaking. Erin remembered hitting him well enough, and could see the dent he'd left in the wall. He took off his shattered goggles, sighed, and slipped them in his pocket. "You okay? It looked like Medea really did a number on you," he said, sounding concerned. "I'm okay," he added. "I just was out for a while." He blinked. "Hey, we got Medea, right? Because sometimes they come back right when things are getting dangerous and backstab you!"

[Electra]

Erin half-turned and looked around as though expecting Medea to pop up at those words, but the supevillainess was nowhere in sight. She turned back to Mark. "I'm really sorry," she told him uncomfortably. "I... she made me think you were a Grue. I hope I didn't hurt you too badly." Since her bat was at her feet anyway, she picked it up and put it away, then snugged her arms back up against her chest without once actually looking anybody in the eye.

[Ecalsneerg]

Geckoman leapt and rolled towards Zeta. Hearing Erin's warning, his eyes went wide. Grue? Wha-what? Undeterred, he resolved to end this quickly so he could help his friends. Although Erin could probably kick any grue's ass, so I'm not that concerned. Yet.

"Well, Centuritron, you might be represting War, but I'm going to represent Pestilence." As soon as he was in striking distance, he rolled onto his hands, legs spread wide. "And you're going down with the sickness!" He sprung up and went to wrap his legs around one of Zeta's knees, in order to simultaneously lock himself around Zeta's knee while moving forward to knock him down before he could use his might to push back.

[Gizmo]

"Running scared for now," Trevor told Mark, "she'll be back." Terrifying Medea into releasing her hold on Erin had been expedient, but hardly a long-term solution. Turning back to Erin, he struggled to sift through conflicting impulses. Seeing the way she pointedly avoided looking at any of them, however, abruptly made up his mind. Stepping forward before he could second guess himself, the lanky youth wrapped his arms around her shoulders, careful not to squeeze too tightly as he silently hung his dark-haired head next to her own.

[Electra]

Erin stiffened at the sudden contact, fighting both the urge to step away and the fainter, quicker urge to step closer and hug back. Nobody ever hugged her, and with good reason, as had just been amply demonstrated. She didn't even trust herself right now not to hold too hard or do something else unfortunate. So she stood there, her face twisting for a moment with the effort not to cry before she choked it back. "I'm sorry," she said again to everyone and no one, still looking down at the floor.

[Avenger Assembled]

Sure enough, the giant robot went down in a tremendous crash of metal! "Argh! You have struck me down!" The sheer force of its impact was enough to temporarily stun even the mighty Psyche. Laying on his back, the giant metal Centuritron kicked his arms and legs. "Curse my inferior design! Why couldn't Talos have gotten a real scientist to manufacture me!" Though the robot was down, and having a lot of trouble getting up, it still blocked the hallway entirely, leaving nothing but a few shadows visible behind it. "When I get up, I'll crush you all! Your puny organic intellects are nothing before the sheer, awesome power of the machine! All glory to the machine!"

[angrydurf]

Phalanx surged forward as the mammoth robot crashed to the ground. "We'll just have to see to it you don't get up then." He shouted as he drove his fists down in a wild double axe-handle blow to the constructs torso hoping to remove this impediment before Stratos managed to evade them. "No machine can stand before the mighty will of those who would do good." He had definitely been spending too much time with mark.

[Gizmo]

Stepping back a step, Trevor pushed away his awkward embarrassment with the same ease he'd bottled his emotions while using the sonic device, and placed his hands on Erin's shoulders. "Look at me. Wasn't your fault," he insisted in a low, calm voice. "Medea chose you because you're the strongest, the one she couldn't hope to fight fairly." The lean youth grimaced, brow furrowing as he muttered largely to himself, "Knew we were dealing with the Crime League, should have seen it coming." Releasing one of her shoulders, he retrieved a long, thin strip of silvery foil from a compartment in his belt. "Here. Fit it under your headband, the circuitry monitors the frequencies used for mind control and the governor chips are shaped into basic warding runes to work against arcane effects." Pausing, he added, "It's... not actually tinfoil."

[Cyroa]

James stood of to one side as Trevor hugged her. There was a long moment when he wondered if that contact was going to send Trevor flying but apparently all was well. Or at least not causing her to snap. Bonus. But beyond a glance, he said or did nothing. It wasn't his place to get in the middle of them and he'd already said similar words to her already. Still, there were some unpleasant twinges seeing her upset...and Trevor with her.

He shook his head and looked to Mark. "So, you're ok?" He summoed fired to his hand, letting it bath along his armor as he healed himself of the bruised bones from Erin's hit. "We need to get to the others and stop these clowns."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I'm OK, heh-heh," said Edge, who sure enough looked hardly wobbly at all after the savage beating he'd taken at Wander's hands. "I've had worse, really. This one time when I was six, I fell off the roof and landed in the bushes. Boy, did my mom look surprised! As for getting out of here, I dunno. Is there any way out?" he asked, looking around them. "We could get out through that dent, I guess," he said, pointing to the divot he'd left in the wall. "If Wander and Hellion hit it hard enough. But that would just take us back where we came from. How do we go forward?"

[Electra]

Trevor's unexpected joke about tinfoil hats was enough to get Erin to look at him, and even drew a quick half-smile from her as she took the metal sheet. "As long as it works, I wouldn't mind if it were tinfoil," she admitted, tugging the fabric band from her hair and sliding the little device in between the layers. As she replaced it, she looked over at Mark. "We should be able to crack through this wall," she told him, "with some effort. Let me try it." Counterbalancing herself with the bat, Erin got a few steps running start, then launched a flying kick at the door that separated them from their teammates.

[Avenger Assembled]

A huge piece of metal went flying off the giant robot, sending sparks flying everywhere and nearly blinding the teens. "Curse my shoddy construction!" shouted Zeta. "Talos, you fool! You should have appreciated me when you had the chance!" Roaring defiance, the floundering, half-broken automata shouted "At least I have one power that can't be beat! The sheer electric energy of lightning! Nothing can stop the pure white light of electrical fury!" And with that, the giant robot fired a blast of energy from its golden hands, a beam of pure white actinic fury that cut through the air like a hot ionic discharge through butter! It struck Phalanx square in the chest, blasting a massive burn mark over his heart.

[Darksider42]

Despite the initial danger the robot before him displayed, it was quite obvious that the being was just a push over. Although he guessed that this was a distraction from Stratos and his main (and quite frankly mad) goal of releasing Superior from his endless, empty prison. "You were made by Talos. The thing knows nothing but shoddy worksmanship." He said as he unslung his guitar and quickly strummed a note from the strings, sending a rush of compressed and quite dangerous sound towards the mechanical being. He had no idea how long they could keep entertaining this machine before the crime league's mad scheme succeeded.

[Ecalsneerg]

Geckoman frowned, even as his goggles shielded him from the flare of the electrical burst. Something's wrong. "You're one screwy robot," he remarked. "What's up with you anyway?" He did a cartwheel over the robot, as if to mock him. "I mean, you're ranting like a madman, not like a machine, and I have my doubts over the involvement of the Crime League, Grue, and Talos." He came up from his cartwheel with his elbow to his chest, ready to bludgeon.

"SPILL!" He dropped onto the robot, driving his elbow under him in a hammerblow.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Fool! You'll never penetrate the mad schemes of Dr. Stratos! His genius is-" That voice, that very familiar voice, was too easy for the boys to recognize. In a flash of light, the robot vanished entirely, the illusory construction leaving behind no traces in its wake. The impervium hallway in front of them was scarred with the marks of Rift's blasts, as well as a circular hole in the wall where blank white walls were just visible on the other side. Just past that, standing before a giant black machine that twisted bizarrely through a thousand impossible shapes, cables leading from it into the white room, stood an abashed-looking Sebastian Stratos, his small frame ridiculous in a huge winter overcoat, while a white-faced Medea stood carefully behind him.

"Well, crap," he said, his words punctuated by a ripping sound from behind the teens as Wander and Hellion's fists and sword broke through the impervium door behind them, reuniting Young Freedom as they stood together at the edge of tomorrow. "I am so mad at Simian right now! Him and his fool Auto-Illusion can go piss up a rope!" He tore off his ski cap and jumped on it, then added hastily, "But he'll be pissing up that rope as a king! Because do you know what, children? Medea and I have done it! We've cracked the doors of Creation and freed a being with the power to bring you heroes down to where you belong! I give you...SUPERIOR!"

And then, while Medea cast a glowing white shield to temporarily block the heroes attacks, Stratos reached inside himself. The mad genius pulled on decades of hate and loathing for the costumed clowns who'd taken away so many of his dreams of respect, of power, of world domination, and poured it out in one magnificent eruption of lightning, the sheer power of the actintic bolt nearly blinding the onlooking heroes as electricity rushed from his body and blasted deep into the heart of the great machine, then rocketed from there into the heart of the Zero Room. "FOOLS! NOW YOU'LL ALL PAY!"

He paused a beat, peering into the glowing white man-sized hole he'd carved in the wall. "Hey, who's-" Then the room went mad. A blonde figure in a black uniform came blasting through the hole, slapping Stratos aside. The mad scientist smashed into the wall with a loud crunch, staggering as he tried to right himself. Superior, his eyes wide and staring, blinked rapidly until he pulled out a set of black goggles from his Nazi-cut uniform, pulling them over his eyes. "Damn this brightness...out of my way, you fools!" He spat as he flew at the kids. "Don't you know who's behind me?"

Behind him, his uniform battered and torn, his handsome face half-hidden by a cybernetic harness around his neck and back, a very, very familiar figure appeared. "Not this time, Kal-Zed!" called the Centurion. "The young heroes of Freedom are here to stop you! And so am I!" And with that, he flew in and landed a devastating punch in the middle of Superior's chest, the KOOM of impact like a sonic boom that blurred the air, sending the Nazi superman back into the impervium wall behind him, his super-tough body cracking it as surely as Edge's had a few minutes earlier. "You'll never win, Kal-Zed!"

[angrydurf]

Phalanx gaped for a bare moment at the Centurion apparently returned. It didn't seem possible but there he was in the midst of battle against his old foe Superior. He shot across the room landing in a crouch before Superior, "You'll not escape today Superior." he growled and surged upward with all his might in a devastating uppercut connecting with the Ubersoldatens Chin with a deafening crack.

[Gizmo]

Midnight didn't spare more than a glance for Superior nor the impossible presence which followed him out of the massive machine. His more overtly powerful classmates could handle the anachronistic thug; he'd make sure they weren't distracted.

Using the spectacle of the clashing paragons as a cover, the black clad youth all but disappeared from view, reappearing without warning as he drove a brutal blow from an escrima stick into Medea's sternum, knocking the wind out of the sorceress' lungs. In the same fluid motion, he flooded the area with inky black mist, leaving the Crime Leaguers with a final sight of ominously glowing red eyes set into a featureless visage before they plunged into darkness.

[Avenger Assembled]

Mark Lucas was well-used to impossible things happening. Sometimes it seemed like it was the possible things that happened especially rarely! But confronted with Superior boiling out of the past, followed shortly by an impossible vision in cybernetic armor, Mark's world seemed to slow to a crawl. It was true that Mark was not a particularly bright boy; his friends and teachers had long since noticed his tendency not to pay attention to anything that wasn't inside his head. But it was a mistake to think that head was actually empty. Well, most of the time. "Wait, the Centurion was buried, not dropped into the Zero Zone," he muttered out loud as his mind slowly turned through the gears of thought. "But that's definitely Superior...it must be the Centurion from a different universe!" he exclaimed. "Or something!" Either way, he knew what to do. "Wander!" he yelled. "I'll cover you! Try and get in there and keep him from wrecking the machinery! We'll need it to get rid of him!" With that he hurled a steel ball bearing from his belt at Superior, the tiny assault a big distraction for the sorely-pressed paragon.

[Electra]

Erin stared at the spectacle of Superior and the weird Centurion dumbly, missing the beginning of the fight entirely while her already overtaxed brain struggled to process what seemed like an impossible scene. Could it be more mind control? No, Trevor told her she was immune to that now, and her team was right there, including Psyche. It had to be real... but what was she supposed to do about it?

Edge's words shook her out of the momentary fugue and got her moving. No matter how bizarre the situation was, she knew one way to stop a villain. Vaulting across the room, she swung on the way down, dealing several punishing blows across Superior's back and shoulders. But he was powerful, and seemed barely affected. Now was not the time for nice fighting. Erin held the bat vertically and smashed the villain in the face with one end, and in the gut with the other, then switched to a horizontal hold and clotheslined him, all in one blindingly fast series of movements.

[Darksider42]

Rifts mind was a bit lost in the ensuring chaos as his mind tried to process. For one, he didn't expect them to fail right away in stopping Stratos plans in opening the portal. The (or at least, A) Centurion coming out along with him was one of the few things he could have possible predicted as well. After a few blows by the others to the Super Nazi, Rifts mind snapped back to attention. Quickly gripping the strings of his guitar, he played a short short solo that send two blasts of sound rushing forth. One of them smashed into Superiors face while the other flew past his head and into the portal. Well, lets hope that did something He though as he watched the others act.

[Avenger Assembled]

"You fools! You stupid children! Don't you realize who this is? It's-!" Superior went down before the powerful blows of the powerhouses of Young Freedom, Phalanx's iron-crunching blows and Wander's barrage of bone-shattering bat strikes sending the Nazi superman to his knees, then onto all fours as he spat out a broken tooth. They weren't holding much back; it was a testimony to the sheer power of the Ultiman's unstoppable body that he was still conscious, if in a bad way. He didn't seem to feel Rift's blast, but it was hard to tell if he was actually unconscious or just a very tough bastard. "Fine, die!" he spat. But despite his harsh words, he didn't get up.

[Cyroa]

James blinked in surprise. Centurion? James didn't impress easy. Far from it. But like...damn. A tiny little spark, buried way down, of hero worship popped up and it caused him to charge in with the others. It overrode his innate distrust and paranoia over Superior's words. He summoned the Blade his hand, swinging at the downed villain without pause. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we got the point. Hope you do too!"