We'd All Go Down Together (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

Reality warper faced reality warper, the awesome power to shape and reshape the universe to one's mad whims crashing together and doing...absolutely nothing. "Hah! How deliciously ironic!" Hex put his hands on his hips and laughed. "Our mutual blood keeps our powers from affecting each other. More fitting this way, isn't it?" He raised his fists, giving his counterpart a delicious leer. "Now we can settle our differences in hand-to-hand combat, just like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean!" He winked at Edge, who gave him a scornful look in return.

"What, you're evil so you're gay? Doesn't that sound a little cliched to you, Mr. Master Villain?" For his part, Edge was doing his best to form a plan, not an easy task for him under the best of circumstances. What to do when your powers just didn't work? He'd read Daisy's debriefings, and made some inferences from what he'd seen in that room when he'd woken up in this Mark's bed. "But that's all you are, isn't it? Just hurting people weaker than you, and giving lots of lame speeches. Maybe you'd be able to accomplish something with your life if you actually took action instead of just standing around talking about it!"

"It's all about freaking the mundanes," said Hex, who was circling Mark like a boxer in the arena. His belt was considerably more padded than Mark's; was he hiding a weapon under there? Or maybe about to produce one? "Don't get me wrong, I love plowing a sweet thing as much as anyone...ah-hah, that got you!" And indeed, Mark's eyes had been widened with disgust at his counterparts words. "I thought that would, after you were so thoughtful to take Daisy with you. Did you get a little piece of that before you-" Edge's blast transformed a chunk of steel wall into dairy products, exposing the rock wall beneath, as his counterpart laughed again. "Guess not!"

"You're...you're nothing but an odious little bully!" spat Edge, blocking a return shot from his counterpart with one of his own. "You just talk big to impress people, but I saw your Trevor put you down like a dog before. You're a drunk. You're drunk on power, on irresponsibility, and on your big fat mouth!" Mark felt his anger rising: what was going on with his more violent friends if this version of _him_ was so annoying? "I know you," he said suddenly, fixing his gaze on Hex. "I know why you're such an ass! You went to the Academy before you had any powers too, right? Because of your dad? It must have been Hell surrounded by all those people who got their powers before you did. What were they gonna do, train you to mop floors? Just like your dad, I bet-"

"YOU SHUT UP ABOUT MY DAD!" And suddenly, the two young men were engaged in a fight that was all too real!

[Electra]

Wander would've been more thrown by her counterpart's mis-identification if it hadn't happened before, back when they'd crossed paths in the place between realities. Still, it was weird. She noticed that this box, like the other one, had plumbing fixtures, but no mirror. Was it possible that Singularity didn't even know what she looked like anymore? The thought was bizarre, but sort of beside the point for now. They were getting out of here, and everything was going to be better. "I'm not Mom," she told her counterpart, "but I'm here to help you. I'm not going to let them hurt you anymore."

She paused for a second when she heard Sage's voice in her head. Thanks, any help would be good. Can you tell if she understands any of this? The contact was quickly cut off though, even as noises started outside.

____

Singularity stared at the familiar-looking stranger, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. It could be a trap, or a trick. Pathos always tricked her, but this was a new one. What did it mean? Was it a new way to make her get out of the box? She couldn't tell, couldn't be sure. Nothing ever was the way it seemed here. She flexed and unflexed her fists, wondering if she should try and fight the stranger before she could attack again. The stranger had gotten in from the ceiling, Singularity suddenly realized. Was there a way out through the ceiling? She had never thought about that possibility, not that she remembered, at least. If the stranger could show her the way out in the ceiling, maybe even if it was a trick, she could get away.

Her attention was caught suddenly by the noises from outside the box. Someone was fighting outside! Singularity's eyes widened, her pupils dilating as she rose to the balls of her feet and turned to face the door. When there was fighting, the box opened and the voices started and she had to go out... She turned to look at the stranger, recognizing the noise. "The bad-luck man," she whispered fearfully, in a voice that sounded hoarse and rusty from disuse.

[Gizmo]

"You're taking the whole thing awfully personally, is all," the Blank remarked casually as laser sharpened steel scraped against carbon fiber alloy with a spray of sparks. The well dressed young man swung smoothly down for a sweeping kick, only to have Midnight anticipate the move and leap over it back-flipping through the air. "Investing so many resources! Quite the puzzle," he continued, his voice unnervingly calm as he spun about and caught his double in the midsection with the other foot.

Midnight rolled with the blow, tumbling away across the cavern floor before springing back up and launching forward again. Trails on inky black mist seeped from the seams of his uniform, leaving stygian trails as he brought both escrima sticks forward in a parallel strike, forcing the Blank to block with both his stiletto blades and opening him up for further attacks. "Seen you," he growled in a gravelly rasp. He knew he should remain silent, focus on the fight, but there was a morbid fascination in the verbal exchange. "Know it's wrong; let it happen anyway." His sticks whirled in matte black arc, a relentless assault that only the other combatant's extensive training allowed him to keep up with. "Coward."

Behind his featureless white mask, the Blank's smirk turned to a cold, thin line. "Well now. Not about to take that from someone who confines himself to sentence fragments," he replied, twisting about to bring an elbow into Midnight's chest, following through with a deadly slash of his blade. This time his counterpart dodged low, but took a step back to circle warily, the two youth's examining each other for weakness. "You know nothing,"  the Blank insisted. "What do you think the life expectancy of a student outside of Hex or Pathos' camps was before I arrived? Can you even fathom the chaos I have to deal with?" Suddenly springing backward, he retracted his weapons back into his sleeves as razor edged disks appeared in his hands in their stead. A pair of sweeping motions sent a volley of the projectiles toward Midnight.

Dropping backward nearly to the ground, the darkly clad vigilante avoided the first of the disks before forcing himself back into the air with a grunt to dodge the rest. The throwing weapons buried themselves, quivering, into the steel walls separating the pair from the rest of the battle. "Excuses. Could have gone underground," he condemned as he recovered his footing in time to sprint to one side as more of the disks arced through the air. "Could have fought back. Could have saved her."

[Avenger Assembled]

"You're nothing! You're nothing!" Hex was firing blast after blast at Edge, the sheer force of warping reality pushing him backwards even though the shifting matrix of reality couldn't actually hurt him in his double's command. "What are you, just some little do-gooder with no ambitions? You know what my family was? We were nothing! Just slaves and toadys living off how good my dad and grand-dad kissed the Praetor's ass! Well not me! I worked every day of my life to get where I am, and when I get out of here, I'm going to fight my way into the Syndicate and be the baddest man who ever lived! Then we'll see who's just a stupid slave!"

"Bull!" Edge fired back, planting his feet as reality warped and bent between them, the air freezing and burning all at once, the two boys sliding back and forth as they fought for purchase. "You got lucky, didn't you!?" he shouted over the screaming of the air. "You can break reality in half and make it your own; you could be the most powerful person in this school! You could do so much, you could _be_ so much, but you don't have the brains to be more than what everyone expects you to be! You're just-" Mark hesitated a moment, seeing himself in the mirror.

"And what about you, huh?" the other Mark spat back, both of them shouting to be heard over the buzzing, wailing screech in the air. "Just going to kick back in that ridiculous costume and with your stupid hair, and let everything you could get pass through your fingers? You think saving kittens out of trees and screwing some four-eyed reporter is going to make you happy? You're just as much of a sap as I am; the difference is, I get to do whatever the hell I want along the way!!" The whirling, twisting air between them was beginning to form into a shape, or rather, a series of shapes that was hard even for the Marks to look at.

"You get to wear your stupid uniform and hurt people weaker than you, because that way you don't have to feel weak anymore," said Edge, again fixing his gaze directly on Hex rather than concentrate on whatever the hell it was that was developing between them. "That's why you're so sensitive about your dad, isn't it?! He taught you how to be the man you are! The weak, cowardly bully who can't do anything but parrot what he's supposed to believe and hurt people who can't hurt him back!"

"Oh yeah? Well what the hell was YOUR dad like?" spat a red-faced Hex.

Mark stared at him and shouted "MY FATHER IS A SUPERHERO!" And with that, he pushed further, and there was a tremendous flash...

[Electra]

"It's okay," Wander told her counterpart, struggling to keep the edge out of her own voice. "My friends are out there, they won't let anything bad happen." She looked towards the ceiling, realizing that if a battle had been joined out there, she might be trapped in here longer than she would like, till someone managed to unlock the box again. "Help me move the bed," she told Singularity, as much for something to do as anything else. The bed was firmly anchored to the wall, but with two extraordinarily strong young women pulling on it, it didn't stand a chance. Dragging the bed into the middle of the enclosure, Wander stood on it and began knocking on the ceiling.

____

Fighting, there was fighting outside and the bad luck man, and the noise was getting louder and louder and LOUDER! Singularity paced while the stranger tapped on the ceiling as though someone were listening. Now they were both trapped in here, and horrible things were happening outside, blood and fighting and death, until there would be nothing left... She'd heard the distant explosions and felt everything shaking, she knew something terrible had happened. What if everyone was going to be gone? What if she was going to be alone in the box and the stranger left and the noises outside slowly became silent until there was nothing outside and nothing inside and nothing anywhere except the voices yelling inside her own head?

______

With an inarticulate cry, Singularity began flinging herself against the wall where the bed had been, over and over again, until the box began to shake from it. "No, no, no, no, no!" A dent began to form in the wall, right at the stress points where they'd pulled the bed out. Wander watched her counterpart, uncertain of what exactly to do now. Intervening at this point might just turn the girl's madness on her would-be rescuer, but it was hard not to do something, anything.

At that point, if Wander had been able to scramble out of the box and leave her counterpart inside, it would've been a very hard impulse to resist. "Erin, stop it!" she called instead. "We're going to get out of here! There's no need to hurt yourself trying to get out, we just need to wait for my friend to open the door." The words seemed to have little effect on the maddened powerhouse, but the surprise of being called by her given name seemed to draw Singularity's attention, at least for a moment.

[Gizmo]

"And we're back to her,"  the Blank observed, tossing the last of his razor edged throwing disks with strangely casual disregard before producing a small device with a stud at the top. Even as he pressed the button, Midnight was diving away from the disks embedded in the steel wall behind him, twisting in the air to throw a handful of capsules behind him. With a short, electronic tone the projectiles detonated, the edge of the fiery explosion causing the capsules to burst and expand with a foamy chemical reaction, containing the worst of it."Honestly, what is--,"  The white-clad villain was cut off as Midnight used the momentum of his leap to transition into a haymaker his counterpart only just avoided.

The body language of the two young men wasn't identical. Midnight's movements were a little more contained, a little more graceful, while the Blank gestured a little more grandly, strode with more obvious confidence. Even so, they were close, and trained as they both were at analyzing the myriad of non-verbal cues, they really had little need for words to convey their meaning. And so that punch told the Blank all he needed to know about Midnight's motivations.

Behind his featureless mask, the Anti-Earth native allowed himself a small, cold scowl."Typical."  With that, he resumed the battle in earnest, foregoing any of his remaining arsenal in favour of a flurry of body blows Midnight managed to catch on his forearms instead. Each silently agreed that they meant to finish things, and that it would be done with their own hands.

[Avenger Assembled]

Suddenly, with a loud hiss like the world's biggest griddle heating up, the steel walls thrown up by the Marks in their struggle erupted in clouds of shimmering three-colored particles that fell apart into nothingness, energy spattering everything with red, blue, and yellow dots of color. In the center of the cavern Edge and Hex were struggling in hand-to-hand combat, not a strength for either of them, reality around them both shifting and warping, colors tasting on the tongue and sounds tickling on the skin of those who watched, as they punched and kicked each other.

"You're nothing but a pathetic waste of skin!" spat Hex. "A weak little nothing with my face and my body, but you're nothing, you hear? You think you're like me? You're just the nothing I crawled out of, and that's all you'll ever be! You're alone, Mark!" he spat. "No one will ever understand you, no one will ever give a damn about you. You'll always be the freak with the insane father with no past, no present, and no future!"

"...says you!" said Edge, grabbing his counterpart by the collar. "You're just a jumped-up bully who thinks your powers make you better than you are, but you know deep inside you're just a worthless little piece of garbage who got lucky! I know who I am! And I know who my friends are! And I know that I'm going to save EVERYTHING!" And suddenly the flash of color washed over both young men in an almost-blinding glow, and when it was cleared Hex had simply disappeared off the face of the Earth. "Freedom beats tyranny!"

[Gizmo]

The sheer force of the glow given off by the probability controllers forced Midnight and the Blank to pause their fight despite their respectively mutated vision. Upon seeing the outcome, it was the latter who spoke first, his voice strained with indignation. "Now you kill him?"  He had only a moment to shake with barely contained rage before a black gloved fist slammed into his masked jaw with an audible crack as Midnight took advantage of his distraction. Falling to the dirt floor and skidding a few paces away, his fedora tumbling away, the sullied villain rose to his feet with a device in his hand similar to the one he'd used to detonate his throwing discs earlier in the battle. "We have a saying here, regarding the apropos response to this level of idiocy," he noted stiffly. "Rocks fall, everyone dies."

As he pressed the button in his hand, a cascade of deafening explosions racked across the ceiling of the cavern, letting loose massive chunks of rock from above. The Blank dodged one such boulder as he sprinted over to where Inquisitor was dueling her double and grabbed the telepath's wrist. The taller villain pressed his belt buckle and the pair vanished in spirals of red light. Simultaneously, Midnight broke into a run toward the lowest point of the bowl shaped space and the impervium box sitting there. Leaping out of the path of a piece of the ceiling, he landed atop another as it fell and pushed off to propel himself to the top of the prison. Within moments he had the hatch there open. "Time to go," he noted calmly over the roar of crashing stone.

[Electra]

The sound of the explosions, muffled as they were by the impervium, were still clearly audible from inside the box. Wander had just enough time to mutter a bad work and Singularity to stop her escape attempt and look upward before everything began to shake. Both girls were naturally agile enough to keep their footing, but as a rock hit the generator and the room plunged into darkness, the shaky ground was the least of their worries. It took Wander a moment to find her flashlight, ignoring the unearthly moaning coming from her counterpart. Rarely had Erin ever been as relieved to see anything as she was to see the hatch open on a familiar black mask.

"Can't leave you guys alone for a minute," she joked to Trevor, managing half a smile. "We'd better get a move on. She turned to try and find Singularity, who had wedged herself into the narrow space between the dresser and the wall, and was staring up at the hatch, wide-eyed. She didn't seem to know whether to keep hiding or to attack. "Come on, Erin," Wander encouraged, "we're getting out of here." She stepped up onto the bed, ready to jump out the hatch. "We can't stay here, it's dangerous and dark."

___________

The world was falling to pieces, and Singularity didn't know what to think anymore. The stranger knew her name, the real name that no one called her except... she couldn't remember, that was a bad memory anyway so no great loss, but it was still very strange that someone should know her name. Before she could puzzle that out, everything got dark and started shaking and exploding! That didn't happen in the box, the box was for before and after all the bad things happened! She tried to hide, but the stranger had a light, and just as promised, suddenly the door in the ceiling opened up. When the stranger encouraged her to go, Singularity shook her head. Even if it wasn't a trick, it was much too confusing and dangerous. At least in the box she was safe. She shrank back against the wall, the pitch of her moans taking on an edge of new hysteria.

_________

Wander studied her counterpart, then looked to the hatch. This was... not good. "How long do we have?" she asked Trevor tersely.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Not long!" said Edge, looking up at the falling ceiling. Caryatid screamed as the rocks started hitting near them, and suddenly Mark grabbed her around the waist and spread his hands. "We are not going to die here in some stupid cave!" And then there was a flash of light, brilliant and coruscating, spread out in a variety of colors, and they were all back in the tunnel from which they'd came; heroes, defector, and refugee all. "Wander, hang on to Erin!" he called as the avalanche began behind them. "We need to move NOW! Steer around the city, don't give them a track to follow!" And suddenly they were off, Caryatid hiding behind Edge (and away from Singularity!) as they zoomed through the darkness on a bed of rock and stone!

[Electra]

For a moment, Wander was totally disoriented by the sudden change of scene and feeling of motion. They were definitely out of containment, and seemed to be standing in a dirt tunnel... that was filling in right behind her! She braced to run before she realized that they were staying inches ahead of the landslide, even as the walls rushed by around them and the floor seemed to tremble and vibrate under her feet. She could barely see a thing, just outlines and shadows from the faint glow of the flashlight Caryatid held loosely at her side. It was instinct more than anything that had her turning to her counterpart,just in time.

________

Singularity knew this dream,and it was a bad one. She buried Megan,after she'd murdered her, no, not murdered, it wasn't like that, but she was dead, and Erin buried her, only she wasn't really dead, but the dirt was falling down on her and choking her and getting in her mouth and eyes and nose! And then it wasn't Megan in the hole anymore, it was her, with her hands tangled in the filthy My Little Pony blanket and unable to move while the other beings in the hole stared and whispered and prepared to leave here there in the dark...

___________

Wander just managed to catch her counterpart around the middle as Singularity leapt for Edge and Caryatid, a move that tumbled both of them to the floor. There was very little space to maneuver in the tunnel they raced through, and both of them took a few hard knocks as they hit the sides and nearly got sucked into the backflow of dirt. Wander fought in near-silence, typical for her, grunting or cursing softly when her opponent got in a hard hit. Singularity was different, crying frantically for her sister even as she did her best to separate her counterpart's head from her body. Wander just hoped this was going to be a really short trip. Things were already not going according to plan.

[Gizmo]

Midnight adjusted quickly to the sudden change in location, if only because he'd been prepared to suggest more or less the same strategy Edge had put into motion. His companions' body heat made them clear to his metahuman eyes, and he could see Wander struggling with Singularity even before the traumatized girl began to cry out. Acting swiftly, he pressed a concealed button on his belt buckle which immediately lit up with powerful diodes, bathing the small space in soft, white light. With his other hand, the young man unfastened the side of his black mask, letting the fabric fall down to hang about his neck. "Erin," he called to Singularity, coming as close as he ever did to raising his voice, "It's alright. We're trying to help you but you need to calm down. Please." Trevor's voice was calm and level, though there was some distinct strain in the corners of his onyx and ruby eyes.

[Avenger Assembled]

Edge turned to the others as they tried to corral the panicking Singularity, at least, that was what he guessed what was happening in the dark: Caryatid could sense the underground vibrations, Midnight and Wander could see and hear well in the dark, but he himself was nearly blind! Midnight's light helped immensely, of course, and by its glow he tried to think of something to say over the roar of rock as they raced forward in the darkness. "We're going to take you away from here, Erin," he said. "It's going to be okay. No one's going to hurt you. You're not going back in the box."

[Electra]

Singularity paused when the man in black talked to her, he knew her name as well, and his voice seemed strangely familiar. He had monster eyes, but they were strange, not like zombie eyes, not like anything she remembered seeing. She stared at him, giving up for a moment on trying to kill the stranger and get away. Before she could decide what to do about the man in black, though, the light came on and she heard another voice: the bad-luck man! Singularity cringed and drew herself up small, giving up the fight and tucking her limbs unoffensively in against her body. The bad luck man was no one to make angry, horrible things would happen. And then he would tell Pathos.

______

Wander rubbed her aching head and rolled to a sitting position on the moving deck of dirt, looking around at the situation. Something about the boys had obviously intimidated her counterpart into surrender, though god knew how long that would last. If this was the last quiet moment they were going to have, she needed to do something to earn this other Erin's trust. She decided to play her one ace in the hole.

Reaching into her bag, Wander drew out a very old and very battered-looking teddy bear. Its fur was clean but faded and worn down, its cloth nose hanging loosely, one ear half torn away. Trevor and Mark could both recognize it as one of the scant handful of possessions Erin kept in pride of place on her dresser at Claremont. "I think this is something of yours," she told her counterpart, extending the toy.

Singularity's eyes lit with recognition the moment she saw the bear. "Bronwyn," she murmured excitedly, reaching for the toy instantly. She seemed to think better of it for a moment, withdrawing cautiously with a look over at Edge, but the temptation was much too strong. Singularity grabbed the toy and hugged it, petting the matted fur and closing her eyes. Wander pursed her lips,her whole face tightening for a moment, then she rocked back on her heels and gave the others a wordless shrug.

[Gizmo]

It took Trevor a moment to realize specifically what Singularity was staring at, then he quickly drew his sunglasses from his jacket and covered his discoloured eyes, quietly apologizing and cursing his lack of thought. He'd gotten so used to not having to hide them around his Erin that much of the initial self-consciousness they'd inspired had faded. He finished placing them on his face just in time to see her produce Bronwyn, much to his surprise. Knowing how much the bear meant to Erin, he paused silently for a moment before sitting down next to her so that their shoulders were touching and loosely taking her hand in his own.

[Avenger Assembled]

Seconds later, they emerged into the underground chamber where they'd planned to make their rendezvous: deep underground and within shouting distance of where Supercape had dropped them off, a perfectly placed location to make their final preparations for departure. It was also deep enough, and armored enough, that containing even a hostile Singularity would have been at least theoretically possible. As it was, though, they were alone in a room with tiled walls and shining lights on the ceiling, the hole in the wall left behind them sealing up as Caryatid gestured at it. A few moments later, she took the liberty of getting away from Singularity, adding, "I'm calling Mind-Master on the mental link he gave me. He says he and Talos are in transit; they're avoiding the subsidence that the incident at the school caused."

[April]

--Good,-- murmured Sage. --The sooner we get out of here, the better.-- The telepath had been quieter than usual, no mean feat for a mute, but she had been so shaken by the encounter with her counterpart that she was shocked into mental silence. Now, though, with the end in sight she finally broke from her daze. Her uniform was torn in a few places, minor cuts and bruises from where Inquisitor's telekinetic blade came too close but there was a small measure of satisfaction knowing she gave as good as she got.

[Electra]

Wander looked over to Midnight, giving his fingers a quick and grateful squeeze. Knowing he understood helped ease the momentary ache of giving away something important. "As soon as Caryatid's family gets here, I'll contact Supercape and he can come out and-" She stopped talking as a strange chill ran up her spine, a feeling like being touched by invisible hands. Wander shuddered and looked around, but they were the only ones in the room. Suddenly, there was a voice inside her mind, a voice she'd heard there dozens of times, only now twisted and wrong and mean. Mmm, you look awfully familiar. I remember when mine looked like you, all new and shiny and determined. It would be so much fun to take you apart, but you're not what I'm looking for right now.

A second later, Mark heard a voice as well, Psyche's distinctive mental voice, but more malicious and seductive at the same time than anything he'd ever heard from his friend. Look at you, all clean-cut and well-intentioned. I heard how you adopted Hex's little slave girl, he was really not pleased about that. You could do so much better, you know. With the sort of power you have, and the sort of connections I have, we could make some changes around this place.

Sage was certainly no stranger to mental communication, but this was certainly nothing she'd initiated. Did they bring you along to dance with me? That's wonderful. Why don't you give it a try? The sound of mental laughter was almost deafening for a moment.

Next to Wander, Singularity stiffened, her fingers clenching around the stuffed bear as her face crumpled. She began scrubbing her closed eyes with her knuckles and rocking back and forth. "No, Mom, no, no, stop!" Wander caught just a quick glimpse of the images her counterpart was being fed, but she already knew what they were. Next to her on the other side, Midnight was entirely unaffected and unmolested.

[Avenger Assembled]

"I...It's Pathos!" Mark called out, even though the voices were surely in everyone's head. "She's in our minds!" Mark always made sure to describe what was going on in case no one else was paying attention. Honestly, he wished more people were that thoughtful in crisis situations. "You think you can tempt me with casual evil sex!?" he shouted aloud. "Welll...for the record, I don't need to sleep with an evil psychopath in order to find personal fulfillment! I've done it with...." And then, horribly, he began to shout names out loud, each time filling his mind with images of what were really an absurdly long list of sexual encounters, drowning out the voice in his head. "And Zarana again, and myself, and then..."

[Gizmo]

Trevor was on guard the moment Erin stopped in mid-sentence, but it wasn't until Mark's outburst that his suspicions were confirmed. Noting dimly that the mental defenses he and Eve had been exploring were apparently more effective than he'd hoped, the young man pulled back one sleeve of his jacket to reveal a bracer of matte black and gleaming circuitry. "Mark, please," he requested calmly as he twisted a dial on the device as far as it would go. A bright sphere of crackling energy expanded from his arm in a flash, sweeping over them and silencing the mocking voice in their heads. The gauntlet continued to hum as he checked on the others. "Will keep her guessing." He suspected not knowing what was going on would be as much a slap in the face for the psychic as any of the day's indignities. He stepped over to Singularity last, kneeling to speak softly to her. "She can't hurt you now. Won't let her."

[Electra]

A trick, it was all another trick somehow and Pathos had found her and now the punishment would be the very worst, the bad memories that flooded her mind were only the beginning it got worse from here- Singularity opened her eyes, stunned, as the voices and pictures in her head suddenly stopped as though someone had shut off a tap. She looked up cautiously, afraid to believe it, and saw the glowing light reaching out to cover them all. Suddenly it was so quiet! She squeezed the bear in her hands and dared to take one deep breath, then another. Nothing happened, all was quiet and stillness and peace. As she watched, the man in black, the one who held the light, knelt down in front of her. He had monster eyes behind the lenses, but the rest of his face was nice. When he told her that Pathos wasn't going to her her anymore, her face reflected an emotion she hadn't felt in a very, very long time: hope.

_______

Wander watched the interchange between Trevor and her counterpart in silence, breathing her own sigh of relief that Trevor's machine had worked. It wasn't as though she'd ever believed it wouldn't, but it was really, really good to see it performing in the clinch. And it was also really good that they weren't going to have to hear any more about Mark's sex life. She smiled a little bit to see Singularity respond to Trevor. That was a good sign, it hopefully meant she could be saved and this wasn't all for nothing. But first they still had to escape. "We can't stay in here," she told the others, looking to Caryatid. "We have to get to the pickup spot, now."

[Avenger Assembled]

"And with...oh, we did it? Great! Nice work, everybody." Edge pulled down the top of his costume, sorting his mind out. Had his effort to make psychic static helped Midnight's efforts to block out Pathos' signal, or had he just...? Surely not! "Let's move," he agreed, everyone quickly heading out the door carved open by Caryatid. "Better not risk using our powers in case they have an energy grid working upstairs," he said quickly. "Let's hustle."

[April]

Sage frowned. Her first impulse was to ignore Edge's suggestion (wouldn't be the first time), track down and neutralize Pathos. "Which," the telepath reflected, "is probably what the psychopathic psychic wants me to do." So instead Sage fought against impulse and shut down the active use of her powers the best she could, withdrawing the mental links she kept with the team, withdrawing her mind from the psychic tapestry of the world and restoring her mental senses to a basic human level.

Which, of course, made Sage frown. Reaching out she rested a hand on Midnight's upper arm, trying to gain his attention for a moment while she signed, >>I will need you to speak for me.

[Gizmo]

Trevor placed on hand atop Eve's as he rose from his crouch, giving Singularity a faint, reassuring smile and signing with his other hand, >>Done.<< He jogged after Mark, being careful to ensure that everyone in their party remained within the sphere of his gauntlet's influence. "Pathos won't be able to find us remotely," he clarified for the others' benefit, "but she has our last location." The young man assumed that reiterating the importance of haste would be redundant.

[Electra]

Singularity and Wander both climbed to their feet to go with the group, both of their bruises from the fight entirely healed already. Wander's black stealth uniform was looking somewhat the worse for wear, though, with blue and gold peeking through holes in several places. She fell back to cover the rear of the group, being careful to stay within the glowing boundary, while Singularity followed Midnight like a very dangerous shadow, the bear snugly tucked in one arm. With Caryatid leading the way, they moved quickly through the rock tunnels, heading towards the cavern that would take them home. "We're not home free yet," Wander reminded everyone, "stay ready."