ic Graduation Day: Noise of Thunder (IC)

[April]

Eve laughed, planting a light kiss on her boisterous friend's cheek before he set her down. Her smile slipped a bit at some of the questions, but soon righted itself; it was becoming easier and easier to shove aside some of the more disturbing memories she gleaned from Singularity. "It wasn't that long ago, actually" the telepath said. "I lost my temper and somehow it smashed aside the block I had. You, uh, may have heard me when it happened." Eve glanced at Trevor and Erin, looking a little embarrassed . "Apparently I also screamed in everyone's mind at that point too."

"Oh, and my parents know. So does Faith." Eve confirmed with a nod to Mark. The telepath glanced over at Corbin and nodded slightly. --He doesn't strike me as the kind of person who isn't in the know, Corbin.--

[Gizmo]

Travis let out a soft breath at Mark's exuberant display, having frankly thought his days of sitting through Lucas style antics long over, though there was a healthy dose of nostalgia mixed in with the long-suffering silence. "Mr. Hughes. Travis Hunter." The aging gentleman rested both hands on his cane and looked up at the imposing if somewhat awkward youth. "Good lord, what is Summers slipping in your food?"

"Corbin's from Missouri," Trevor noted with the faintest ghost of a smile, to which Travis grunted softly as though it explained much. "Reasonably sure the headmaster hasn't tapered with the cafeteria."

The elder Hunter snorted flatly. "That boy never did focus enough on chemistry," he bemoaned, shaking his head slightly.

[KnightDisciple]

"You know us kids from Missouri; nothing but pancakes, steak, cornbread, and apple pie."

He chuckled, though it was a bit forced as Travis mused on the headmaster's chemistry skills.

"But yeah. I just lucked out in the genetics department, I suppose."

Corbin nodded at Sage with a smile. Of course, his smile was bursting as he heard her talk.

"So that's what that was? Don't sweat it, Eve. I wasn't doing much at the time, and if it means you can talk however you want now, it's worth it in my book."

He glanced at Travis, and then his fellow teenagers as a very light blue glow surrounded his body.

"Hang on just a sec, I'll go get the presents."

He suddenly flew off, skimming the ground on his way to his dorm room. In less than 5 minutes, he had returned. His arms held six picture frames, 18 x 24 inches. He handed one each out to Wander, Edge, Sage, and Midnight.

The pictures turned out to be identical hand-drawn mini-posters of the "classic" Young Freedom lineup; it had Edge, Wander, Midnight II, Psyche, Phalanx, and Sage, all in costume, all in various poses that captured the spirit of each student perfectly. Slightly closer inspection revealed they were, in fact, excellent digital copies.

Corbin stood there, shyly holding the last two pictures.

"I guess I'll hand these off to Mike and Alex when I see them. I tried to do you guys justice; I hope it's alright. I've got the original tucked away in a secure location, along with any other prints like that that I produce."

Corbin's face was colored by a slight blush; the large student was clearly a bit embarrassed to present classmates he saw as inspirations to him with such "measly" gifts.

[Electra]

"This is really great, Corbin," Erin told her classmate sincerely, smiling as she looked over the picture. "It's really cool. I'll have to hang it up in my new place." It was sort of nice, she figured, to have one piece of art for her walls even before she'd landed an apartment. "You'll have to draw up a new version next year, with you and all the new people who are going to be on the team. Make like a series of it." Tucking it under her arm, she looked around for a safe place to stash the picture while the ceremony was going on.

[Avenger Assembled]

Suddenly, someone else was there, stepping out of the air as if she was stepping out of a door, interjecting herself into the camaraderie of the group. Those who'd been there for the depressing saga of Mark's family instantly recognized Martha Lucas. She grabbed her son by the shoulder and all but spun him around, her face pale. She wasn't in the camping gear she'd been wearing when Mark saw her last, instead she was in a bizarrely incongruous polo shirt and jeans that made her look like she'd just stepped off a golf course. "Mark," she said urgently, "Listen to me! You have to be ready right now! Right now or it'll be too late!" She was attracting a lot of attention; even in this crowd people didn't just step out of nowhere and shout about it in the process.

"Mom, Mom, what's going on?" asked Mark with equal urgency, his heart suddenly racing at the sight of his missing parent. He asked the first question that came to mind, unable to keep the suspicion out of his voice. "...where's Dad?" Before she could answer, there came a low tremor in the ground, as if of a distant earthquake, a wind from the southwest blowing up hard, and the sky began to darken as if in eclipse. But from the surprised exclamations from the crowd, there was no eclipse scheduled for today...

[Gizmo]

Travis Hunter regarded the sudden appearance of Martha Lucas and the abruptly ominous weather with a single, flat expression. "Typical."

Next to him, his grandson reacted with practiced precision, the sentimentality of the previous moment switching over the tactical coolness. "Sage, link us up. Templar, get the audience and underclassmen inside, behind force fields, whatever works." Releasing Erin's hand, he stepped quickly but calmly to the back of the classic vehicle he and his grandfather had arrived in ad opened the truck. Inside, neatly folded, were the garb and equipment of the masked vigilante, Midnight. "Wander, get ready and stay close. Whatever's coming, the Lucases are key. Edge, we need answers." With that, the featureless black fabric and red lenses was pulled down over his face and the beaten black fedora set atop his head. Clicking his utility belt into place around his waist, Midnight withdrew a handheld tablet computer and began simultaneously taking readings and streaming whatever news and satellite feeds he could pick up.

[Electra]

"Somehow I knew something like this was going to happen," Erin muttered. "We'd never be able to just graduate without some sort of crazy mess cropping up." Setting aside cap, gown, and portrait under a nearby bush, she pulled off her blouse to reveal her uniform underneath. It had seemed like a wise precaution. In a moment, she was ready to go and fully on guard. "Any idea what's going on?" she asked Mark tersely. Dropping her voice, she asked, "Could this be the Terminus, like Rick warned you about?"

[KnightDisciple]

Almost before Trevor was done handing out orders, Corbin was suddenly Cobalt Templar, in all his shining, armored glory. He blurred through the air over to the crowd, hovering about 10 feet above them. His voice bellowed out, trying to drown out the sudden storm noises and panic from the crowd.

"Everyone! Please start moving inside! Freshmen, sophomores, head in with them and guide them to the shelters! Go for the nearest shelter to your position! Juniors! Play rearguard and help make sure everyone makes it inside!"

At the moment, CT had generated several large, glowing "arrows" of blue flame, to help guide the not-yet-full crowd inside. While he was bellowing out orders, he was sending thoughts directed towards his lover.

~Get inside with the rest of them, Quo-Dis. You and the other juniors are going to be our best line of defense inside.~

He didn't "verbalize" it, but her pyschic senses would likely pick up the fact he was scared. Not for his own sake, but for hers. He was scared of losing her.

[April]

"Already done," the telepath assured Midnight, speaking in her strange resonance as the words were carried on sound and thought. She paused a beat then added, "Summers is notified." Sage pressed her fingers against the choker she wore around her neck where it began to shift, revealing its true nature as a morphic molecule device. Before long Sage was completely enclosed in her traditional costume; predominantly black with a band of blue along the sides and cinched at the waste with a belt of gold. With a casual flick of her fingers she cleanly sliced her civilian clothing off with a thin blade of telekinetic energy.

As the white haired mindwalker turned her telepathy to the task of assisting Cobalt Templar, relaying his warning and instructions to others around the campus she sent a separate mental inquiry to Midnight, easily finding the well used mental pathway. --Did you want me to link your Grandfather in as well?--

[Avenger Assembled]

But it was all too late, as a curtain of black fire came erupting from the horizon, spreading impossibly fast. They could hear screams from the city as the obsidian flame washed over everything, all it touched vanishing in an instant as if it had never been there at all. Edge just had time to erect a shield around Young Freedom before the wall hit, its impossible black light blotting out the world, its deafening roar like the howling of an unstoppable wind as it whipped around Mark's blue and gold bubble like a hurricane. Mark felt the comforting wall he'd thrown up begin to fry beneath that awful flame that was neither cold-nor-heat, like a wooden ball beginning to burn in an inferno. But this was no fire: this was the all-destroying conflagration of entropy itself. All around them, there was nothing but that terrible burning nothingness, the world having vanished with neither a bang or nor a whimper, even the ground beneath their feet beginning to cave way. "It's slipping, it's slipping, it's-"

Beneath the all-destroying wash of pure searing entropy, Earth-Prime collapsed into the primordial nothingness that waited for all life and all existence at the last, terrible end of all things. With the destruction of the universal keystone, the entire universe that had once held this particular third planet from Sol began to pour into the firey chasm that had once been the Earth like a bathtub flowing into an open drain, pulling with it first all of the nearby chain of universes, then the others, as all of reality began its inexorable collapse into the Terminus.

END OF PART ONE

Continued in >Worn-Out Places