Live From The Jaws Of Oblivion! (IC)

[Quinn]

-Set after Victory's Vignette.

June 17th, 2011.

Nichtuberall - Herr Doktor Viktor Archeville's Secret Asteroid Base.

Somewhere In Space.

"...Ow."

Pain. Lots of pain. Where was he?

Lying on the ground. Ground?

Felt hard. Metallic. Steel ground. Floor. Must be inside?

Hear alarms. Must be somewhere with alarms. Why here?

Hammer. Must reach weapon. Oh wait, hammer's melted. How did that happen?

Victory. Fighting...not-Victory. Not-Victory melted hammer. Wait...

Rachel.

Push blinked, his eyes still somewhat glazed as his body tried to boot-strap itself back into action. Sense started to return to his brainpan, the man shaking his head and sitting up; then promptly wincing as an absolutely mammoth headache made itself known in a most unpleasant manner. Focus. Take stock. Headache. Hammer wrecked. Several bruises. Shoulder feels popped. No broken bones. I think. Victory gone. Mooks - he looked left and right at the piles of unconscious Metaceptors, strewn about all over the hangar - de-mookified. Now would be good for restNO. Focus. FOCUS. Job still needs doing. Rest when you're dead.

Gritting his teeth, Push hauled himself to his feet and leaned on the haft of the former hammer, now about as useful as a walking stick. Focus. Set priorities. Find Blueshift. Rescue Victory. Get back to Earth. He slapped his commlink, hoping the earlier interference had vanished; the kineticist's voice a croak as he coughed out a name.

"Blue, you out there?"

[quotemyname]

The garbled message barely came through above the interference. About half of it got lost in translation. "Mac, I need that message. Filter and re rout it. I want it cleared up."

"On it!" The little robot fiddled with some of the controls on the console in front of them. When he replayed the message, it was clearer.

"Blue, you out there?"

Blueshift's fingers danced across the two of the six keyboards in front of her. Finally she pressed 'return' and spoke into the mic, "I'm here, Push. I'm glad you made it. Now we know why we weren't disturbed while hacking this thing. You must have kept them at bay," Blueshift smiled, her resolve nearly faltered, slipping into her feelings for her boyfriend. She shook her head, she needed to stay clear minded, they needed to get on top of things! "Working on a damage report now. I suggest we regroup in the control room. A few of the halls are collapsed, but there's at least one clear path. I'm sending Mac to your location. He'll lead you back here." She waved a hand toward the door, and the little robot sped off.

"And Push?" She hesitated only slightly, "I'm glad your okay, Baby."

[Quinn]

Push let himself sag to one side in relief, leaning on a handy wall, and mentally ran through several potential replies. About half of which would have been so sugary his teeth'd have rotted, and the other half of which involved shoving that flying tin can out of the nearest airlock...not that he would actually do that, but the thought was certainly pleasant.

"Copy that. Find...find anything we can use?"

Nothing to do but wait, then. The kineticist began mentally tallying his injuries again, and balked about a quarter of the way in; he'd been through worse, but not much. This one definitley made his top five worst days. Probably number three. Or four. He shook his head, wincing at the headache; focus elsewhere. Victory blasted off. Through a portal. Kidnapped by some...copycat? Machine? A couple dozen possibilities ran in a circle around his imagination, and he waved them off. Time. Something they didn't have.

Think, man. Victory was dragged through a portal. A portal leads somewhere. Somewhere you can go. Can't go myself...no teleporters in the base, place is completely off the grid...need help. Need... Push slapped his commlink again, his voice getting stronger as a fresh objective filled his mind.

"Blue, get Supercape, any communication band you can get working, send out an SOS for him; we've got a whole new problem now!"

[quotemyname]

"Copy that. Find...find anything we can use?"

That's Push for you. Stoic as always. she thought, "I've found a lot of things we can use. It'd take me longer to elaborate than it would for you to get here and see for yourself."

"Blue, get Supercape, any communication band you can get working, send out an SOS for him; we've got a whole new problem now!"

"Well, I'll tell him. Don't suppose you care to let me in on what's going on?" She questioned over their comm link, "Contrary to popular belief, I don't know everything." She was only good at finding the solutions to problems she could research.

About the same time, Mac arrived at Push's location, "Come on, hot shot," The little robot paused for a minute, unable to pass up the chance to take a shot at his creator's significant other, "Gee wiz!" Mac stuck his hands on what Push imagined might be his hips, if he'd had hips, "Didn't anyone ever tell you you're supposed to get cleaned up before a date?" It always amazed Push how the concept of sarcasm had made it into the robot's programming. Before long, Push was on his way to the control room.

---

"Blueshift to Supercape, come in Supercape," She tried every radio frequency and quantum transmission signal the control room and her own equipment would let her muster. "Emergency in Nichtuberall," With Supercape's plethora of super senses and usual proximity to technology, the only way he'd miss this message was if he .... Well, she didn't want to think about that possibility (though she couldn't stop herself), "Blueshift and Push requesting your assistance. Safe transmission destination available. Use following coordinates for destination location."

[Supercape]

"Blueshift to Supercape, come in Supercape,"

"Blueshift and Push requesting your assistance. Safe transmission destination available. Use following coordinates for destination location."

"What the blazes?" replies Quentin Quill, enjoying a quiet moment in his home, a cup of tea in his hand, a crossword on his lap, and Beethoven playing in the background.

A moment later, and he had opened up a quantum hole between his brain and the destination, and sent out a return signal.

"What seven types of pickle have you got yourself into this time?" he asked. "No...don't answer that. It's probably more than seven...hold on, I'll be there in a moment..."

Shutting down the hole, he changed his tweed jacket and suit into the magnificent sparkling costume of Supercape. With another moments concentration, he managed to entangle the two points: here and there. With the usual distortion of space, time, and other dimensions, he shifted straight to the dimensions given.

Staggering slightly from the disorientation, he reached out to steady himself.

"Someone mind enlightening me?" he asked.

[Quinn]

A door opened behind the blue-caped wonder, and a person who looked like they'd just been through a war walked through. Push used the haft of the hammer as a walking stick, coming in behind Mac; his gait was somewhat pained, but he flatly refused to let the little robot help him along.

"Sorry 'm late. Ran into some trouble on the way here."

Any glances at the interior cameras would show that Push's definition of "trouble" might have qualified for the understatement of the year award. Frankly, the kineticist was rather surprised the place was still intact after they rocked the house, but it was Archeville-tech; probably could take a nuclear blast and still keep running. He turned to both of them, staying on his feet instead of leaning on a wall this time.

"Yo 'cape. Good to see you. Gotta talk fast. Blue and I hit Dok's secret hidey-hole. Wanted to find things. She got here before I did. Pack of monsters tried to jump her from behind. I ran distraction. Destruction. Whatever. Victory, flying tin can man, came in earlier. Blew through mooks who'd stonewalled me in a hangar. Should be a recording somewhere. We won. Yay us."

He took a breath.

"Some...thing...came into the hangar. Looked like Victory. But not Victory. Threw me into a wall like a ragdoll. Picked up the tin can. Started talking smack. I nailed him from behind with the hammer. He grabbed it. Blasted it. Melted it. Sent me across the whole damn hangar. Saw them disappear into portal right before things went black."

He took another breath, then the next words sounded as if he was talking to himself, right before a small barrage of questions hit the others.

"Priorities. Inventory, then rescue. Supercape, what's happening on Earth? Blue, did you find anything? MAC, will you stop buzzing around my head?"

[quotemyname]

"Hey, you said take inventory. Just confirming you still lacked a brain." The little robot seemed to shrug before puttering off toward Blueshift.

"I thought I talked fast." Blueshift smiled at the two of them. She also looked a bit battered. From the tears in her costume to the bags beneath her eyes. It was likely she'd had better days. "I found a few things. Still running analysis and results though. Should be finishing up soon."

"One thing's for sure. Neither Victory or Anti-Victory are still here. Also working on tracking them..."

[Supercape]

"Priorities. Inventory, then rescue. Supercape, what's happening on Earth? "

"All hell broke lose" replied Supercape "some might say literally. But it seems to be recovering, and you know, such disasters often pull people together, even if the spirit is transient..."

"So, any idea how this, err.. Anti-Victory...actually moves around? this portal thing I guess?" he coughed tapping his chin. "Bit bamboozling, I shouldn't wonder..." he muttered. "And who is this Anti-Victory? that's not a good name, by the way. May as well call him 'Defeat' in that case. "

[quotemyname]

"Well, with all the strange multiple dimension stuff kicking around recently I decided to go with the same naming moniker as one might for an alternate dimension Earth. Anti-Earth," Blueshift explained while still striking away at the keyboard with rapid abandon, "Oh man. Speaking of alternate dimensions, I've found something."

"Uh oh! You're not going to like this..." Mac dutifully chimed in as he scurried around tidying up the areas around the consoles.

"Look here," Blueshift pointed to one of the larger screens that was still in tact. She brought up a chart that seemed to be a record of energy fluctuations. Her gauntlet produced a laser pointer and she began to detail the parameters of the graph, "This axis here," she traced along the horizontal, "Represents time since the attacks on Earth began. The point at which the first alarms began blaring being T₀." She traced along the vertical, "This axis is the level of energy, radiation, etc. detected around Nichtuberall. Different colors being different types of rads. This here," She focused the pointer somewhere near the middle, of the graph, then touched to other places along the time axis. "Is my arrival, Pushes arrival, and the moment the fighting stopped. You'll notice this yellow line spikes shortly after push arrives, and drops to nearly nothing about one minute later, an instant before the fighting ceased."

"Gentleman," Blueshift stopped typing for once, and turned to face them, "The yellow is Terminus Energy." Her face was grim.

[Quinn]

"Defeat's apt. Put Vic and I through hell."

Push's face went very flat the second Blueshift mentioned Terminus energy. He stepped up beside her, staring at the screen like he was trying to bore a hole through it with his eyes. One thing Blueshift had become accustomed to while dating the kineticist, and Supercape had seen during the occasional teamup, was that there were very few things that could ruffle Push's feathers, so to speak; he'd remained insouciant while dealing with everything from intergalactic space pirates to eldrich abominations from beyond. Right now, though...this was something that had broken that demeanor. Hard. His voice was slightly unsteady as he kept staring at the screen, the tone one-third shaken, one-third anticipatory, and one-third just flat out stunned.

"...Well. That sucks."

[Supercape]

"Hmmm?" replied Supercape, not entirely following.

"I confess I have studiously avoided the Terminus, and terminus energy" he explained to Push and Blueshift. "Technically it would probably be reachable, as it is entangled up with everything else on a quantum level. But quite frankly, ladies and gentlemen, it gives me the heeby - jeebies, and I avoid it like the bubonic plauge. "

"So, whilst the normal spectrum of energy and matter and all that jazz is quite within the grasp of my feeble mind, this stuff is something I am quite unfamiliar with. And now you say... there is a surge of it? most peculiar. And I guess poor Victory is, where, the Terminus itself?"

[quotemyname]

"That would be the most logical determination, yes." Blueshift frowned, attacking the keyboard once again. "Currently running some files and programs. I invented them to decode energy signatures like this. A little easier than mapping human genomes, actually. Just have to figure out a pattern. Once I have that. Can figure out..." Blueshift's explanation drifted off as she began to concentrate harder.

Thankfully, Mac picked up where she left off, "Basically, she's running some numbers. Decode that surge of energy, and we should be able to figure out where it took Victory, or if he went under his own power, where he's gone off to." The little robot tilted sideways slightly, and the diodes on his chassis glowed orange, "Ya Dig?"

[Supercape]

"Er, yes" replied Supercape, twiddling his thumbs and looking intelligent. "I..um...dig..."

He understood the principle, of course. It would take him days to work out the actual maths, instead of the minutes that Blueshift's turbo-charged brain would. And Supercape was pretty bright as they went.

He consoled himself with the fact he spoke the Queen's English, and was a little older and wiser than Blueshift.

"Well, ah, when you have finished those simple calculations do let me know and I can see about getting us there, assuming that's the plan. I would of course help you, but the maths look so easy, it hardly seems worth my while, and you do it so well..." he added, with a cheeky wink.

[quotemyname]

"Well, ah, when you have finished those simple calculations do let me know and I can see about getting us there, assuming that's the plan. I would of course help you, but the maths look so easy, it hardly seems worth my while, and you do it so well..."

"Done!" Blueshift came very close to cutting off the end of poor Supercape's sentence. "Pencils down. Okay 'Cape take a look:" Once again, as Blueshift's coaxed the keyboard with deft hands, one of the larger screens lit up.

What appeared would make little sense to most of the earth's inhabitants aside from present company and perhaps Dr. Archeville or Stephen Hawking. The raw calculations scrolled rapidly (yet slow enough to read and understand) in a vertical bar on the right side of the screen. Most of the display was dominated by graphic representations and charts describing complex things like gravity wells, time fluctuations, and wormholes.

Blueshift turned to her audience, "Normally I explain what it is that I'm doing. But I have a feeling that that would just waste precious time at this juncture. So, unless you'd like to check my math for the ninety-seven thousand eight hundred sixty-first time, all you need to know is this:" She tapped one last button, and a small alert box appeared in the center of the monitor displaying the complex system of dimensional coordinates that Supercape would need to use to get them to their destination. "I would also normally recommend we prepare for the journey and the mission. But, again, we just don't have the time. If we want to save Victory, we have to get him out of the Terminus ASAP..."

Blueshift tapped one last button. Two things happened, a picture on the screen of a small shuttle appeared below the coordinates, and a hatch spiraled open in a nearby wall. "...And that means that we leave yesterday!" She pointed at the open hatch.

"Attention passengers of Blueshift Supersymmetric Cruises! The captain has advised that you fasten your seat belts at this time." Mac happily zipped around the room, and Blueshift's audience, fussing with torn bits of uniform here, and tightening a cape there, "You are also advised to ensure that your tray tables and seats remain in an upright and locked position until the dimensional craft has completed take-off." Mac moved ahead to hover near the opening to the dimensional craft, the lights on his chassis lit up in sequence creating a flow of dots that moved in the direction of the shuttle, vaguely reminiscent of the lights on the floor of a passenger jet, "Once again, this is Blueshift Supersymmetric Cruises thanking you for you business and wishing you all a safe flight." Noting that neither Supercape or Push moved to enter that craft very quickly the little robot's diodes glowed red, and he inclined his chassis toward them. It was a surprisingly human gesture of anger, "That means 'move', people!"

[Supercape]

"I hope this contraption works..." muttered Supercape as he strode into the craft.

Well, it would be an experience anyway.

"...in any case, if not, I can do the job...errr....I think I can do the job, that is..." he added thoughtfully. Truth was he didn't exactly know where he was going. Returning would be a lot easier once he had got his bearings.

Well, he thought it would be anyway.

He dutifully strapped himself in once seated.

"Bomb's away, chaps!" he joked as he gave the belt a final tighten.

[Quinn]

Push was out the door the second the shuttle came up on screen. For a guy who'd been in fairly rough shape, he definitley moved like he had a purpose; for all that he couldn't stand the big blue bucket of bolts, no way was he leaving him hanging in the middle of the end of all things. But that dude definitley owed him a really big-huge dinner. Probably at a really expensive restaraunt. Either him or AEGIS footing the bill. Gotta be really classy. He'd check the phone book when they got back.

At Mac's glowing red, Push almost absently swatted the little robot on the back of the chassy as usual, clomping up the ramp. For a moment he looked at the haft of the hammer still in his hand, knuckles almost white from the pressure of his grip. There'd be a reckoning. Some day. But the rescue was all that mattered here now.

"Blue, Victory's got a breather for high altitudes and space; Defeat's probably going to be armed with the same, and a lotta heavy hardware. If he shows up, leave him to me and Supercape; 'cape, we'll need emergency co-ordinates to anywhere that's not there once we've got him on board. And MAC?"

He leaned down by the robot, and spoke very quietly, lower than 'cape or Blueshift could hear; then he finished heading up the ramp and fairly flopped into a seat beside the two, the quiet words he'd spoken echoing in his ears.

"If that Terminus-powered rustbucket manages to take down 'cape and me and comes for you two, don't wait, don't fight. Get her the hell out of there by any means neccessary, even if she won't go. Emergency override, authorization Gabriel Quinn."

[quotemyname]

"Blue, Victory's got a breather for high altitudes and space; Defeat's probably going to be armed with the same, and a lotta heavy hardware. If he shows up, leave him to me and Supercape; 'cape, we'll need emergency co-ordinates to anywhere that's not there once we've got him on board. And MAC?"

"Yea, no problem. I usually play set-up and distraction anyway." Blueshift responded as they all filed into the pod. She quickly got down on her hands and knees and accessed the service panel under the vehicle's controls, "I'll support you guys how I can, but I'm a smart fighter. No way I'm letting someone with a portable nuke anywhere near me." She began to rummage through a slew of tangled wires and other components busy as a bee.

Blueshift was fully oblivious when Push made his aside to her pet robot:

"If that Terminus-powered rustbucket manages to take down 'cape and me and comes for you two, don't wait, don't fight. Get her the hell out of there by any means neccessary, even if she won't go. Emergency override, authorization Gabriel Quinn."

"Emergency Override Recognized. Authorized User: Gabriel Quinn. Protocol recognized, received, logged, processing." Mac was almost trance-like for a moment as he registered the new programming. Some of his original programing still remained, causing him to be noticeably robotic when receiving such orders. Then something strange happened: The lights on his chassis turned a dull forest green, and he looked up at push with what felt so much like a very human sense of respect it was scary. Blueshift really knew her stuff when she programmed this particular rust bucket. When Mac spoke, he used a tone of voice that Push didn't recognize. He'd never heard the robot being seriously somber before, "Don't think the fact that orders become recorded and registered makes me say this lightly: You don't have to tell me twice. Nothing short of my physical destruction down to the last diode is going to keep me from that particular goal." A tiny arm extended and rested on Push's shoulder, an almost brotherly gesture, "You take care of the mission. I'll take care of my master." The arm retracted and the little robot turned to go, but offered one last sidelong remark, "Don't you dare go getting distracted by her safety and risk your own, or that of Victory and Supercape. Eyes on the prize, Push. If she survives this and you don't... Well... I don't even want to think about how upset she's going to be. I'm not sure all the subroutines in the world could let me handle that." And with that, the tiny robot floated to a docking station at the side of the pod and hooked itself in, becoming stationary.

"Got it!" Blueshift's call jolted Push's attention back to the situation at hand. She was crawling out from under the instrument horizon, "Here you go, Supercape." Blueshift pulled a small cylinder out of one of the pouches on her belt of gadgets. At the click of a button, it extended becoming about a foot and a half long. Two hatches opened on either end of the rod. Blueshift reached down, pulled a bundle of wires and plugged them into one end of the rod. She did likewise with another bundle, and then offered the rod to Supercape, "Put your hands on here. You should be able to channel your dimensional warping powers through the ship with this. Think of it as kind of like a super tech hot wiring. If you channel your powers through the ship, it should get us all there in one piece at the same time. You remember the coordinates?" After Supercape accepted the device, Blueshift moved to one of the seats in the cockpit and strapped herself in.

She didn't look back, she sat and stared out the cockpit windshield, "Well, no turning back now, boys. Cross your fingers. This might get bumpy."

In the seconds before the ship made the inter-dimensional jump, it was all she could do to keep from shaking in her boots. She had never been to the Terminus before. This was a once in a lifetime chance. She was torn between titillation and terror. She couldn't decide if she was excited, happy, afraid, or just hysterical, Probably just afraid, she thought, You're afraid of everything, Her expression soured a little, and she gripped the arms of the chair with whitening knuckles as Supercape clasped the rod...

[JackgarPrime]

GM

As the rescue squad makes the jump, the entire world seems to swirl around them. The colors of their own space blink out, washed away in a torrent of sickening orange light. The change comes quickly, but is disorienting all the same, the feel of their very subconscious being hit with a pulse of energy, only to be gone as soon as they'd feel it. As the feeling passes, they'd find themselves staring out of the cockpit into a scene of utter desolation. A sky of that same horrible orange they could nearly taste on their way in filled the sky. The skyline in the distance visibly crumbling in large chunks even as they look at it. The immediate surroundings, as far as they were aware, seemed to be blasted rock, scorched through, with traces of a very familiar-looking energy noticeable even from their seats. A bolt of red light flashes beyond the ruined scape, as though a lightning bolt.

This must be the place.