ic [Gorgon] Plan Bee [IC]

[Avenger Assembled]

September 21, 2011

Freedom Hall

Under normal circumstances, Freedom Hall might be evacuating through the teleporters rather than through the garden, but then it was only recently that Freedom Hall had gained the services of the famous Fleur de Joie. Lacking the power to journey into space, and having freshly returned from his unsuccessful visit to Heaven, Freedom Angel was focused on the people now, moving through the small crowd of citizens who had been called up as part of the League's emergency evacuation program: there were heroes' families here and dependents, a sampling of survival experts and doctors, anybody who could help set up a camp on an alien world and maintain it long enough for the heroes of Freedom City to save the day.

"God is watching everything we do," Freedom Angel assured the small group of families; mostly Navy families from Lonely Point, who were next on the list, "and He watches over us even now. Have no doubt that with His guidance and with the courage and skill of the Freedom League and the other heroes of the world, we will save this planet and everyone on it."

"So why do we have to go?" asked a combative-looking girl of about 12, giving the angel a suspicious look. "If everything's going to be okay, why can't I stay with my mom?" Her dad was holding her, hands on her shoulders, but it looked like he had questions for the angel as well, and even as he heard the little fwoop that signaled a successful transfer of the other group, the angel knew he had to say something to satisfy these frightened people.

"Because we need your mom to help save the world," replied the angel seriously. "The base at Lonely Point is helping coordinate the League's war with the Gorgon and her creatures in the depths of space. And if your mom knows, and if all your families know," he added, speaking now to the larger group, "they'll be able to concentrate on helping save the world, not just worrying about the ones they love. It's a tough duty," he added. "I know you would rather stay here with the ones you love. But this is a sacrifice we have to make the world that we know and love can be guarded. Sanctuary is a fine, green place," he promised the others as he opened the garden door. "You will love it. Fleur, are we ready for the next group?" he called.

[Electra]

"Yes, send them in," Fleur called from the garden. She already had a portal open, a massive sunflower the size of an above-ground pool turned sideways, through which the civilian staging area on Sanctuary was visible. All hands were on deck for this emergency, with the Sanctuary natives guiding groups of refugees to where they needed to go, and the bees giving rides or pulling carts to get everyone where they needed to go. It was chaotic, but so far the chaos was organized, and that was all she could hope for.

The past month had been a busy whirl of preparations as Sanctuary's usable land was quintupled in size, but even then, it wouldn't safely hold more than a few thousand people. Stesha knew she'd done the best she could, but it was still a pang in her heart. She'd refused to have any say in choosing the refugee population, beyond her own family members who were already on the other side and helping out. There was no way she could make the choice. As usual, Amaryllis was snug in her sling against her mother's chest, sucking a pacifier and watching the show.

[Avenger Assembled]

By the time the last evacuation group of the day had been transferred over to Sanctuary, Amaryllis had needed a diaper change and a feeding. Freedom Angel hadn't flagged in his tireless efforts to keep the evacuees calm and ordered, taking advantage of an angel's endurance as best he could. He'd sent through what congregants of his own he'd managed to volunteer, making the choice of sacrifice and salvation that his maker had made so many centuries earlier, but it was still a stressful time even for a messenger of the Almighty. "All right, I believe we are just waiting for the other heroes, and then we can all slip the bonds of this globe for yours for the night. Are you well?" he asked Fleur solicitously. "Do you need to recuperate?"

[Electra]

"Tired," Stesha admitted, closing the portal with a wave of her hand and bouncing on her heels to soothe an increasingly cranky baby. "But I imagine we'll be working through most of the evening to get everyone settled in and fed, then see if Gaian Knight can whip together some more shelters in the new acre I cleared yesterday. If we get some shelter, can get some of the bees to carry water while the stream is filtering through the earth wall, we could take an extra few hundred tomorrow..."

She trailed off, looking at Freedom Angel with eyes that held little of their customary good cheer. "Heyzel, what are we even doing here?" she asked. "We've worked so hard, but there are so many people, we aren't even making a dent. It feels so hopeless." Her voice caught for a moment as she rubbed her daughter's tiny back.

[Avenger Assembled]

"We are saving who we can and what we can, against a disaster that we all pray will not come," said the angel with his usual honesty. "Every day, whether in green hood or divine armor, you and I and all the others go out and fight for mankind. Not because we expect to win every battle that first day, not even because we believe we can triumph over all evils. But because there is a need, and we are there to fill it." He sighed. "As for the current threat, humanity has faced extinction before and survived. I have faith that mankind will save the Earth. But faith is no bar to action; the kind of action we are taking right now."

[alderwitch]

"It always seems to feel the most hopeless right before dawn," the voice was quiet and polite as Psyche and Phalanx dropped in from the sky. Despite the shining fabric of their costumes, even the two Terminus-children looked weary. Neither of them wore masks so the faint lines bracketing eyes and mouths were quite visible on their still so young faces. "Excuse me, we heard you could use some help on shelter fabrications. I'm Psyche, this is Phalanx if you don't remember us. I've got matter creation and reconstruction, he's got super speed and heavy lifting so just point us where you need us."

She dropped to her booted feet, a polite distance away and offered a warm smile despite looking like she'd been on her feet for some time, radiating a calm that didn't match either her age or the situation even slightly, "You've a lovely baby."

[Electra]

"Thank you," Fleur said, mustering a tired smile for the young heroes. "She needs a meal and her bed, then she'll be much more pleasant. And I absolutely welcome all the help we can get. We've got more than five thousand refugees on Sanctuary already, many of them the families of superheroes or people the League considers to have irreplaceable skills. Did you know they had a plan for this?" she asked with a short, humorless laugh. "That's so strange, but it does make sense. Who do you take along in case the world is ending?"

She paused and seemed to shake herself. "In any case, yes, by all means. Gaian Knight and Dark Star will meet us on the other side of the portal. Are you both ready now?"

[angrydurf]

Phalanx was tired, He'd been ferrying equipment to the Lighthouse for the past several days interspersed with scouting the fringes of the solar system for signs of the gorgons arrival. He hadn't imagined that things could have grown so desperate that they were actually evacuating people to other worlds or at the least another world but when the League had called on him to aid the evacuees he had responded. His family had earned a spot with his service here but when he went to collect them they had refused insisting they deserved a spot no more than anyone else. IT had been a difficult good bye.

Looking off towards the city he nodded affirmation and laid one hand on his Fiances shoulder, "As ready as one can be." He intoned solemnly, "I imagine the league has plans for many eventualities." he added as he turned towards the waiting portal.

[Avenger Assembled]

Sanctuary was a lovely world these days, or at least it was in the area around where Fleur de Joie and Gaian Knight had been working for so many months to make the area green and livable. With thousands of evacuees living in emergency shelters ranging from actual houses to tents, conditions were considerably less pleasant: if the unthinkable did happen and they were cut off from Earth-Prime by the great disaster, the heroes here were going to have to work hard to make things livable even in the medium-term. But they had supplies and powers enough for everyone evacuated to live in something like comfort, and there was something to be said for that.

As Fleur de Joie and the others stepped out of the big flower nearby her house, the sound of screaming rent the air from nearby! One of the nearby shelters was in flames from who knew what cause, the structure of wood and earth burning from the roof down, and a crowd was gathering: Fleur and Freedom Angel recognized what was going on with sick horror. That was no ordinary house; that was one of the clinic buildings! "Someone help! We have people stuck in there," shouted one of the civilians (Fleur recognized him as Floyd, one of the locals who'd volunteered to help), looking overjoyed at the sight of her and her companions. "It's Fleur de Joie and the others! She'll help us!"

[angrydurf]

Phalanx snapped into action as he caught sight of the flames. "We have to get those people out before we fight the blaze." he said urgently as he headed into motion training from his civilian life leaping to the fore. "Contain the fire, wetting down the surrounding buildings should keep it from spreading." he suggested urgently, "Continual flow if possible." he wasn't exactly sure what all of them were capable off and likely could have extinguished the blaze himself in short order with a puff from his mighty lungs but such could be quite harmful for those trapped inside the burning building. Rescue, Containment, Suppression, There was an order to these things and he'd had it well drilled into him in the academy. "I'll head in and start rescue operations, can you set up some sort of triage area?" he asked the others but was gone in a flash of blue and gold without waiting for an answer beginning a systematic search of the building at staggering speeds.

[Electra]

Stesha's eyes widened as she raced towards the scene and caught sight of the climbing flames, the screaming people. Her first instinct was to teleport in, rescue anyone who was still caught, but her hands were tied by the delicate bundle strapped to her chest. "Heyzel, can you help them?" she asked, her voice tense. "I can heal anyone who's been burned, just so long as you get them out alive! Over here!" she called, waving to the lead medic. "Bring the wounded over here, away from the fire zone!" Amaryllis was wailing full-throatedly now, but Stesha could do no more than give her a stroke on the back as an apology. Rest and food would wait a little while longer.

[Avenger Assembled]

The fire was burning hot and fierce, so bright that there wasn't even much smoke. That made it easier for the heroes in some respects, tougher in others: though smoke inhalation wasn't much of a hazard for Phalanx and Freedom Angel as they rescued a half-dozen patients from the clinic, Heyzel wound up with scorched feathers on his wings and Phalanx's cape was a good foot shorter by the time they were done. Their prompt action had saved lives, but not for long without medical care. Though healing others was tough for him, Freedom Angel joined Psyche and Fleur in tending to the wounded people, triaging the most badly hurt so they could concentrate on those who could most readily be saved.

Despite his pessimism, the last man he'd saved turned out to still be living once Fleur had fixed up the doctor with the burned face and his patient who'd scorched her arm on an overheated metal door, and Psyche had saved the couple who'd been waiting in the front door when the flashfire from inside had alighted their clothes. "He was wrapped around that little girl like a shroud," he said, pointing to the white-faced six-year-old who was looking around in shock. "And they were at the heart of the blaze. He took the pain for himself, and saved her, he...oh."

Unfamiliar with non-humans, in the crisis Freedom Angel had mistaken the red skin and lipless face for the victim of third degree burns or worse: up close, the four heroes could all identify the last man out of the burnt clinic as a badly-burned Grue.

[Fox]

Somewhere between the last of the rescues and the unveiling of the grue a piece of wood toppled, its connection to its surrounding supports burnt away by the raging fire that had all but consumed it anyway. It fell, unseen, and hit the earth...and the earth hit back.

Jagged spines of solid stone and flowing snakes of dirt pulled up out of the ground, coming together to form a tall, seamless wall around what was left of the immolated clinic; the open top knitted together to form a lattice of earth to let the heat and smoke out but the sparks in, and so preserve the neighboring buildings. Gaian Knight may have showed up pretty late to the party, but this apparently wasn't his first burning building.

"I couldn't feel anybody else in there," he said, quickly bringing the large, flat-topped rock he was standing on closer to the assembled heroes - some he recognized, some he didn't - and running a hand back through his hair. "Looked like you'd gotten everybody already - sorry I didn't get here in time. I didn't even know anything was wrong until I got close enough to see it; I lost track of time putting up some tempor...ary....?"

He trailed off, standing on his rock, blinking behind his goggles at the burnt man and then glancing to the heroes and back again. ".....that's a Grue. Isn't it? What the hell is a Grue doing here?"

[angrydurf]

"Good work Everyone." Phalanx said as he came to rest having ensured the small building was clear before Gaian Knight had so capably contained the blaze. He stepped up to offer what minor aid he could to the wounded and assisted with triage until the Grue was revealed. He immediately stepped forward placing himself between the Grue and most of the onlookers. He looked at the alien uncertainly, "What is your purpose here?" he asked in a ringing tone. The motives of the Grue were a mystery to him but he knew they were rarely in line with the public good. And yet this one had saved a human child at great personal risk. It bore investigation at the least.

[Avenger Assembled]

The Grue opened his eyes and looked around, drawing in a gasp that turned into a hiss of pain: he didn't seem to be trying to shapeshift, rather he seemed to be in so much pain he could hardly move. With that in mind, enemy alien though this was and as exhausting as the effort would be, the angel of Freedom bent to heal his burns. Casting his eyes wildly about, the Grue finally focused on those who'd been speaking to him. In a slow, painful hiss, he whispered, "Understand...owe you my life...but will not speak. Do with me what you will." Even when his burns had healed, at least enough that he was no longer actually suffering, the Grue didn't move, just look up at his captors with suspicious, frightened eyes.

"Your name is Amanda Smith," said Heyzel, looking at the little girl who the Grue had been so badly hurt saving. As sympathetically as he could, which was very sympathetic indeed, he stooped to as of her"I recognize your face from the League's manifests. Where are your parents?" Even as reassuring as the angel was, the little girl shook her head, hugging her arms to her chest, and looked away.

[Electra]

"He may be a Grue," Fleur decided in a steady voice, "but he's injured and needs attention. Get some water for him," she instructed one of the medics. "Does anyone know what caused the fire?"

Heyzel had done as much healing on the injured Grue as could be done for now, and Phalanx was keeping an eye out for any trouble. Joining Heyzel by the little girl, she knelt down on the ground, one hand on Ammy's back to steady the load. "It's all right, sweetheart," she murmured to the frightened little girl. "You're safe here and nothing is going to hurt you. My name is Fleur, and this is Freedom Angel. Do you know where your mommy and daddy are?"

[alderwitch]

"No one means you any harm," Psyche assured the grue as Fleur had the little girl well in hand, extending that soothing aura of calm from her. Her white costume was soot streaked in more than a few places but her smile was genuine as she extended one hand out, palm outward in a gesture of good will and went to take the water from the medic and hand it over. In addition to her own not insignificant protections, she trusted Phalanx with her protection. She always would.

Kneeling on the ground, she extended the cup to him, taking a sip from it herself first and then simply holding it out to be taken. "In the field, everyone calls me Psyche. This is Phalanx."

She left the names of the other heroes out for a moment as while she knew Phalanx wouldn't mind her offering their information to the Grue in question, she didn't want to presume for the others.

[Fox]

Gaian Knight frowned a little and looked around, running a hand through his hair again and sighing. So many hurt people....

He couldn't heal, really, or at least not that he knew of; he didn't want to crowd the little girl, either, as much as it hurt to see her so frightened. Though, speaking of frightened, he doubted the natives would know anything of Grue but if any of the refugees that had been filing in caught sight of their new patient...no, that wouldn't be helpful at all. That, at least, he could do something about.

The ground moved again, but slowly this time, almost gently. Bits of stone and dirt carefully pulled up into the air, flowing together into the uniform walls of a make-shift, open-topped building. More a shack, really; the hero had made it as large as he could, but the point was to protect prying eyes from their own hurt, panic-filled minds, not impede anybody from getting to those in need.

"Privacy," he supplied, with a lopsided smile that was more tired explanation than an attempt at a joke. "And - no offense, miss," he offered the frightened girl, giving her a friendly smile and as polite a bow as he could in the space he had, " - but you looked like you could use a wall to put your back to, hmm?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"...no," said the little girl, shooting frightened glances at her burnt rescuer and back at the adults as she drank the cool water. She was mostly unburnt, with just a few red patches here and there, but her hair had been scorched by the fire. "I mean, uh, I don't know." She licked her lips nervously. "My...my mommy is waiting for us back at the shelter. I just came here to get some bandages for our first aid kit because it was all out..." She shifted from foot to foot, obviously frightened, and obviously concealing something from the adults looking at her. She took a step back against the wall erected by Gaian Knight, her eyes very wide. "Can't we just go back?"

For his part, the angel was looking from the girl to the Grue who'd rescued her, and back again. ...oh, my sweet Lord. He seriously considered not saying a word, but couldn't keep a secret like this from his fellow heroes. Instead, he simply chose to speak and let them draw what conclusions they drew from it. "Let us take these two to their home, and keep their secret as our own until we can make sure there are no secret threats here."

[Electra]

"What?" Stesha asked, looking up at Heyzel in confusion for a moment before his words sunk in. Suddenly, the scene made more sense, even if there were far too many questions still unanswered for her liking. Getting to her feet, she gently guided the little girl over to where the burnt Grue was still laying. She was very grateful for the wall Gaian Knight had put up, but suspected its dubious privacy wouldn't last too long. "See, everyone is all right," she told the little girl.

To the adult Grue, she gave a more stern, though still not hostile look. "We have some questions that we need you to answer," she told him firmly. "As long as you don't try and attack anyone, nothing bad is going to happen. What are you doing here?"

[Fox]

Gaian Knight was frowning again, chewing on the new - and subtle - revelation. It explained a lot, at the very least...and he had to admit, it humanized the normally-suspicious Grue. I guess 'humanized' probably isn't very polite...hm.

"I can get us all there," he offered, waving a hand as if to dismiss the admittedly not-insignificant effort that'd take as trivially unimportant, "above ground or under it, whichever people prefer. I'm gonna need to know where the shelter is, though...we've been putting up a lot of those lately, and I don't think this is something we want to drop in the wrong person's lap."

[Avenger Assembled]

The Grue was silent for a long time, his body slowly, fitfully reshaping itself back into the face of a man. Finally, he said, "I came to this planet ten of your years ago. As I lived among humans, my connection to the Meta-Mind faded, so I was targeted and captured when we came again in 2003." He shot a guilty look at his daughter as she tensed and said, "It's all right, my angel. They know. We have to tell them the truth now, just as we did Mr. Fox." He looked at the heroes again and said, "I was on the ship that crashed into the football stadium, after Daedalus disabled our navigation system. I was in a cell, so I survived. It was hours before our ship was occupied, I had time to search..." He closed his eyes in remembered pain. "I had hoped more podlings had survived, but only one birthing chamber had gone unbroken. Amanda has been my child from that moment on."

[angrydurf]

Arriving at the more private location Phalanx cocked his head to one side as he thought over the Grues story. He was no expert on the Grue to be certain but some of this just didn't make sense with what he had learned in last years invasion. "Cell?" he asked uncertainly, "Severed from the Meta Mind?" He was a little lost at all this and glanced to Psyche and the others for some explanation feeling a bit out of his depth. "What exactly does that mean?" he turned to the others to address them more directly, "And can we trust anything he says?" he added uncertainly. The Grue certainly seemed to have some heroic impulse which was a plus in Phalanxs mind but the grue were master infiltrators and one could not be too careful.

[Avenger Assembled]

"In their current state, Grue are half-souled; their wills and minds enslaved near-inescapably to the Meta-Mind," said the angel of Freedom, sorrow and grief in his voice for the predicament of the shapeshifting aliens. "Those who are away long enough, and around enough other free species, may be lucky enough to free their souls and become fully sentient beings in their own right. It is a blasphemy what the Meta-Mind does to its people, telling even those with their own wills that it is their holy destiny to serve a collective consciousness that does naught but grope for its own power." And if anyone should know, it was the angel! "If they recaptured him, perhaps they sought ways to make sure the 'taint' of freedom did not spread to others." He studied the Grue for a moment, and the frightened little girl at his side who looked just barely able to hold her own shape. "He tells the truth as he knows it, Grue telepathy or otherwise. I doubt the Meta-Mind could give him illusions of escape like that. Slavemasters never can understand the motivations of free men. And the rest of you?" he asked the other heroes.