ic Faded Giant [IC]

[trollthumper]

"There was nothing left of them," said Citizen Bomb, shaking his head. "I do not know whether that's a blessing or just another crime." He approached the bodies of the dead Spetsnaz, poised in case any of them decided to get back up. "We will make sure they are buried with full honors. It is the least we can do."

"And what least it is," said Nightwatchman. Already he was moving forward, cutting open the tattered and thread-bare blouse of one of the soldiers. He inspected the body, then looked to the others. "The same markings. They were prepared the same way as your victim. And left to wait for a long time, if the state of their clothing is any indicator."

"Yeah, but for what?" asked Cannonade. Four guys in Moscow, one in the Pine Barrens. Why'd they be waking up now?"

Meanwhile, Wander and Midnight, scanning the crowd, noticed one man who was watching the bodies closely. Perhaps a little too closely. And as they went over the fight in their heads, they realized he'd been one of the few people who wasn't running in panic - he'd kept his distance, but remained stock still with a soldier's resolve. And now that it was all over, he was turning to leave...

[Electra]

Wander glanced at Midnight and noticed him looking the same way she was. With a jerk of her head to indicate where she was going, she slipped through the crowd, dodging bodies and keeping her eye on the retreating stranger. Within moments, she'd cleared the crowd and was catching up to the man. Keeping her bat sheathed, she caught him by the arm and swung him around in one practiced movement, the same way she'd nab a civilian at HAX who'd wandered out of the public areas. "You seem pretty interested in everything that's going on," she noted, her voice neutral. "Is there anything you want to tell us about what's happening here?"

[trollthumper]

The man Wander grabbed was elderly, with steel gray hair and a face wrinkled like an old map. But he was lean and tough like jerky, and looked like any match for a normal person of his age. Then again, Wander was anything but normal, and the man knew this, as he didn't so much as struggle in her grasp. "You found the one on your coast, did you?" he asked. "Good. That is one mistake down."

"What kind of mistake?" Nightwatchman was there in the blink of an eye, his face hidden within the folds of his cowl. "These are your creation?"

"Creation?" The old man let out a bitter laugh. "They're a miscarriage, one we decided to put in a crib and treat like any other baby." He adjusted himself, trying to act as natural as he could despite Wander's grip. "Misha Strogolev, Soviet Army. Retired, of course."

"Yeah, well, forgive me if I don't salute," Cannonade said. "You called 'em a miscarriage. You mean these guys didn't turn out as intended?"

"You say that like they were supposed to 'turn out' at all. We lost the Fifth in Dyaltov Pass when they were sent to investigate the anomaly. When we found them, they were ravening, screaming in alien tongues, no better than rabid dogs. Some argued that we put them down, give them the honor of a peaceful death. But... they were gone. There was no them to kill. What was left were these beings, riding around in human flesh. We realized their potential all too well - it took three Spetsnaz groups to bring them in, with a good deal of loss. If they could be controlled... handled..."

"The glyphs," said Morning Star. "Those were your idea."

Strogolev nodded. "We had to make it work, of course. You tell your superiors you're using 'magic spells,' you're cleaning out a toilet stall in Siberia by the time the week's out. 'Superdense linguistic constructs', however, was just secular enough to work. We had the aliens in their cages, bound on our leash. We knew what we were facing - the fears of the West were fears of our own. Who would be the first to push that damnable button. But... we had bombs that could think. Weapons that could respond to external stimuli and adapt. And, after a decade passed with no age or decay, we realized they could wait for a long time."

"That guy in the Pine Barrens... you sent him over, had him hiding out in the woods, just in case the flag went up?"

"Your Barrens are a large, mostly unclaimed forest - a good place to hide, for one who does not have to do a lot of moving. And, quite close to both Manhattan and Washington..."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Where are the rest of them?" asked Edge with uncommon perspicacity. Anyone else might have looked absurd in colorful cape and costume as he faced down the Soviet survivor, but the sheer force of his suspicion and anger made him a golden beacon of justice there on the crowded street. "The other soldiers who were changed like this. Or..." His eyes narrowed. "Did you forget about them? Did you just let power pour into their bodies and leave them laying around like they were bombs, instead of your own people?"

[Gizmo]

"Not their people..." Midnight noted slowly, disconcertingly drawing attention to the spot where he had previously been going unnoticed. "Corpses. Husks. Beings trapped within." The black clad vigilante's voice was cold and even unlike Edge's righteous indignation. If Mark's tone conveyed disgust and disbelief, this gravely rumble suggested both a cynical lack of surprise and a dark promise of consequences to be enforced. "Prisoners of war turned into suicide bombers, wrapped in desecrated remains of fallen soldiers."

[Electra]

Wander tightened her grip on the soldier further, stopping just shy of actual injury. "I think there are quite a few people who are going to want to talk to you about exactly what you did to these people," she warned. "But first, you're going to tell us exactly where the rest of them are so that we can stop them before they hurt anybody else." The idea that anyone would deliberately try and weaponize a zombie was sickening, to the point where she kept her hands locked around the man's wrists as much for fear of what she might do as to keep him from escaping.

[trollthumper]

"What 'we' did?" Strogolev shook his head. "These men were already dead by the time we found them. As I said, there was nothing left. We had our best psychics go over them - they were hollow, nothing more than meat. With the men gone, we tried to communicate with the passengers - to address them on equal terms. It was impossible. You might as well try to establish terms with a bonfire. And they had a penchant for destruction unlike anything we'd ever seen..." He stopped himself, as if realizing this wasn't helping his case. "I was one of the first to suggest they be put down. To grant some honor to the lost. But in doing so, we risked letting the aliens loose. If that had happened -- "

Strogolev grew very still as Nightwatchman suddenly appeared at his back, a bit too close for comfort. "Nothing that annoys me more," he said, "than veteran Party members prattling on in defense of their own souls. Get to the point, old man."

The veteran cleared his throat. "We didn't forget them - or at least, we did not mean to. But the project was top secret, at best, and... so much was lost in the fall. I had been transferred off of it a decade past, and it had undergone so many name changes in that time that it was near impossible to find. We lost the control codes, the launch signals, even the master glyphs. They were off the map, well and truly, and I thought they'd stay that way until doomsday."

"So what changed?" Cannonade said. "You think someone else found the keys?"

"If they did, and had any idea what they were doing, your man wouldn't have been wandering around aimlessly. Nor would these four have gone on a simple rampage. No, something is overriding the control sigils, something powerful enough to stir the sympathies. We long theorized what saturated Kholat Syakhl with that much radiation... and now I know. The things that were left behind? They were mere remoras, coasting on the bodies of something larger. Now the shark is coming back."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Great. Well, hm," said Edge, thinking out loud. He certainly wasn't about to recommend they let this guy go; it was a temptation to suggest Wander turn him over and shake him until more truth came out. "Do we need to go to Kholat Syakhl and wait for it to arrive?" he asked aloud, trying to get the others' input. Everyone knew how fast he could get them there. "Or should we try and intercept this thing in space? With the Lighthouse, there are a lot more eyes in the sky now than there were in the 1950s the first time this thing showed up." Back then there hadn't been a Liberty League OR a Freedom League, in fact. Was that why whatever creature was behind this had gone to the Soviet Union? It was an unpleasant thought.

[trollthumper]

"That would be wise," said Morning Star. "Already there are whispers in the halls of Dazbog. A new star is charging into the sky, one that hungers like Simargl himself. But it is my mansion, too, and I know its halls well."

"I'm... going to take your word on it," said Cannonade, chalking up half of that to some gap in translation. He looked to Nightwatchman and Crimson Bomb. "You coming?"

"We will stay down here," said Crimson Bomb. "If that thing get closer, more of those hosts will wake. It would be best if we stayed down here to respond as fast as possible. Though I believe Zorya has volunteered her services."

"Hey, she knows the territory. Not turning that down." He was trying to sound confident, but nervousness kept running through it like a current. This was space. He'd been to many places in his time as a hero - Boston, Switzerland, Tian - but the straight-up vacuum of space was a first for him. He closed his eyes when he was sure nobody was looking - and when he opened them again, he was looking down on the planet he had just left. Edge must have teleported the group up while he was trying to maintain his composure. It was safe to say the sudden change in scenery wasn't helping.

Especially the strange, indescribable blur that hung out of the corner of his eye.

"I take it that's why you're here?"

Cannonade turned suddenly to find Pseudo standing behind them at full attention. "I noticed it two hours ago. It has been having unfortunate effects on Freedom League communications. I was going to head down to the surface when I noticed the intrusion."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Pseudo, you've been out in space," said Edge, hands on the glass as he stared unashamedly at the unnameable thing in the deep black sky. "Have you ever seen anything like this before?" Most people didn't know Pseudo was a Grue with decades of experience in space and elsewhere; most people weren't the son of Rick Lucas. "...If you don't know, we need to get a Javelin out there. Maybe in suits." He drummed his fingers on the glass, feeling momentarily unsettled by the sight of so much raw, alien power. It was terribly alien; at the same time it was all terribly familiar.

[trollthumper]

Pseudo looked out onto the storm with no name, his brow furrowed. "This..." He shook his head. "This is something I have not seen. Or I have, and have never known it as alive. There is a... rhythm, within its depths, that carries the beat of life, something that I would not find in a solar wind or a pulsar. But beneath that rhythm there is... nothing but a tide. Drawing and expanding, rushing in and out. You might as well try to read a black hole."

"...yeah, something tells me it doesn't come in peace."

"I do not think peace is an option - or even recognizable for the entity. It is a force, or views itself as such. But with the tides come the great waves. And I would rather not see this wash over Earth."

The members of the Liberty League suited up for the harshness of vacuum. Morning Star raised her hand to Pseudo's offer, standing on the cusp of the airlock like a swimmer waiting to dive into the ocean. When the bay doors open, she was first out, pushing past the rapid acceleration of the Javelin, sword at the ready.

"We will make contact with the entity in one minute," said Pseudo. "Be ready to push out."

Cannonade tried to focus on the aura, but... it was a bit tricky. Without the Lighthouse, and with only a few yards of... okay, it was an impervium alloy, but it was still enough to give him pause. Looking at the thing from the depths of space made him feel something like fear. Actually being in the depths of space made him feel small.

But he couldn't get existential. Not at a time like this. He took his position at the cargo bay. "Ready when you guys are," he said over the comms.

[Electra]

Erin secured her gloves and rechecked her breathing apparatus, the sound of her own breath loud in her ears. It reminded her of the times she'd gone snorkeling on vacation in Puget Sound, how the world had been so quiet but for the lap of water and her own lungs. Now there weren't even any waves, and there was nothing but herself. "Just a second," she said aloud, maybe just a little louder than necessary for the sake of banishing the silence. The helmet cut off her peripheral vision some, but she could see the others around her, making their own final checks. She took a couple of steps closer to Trevor and pretended to help check his suit. He didn't need it, Midnight's gear was always in good order.

"Well, here's another first," she murmured to him with a wry smile. Touching her gloved hand once to his suited arm, she pushed off in the direction of the hatchway, moving like someone who'd been eluding gravity for years.

[Gizmo]

Trevor gave Erin a small grin, the expression only just readable behind his black mask and the faceplate of his spacesuit. The young man took a moment to inwardly chastise himself for putting off the trip to space the couple had been planning for a while, but in his own defense they had been kept a little busy for that magnitude of vacation. Regardless, they were there now, about to do battle with an alien entity for the fate of the world. Head in the game, then. Triple-checking all of his equipment, he prepared himself.

[trollthumper]

The Pegasus came to rest not two hundred feet out from the mass of light. At Pseudo's signal, the group pushed out from the vessel, the jets on their space suits quickly closing the distance. The guiding intelligence of the colors began to flash at a quicker pace, like lightning in a surging storm. It wasn't a comforting sight.

"The rhythm is changing," said Pseudo. "It knows we are here. What we are. What we want."

None of that was comforting to Cannonade, especially as he saw the mass of light begin to diffuse. What looked like tendrils began to drift through the depths of space, burning white hot. But as he drew closer, he saw how tightly knit the central mass was. The light was almost tangible, both energy and matter. At the heart of it, through the glimpses of burning crimson-cyan, he saw something so dense it could almost be solid.

Hell, it might almost be breakable.

"All right. Let's show this thing why it should've chosen a different planet for day care."

[Avenger Assembled]

"All right, keep an eye out for space monsters!" Edge called to the others, his voice coming over the comm systems, hanging back to get a better view of the battlefield. Mark had been to space before, of course; his first visit had been when he was just a little kid with his dad, but generally they weren't in combat with space-horrors at the time. That would be a terrible father-son trip. Good choice, dad."This seems like the kind of thing that might have unspeakable creatures from beyond space and time hanging out to scavenge anyone who gets too close." He studied the solid thing that drifted obscenely there amid the swirling, unable to suppress a shudder of disgust. "That thing's really gross. If you've still got those charges, Midnight, this is probably a good time for them. Everyone else, blow it up!"

[Gizmo]

"Hnn. 'If'," Midnight scoffed over the comm channel, his inflectionless voice sounding almost offended to those who knew him well. He retrieved from the sealed pouches of the belt slipping about his spacesuit a number of timed charges, considerably more than he would have ever risked using all at once somewhere less wholly empty than space itself. Stacking their self-adhering sides against each other, he activated their timer and drew back his arm, silently counting down in his head as he carefully gauged the distance. Letting loose, he sent the deadly bundle speeding through the frictionless void directly at the aurora's center. A beat later, the silent explosion ripped though the alien entity's colourful being in an angry blossom that quickly imploded upon itself.

[Electra]

"Pretty," Wander complimented Midnight with a dry smile, "and effective too. Let's see if it can take a punch." Pushing off from the side of the ship, she aimed herself at the center mass of the thing, using her suit thrusters to avoid the burning tendrils. As she floated, she drew back her bat, holding it in both hands as she smashed the center mass like she was aiming for the fences. The eerily silent impact sent her tumbling away in the other direction before she could see exactly what she'd done, but it seemed certain that the colorful alien thing was not having a very good visit to Earth. She tucked her arms and legs in to help control her roll, and was grateful not to be prone to motion sickness.

[trollthumper]

The sheer onslaught caused the mass of light to shiver and recoil, drawing away in bands of solid phosphorescence as if preparing to lash out at everyone around it. As it did, however, something hideously dense came into view, so dark and compact it seemed to eat away at the light around it. One of the tendrils drew tighter and tighter, sharpening to a point like a spear. It lashed out at Pseudo, trying to run him through --

-- only for Cannonade to catch it in mid-flight, struggling with all his might to keep the tentacle from hitting its mark.

"You know what?" he said, fighting to keep his hold. There was no purchase in the vacuum of space, no ground to push into. But there was some propulsion in his spacesuit. "You really need to learn to keep your hands to yourself!"

He kicked off, using the suit's propulsion to wrestle the pointed end of the tendril back towards the mass of light - and right towards the dark heart of the beast. He kicked off right before it was about to make contact, and let inertia do the rest. The sharpened light cracked the dense core like a chisel being brought down on a walnut, shards of the thing's superdense heart flying off into orbit. The thing shrieked in white noise, its armed flailing wildly.

"Back to the ship," ordered Psuedo over telepathic link. "NOW."

The members of the Liberty League didn't need to be told twice. They raced back towards the Pegasus, with Morning Star being the last one in through the door as the thing began to go critical. It flew out in all directions, attempting to gain purchase on something, anything, so that it might rend it in two. Some of its appendages touched down through the ionosphere, disrupting radio communications worldwide and sending showers of light through the sky. It burned brighter and brighter, to the point that Cannonade had to shield his eyes out of fear that they might burn right out of his head.

And then, in just a second, it was gone. The mass winked out, and small motes of coherent, indescribable light and superdense core were borne away on the solar winds.

"Huh," Cannonade said. "Big hype for such a small show."

"Its attention was likely elsewhere," said Morning Star. "Perhaps it had burned too much out trying to draw its idle children home."

"Yeah, well it looks like they're gonna have to pay for their own tickets."

[Avenger Assembled]

Mark was oddly touched as he watched the thing fall, so close to its children and never quite touching them, and he had to remind himself of all the terrible things that had happened as a result of that creature coming to Earth. "It's a shame we couldn't talk to it," he finally said, taking his hand off the airlock and going to put his suit back. "But I guess some things aren't interested in talking, even about family." He sighed, then after a moment, the light seemed to come on as if the station had crested over the horizon and seen the Sun rising again. "Hey, we're in space now! That's totally awesome. Let's go to the null-grav training area and float around like...uh, like superheroes," he said with a wink. "It'll be great!"

[Gizmo]

Midnight rolled his shoulders stiffly as he unsealed his borrowed spacesuit, resolving to come up with a better, more personalized option in case the need to opperate in vacuum arose again. It was good to have the situation dealt with, though the defeat of the energy entity left him uneasy. If it had survived, he wasn't sure that anything was preventing it from returning to Earth, better prepared in the future. Then again, now that they were aware of its existence, the heroes of the world would be prepared as well.

He had to admit inwardly that Mark's claims of awesomeness were not unfounded; there was something very, very cool about actually being in outer space now that the immediate threat was over. Aloud, however he cleared his throat quietly and glanced toward Pseudo. "Don't want to tie up League resources..."

[Electra]

Erin pulled her helmet off and went to work on the rest of her suit, her hair beginning to float gently with he lack of gravity. Once she was back in her own clothes, she turned a couple of experimental somersaults, chuckling at the odd sensation. "Come on, Midnight," she cajoled, "didn't you ever want to be an astronaut when you were little? Before we have to go, I at least want to try chasing down a ball of orange juice or something. Gotta be some benefit in defeating that thing quickly." Making her way over to the wall, she walked up the side and upside-down across the ceiling, looking just about as tickled by the situation as anyone had ever seen her.

[trollthumper]

"It should be fine," said Pseudo. "Think of it as practice for future threats." He turned to Mark. "As for the nature of the creature... I, too, wish we could have communicated with it. To meet a mind I cannot map is... an experience, to say the least. If we could have established a means of speaking, perhaps we could have found another way." He shook his head. "But sometimes we must admit that there are things in the universe we cannot understand. Time was of the essence, and we made our choice. Perhaps, in the future, we may have a second chance..."

"For now, let's take comfort in our victory," said Morning Star. "I heard from my colleagues. They say the missing Spetsnaz were spotted - in Vladivostok, St. Petersburg, and San Francisco, of all places. They rose when the aurora touched the highest heavens, but fell when it winked out. They are gone, along with the thing that spawned them."

"And it looks like we can put the soldiers to rest," Cannonade said. He shook his head "Still can't believe they did that..."

Morning Star put a hand on his shoulder. "It was a fearful time, for when men who mastered fear could prosper. What matters is that we go forward, and put the past to rest."

[Avenger Assembled]

Morning Star opted to head back to Earth to report back to her team, leaving the Liberty League proper to enjoy the comforts of Freedom League space travel. Mark couldn't help but be a little envious of all the space aboard the Lighthouse, for all that he loved the team's headquarters back on Earth; if nothing else, it was hard to top the view from a space station! The null-grav room turned out to be a big cylinder near the heart of the station, tall as Midnight Manor but about as wide around as Mark's apartment, lit by florescent lights at regular intervals and slightly warm as the door opened at Pseudo's gesture. "It's part of the gravity generator itself, a necessity of Lor technology," he added for the benefit of the team. "Careful as you walk in, as there is only microgravity in there, and be mindful of air currents." He smiled thinly, "And, ah, if you have balance difficulties, use the suction devices around the inner door."

[Gizmo]

Unfastening his mask to hang about his neck once they were in reasonably private company, Trevor looked faintly apprehensive about the prospect of zero gravity. It wasn't so much that he didn't think he'd be able to manage; he'd done some basic underwater simulation and was perfectly confident in his acrobatic abilities. Even so, for someone with a finely tuned, intuitive sense of distance and timing the idea of jumping and not actually coming back down was a little unsettling.

Even so, it was obvious how enthused Erin was with the idea - Mark was more or less always enthused and Joe was an affable sort by nature so far as Trevor had seen - and that was enough for him to put his unease aside. "After you?" he offered.

[Electra]

Erin pushed off fearlessly, shooting through the air like someone born to it as she crossed the wide, circular space. Years of acrobatics training served her well here, and with no monsters to fight, it was surprisingly easy to relax a little. She fetched up against the far wall, tucking to land feet first, and then tumbled gently back in the direction of the door. "This is so cool," she said with a laugh. "It's like when I used to long-jump, but better. You never start the falling part, just keep on going, like flying. Come on, it's fun!" She extended a hand to Trevor, the other hanging onto one of the suction cup wall handles so they didn't float away too precipitously.