All In (IC)

[Electra]

Harrier had hardly touched down when he felt a soft whoosh of air and heard the thud of feet beside him. Miss Americana gave him a confident smile, still holding the scanner she'd tuned to find him. Whatever had been bothering Gina was entirely absent now, hidden or ameliorated now that she was in her beautiful and impervious shell. "They're making good progress," she commented, apparently to thin air with Harrier now hidden. "But it doesn't look like they're in the finishing stages. Let me do a quick analysis to see if there's anything technological controlling them, or if it's psychic or metaphysical. We'll get the civilians away, then destroy the device." Her voice was reassuring, matter-of-fact, a voice he'd heard her use many times to calm panicked civilians.

[Avenger Assembled]

Scanning the crowd, Harrier looked for anyone eager to hide themselves from the gathering crowd of onlookers. He finally found the man he was looking for in an ornamental bush, lurking inside the arboreal shield as his glowing eyes gave him away to the sharp-eyed cyborg. He didn't hesitate, pointing out the figure to Miss Americana as she pulled out her scanner, then advancing on him with raised pike. Before he could reach him, though, he stopped, momentarily stricken. "I know that man," he said aloud as Miss Americana reached his location, his voice as ever muffled and distant through his black, terrifying armor riven with spikes. "He lives in my building; his name is Joseph, he is a survivor of a branch timeline destroyed by the Terminus." Harrier voice hardened. "He has seen what he has seen. And he does this." And with that, his momentary doubts passed, Harrier advanced on the man, pike raised high.

Too late, Harrier realized that a psychic would have more than one way of detecting foes. "No, no!" Joseph yelled, springing from the bushes and pointing at the invisible Harrier, evidently ignoring the obvious superheroine in the crowd in favor of the oncoming Omegadrone. "You won't get me!" yelled Joseph, his eyes wide. With his goatee and sweater vest, he looked almost professorial if you ignored the madness in his eyes. "You won't stop me here!" And with that, he fired a bolt of sickly green energy from his hands at Harrier, clanging against the armor of his invisible opponent hard enough to send shockwaves radiating through the man inside the machine.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Whatever your plan is, we will stop you," said Harrier firmly as he advanced again on the mad-eyed psychic, his pike crackling with energy as he approached his fellow refugee. "I will not allow you or anyone else to build the machines of the Terminus in Freedom City." He was about to bring the pike down across the psychic's face, a stunning blow with the energy-wrapped blade that would have stunned him, when suddenly Joseph gave a terrible scream, his face contorting in such horror that Harrier's blow missed him.

"You dare tell me not to build Terminus machines?" sneered the psychic angrily, tears streaming freely down his cheeks as he screamed at his invisible enemy. "You MONSTER! I just wanted to show these people what they'd forgotten, but I'll make you pay for all you've done!"

[Electra]

Miss Americana hesitated for just a moment as Harrier headed off to deal with the possibly murderous psychic in the bushes, but she did not follow him. He could take care of himself if anyone could, and these civilians needed to be distracted and moved quickly. If anyone could provide a distraction, it was Miss Americana. Fluffing her blonde curls once with her fingers, she took to the air, flying just over the heads of the busy workers.

"Excuse me for just a moment, everyone," she called out, her voice seeming to amplify itself naturally as all those assembled fell silent to look at her. She met eyes here and there smiling into them as though making a special, personal connection with each member of the crowd. "I know you're all very busy, but it would really be a great help to me if you would all move to that side of the park, just for a few minutes. It's quite important to me," she assured them, shamelessly personalizing the request in the hopes that it would move them that much faster. She began moving herself, still talking, drawing the people with her like a beautiful Pied Piper. As she went, she chanced a quick glance, no more, to where the real fight was happening.

[Avenger Assembled]

The crowd followed Miss Americana; the shouting man in the bushes drew some of their attentions, but between Miss Americana's charms and the natural desire for Freedom Cityites to get away from a potential superbattle, everyone got out of the way in a hurry with the exception of the mind-controlled group standing in and around the half-built machine. "Oh, did I see you hesitate, Omegadrone?" spat Joseph as he glared at Harrier, seeing him mentally even though Harrier's visual chameleon circuits were still active. "It's too late for that!" he yelled, his voice breaking. "Too late for me, too late for my family, and too late for YOU!" This time he didn't bother with blasting; with the sheer power of his mind, face contorted with fury, he scooped up a giant rock easily the size of Harrier's midsection and hurled it at the Omegadrone: the blow landing with devastating force, staggering the former drone and knocking out his chameleon circuits!

At the sight of an Omegadrone standing there in the park, the crowd did run, but Miss A had got them far enough away that they were running away from each other, not stampeding or trapped close to the fight the way they might have been otherwise. As the true measure of Joseph's intentions sunk in, Harrier rose to his feet at the psychic's advance, propping himself up on his pike. "...you have endangered innocents in your desire for closure." he finally replied, his voice flat and tinny through his armor. "I cannot allow you to endanger these people in your efforts to punish me." He whipped the pike up and fired, a blast that ricocheted off a return stroke from Joseph. _At least his attention's on me now,_ Harrier thought tightly.

[Electra]

Even as he thought that, Miss Americana looped around in the air, flying back towards the combat. She frowned as she took in the damage to Harrier's holographic projector, and to the suit itself. Harrier's Omegadrone armor did a good job of protecting the flesh within it, but even that couldn't hold indefinitely under this kind of telekinetic barrage. Extending her hands, she shot a bright beam of laser fire at the unassuming-looking villain. It grabbed his attention well enough, but unfortunately it didn't seem to have much effect besides that.

"Halt your attack!" she called to the psychic. "You're endangering civilians and putting lives and property at risk. Whatever you think you're doing isn't worth this!" She fired again, another shot that hit its mark and bounced harmlessly away, making her bite her lip nervously. This was a more formidable opponent than she'd thought.

[Avenger Assembled]

"You can't stop me!" yelled the mad psychic as he absorbed the lasers without flinching. "I was the most powerful psychic on my world before that thing and his kind destroyed everything!" He released his mental hold on his terrified captives, who being sensible Freedomians took one look at what was going on and quickly vacated the half-built doomforge, fleeing for their lives as fast as they could run away from the Omegadrone, the mad psion, and the beautiful patriotic heroine who was all that made sense in this crazy world. "You doubt my pain! Let me show you what they've done and the justice of what I do!" He concentrated, a glowing red butterfly aurora of psychic energy appearing in the air around his head, a matching one flaring to life around Miss Americana's head a moment later, but evidently he found no mental purchase in the all-American heroine. "What? No! It's impossible! You should be-"

Harrier's pike slammed into the back of Joseph's head hard enough to knock him to the ground, slamming him face-first into the sodden green earth beneath their feet. Blood in his mouth, Joseph looked up to see a crackling cosmic blade a few inches from his face as the former Omegadrone said with cold, methodical fury that burned like Terminus fire, "The vastest of sufferings is not a weapon to wield on innocents." He took a few steps back, aiming to give Miss Americana a clear shot if she came back for another pass. "You dare not speak of justice and build that horror upon this world of innocents," he went on, the doomforge at his back and outlining his too-familiar outline like a terrible spectre of the past.

[Electra]

"I'm sorry you lost your world," Miss A told the mad psychic, wringing her hands empathetically. The man was too far away and too far gone to see that the motion was in fact very controlled, each twist adjusting a different finger joint to a minute extent. "But this isn't the way to honor what you lost. This is wrong, and you have to stop!" She held out her hands again, and this time the beam that emerged was nebulous and diffuse, a deep blue haze that enveloped Joseph rather than striking him. Within moments, the attack sapped the energy he was using to power his defensive field, sending him crumpling to his knees. Miss A nodded fractionally to Harrier, trusting he would know what to do.

[Avenger Assembled]

Harrier brought the pike down across Joseph's back again, this time using a powerful, electrically-charged stroke that reached the fragile body of the powerfully-minded psychic and knocked him into a deeper state of unconsciousness. With the body asleep, the mind that had done so much damage and might have done even more was no threat. As he stood over the body of the fallen victim of the Terminus, Harrier suddenly spun and fired another shot into the heart of the now-vacant doomforge: the half-assembled piece of menacing scrap metal exploded on impact from the cosmic blast, sending shards of debris flying everywhere in the now-vacant green. He'd been standing between the fallen figure of his former foe, so the destruction of the doomforge didn't harm its builder at all.

[Electra]

Miss A threw up an arm automatically to protect herself from the debris, but the flying shards of metal merely nicked her costume here and there before bouncing harmlessly away. She considered reminding Harrier of the dangers from collateral damage during city fights, but something about his expression suggested it would fall on deaf ears right now. He'd had to destroy that forge. In any case, no real harm had been done to any people, and Fleur de Joie or one of her associates could repair the damage to the park itself.

Graceful as a dancer, she spiraled down to land next to Harrier. She was quiet for a moment as she looked him over for damage. "You're going to need to stop in at my lab," she told him. "I'll get your projector fixed up again. Are you feeling all right?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Harrier had been staring at the flashburned remains of the forge before Miss Americana's approach; when she joined him on the ground he turned to her, his face hidden behind cold, pitiless Terminus steel. Only her knowledge of the man inside the armor had let her gauge his mood so closely from the air. At her words, he looked at the unconscious man at his feet. "Doomforges are constructed on worlds that have been broken by the Terminus to facilitate the destruction of the surviving sentient population. To build one so accurately, he must have seen one for himself." Left unspoken was how many Harrier himself had seen, or the memories of what it was like to be inside one. "I will join you in your laboratory."

They had to stay long enough for the authorities to arrive, of course, including a telepath from the Freedom League who could help control Joseph's powers even after he was fitted with a psi-nullifier. Harrier kept to himself and said nothing as Lady Liberty spoke to Miss Americana, but kept his ears open all the same. The occasional crunch of broken steel as Harrier walked around breaking pieces of the forge sounded as Lady Liberty gave her explanation. "From what Mr. Hart told us, this was the first anniversary of the destruction of his home world." Lives had been saved and certainly sanities, but it was a sad moment all the same.

Heedless of the newscameras now watching them from a discreet distance, the 'heroic' Omegadrone having as always attracted heavy interest, particularly now in the company of the lovely Miss Americana and with the signs of the Terminus left everywhere, when Joseph was loaded into the ambulance; Harrier took off into the sky on a column of fire.

[Electra]

Miss Americana watched Harrier as he took off into the sky, but then turned her attention to the civilians on the ground. A few clasped hands and autographs did a lot to soothe and pacify the gathering. As she worked the crowd, she made sure to toss in some nice statements about Harrier's work, and how lucky it was that he had seen the danger and moved to avert it so quickly. After another ten minutes or so, with the crowd dispersing and technicians from the Freedom League showing up to collect the remains of the device, Miss A took off into the sky as well, swooping once around downtown before angling off towards Hanover and the gleaming cylinder of The Lab.

Just before reaching the lab, Miss A banked and dove, making a quick descent that took her behind buildings and hid her from sight as she landed in the back lot of a nondescript office building. Emerson had orders to let Harrier in, rather than leaving the Omegadrone standing where anyone could see him, so the parking lot was deserted. Letting out her breath on a long sigh, she opened the door and stepped into her private lab.

[Avenger Assembled]

Steve had walked from the area near Hayes Park where he'd landed to Miss Americana's laboratory, his armor retracted back under his skin and his head down. The memory of that awful grief on the face of his psychic opponent of earlier in the day still burned hot in his mind, a fresh layer seared on the already-scorched surface of his soul. But he'd always been one to push forward rather than wallow in depths of suffering he knew too well could drag him down into a bottomless pit from which no one could possibly escape, so he kept moving, walking in his slow, mechanical stride down the center of the sidewalk until he reached Miss Americana's lab's front door. Once there, and guided by the robot, he headed directly inside, removing his shirt as they went.

"The projectors were damaged by the impact, not by the blast itself," he said without preamble as he peeled them off his chest, heedless of the bruises already forming on his scarred flesh. "They should be...repairable."

[Electra]

"Repairable or replaceable," Miss A agreed, gathering up the nodes and setting them aside absently. She lifted her scanner and pointed it at him, letting it gather medical data while she assessed him visually. It was nothing she hadn't done dozens of times before on various heroes, but now she felt shaky, unfocused, for reasons she wasn't sure she wanted to explore. Right now it was time to do her job, she reminded herself, and think about other things later. "How are you feeling?" she asked him, leaning in to examine the bruising on his ribs and collarbone. "You took some hard hits."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I have suffered worse injuries than this," replied the former drone, a darkness in his eyes suggesting he'd taken blows recently far worse than what he'd gotten from Joseph's telekinetic powers, and taken wounds deeper than the bruises on his skin. He looked at Miss Americana, and as beautiful as the paragon was, he found himself speaking to Gina directly in his mind. "It was a poor reward for our conversation earlier," he said apologetically. "I would not have put you in a position to defend me, had avoiding it been within my power."

[Electra]

"Don't be stupid," Miss A told him brusquely, and it seemed there was more of Gina in that than Miss A's usual charismatic cheer. "Heroes back each other up. If you hadn't gone after him, he might have targeted the civilians instead, and it would've been a hell of a mess. He gave you a mean sucker punch, but you did all right. And don't make this some kind of male-female thing either," she warned. "I'll have you know that this thing is sexless as a Barbie Doll, so it doesn't even count. Now lay back."

She gave a gentle nudge to his less-bruised shoulder to get him to lay down on the exam table. "You got lucky, no broken bones, no internal bleeding. The bruises will be tender for a day or so, but your body's own accelerated healing will take care of them fairly quickly. I'll give you some salve that will ease the soreness. Now let's see the suit."

[Avenger Assembled]

Harrier was silent for a moment at that suggestion, seriously considering his response, before wordlessly he let his armor erupt from his skin, folding away his organic flesh and hiding it beneath a somewhat-battered covering of Terminus steel. Though he'd taken some dents and scuffs here, most of it would be easy enough for his armor' self-repair systems to fix. As she worked on him, he lay silently, turning with a clank at her command, but he couldn't simply be silent with Gina the way he could with almost every living soul. From behind his armor there came an echoing "You have never pried into the details of my life. I have always appreciated that."

[Electra]

Miss A pursed her lips for a moment, concentrating on a fiddly bit of fiberglass patching she was applying to his shoulder. "Everyone's entitled to their privacy," she finally said. "Some people think that talking about the past helps make it better, but I think sometimes you're better off just moving on and trying to make whatever you can of the now and the future. If you ever want to talk about it, I'll listen, but you don't have to." She smoothed the patch down with her fingers, then wiped away the excess epoxy resin with a cloth. "Joseph is going to have to learn to accept his past, too," she added quietly. "Learn to live with it, or it'll drive him to further madness. They'll keep him away from you from now on."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I agree." When the work was done, Harrier retracted his armor beneath his skin, leaving behind the all-too-human man beneath. "I tell my story, I speak to therapists, and I see men like Joseph, and imagine how many like him there are here, with no powers but all the rage. I cannot escape my past," he told Miss Americana, his voice returning to its usual measured stillness. "Not for a day, not for an hour. We all must live with the consequences of what has been." Touching Miss Americana wasn't the same as touching Gina, but he did it anyway, reaching over to take the robot's hand for a moment. "But we can have a present, and a future, beyond that." He squeezed her hand lightly, and Gina could feel the metal bones beneath his skin.

[Electra]

Miss Americana's hand was warm and human, soft skin over gracefully-shaped bones and tendons. No one who hadn't seen the truth behind the beautiful superheroine would ever have guessed it was all just a facade. Miss A hesitated a moment, then gave him a light pat on the hand with her free hand, reassuring and impersonal as any doctor. It would be, she knew, the gravest of mistakes to allow herself to become confused about her life in this body and her real life. "Lucky for you," she told him, "you should suffer no lasting consequences from this fight. You're already knitting up nicely. Let me give you something for the pain and you should be all set."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Yes, thank you," agreed Harrier. His own welfare had never been a high priority for him, but he was no less grateful for the ministrations. Negotiating with Miss Americana when the woman he wanted was on the other end would be tricky, but for all that he found it strangely comforting. His life in Freedom City required a mask even when he wasn't armored, hiding his true nature so he could survive day to day in a world that would otherwise have been impossible to manage. It was no strange thing, then, to know that Gina was doing the same thing. He gave her that flat, level look and said, "I would see you again," he went on, speaking through the gynoid to its operator. "The League will debrief me about today's events. On the weekend? I will bring a movie."

[Electra]

Miss A twitched once, an uncharacteristically mechanical gesture for all it only lasted a fraction of a second. Half a mile away, Gina flinched, cursing her own distractedness as she took firm control over the robot again. Didn't he know this was only going to make everything harder? Didn't they both have enough problems without the high likelihood that any relationship between them was tragically ludicrous and doomed to rapid and painful failure? "No, don't," she said, even as she regretted the words, then totally shocked herself by adding "I have five thousand movies, there'll be something we both like." She was obviously losing her mind.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Just the popcorn, then. I should be an equal partner in...our date." There was something exotic and novel about the words, for all that he was speaking of a concept with which he had only a very limited familiarity.

With the work done and a date made, Harrier headed for the door, feeling a strange, slightly giddy sensation at the idea that he had a date: he had one of those things normal people had that he'd coveted for so long. I have never been on a date, I have only seen them on television...I should speak to people about this. It had been a while since he'd been in touch with Jack of all Blades, perhaps he could offer some advice, or maybe Gabriel. Not that he'd reveal anything about Gina or their relationship, of course, but the two men did seem to be successful with women.

"I will see you then, Miss Americana," he said seriously at the door, back in his fleshly disguise with his armor safely tucked away. And for a moment, the words seemed to blot out the voices in his head. It was nice to have the moment.

[Electra]

"All right, take care," Miss A replied, seemingly a little distracted by her diagnostic equipment even as she smiled. "Give me a call if that patching starts acting up, otherwise it should fall off when the plates have finished repairing." She looked up long enough to see him walk out the door, then set the locks and abandoned the robot where it stood. Suddenly even such limited exposure to the outside world seemed like too much.

In her basement, Gina scrubbed her face and stared at the exterior camera feeds, still trained on the park. "This is such a bad idea," she said aloud. She should call and cancel. Or maybe just move. She could build a new robot, in a new city, perhaps build an isolated base for herself on the far side of the moon... With a shake of her head, she sternly recalled herself to reality. It was just a movie and popcorn, in her own house. Steve knew what she looked like, he had been in her home before. Hell, she'd slept with him, so it wasn't as though there was any prospect of him seeing what he hadn't before. It was just a movie, just a movie, just a movie with... a friend. It would be okay.