ic The Hard Hand of Fate (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

"No third kidneys," said Samson with the ghost of a smile. "I'm lucky to have two." Evidently gallows humor wasn't out of place here, probably because it was the only humor left. "We're all human in the Vault, minus some genetic engineering here and cybernetic enhancements there. As for magic, I couldn't tell you that. I don't know how things are where you're from, but most people with magical knowledge were in Europe or magical dimensions when the invasion happened. Some of them were the first to go, others...well, maybe they made it out, or hunkered down for the end like I did." He shrugged and admitted, "I have no way of knowing what would work and what wouldn't."

The elevator went deep, deep into the mountain, far enough that the shaft seemed to heat up from the sheer crushing depths of rock over their heads. This far down, with the noises from the surface quiet, Murdock for a moment could believe they were safe. But only for a moment. This, and everything else in this planet, will be torn apart by the Doom Coil within days or less. We must work quickly. "What do you know about how the invasion happened?" he asked Power as they went, prompting the battered engineer to tell his story. Power, a wealthy geologist and inventor, had been leader of a team called Earth Corps, a group of armored heroes who fought subterranean monsters genetically engineered like what sounded like local versions of Terra-King and his Sub-Terrans.

"Things have been pretty rough the last couple of years with all the magical disasters, but we've gotten through it. Or we did, anyway. There was no rhyme or reason to it that we could see; one day the sky opened up, and Hell followed. No talking, no posturing, no demands or negotiations...We only know who Mandragora himself is because he challenged our greatest warriors to a fight. Those poor brave Serpent bastards..." He shook his head. "And then they were everywhere; first on Guardian Island, then St. Fillmore, then everywhere else. I sent three of my team; Red Dog, Black Fist, and Whitesnake, to LA to try to hold the line when that damn starship came down to take out the West Coast. They didn't last two hours against those drones. None of them did. At least they didn't come back...changed." He shuddered, his already-battered face paling.

And then they were there at the Vault, and the conversation shifted. The Vault itself was fairly sparse and utilitarian; a dozen rooms adding up in size to about as big as a single floor of the HAX building, once a shelter against nuclear armageddon that was now a refuge of perhaps the last living humans on this Earth. The survivors of this world were all shell-shocked, faces pale and clothing torn, a dead, haunted look in their eyes eerily familiar to the heroes with experience with disasters like this. Some were badly hurt, a haggard woman in medical fatigues carrying a sleeping newborn in a backpack tending to everything from children with broken limbs and hollow eyes to men and women with torn bodies barely held together by sutures, on shiny plastic emergency stretchers now gone dirty and stained. Everyone was doing all they could. Which wasn't much; there was little talking, and only a small amount of weeping: these people had had time to consider the end they'd all seen coming.

"Everyone!" called Power, walking out of the elevator and leading the group. "I need your attention. I have a way out for all of us!" Someone laughed at that, a bitter sound that echoed through the cramped confines of the sweat-and-blood-and-waste smelling rooms, but Power pressed on. "These four heroes are from another dimension! They heard my distress call, and they're here to help us find a way to escape the Terminus!" There were no cheers at that, but everyone was paying attention now to what the heroes said and did.

Don't think. Don't feel. Just act. Murdock's face was stone, but in his mind the world was burning. He smelled the fear and despair in the air, saw the broken bodies and suffering people packed so close together, and it was all so terribly familiar. Not so familiar, he thought, his mental voice dry and dead even to his own awareness. Before, you'd have been one of the things trying to get in.

[Fox]

Mara's stomach turned, and she was glad - very glad - that her suit filtered the air so that at least one of her senses was spared the scene. [bg=#555555]"Quarantine was a good idea. Imagine they'll want some time to adjust, and don't want to spread things like flu across dimensions. Also,"[/bg] she reluctantly and distractedly admitted, [bg=#555555]"going to be tearing holes in space repeatedly. Not always safe. Things in the dark areas between places; have had an incident once or twice. Never hurts to be cautious."[/bg]

She took a deep breath, telling herself to focus on the science. At least for now. [bg=#555555]"Not sure how many I can take at once. Groups. Going to need at least a little space to set up, and...might need to salvage parts from your equipment. Easier to build an anchor here if I have local material. Shouldn't take long. Noticed old - mmh, old by our standards? - equipment; good - if it's anything like ours, it's built to last."[/bg]

[Electra]

Erin pursed her lips as she walked into the crowded room full of haggard survivors, struggling for detachment. If Murdock, who'd seen more of the worst the Terminus had to offer than she could dream, could remain calm, surely she could as well. If Mara and Ellie, neither of whom were accustomed to mass casualties, could keep their composure, she would too. And just hope to god that Trevor was home when she made it back. "All right," she said crisply. "Murdock, you and I will start grouping people into twenties and get them out of the main room here so Dragonfly and the techs can work. Don't group anyone with bad injuries, send them over to Jill in the room where that medic's been working. No more than one small bag of luggage per person."

She started in on the job herself, barking out numbers at people, directing them where to go and wait to be moved. She couldn't answer there questions, there wasn't time even if she'd known the answers. All she could say was "We're getting you out of here, someplace you'll be safe. We can't do worse for you than what you've got now, right?" At the same time, she kept a lookout for trouble in the rooms. Fear brought on paranoia and xenophobia, and in circumstances like these, minds could snap. The last thing they needed with a rampage or a riot among the people they were trying to save.

[Gizmo]

Jill took a steadying breath at the sight of the refugees, the looks on their faces chilling her as much as the state of their injuries. A moment later her eyes narrowed and she steeled herself, the skills she'd developed volunteering in hospitals and crusading as a superheroic combat medic allowing her to focus on the task at hand. Pausing just long enough to brush a quick peck on the side of Dragonfly's helmet, she advised in a whisper, "Work fast, muñequita." Then she was striding confidently into the midst of the local, catching the eye of the woman in scrubs.

"Hi, I'm Jill," she announced simply, loudly enough to be overheard by the battered crowd. "Let's ignore the whole 'other dimension' and 'looks barely out of high school' thing and focus on me relieving you after one helluva long shift in the ER, huh?" The young woman offered the obviously weary older woman a wry but winning smile, flipping open her messenger bag. "Get me up to speed. Dunno how you do things here, ladies and menfolk, but where I come from nobody gets left behind, so I will personally kick the butt of anybody who tries to lie down and die before I can get them patched up! Then I'll fix that too!"

[Avenger Assembled]

Up close, the bags under her eyes and her thin frame showed how the healer had been simply working herself to death in the days since the end of her world began. She leaned against the wall, bracing herself on one hand and looking like she was about to fall asleep standing up. "Heartbeat. Thirty-seven patients," she said almost robotically, as if reading the report of a disaster that had happened to someone else. "Injuries ranging from heart attacks to mass blunt trauma to energy weapon burns. Lost ten so far, including all dragon casualties. Massive internal necrosis. Nothing I could do." Her baby stirred and she began rocking back and forth, singing almost to herself. "Sssh, sssh...worst injuries are over here," she went on in an almost singsong voice, pointing to a small, silent group; a group in tattered uniforms who looked practically sewn together from what the Claremont-trained Jill immediately recognized as the aftereffects of multiple Omegadrone pike blasts. "National Guardsmen and Tarantula forces saw schoolbus under attack by the park's perimeter. Rescued fourteen children. Lost half on the one-klick return trip."

-

_Don't think. Don't feel. Just act._ The words echoed in Harrier's mind over and over again as he went about his work, doing his efficient best to round up the terrified survivors with promises of safety and rescue. He could, at least, make glowing promises about Freedom City. "A dimension protected from the Terminus, a place where you can be safe and they will not harm you." Most of the people were simply too shell-shocked to reply, packing up what pitiful possessions they'd managed to salvage of their old lives and lining up dutifully, but others had questions: children cried and clung to ashen-faced adults , begging to know where siblings were, where their parents were, and adults did the same, families torn apart that would simply never ever be reunited. He was gentler with them, telling them simply, "It's time to go." He had the idea that some of them, eying him in their torn sweaters, their eyes glassy yet with shock, thought they were being taken to be euthanized. He couldn't blame them.

The scarred-face Harrier was obeyed more than listened to, but Erin, a girl in her teens and looking more approachable, was the subject of more curiousity and open questioning. "Are you with Teen Action Force? Did anyone make it on the East Coast?" Evidently this world was different enough that there was no Freedom City; a blessing and a curse all in one. The press of the crowd was so thick that Erin didn't even notice the little girl coming for her until there were small arms around her leg. Her face smudged with ash and blonde hair burned short, she couldn't have been more than six as she clung to Erin and stared up at her with deep eyes.

"She hasn't talked since they brought her in," murmured one of the other survivors to Erin, an older woman in her late forties. "They found her by the freeway, after the monsters had passed over. Nothing else was left." Near Erin, Harrier felt the hairs go up on the back of his neck, and peered up at the ceiling with a look of carefully suppressed alarm.

-

"I'll show you what I can," said Samson, who pulled Dragonfly away from the cramped shelter to the small amount of technical gear that he'd managed to bring down: sure enough, there wasn't much. "Most of our high-tech stuff is up in the command post, so we'll have to go back up for raids. Guess I should have thought of that. Stupid..." He rubbed his eyes. "I, uh, what's down here is mostly the fission reactor and its control systems, the backup computers, our old powersuits..." They'd come through a tight steel door to enter the small wing full of machinery, and now Samson stared at the supercomputers in the room blankly, his bearded face reflected in the glass dials. "Your world...you fought the Terminus, didn't you?" he asked quietly. "And won, or you wouldn't have all your technology, and you wouldn't know what they are. God, we must look so pathetic to you," he said, his voice a sudden curse. "Rats hiding in a bolthole, waiting for the end. Everything we are, dead inside of a week."

He put his hands on the plastic keyboard before him, fingers tapping as he called up schematics of the reactor room just beneath their feet, the cramped equipment bays all around the shelter that held what they had down here. Even in despair he wasn't giving up. "If my life's work can save one life here, one memory of our world, I will gladly give everything of myself to see it done," he told Mara frankly. "When you get your portal done, I will be the last to leave."

As he worked, suddenly a red light began to flash by Samson's monitor. Shooting a glance back at the busy Vault behind them, Samson looked up at Dragonfly and said simply, his voice haunted, "That's the perimeter alert. And since everything else I've heard of on this planet is dead...that means they're coming."

[Fox]

[bg=#555555]"Not pathetic,"[/bg] Dragonfly countered, though her tone was less comforting and more matter-of-factly, like she was correcting somebody's faulty physics knowledge. [bg=#555555]"You survived. It's what matters. Sometimes all you can do - keep going until you have a chance for something better."[/bg]

She took a moment, perimeter alert or not, to take in what they had to work with. going to need to run a line to the reactor probably - or tap into the nearest heavy cables [bg=#555555]"Going to need help if we're that low on time. One, two, maybe three people - mechanical or electrical backgrounds. Engineers, preferably - good health, capable of taking orders, ideally. But will take what I can get, technical backgrounds or not. Fortunately, usually have some parts on hand, and used to working with...older equipment."[/bg]

She'd already deployed a number of small, articulated tools from her gauntlets, but she paused for a moment and glanced at Samson. [bg=#555555]"When Terminus invaded us, they hit the most dense super-human population in the area - probably the world. Tactical error. Even then, victory...cost us a lot. And mostly just drove them away, kept them from trying again. Here, just have to slow them down. Buy time. Whatever you can do, just don't die."[/bg]

[Electra]

Erin couldn't answer any of their questions, and really preferred not to think of the likely answers, so she simply told people there was no time for talk, or that she wasn't local, or that everything would be explained later. Her nerves were ratcheted high enough that she grabbed for her bat when the arms went around her leg, but luckily the crowd prevented her from actually drawing down on the little kid who'd taken hold. Dealing with kids this age was always a punch in the gut to her, but this one in particular had something in her eyes that Erin could recognize. Some deep and primal knowledge of being all alone in the world, even in this press.

Reaching down, she picked up the girl and held her at arm's length, checking her over for injuries. Practically no one here was unscathed, but this little bit of a thing seemed to be all right except for some minor burns that were already healing. "You'll be safe now," she told the child matter-of-factly. Nothing more, no promises that it would be okay, or that the worst was over now. She knew better than that, but at least she could promise a safer place. With a single motion, she swung the child onto her back, anchoring with her own arms till the girl took hold, then went on with her work. The clock was already ticking way too fast.

[Gizmo]

Jill recognized the look on Hearbeat's slack features immediately. It was the same one she's seen on nurses hitting the umpteenth hour on their feet, forcing themselves to keep going because the emergencies just wouldn't stop and if they stopped to rest someone was going to die. Never this bad though. Dios, she must have had to deliver the baby without help, too. Before anything else she paused to place and hand on the local woman's shoulder. "Alright, I got this. Okay? Now's probably a lousy time to take a nap, but all you need to worry about now is your baby, deal? 'Cause I'm awful with little kids."

With a last reassuring smile, the pre-med student jogged over to the worst injured men. The closest had makeshift bandages the had probably once been bedsheets wrapped around one side of his head, extensive burns still evident around the edges. The arm on the same side he hadn't even bothered to attempt to treat, uniform sleeve and skin alike charred into uselessness. 'Hey, soldier," Jill greeted softly, fishing a small flashlight out of her messenger bag and scanning the man's severe injuries with her eyes. "Way I hear it, you're some sort of super badass school bus saving movie star," she continued conversationally, watching as his one good eye reflexively followed the penlight. Setting it down, she flexed her empty hands, coaxing radiant blue energy to surround them, like sunbeams filtering through a leafy canopy. "You're going to fit right in back where I came from."

Placing one hand on the soldier's arm and the other alongside his scalp, Jill let her healing abilities weave their way into the ruined flesh. The effect was immediate as the man gasped, a loud, shuddering breath. Blue light gathered all about his bandages, pouring into them and soon radiating out from between them as well. As the masked teenager moved her palm along his forearm, burnt skin fell in large flakes to the floor, revealing healthy, dark chocolate hued skin in its wake. By the time she hand reached his hand, cupping it in her own, he'd regained enough mobility to open and close the fingers there reflexively. When Jill rose to her feet again, he carefully lifted his healed arm to his face, tentatively pulling away the fabric covering it. Once the bandages were out of the way, his new eye blinked, the brow surrounding it devoid of scarring. "And that's how we do that," Jill noted with satisfaction as she moved onto the next soldier without hesitation.

[Avenger Assembled]

There was another flash, three blue lights over the green-screen monitor, and Samson relaxed a fraction. "Good, they made it in ." He looked up at Dragonfly and went on. "Green Screen and Blue Steel. They were shutting down our teleport network, making sure no one could pop into the Vault unannounced. The last two survivors of Earth Corps." He actually smiled a little before adding, "The finest computer hacker, and finest engineer I've met. I'll see about rounding up some people who might be able to help you, luckily most of my support staff was in the building already..." He rose to his feet, studied the perimeter alert for a moment, then shook his head. "I was tempted to go up and see what we're up against...but it doesn't really matter. We've got to get the job done."

He led the way back to the elevator the group had taken down to the Vault, stopping to pick up another engineer to help them, a mousy woman with red hair and blue overalls, who pulled goggles down over her eyes as she went, carefully ducking her way through the assembling crowd. "This is Tress, she's one of my best nuclear techs," said Samson, "Tress, this is Dragonfly. With her, Green Screen, and Blue Steel, you shouldn't have any trouble."

-

The soldiers murmured their gratitude to Jill, some of the healthier ones even getting up to make sure their still-wounded comrades didn't turn her away and try and steer her towards others who were injured. "You need to get better. These people need us if we're going to help them get to Jill's homeworld." The first soldier she'd helped took over as something of her bodyguard, introducing himself simply as "Lieutenant Win Hudson, miss." Having Hudson there helped when Jill turned around and found that her display hadn't gone unnoticed: less exhausted, there might have been a riot, but instead she was faced with mothers with hungry children, walking wounded with bandages and severe burns, and others who hadn't needed the hospital beds but were certainly badly hurt. Heartbeat, for her part, had fallen asleep in a corner, her baby carefully propped up and nursing at her breast.

"You're the healer from another dimension," said Hudson seriously as he stood between Jill and the crowd, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to keep her from being trampled. He was as tired as anyone else, but on his feet for all that. "How much of this can you take?"

-

With her new best friend clinging to her mutely but firmly, no one seriously questioned Erin again as she and Murdock got people lined up and as packed as they could muster, in seated rows all across the Vault floor like people waiting for an airplane to Heaven. Most people were shaken up enough that some gentle physical movement was enough to get them to go where they were supposed to, which was a blessing: so far the people of this world had held together without panicking. The unattached children were the hardest, but most of them could be persuaded to stay with an adult they recognized, particularly one of their rescuers. The sight of living heroes seemed to be an inspiration to them. Erin could see she'd been right to be concerned about quarantine; hygenie had not been a priority over the last few days, and between the smell near the small row of overloaded restrooms, the people who looked pale and sweating for reasons besides shock, it was clear everyone here would need to see a doctor on the other side.

Erin caught Murdock looking unusually tense as he went about his work, and as he gently handed a weeping little boy off to a park ranger who held him close, Murdock leaned over and said, his voice a quiet whisper. "There is a force landing on the surface within a few miles. Omegadrones and...something else. I can't tell more closely than that. And there's something else, there is..." His eyes widened as the elevator doors across the room stepped open, and two armored figures stepped out.

Green Screen and Blue Steel turned out to be wearing industrial armor similar to Samson's; Green Screen's a bit more like printed computer circuits, Blue Steel a bit more like smooth, polished chrome: Green Screen was an Asian man in his late thirties, while Blue Steel was a tall blonde man with Nordic features. Surprised by the new people, they both looked eager to help. "All the teleporters are out, everywhere from Gem Mountain to the Action Force base," reported Blue Steel. "They won't be following us in here that way. So you're an engineer too-"

Green Screen and Harrier saw each other in the same moment, Green Screen's eyes widening briefly as Harrier closed on him, the former Omegadrone's eyes burning with fury. Realizing the peril he was in, Green Screen suddenly shouted "OMEGADRONE! That man is an Omegadrone spy, I know what those marks mean! He's one of those killer cyborgs" He raised his armored arm, lasers mounted on it glowing, as Harrier shouted over him, a look of almost apocalyptic fury on his face as he advanced heedless of the weapon in his face.

"Your transmitter! Where is it!?" And now there were screams in the crowd as suddenly they saw their hero threatening their newly-arrived savior. "Tell me now, so these people do not see me take it from your body!"

[Fox]

Dragonfly re-entered the room just in time to see the conflict break out, stopping in the middle of her instructions to Tress about what she needed salvaged from the computers. what - don't - agh - need to start building - need their help? - couldn't just get into fights with anyone else - agh - agh!

[bg=#555555]"Hey. Hey."[/bg] She marched her way over to Green Screen, Blue Steel, and Murdock, muttering foul things in a number of languages under her breath before finally giving up on subtlety. Her suit lit up mid-march, four blade-like wings flaring into being behind her as armored plates flexed and space around her twisted with a sound like someone had cracked the world's biggest bullwhip. [bg=#555555]"HEY! Yes, you. Idiots. You,"[/bg] - she jabbed a finger at Murdock - [bg=#555555]"don't threaten people. Will not be taking anything off anybody's body. And you,"[/bg] she continued, turning the finger on Green Screen, [bg=#555555]"will not start fights in rooms full of civilians. Well aware of what he is but he is here to help, and hates what's happening on the surface more than you do, and if you are transmitting anything you need to calm down and turn it off or hand it over so that you and your friend can help me build a machine that bridges dimensions so we can GET EVERYONE OFF THIS DYING PLANET. Unless the both of you would rather waste time fighting until they make it down here and kill you both anyway."[/bg]

[Electra]

Wander was there a moment after Mara, delayed slightly by the crowd around them and her automatic adjustments to protect the burden on her back. She had her bat drawn, but not fully deployed, by the time she stepped up to the group. "Wait, Dragonfly," she interjected, staring hard at Green Screen. "Something's off here. Harrier was furious before this dude even said anything about Omegadrones. He knows something we don't." She cocked her head expectantly at her subordinate, but didn't take her attention off the strange computer hacker or the people nearby he was trying to whip into a frenzy. "Everybody just back off!" she added, raising her voice to the crowd.

[Gizmo]

Jill shot a confident smirk Hudson's way, planting one hand on her hip. She was glad to have the soldier there as an imposing force for crowd control; she could have easily protected herself with force fields if it came down to it but having to reduce any of the refugees to piles of heaving nausea with her less friendly abilities would have been seriously counter-productive. "If we can keep things orderly? Pretty much whatever you can throw my way, solider," she answered before turning to address the crowd as a whole. "Alright folks, I can't make you any less tired or hungry, I'm sorry, that'll have to wait until we can get back. With that in mind, I've got to start with anybody who can't move on their own--"

Before she could finish that thought, the confrontation broke out near the elevator. "...yes. Yelling, awesome. Because that is clearly what we needed." Rolling up her sleeves, the metamagi lifted both hands, a deeper blue light appearing about them as an eight foot tall ribbon of bioelectric energy created a solid fence starting in front of here and weaving though the crowd until it reached Harrier and Green Screen, forming a barrier between the two men. "Would you guys save the spazz monkey routine until after I'm done regrowing eyeballs? Dios."

[Avenger Assembled]

"He's crazy!" spluttered Green Screen, taking shelter behind the force field. "He's some kind of Terminus double agent, I bet, sent here to bring us down from the inside! C'mon, Sam, you know me," he pleaded to Samson Powers, who'd been watching the confrontation with wide eyes the whole time. "Kurt and I, we were out taking out the teleport beacons, he took the western half and I took the east, that's all! Check my suit if you want, I'm on total lockdown here!" He was all injured innocence, looking to the still-frightened crowd for protection. "C'mon, he's an Omegadrone, I saw what they looked like with the armor off when I was clearing out the base in Bryce Canyon, there was an injured one out there! Who the hell are you going to believe?"

Harrier's face was stone, but his eyes burned with fury as he stared through the force field at Green Screen as if he could set him aflame by sheer force of will. "He is transmitting a Terminus IFF signal on a frequency only monitored by Omegadrones and Terminus starships." His hands closed into fists, slowly, then released. "The implants are given to Annihilists and their lackeys so that they will not be accidentally targeted by Omegadrones during conquest missions." He spoke with flat, dead certainty. "It uses entropically-infused neutrinos." He pointed straight up through the ceiling to the burning world overhead. "They can hear it. They know."

[Fox]

Dragonfly's expression, hidden though it might be behind her helmet, went flat; her change in mood was visible in the rest of her posture, though, as she settled back into cold calculation. [bg=#555555]"Could build something to scan for the frequency. Wouldn't take long. Just more time than I want to take. Could even have someone else build it - can't accuse me of cheating or lying, then. If Harrier's wrong, fine. But I believe him. And if he's right...well. Not our dimension. Can strip your armor, let the survivors here decide what to do with you while we finish working. Imagine they'll have...ideas. I would."[/bg]

[Electra]

"If he's working with the Terminus forces, and we strip him or shut down the tracker, someone might notice," Wander pointed out. She took another step forward, giving her bat the twist that telescoped it open. "What are you doing for them?" she demanded. "Are you spying on the people here? Were you sent to wipe them out, or just to show the way? Did you lead them here?" The barrier Jill had erected kept Harrier back, but Wander was on the other side, more than ready to extract answers by whatever means necessary. She brought the bat up, and even the kid on her back didn't make her look much less menacing. "Don't bother lying, we'll know. What is Mandragora's plan for this place?"

[Avenger Assembled]

The hacker began to sweat. "I, uh, it's not like that! You've got to understand, you've been down here the whole time, you haven't been up there on the surface! It's the end, man, it's the end of everything. God, in Bryce Canyon, they were throwing them in this machine goop, and they were coming out with the armor bursting through and they were screaming..." His ashen face paled. "That's where I hacked into their comm systems and I had a little conversation with Mandragora, I-" If not for the force field, Harrier would have been on him right there; as it was, Green Screen suddenly found himself with Blue Steel's long bladed weapon pointed at him as well as Wander's bat. "He said he could use smart people like us on his team! Y'know, to help with all the tech they'd grabbed from this world, so if I got all of us to surrender without any more problems, he'd take some of our people back to his planet..." He fell silent, and in the room you could hear a pin drop.

"Others have made the same choice," said Harrier suddenly, his fury replaced with a dawning, terrible pity. "Mandragora is a creature of his word. You and your loved ones would have survived. And if you ever were a good man, you would have regretted that survival. If you choose to leave him, do not allow him to be taken alive. No one deserves the..." He blinked, suddenly, and his eyes narrowed, the hacker's would-be treachery forgotten. "Wait. They were doing what?" Unsure of himself, but with all the eyes on him, Green Screen spilled out a story of what he'd seen: helpless civilians dragged into what sounded like a nanite infusion and hurled in by faceless Omegadrones, only to emerge with the armor erupting from their bodies as they changed. It was clearly no lie. "But nanotechnology is restricted in the Terminus..." His eyes widened with sudden, terrible knowledge. "...by Omega's law."

[Gizmo]

"Ugh," Jill uttered in disgust as she let her force field disappear as suddenly as it had sprung into existence. "Genius move there, make a deal with the guys who want the heat death of the entire freaking multiverse. I'm sure that'll work out just amazing for you," the medic grumbled largely to herself. The revelation of the Terminus' apparently new use of nanites disturbed her more than she allowed to show on her face. Besides not knowing what if anything her powers could do against something like that it reminded her of-- No, shut up brain, it's not the same as with Archeville at all. Focus. Clearly more irritable than before, she rolled her shoulders and turned back to Hudson. "There's always one, amirite? Back to work. This tibia isn't going to unshatter itself!"

[Fox]

Dragonfly made a strangled noise, trying awfully hard not to just have this guy thrown back outside without his transmitter. nanotech - great - as if situation wasn't bad enough [bg=#555555]"Good they had to put people in it, at least, and not just dust the planet. Dangerous technology. Agh. Agh!"[/bg]

She threw her hands up, shaking her head. [bg=#555555]"Need to prioritize. Should probably disarm him, find his transmitter, shut it off. Tie him up or something. Need to get started building so we can get out of here. Can take the traitorous idiot with us and deal with him later."[/bg]

She put a hand to her face to re-collect her thoughts, and glanced around for Tress, trying to switch back to engineer mode. [bg=#555555]"Right. I'll start setting up. Blue Steel - when you have a chance, could use your help. Lots to do. Not a lot of time. Mmh, where did I see those capacitors...."[/bg]

[Electra]

Wander shook her head. "No, we can't shut down the transmitters. If Mandragora is watching, he already knows where we are. Shutting down the transmitter would tell him his agent is neutralized, and there's no more reason to hold off waiting for a surrender. We need every minute we can beg, borrow or steal, even if it means leaving the transmitter turned on."

She gave Green Screen another flat-eyed stare. "I don't know you, but I know you're a coward who will do anything to save your own life. You have no chance with the Terminus. When Mandragora finds out you not only lost the survivors but an escaped Omegadrone, he'll have you tortured to death publicly as soon as you get to Nihilor. If you cooperate fully with us, and I mean everything you can possibly do or say, we'll take you with us and you'll stand trial like a human being. It's the best offer you're ever going to get. Now how long did Mandragora give you to negotiate a surrender?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"Mandragora's dragons are taught from a young age to feed on the flesh of human beings," added Harrier, the hard facts to Wander's grim assurances. "Prisoners who he seeks to truly punish are left with five or six young hatchlings, each as large as one of your great dogs. They play like cats." And despite the anger he'd felt towards this man moments earlier, despite the fact that without the other heroes there he might simply have removed Green Screen's implant with his bare hands whatever the others around them felt, Steve knew they couldn't leave him there. No man deserves the Terminus. Whatever his crimes. He couldn't approve of the choice to sell out the hopes and dreams of others to buy more time, more life, but he could understand it. When there was nothing left but survival, some people chose to live. Even at the cost of their souls. His eyes bored into Green Screen, who under the pressure of his own ally's weapon and the formidable presence of Harrier and Wander, finally broke.

"Two, uh, two hours," the defeated would-be traitor said, his eyes on the floor. "After that, he'd send in a dragon squad and they'd burn their way through the rocks. It was either pick the ones I wanted to live, or watch everyone burn."

"Oh, Kashi..." Samson put a hand over his face, the look on his face like a parent who'd lose a child, and said, "Kurt...Kurt, take him away. Get his armor off, make sure that transmitter stays active. Lock him in storage and we'll bring him with us. If we can," he added. "Then, Kurt, you go help Dragonfly. Between the three of you, you can get something done..."

As Blue Steel dragged his teammate away, Green Screen too beaten down by the stares of his allies and the furious looks from the civilians who'd been close enough to hear what was going on, Samson suddenly rounded on Harrier and looked at him like he'd seen a ghost. "You are one of those things. Or used to be. I didn't believe it till she said it," he added with a look at Erin. "How were you freed?" he whispered urgently as noise roiled through the still-active crowd, the news that one of the Earth Corps had betrayed them enough to frighten everyone.

Guilt flashed across Steve's face, and he looked away. "...a stroke of fate." He forced himself to look up and meet this man's eyes. "None have yet duplicated the accidental discharge that severed my connection to the other drones. I am...I am sorry."

Samson stared at Steve and seemed to take a long breath, his voice briefly choked with tears. "My brother's family, and his kids, they were in San Francisco. Drones got them, not dragons. I was hoping..." He took a breath again and said, "But even if we can't save anyone else here, that's...that's good news." He seemed to be trying to convince Harrier as much as himself. "If one can be free, all can be free. Just don't tell anyone here, for God's sakes."

"Samson..." Steve swallowed hard. "Thank you." He blinked, then, added, his voice returning to its usual almost mechanical tone. "Where exactly is Bryce Canyon?"

"Twenty miles. It's...it was our nearest teleport station. Kids at the college ran it, and had a little skatepark on the side. They were on the surface and had no defenses; we lost contact with them on the first day."

[Avenger Assembled]

In the depths of the reactor room and its adjoining computer systems, the three engineers went to work trying to build the machine that would save everyone. It wasn't easy with their programmer gone; Tress was a great mechanic and Kurt (aka Blue Steel) an excellent engineer by all accounts, but wiring through the old computers without Green Screen around was another step for them all to work around. The Vault reactor was powerful, a big, overbuilt fission plant that could indeed have made a tremendous explosion if Samson had gone through with his plans to blow it up. The two survivors followed Mara's orders without complaint, even when building supertech machinery for which they obviously had no particular intuitive understanding, working without a break to build the machines that just might save everybody. While they worked, Tress did venture to ask one question of Mara.

"Are women in charge of your world?" she asked curiously in the few minutes before Kurt arrived in the reactor room to join them. "I mean, that's great if you are, but you're obviously in charge of your group, Erin looks very tough, that doctor girl is tough, but Steve up there does whatever you and your friends tell him to do..."

-

There were lots of injured people who needed Ellie's help, and thanks to Lieutenant Hudson and a few other survivors, as well as the order Erin and Steve had imposed on the group as a whole earlier, there managed to be no riots as people got their lives saved by her over and over again. It wasn't until near the end of the line that Ellie ran into her first serious problem, a pale, sweating man covered in a ratty blanket that looked like it had come out of the back of someone's car, smelling faintly of nothing less than decay itself. "Don't need help," he was saying even as someone who looked like his wife was anxiously pushing him towards the healer. "Save the...save the kids...." Suddenly, he collapsed and his wife screamed "Harold!", and as the others looked on black, stinking bile began leaking from the man's mouth.

[Electra]

"Twenty miles isn't too far," Erin said, looking over to Murdock, "and we've what we can for now to organize the civilians. If the Terminus is working on a new weapon, or a new way to make weapons, I guess, we'd better get a look at it. If you and I go, the others can keep working and we'll move quicker." Reaching back, she lifted the child from her shoulders, gentle despite the force needed to overcome those clingy little arms. "I have to go fight some bad guys," she told the girl, looking soberly into her eyes. "While I'm gone, I want you to stay close to her." She pointed across the room at Ellie, who was already back at work among the injured. "Her name is Jill o'Cure. She's loud sometimes, and her powers make her glow funny, but she's nice. She'll make sure you get to the safe place if I'm not back in time, all right?" In a world like this, there was no guarantee that even a quick recon mission was survivable, but Erin wasn't going to borrow trouble, much less suggest it to a little kid. Instead, she set the girl down and gave her a little pat in Ellie's direction.

[Gizmo]

"Dios!" Jill swore as the bile began seeping from the man's mouth as viscous, black slop. It didn't take a huge intuitive leap to recognize the effects of the 'dragonfire' Heartbeat had mentioned earlier, decaying the can from the inside out. The medic didn't even want to think about which organs the substance leaking from his pained features had been originally even as she was able to reflexively make some educated guesses. There was no question that the man had seconds to live, the entropic rot accelerating before her eyes.

Like hell he does. Hands instantly blazing like twin suns, the metamagi planted one palm on the stricken man's chest and the other across his face, the bile sizzling away at her touch like fat on a griddle. "C'mon, Harold, what'd I just say about lying down and dying, huh?" she grunted in obvious strain, sweat beading along her forehead between her hairline and the top of her bandana mask as she pushed herself further, feeling the insidious decay within the body actively working against her. "Hunf, that all you got, you Terminus piece of-- ung!" she muttered under her breath, narrowing her eyes. "You're in m-my dojo, now."

With a final burst of light, Jill was physically thrown back a step, falling heavily on her backside. Harold, for his part, was not only no longer spitting up sticky tar, but was moving about on his own, letting the blanket drop to the floor as he embraced his wife in stunned relief. Thankfully, the smell had largely subsided as well. Lying on her back and breathing heavily, Jill looked up to see a young girl looking down at her with a fairly perturbed expression. "Hey, niña. Here, shake my hand. Apparently I'm pretty much just awesome."

[Fox]

Dragonfly snorted a little, the little tools on her gauntlets carefully re-wiring a piece she'd salvaged from a machine that...well, she wasn't sure what it was supposed to have done; she hadn't looked that closely. Whatever it was, it wouldn't be doing it anymore. [bg=#555555]"Not really,"[/bg] she answered, shrugging. [bg=#555555]"Not a big student of history, but...traditionally a patriarchy. Still mostly men in high positions of power. But we're theoretically equal, and women are catching up...I think. ....not really big on current events, either."[/bg]

The piece of re-worked technology disappeared into her dimensional pocket and she set to cutting a few large metal plates free from the now-disabled whatever-it-was, placing them on top of the coiled power cabling she'd found. [bg=#555555]"Steve's just...think he's too used to taking orders. Listens to me and Erin because she's his boss and I'm her boss. When I'm not in armor. Jill, doctor girl, isn't - his boss, I mean - but she's...charismatic. And used to dealing with stubborn, hot-headed people."[/bg]

[Avenger Assembled]

The two of them, going alone into a Terminus-overrun world, near a site assuredly as well-guarded as doomforge sites tended to be, was frightening to Harrier, as it would be to any rational being. But this is no common forge. And the idea that the Terminus had found a way to speed up the breaking and remaking of human beings into Omegadrones was enough to wipe away any fears for himself. He felt a distant, phantom ache in what had once been his bones, an echo of agony indescribable as he said, "Even if they are finished, destroying the site may discredit the experiment." agreed Harrier. He feared for Erin, the young woman with the young man she occasionally spoke of, but knew that this was the slayer of Omega: surely this would be a task doable with her at his side.

He took her aside, taking a little space from the others, as they spoke as privately as the narrow space allowed. "I saw a map of the region on the wall in Samson's command post. Best to proceed on foot; dragons and Omegadrones will be in the air, looking for targets to bring down. If they are hunting for resistance, one or two survivors may not be made a group target. After all, soon it will no longer matter." He took a breath to steady himself. "We go, we scout, we destroy it if we can. We do not allow ourselves to be taken. We do all we can to make sure no one else suffers at the hands of the Terminus." He nodded, and turned to the elevator. "The others may not understand, but they should know where we have gone."

-

Having cured a victim of dragonfire and getting a handshake from a big-eyed little girl, Jill could have ordered the people around the stretchers and hospital beds to stand on their heads and call her Your Majesty and they'd have done so without hesitation. There were a few smiles from the kids, and people clapping her on the back in congratulation, though not the raucous celebrations she might have gotten in other circumstances. These people had been through too much to really celebrate, but she'd certainly made them a whole lot happier. Eventually the line even began to fade as people were cured and took the places Erin and Harrier had marked out for them earlier, leaving only those still sleeping like Heartbeat and her baby near the hospital beds: Heartbeat herself hadn't stirred a wink during all the fuss.

"Looks like you don't need me anymore," said Lieutenant Hudson with a faint smile of his own for both Jill and her new best friend, giving Jill a firm handshake. "Thank you. From all of us." And he wasn't the only one with thanks, between Harold and his wife and the other new arrivals, the crowd had moved from wanting things from Jill to giving her all they had: human love and compassion.

-

The first time Dragonfly tested the dimensional teleporter for Samson, Blue Steel, and Tress, the hastily-cobbled together equipment functiong perfectly as hundreds of thousands of uranium-derived volts poured into the carefully arranged rare earth probes and focused energy matrixes, the three locals exchanged a look. "Leave it down here?" said Blue Steel questioningly. "Take people down in small groups, ones we can control one-on-one, so we don't have a panic."

"No," said Samson, with more authority. "We should set it up again up there, so everyone can see what we're doing, and they know what's happening and where they're going. If we're worried about crowd control, it'll be harder to have a stampede in a room as large as the Vault."

"Good work, Dragonfly," Tress added in a murmur to Mara now that the work was done, the tech evidently not having a comment on the argument the men who'd been her bosses in another life were having. Her voice a soft confession. "I've got to admit, I wondered...I wondered if this was just something that would dump people in the void, at first. Don't get me wrong, I'd have gone too, anything's better than staying here, but...this is good. Thank you. I can live with this."