ic The Hard Hand of Fate (IC)

[Electra]

"We'll tell them on the way," Erin decided, leading the way towards the elevator. Now that the decision was made, it was important not to think about it too hard, or worse, to get pulled into an argument about it. She waited till the elevator was nearly at the top level before activating her communicator to the others. "Murdock and I are going to check out the doomforges at Bryce Canyon. We won't be gone long." She shoved the device back on her belt and looked to Harrier. "All right, if we're going on foot, it's going to have to be my feet. You're too slow on the ground. You navigate." She bent forward slightly to allow him to climb on her back, then took off at top speed, tearing across the empty, brutalized landscape.

[Fox]

Thank you. I can live with this."

[bg=#555555]"That is sort of the point,"[/bg] Dragonfly dryly - and tiredly - joked, though there wasn't any malice in her voice. Behind the metal faceplate she was giving Tress a careful look; she knew that tone of voice, that kind of weary resignation - she'd used it more than once after escaping but before getting back on her feet. It wasn't the sort of thing she wanted to hear from anybody else.

[bg=#555555]"You're very good,"[/bg] she noted, dumping suit power into physical strength so she could heft their newly-crafted device now that the power cables were - temporarily - disconnected. Some part of her multi-threaded mind drifted toward the communication system build into her suit; she silently noted Erin's message, and frowned, but had to admit the logic in their surface excursion. [bg=#555555]"Grab the paint? Going to need it to draw a perimeter - thanks. Want a job?"[/bg] The offer was a bit out of nowhere, but she seemed perfectly serious about it. [bg=#555555]"Run a tech company - improving other peoples' projects, mostly. Consulting. Could use someone like you - smart, good under pressure. Going to have to help us here, first, though - not done yet. Think of it as a really bad interview."[/bg]

[Avenger Assembled]

Wander and Harrier raced out of the burnt-out shell of a building that had once been the Earth Corps headquarters and straight into a scene from the depths of Hell itself. What had once been a beautiful state park had been blasted down to the bone by a conflagration that still smoldered here and there amid wrecked buildings and murdered forests. The blacked remains of dead trees, the burnt-bare skeletons of dead animals and dead people reached up towards the red and bleeding sky overhead like the fingers of the world reaching up to pull down death. Bones and ash were piled atop each other in heaps that must have been shelters, charnel remains of the world. If it was like this in a sparsely populated national park, albeit one that had been a destination for refugees in the last terrible hours overhead, what must it have been like, what must it still be like, in the larger cities?

It didn't bear thinking about. Besides, Harrier had seen worse. He went invisible as they ran, fiddling with his pike after warning her first, the better to cut down her profile to any staring eyes. Though he knew that there were plenty of beings in the Terminus who could see an Omegadrone. They kept to the dead forest to avoid any eyes in the sky that might be monitoring the roads, which had now cooled down after being melted to liquid tar earlier in the last days, the seared-black trees forcing Wander to slow down a fraction in their run, just enough that they didn't plow into something solid as they went. Harrier kept a careful track of their route as they went, and finally as they raced down a dead streambed towards what had once been a waterfall, he said in his tinny armored voice, "Here. We should-"

Suddenly, just as he spoke, his arms tightened around her. "DOWN!" And no sooner had he done so than Wander heard a great choking roar from the valley beneath them, and saw, rising on a massive column of fire up from the valley floor, obviously having just lifted off from the remains of the Bryce Canyon complex, a great black skull-headed vessel as large as a commercial airliner, its VTOL jets burning with the same black and red fire that marked Harrier's jetpack: a Terminus vessel!

[Gizmo]

Jill turned from her conversation with Harold's wife as the scientists reemerged into the larger part of the Vault and began walking toward them, carrying the soft spoken little blonde girl in her arms. The latter was looking considerably better than she had when Dragonfly and the other technicians had gone off to begin work on their ride back home, her burns having disappeared and her spirits improved, even if that really wasn't saying much. "Hey! I made a friend." The medic gave the girl a big smile, and if she wasn't quite up to returning it or saying anything just yet, she at least looked from person to person without hiding her face. "Everybody's more or less mobile," Jill told Samson more seriously. "Aside from the debilitating exhaustion, I mean. Nobody's in any immediate danger anymore, but more than a few of them are going to need to spend a few days under observation before I'd call them out of the woods. You manage to call us a cab?" she asked Mara.

[Electra]

Wander dropped as soon as Harrier spoke, even before he tossed her down, raising her head and shading her eyes to see the ship take off. "Guess we found the place," she muttered, rising to a crouch and brushing herself off. "That's not big enough to have picked up the equipment, gotta be a transport or something." She moved quickly to the edge of the cliff, moving from cover to cover until she could peer over the edge. The blue HAX uniform she wore was less suited to this work than her crimefighting costume, but it was quickly coated with soot and dust, indistinguishable from the rest of the ground. "I can get us to the ground," she told Harrier, "but you're going to have to get us closer. I've never tried to sneak up on these guys."

[Avenger Assembled]

"A troop transport," agreed Harrier, still invisible in the dirt beside her. Wander could hear him, his voice tinny and echoy as usual when his armor was up. "Fully loaded from the engine noise. Most likely with the drones transformed in this facility. A small contingency force will be left, as well as whatever technicians remain to tend the pits themselves." This close, the building was mercifully quiet: none of the unending lamentations or horse screams of agony Harrier associated with doomforges and those who watched them, just mechanical noises and the sound of thrumming machinery.

But who was to say what noises these nanoforges made? At Wander's words, Harrier hesitated only a fraction before saying, "They can see in darkness, and communicate via radio. They can be fooled, but not frightened or persuaded. But I...I cannot pass for a healthy drone, Wander," he went on, sounding a trifle nervous for the first time. "I can intercept IFF signals, but I cannot return them. I would be recognized as damaged and severed from the Voice, a target for every drone in the facility...."

An idea was evidently coming to him. "I can enter through that front gate, you can approach from the rear, and we can meet in the middle." At the suicidal risk he was taking, Harrier went on, "I am a heavy assault Omegadrone, Wander. I have engaged in combat against countless lesser drones and multiple superhuman opponents simultaneously and been victorious. I will be able to survive combat against a rearguard doomforge force long enough for you to complete the mission."

[Electra]

Even before he finished speaking, Wander was shaking her head. "Unacceptable risk," she told him. "You're the best asset we have in knowing what the Terminus is going to throw at us and how to interpret what we're seeing. Even if I thought it would work, we can't afford to lose you." She cracked a half-smile. "Plus, Mara would be pissed at me for losing an employee. We stick together on this one. If you put up that hologram thingy, would that help?" she suggested. "Maybe buy some time before they thought to scan you for Omegadrone parts, anyway."

She chewed on her thumbnail, studying the facility far below. "This would be easier if we had some explosives of our own," she mused. "We'll have to make do. If stealth isn't an option, we'll just have to use speed. Drop over the cliff, head for the back door as fast as we can, bust our way in. We'll have to fight, but close quarters give the advantage to the smaller team anyway."

[Fox]

[bg=#555555]"Cab, yes. But the driver's kind of crazy,"[/bg] Dragonfly tiredly replied, gently putting the pylon back down so that it could have power cables run back into it. [bg=#555555]"Erin and Harrier are investigating a doomforge. Apparently. They'll be back."[/bg] they'd better [bg=#555555]"In the meantime...."[/bg]

Dragonfly relieved Tress of the paint can, using her suit's computer to paint an untidy circle about ten feet out from the pylon itself, still being hooked back up. [bg=#555555]"We need to start getting people out of here. As many as can fit inside the circle at a time, and they need to move out of the way as soon as they arrive. Mmh - needs to be operated by you, or me, or Erin or Harrier. Needs either the math provided to it, or somebody who's been in our dimension long enough to act as....anchor. Easy, though - pull the big lever on the side. Let go to arrive there yourself, hold on to stay here. Tried to keep it simple."[/bg]

[Avenger Assembled]

"...all right," Tress had said after a moment's hesitation down below, studying her new prospective boss with eyes gone huge for a moment before nodding again, as if answering an argument inside her own mind. "All right, I'll do it. It'd be a shame to come all this way and not see the world that can produce women like you. And machines like this." She smiled for a moment at the machine, so briefly, before pulling her goggles back over her face and getting back to work. Up top, while Mara and Jill talked, she went about gathering up the small bag of her things before joining the others to help organize the evacuation.

Samson briefly embraced both women, a look of profound, utter relief on his face, before he went about calling the others to attention to announce the news of their salvation. As he talked, walking from person to person in the neat rows Steve and Erin had made, telling them how to use the teleporter, Jill and Dragonfly could see the tears welling in the eyes of those whose salvation they'd won that day.

There was another whup from above as people took their places for the first trip, in volume no louder than the occasional booms that had come from far above the whole time they were there, but it seemed to get one person's attention in particular. The little girl took Jill by the sleeve and pulled insistently to get her attention, looking up and pointing straight up at the ceiling and through it with her bare finger, again and again.

[Avenger Assembled]

"You take them from ground level first, I'll come in from the air," suggested Harrier, who had no hesitation about sending in one of the slayers of Omega to fight enemies of this caliber: the only reason he hadn't let her go alone was that he'd never let even the most powerful ally fight the Terminus unaided. "A momentary confusion will be enough here. Two or three squads of lesser drones, the same number of heavy units. Two dozen technicians, none of whom will be particularly good fighters. Ready?" They counted down until they were ready, and then Harrier rocketed into the air on a roaring column of fire, ready to descend after Wander had broken through the perimeter.

The Bryce Canyon complex looked like it had once been something like a community college complex, before the skies had burned red and the world itself a moment later. There were only a few skeletons amid the burnt-out buildings, and none anywhere near what might once have been the local football stadium: there were Omegadrones there, front and back, and as she made her approach Erin could hear the sound of working machinery inside.

[Gizmo]

Jill laughed a little at Samson's bearhug, carefully making sure the little girl in her arms wasn't squashed between them too badly. It was a relief to see some semblance of hope returning to the faces in the Vault, if only in flickers amidst the still stifling miasma of quiet desperation and she gave her girlfriend an approving grin. The tugging on her sleeve got her attention quickly though, turning her concerned expression to the child as she pointed urgently. "What is is, hun?" she asked in what she hoped was a reassuring tone, following the direction of the finger to the ceiling. Dread mounting, the metamagi's hands lit up with blue light, ready to bring forth a protective barrier at a moment's notice. "I think we might want to pick up the pace a bit," she told Dragonfly under her breath.

[Electra]

Wander nodded acknowledgement to Harrier's plan, then drew her bat and opened it before stepping off the cliff as casually as stepping onto a sidewalk. She fell through the air, orienting her body perpendicular to the ground, and landed with a soft thud. The instant her feet were on the ground she took off running, homing in on the signs of movement she could see through the window. Speed and surprise were her only advantage here, and she was determined to take advantage of it. Raising an arm to protect her face, she ran straight through the giant picture window without slowing, glass shattering and showering around her in a crashing cacophony. Her first blow felled one Omegadrone outright, her second another. These were low-powered drones, easy to pick off, but momentum only carried her so far. When Wander looked up, there were plenty more drones where that came from!

[Avenger Assembled]

Luckily, one of them was on her side. His engines roaring with almighty speed, Harrier plunged through an open side window in the stadium gatehouse just seconds after Wander had destroyed the drones at the door. He was still wearing Caradoc's gleaming armor, the better to confuse the drones inside and not terrify any human beings they might happen to encounter (should they be so lucky), but there was nothing of the shining knight in him as he plunged his screaming blade through the neck of the last standing drone, its head flying off in a perfect arc as its internal oils splattered him. "DIE FOR OMEGA!" he yelled, his voice flat and tinny through the armor, a sharp contrast to his usual silent mien in combat.

Seconds later, the stairwell doors kicked open and two big, bulky drones stepped out: with their spiked bodies and long, wickedly bladed pikes, these were no minor drones like Harrier and Wander had just destroyed: there were heavy assault drones, superhero hunters like those that had killed so many on so many worlds. One fired a blast of inky black entropy at Wander, scorching past the nimble heroine without hitting her, while Harrier hefted his pike and slashed aside the blast from the other in the air, cutting Terminus energy in two with its own like.

"No. There is no escape."

[Avenger Assembled]

"el fuego," the little girl finally whispered, so quiet that only someone as observant as Jill would have heard it. "el fuego monstruo..." By mutual agreement, it was a group of mostly kids who were going through the first time: ten children under ten and as many of their parents as could fit inside the dimensional teleporter's circle of effect, bodies packed in tight and clinging to each other, each adult carrying two kids to fit as many as possible for each teleport. Tress and Kurt, now assisting Mara, manned their stations by the machine and waited for the signal. After all, there was very little they could do without her! When the perimeter alert went off, again, louder, people looked scared as the red lights on the walls flashed silently, on and off, just once, but the hope the heroes had given them was enough to keep away panic, especially with Samson walking among them like a conductor. "Form a line, form a line, right this way..."

Leaning close to Jill and Dragonfly, he murmured "Not an attempt at the complex itself yet. Sometimes they come over looking to see if anything they can eat survived."

[Fox]

[bg=#555555]"Right,"[/bg] Dragonfly nodded, carefully eyeing the roof over their heads and wishing she'd installed some sort of sensory array that could penetrate solid earth. something to think about [bg=#555555]"Better get started, then. And hope it doesn't draw attention."[/bg]

She took a deep breath, little lights dancing behind her eyes - barely visible behind the blue lenses in her helmet - and their creation started to spin up. [bg=#555555]"Remember,"[/bg] she reminded the group as the pylon filled with flickering light, [bg=#555555]"clear the area as soon as you arrive to make room for everyone else. Need to send groups as fast as we can."[/bg]

And then space inside the painted circle turned inside-out and shattered, not too dissimilar from the heroes' own arrival - the whole cylindrical area seemed to break apart and mix with broken-up pieces of what was visibly a large room back at the HAX building. When space righted itself and the machine spun back down, there wasn't a person to be seen.

[bg=#555555]"Next group,"[/bg] she instructed, mentally ticking down the seconds it would take for the pylon to be ready again without risking overheating or blowing parts they couldn't easily replace. [bg=#555555]"Quickly, please - don't forget to stay inside the circle."[/bg]

[Electra]

Erin relaxed fractionally to see that these Omegadrones were not the top-of-the-line hero crushers, though she wouldn't make the mistake of getting cocky. She dodged the blow one sent at her and retaliated, launching herself into the rafters to swing by her legs from a pipe before launching an aerial assault. One swift blow from her bat had the drone reeling backwards, out of the fight at least for the moment. While Harrier dealt with the other drone, she began to look around, trying to see where the doomforge itself would be in a place like this. There had to be more drones as well, technicians too, but not in this room. They'd have to press on further, and quickly. As fast as they'd moved, time was still leaking away from them.

[Avenger Assembled]

Wander couldn't see much signs of heavy technology in here; just scenes of carnage and struggle, bloodstains and organic leavings on the walls and floor, with the heavy scorchmarks of Omegadrone fire. She could catch glimpses of the unique black-steel architecture of the Terminus past the swinging doors the Omegadrones had been fighting from; evidently they'd colonized the entire stadium interior (probably taking advantage of the open space) the way they had her own Freedom City.

His jetpack roaring behind him, Harrier didn't hesitate to fly into melee against the other heavy assault drone, smashing his pike against the face that might once have been his own again and again until steel cracked and the drone staggered backwards, knocked asunder as its internal systems fought to keep it conscious. "That one's not dead!" he called to Wander as she looked away from the one she was fighting; for all that they'd been terrible marksmen, both these drones were made of far sterner stuff than the typical Omegadrones Wander was probably used to fighting.

As if summoned, a squad of those same drones came pouring out of the door left open by their superiors, attacking the two heroes with devastating intent. Though their bolts glanced harmlessly off the heavily-armored Harrier, one struck home on Wander as the drones swarmed around them both like demonic cyber-hornets.

[Electra]

Wander looked aside as Harrier called out to her, a brief moment of inattention that cost her as one of the drones scored a blast to her left shoulder. She hissed with the pain and shock of entropy burning through her clothes, into skin and muscle and bone. Nothing felt quite like a hit from a power pike. She forced herself to focus, blocking out the pain and favoring her undamaged arm as she began once again to swing her bat. The drone who shot her went down first, of course, followed by all the rest of his fellows. By the time they were in a red metal heap on the ground, she was already feeling quite a bit better. "Can you get the ones that are left?" she called to Harrier, even as she moved to open the door separating them from the rest of the facility.

[Avenger Assembled]

When she looked back, Wander saw the two big drones advancing on Harrier with sinister intent. By way of reply, Harrier shifted...and dropped the Caradoc disguise in a shimmer of light, instantly looking exactly like the two drones with whom he was fighting. They actually paused, as stunned as an Omegadrone could be, a fatal move as Harrier drove his pike through the heart of the one Wander had been fighting without hesitation. Without a noise, it fell backwards, suddenly a pile of cybernetic parts and matter that hadn't been alive for a very long time. The armor, mercifully, stayed shut. Spinning, Harrier fired another blast at the other drone, knocking it backwards.

"I'll be fine! Go! Go!" he called in that tinny voice as he turned to face the last drone.

-

Wander ran onto a football field that had been transformed into a charnel house; a laboratory of Hell and factory of pain. The grass was long gone, of course, the sod torn up into deep pits lined with a silvery grey liquid metal that looked deceptively placid, the torn-up dirt covered in footprints and dragging marks, as well as the scorches of weapons fire and jetpacks. There were computer consoles like something out of Star Trek by the pits, long probes extending down into each.

There were about two dozen people there on the field with her; humanoid shapes in what it took her a moment to recognize as black and red hazmat suits, the red blobby star on their chest matching Shadivan Steelgrave's helmet face. None of them appeared to be armed; in fact, they were in the middle of a panic at her arrival, she could hear at least one voice, belonging to a humanoid woman shouting into one of the consoles, "The teleporter! The teleporter! Lord Mandragora, please!"

But no help was coming.

[Gizmo]

Realizing the girl spoke Spanish, Jill set her down carefully and knelt in front of her, placing a comforting hand on the orphan's shoulder and addressing her in the same language. "" She held up one pinky finger in front of the girl, her expression proving how solemnly she was taking the vow. "" She didn't love the idea of leaving the girl alone, even to send her to safety, but she couldn't leave herself until they'd made sure Erin and Steve were alright.

[Avenger Assembled]

"" she replied to Jill. She gave Jill another hug around the neck, tight as could be, before reluctantly disengaging and getting ready to take her trip. "" she added in a whisper, her dark eyes huge at the words, before making her way over to joining the other kids for another wave through the dimensional teleporter. As she vanished, she met Jill's eyes, and even as she was cast into another dimension, Yolanda waved at Jill and just for a moment smiled before vanishing back to Earth-Prime.

[Electra]

Wander paused for a moment to take in the scene, all the while forcing herself not to understand it entirely. There was a fine line to walk between grasping the tactical situation and absorbing the atrocities that had taken place here, that she'd been unable to prevent. "Everybody on the ground, now!" she shouted, brandishing her bat at the technicians. "If there's any head not in the dirt in three seconds, I'm taking it off, got it?" The wound in her shoulder was already healed, leaving only blackened cloth behind, but her entire body felt a sort of vague, nauseous ache that was part power pike and part just being here in this place. She almost hoped one of the technicians tried something.

[Avenger Assembled]

One thing about life in the Terminus; you learn to obey your superiors quickly. The technicians all hit the ground at once, their faces still hidden by their suits, the one by the comm panel hitting it one last time before falling to the ground with the others with a cry of despair. Seconds later, an Omegadrone came blasting through the wall by Erin, its systems overloading, burning Terminus fire across its body in an instant before it exploded in an eruption of sizzling black and red and green that left a pile of electronic parts scattered across the stadium floor. A few moments later, Harrier came stalking out, his armor stained with oils and fluids, his face as ever invisible behind his mask.

At the sight of the nanoforges, instantly recognizable as such despite being very different from the systems Harrier knew, Steve fought the sudden, instinctive urge of any citizen of Nihilor to flee at the sight of a place like this. Unbidden, his words came out loud as he stood by Erin, so close that only she could hear. "They wore the same costumes. At the forges." Out loud, he shouted, "Which one of you is the team leader?"

"You can talk?!?" The voice full of terror and wonder came from one of the nearest techs, and without hesitation Harrier strode over there and grabbed the man by the neck, lifting him up over his head one-handed. Kicking and squirming, whimpering in fear, the technician called out "Please!" to the silent spiked sentinel holding him up. "Mercy!"

"You. Dare. Beg Me? HERE?" For just a moment, it looked as though Harrier was going to rip the man's head right off before he said, "Wander, if you have questions, best to ask them quickly!"

[Electra]

Wander bounded after Harrier, putting a restraining hand on the arm holding the technician. "Ease back, Caradoc," she murmured, deliberately appealing to the human-friendly, knight-in-shining-armor part of him. "We don't need to kill them," she said, raising her voice, "as long as they cooperate with us, fully and quickly!" She turned to the cowering technicians. "We're destroying this forge," she announced. "How do we do it quickly and without blowing ourselves sky-high, and you with us? And when is the next transport scheduled to arrive? Are any more humans coming this way?"

[Avenger Assembled]

There was dead silence from the others, even the man Harrier was still holding up by the collar, having efficiently switching his grip so the man didn't strangle beneath his strong fingers. "Their families remain behind in Steelgrave's compound," said Harrier, the anger in his voice giving way now that the mass murderer he held was no longer trying to defend himself. "And await the forges, if they betray him." Looking around, he added for Wander's benefit, "I can bombard the site from the air, but will attract attention, and leaves us with the problem of these people. Andd I have no idea how the nanites will respond to-

Suddenly, one in the rear sat up and tore off her helmet, a shock of red hair spilling out before she called out, "There are no more transports coming! Mandragora left us to rot in this miserable place!" It was the woman who Erin had seen desperately trying to raise her putative master. In a horse voice, she yelled, "There are no more humans coming. This planet is dead, and so will all of us be!"

"DAMN you, Calendar!" cursed the man Harrier was holding, his attention on the betrayer more than the impossible spectacle of a thinking, talking Omegadrone. "Maybe you don't have anyone, but my family is-"

"Don't be stupid!" she yelled at him, trying to break from the suddenly hostile crowd, her fellows turning on her in sheer terror of being found out to have been in her company, and make a run for the heroes. "Mandragora betrayed Steelgrave too when he left us here! It has to have been a setup from the beginning!" She went down, as two of her fellows jumped her, and yelled, her eyes on Wander, "Please!"