Back to the Present [AoO]

[Veiled Malice]

Ren boggled at the news he'd just been given. Omega, taking over Centurion? He hadn't even noticed the cave behind them filling in, so stunned was he by the revelation that Earth's greatest hero had fallen to it's greatest villain. Despite the fact that he himself was supposed to be a bad guy, Ren had no desire to live in a world in which that maniacal despot ruled. There was no room for someone like him - or someone like Lynn - on a world like that.

"How?" Ren finally said, his voice shaky. "How the hell are we supposed to help against Centurion, much less him and Omega combined?"

[Heritage]

Grim eyes go wide as Foreshadow explains the state of this harsh new world; it looks like she wants to say something, but can't find the words.

"How?" Ren finally said, his voice shaky. "How the hell are we supposed to help against Centurion, much less him and Omega combined?"

The young heroine points vaguely at Ren, still trying to absorb it all. "What he said; if we're your best chance, you are beyond screwed. Omegatron or whatever he's called could kill me by blowing his nose; how are we-" She stops and turns around. "What happened to the door just now?"

[Heridfel]

"What door?" a new voice behind them asks. As they turn to look at it, they see a tall, bald man with a goatee dusting off his hands. His presence doesn't seem to come as a surprise to Foreshadow, which might speak to how trustworthy he is. Nanowire and Icarus could sense with their radar that he stepped through the earth to appear within the tunnel; Grimalkin heard no sign of him until he stepped out.

"A door wouldn't be safe. I have to keep moving this cavern anyway, so it wouldn't do any good," he says.

Foreshadow tugs on Icarus's arm lightly.

"You must exit so that Earthbender can finish his duty," he says. Icarus glances back to the man and continues into the cavern. Once inside, he looks around while speaking to Foreshadow.

"Nanowire's got a point. Why do you think we can help you out against this guy if everyone else couldn't?" Icarus asks.

"Lady Tarot and I sensed that we were soon to receive visitors from another world. Centurion has spent the last 3 years killing off anyone capable of traveling through time or dimensions, or those who might be able to do the same by magic or technology," Foreshadow says. "That is likely why he revealed himself by killing the Master Mage. He sealed the Rainbow Bridge and closed off Olympus, and Baron Samedi and Hades have taken control of their dimensions in service to him. We don't know how you got here, but you can enlist help for us."

[Heritage]

Grim holds up her hands. "Look, I just got lucky playing around with my great-grandfather's mirror, but maybe lightening can strike twice somehow; I'll help in anyway I can, but I can't promise anything. My name is Grimalkin, and it's kind of an honor to meet you, sir."

She rubs her hands together in anticipation. "So, where's the rest of Le Resistance?"

[Veiled Malice]

Ren strode into the cavernous underground chamber, following closely after Icarus and Lynn. "I hazard a guess that we need some kind of power source for Icarus here. Come to think of it, how the heck did you get out of the past in the first place?" he directed towards the armored man. "You said something about ASTRO labs, but as far as I know, they didn't have any chrono-spanning devices built. At least not in the 70's."

[Heridfel]

Icarus shakes his head, "Some sort of mumbo-jumbo. Far as I could tell, I was a spring all stretched out, and they just had to find a way to undo whatever had hooked me there."

Foreshadow looks to Grimalkin grimly, "We're not all here. It'd be suicide to risk all of us in one place, especially since we can't be sure that you don't intend to betray us. The four of us are all we can risk now. It sounds like you recognize me, some of you. The man who formed the tunnel is Earthbender. Rant is around here somewhere, and Network is our ghost in the machine. He's the one powering everything we have down here."

The light dims for a moment, and a transparent image of a man, lined in electric current, appears from a piece of machinery. "If it's power you need, I can provide it. Just show me where to plug in," he buzzes.

Icarus recoils, "There's no place for you to plug in. It doesn't work like that. Network... weren't you with Force Ops? I thought you were one of the ones that got killed during the Invasion."

Network shakes his head, and Earthbender speaks up. "Those who died then were fortunate. They never saw Earth's greatest hero fall."

"I think the families torn apart then would disagree with you, Earthbender," Foreshadow says. "I know the Parkers did."

[Heritage]

Grim shakes her head, a look of firm conviction on her face.

"I can only speak for myself, but I won't betray you, not when the world is this messed up. How-" Her mouth hangs open for a second, then she looks nervously between Icarus, Ren and back to Foreshadow. "Wait, which Parkers? What family, where are they from?"

[Veiled Malice]

"Well, I can tell you I'm not a huge fan of your world from what I've seen so far," Ren stated simply. "So you can count on me to do whatever I can to change it. Where do we start?"

He looked back to Lynn as she asked about the Parkers. Whatever her connection to them was, she seemed to be rather agitated about it.

[Heridfel]

Icarus freezes in place. His expression changes to something more threatening, and for the first time since Nanowire and Grimalkin saw him, he looks like a villain.

"Yeah, what about the Parkers?" he asks. He looks between Earthbender and Foreshadow, seeking an answer, now.

Earthbender is the one to answer him.

"Well, the oldest one, hero named Gravitor... he was the one who worked with Daedalus, and made quantum leaps in microcircuitry. He must have been 80 or something by the time Omega came, but he suited up and went to go fight. He had a heart attack in the middle of it and died.

His son and his wife were at the mall when the reports came in. Lainey Parker was killed when part of the building collapsed on her, and Sean Parker... he must have been a mutant, because he not only survived, but he fought off parademons barehanded to get his children out. They're with u..." he says, when Foreshadow cuts him off.

"Enough! It is we four for now, Earthbender," Foreshadow says. He softens. "The Parker children lost nearly their whole family that day. The death of Gravitor was one of the most notable, and Centurion himself gave the eulogy."

Icarus looks ready to collapse. The only warning that the group has is the small movement of his right hand clenching into a fist. He punches the ground suddenly, and the cavern itself shakes. Earthbender puts up his hands, steadying the ceiling and looking at Icarus like he's gone crazy. Maybe there's only so much that someone can take.

[Heritage]

"Well, the oldest one, hero named Gravitor... he was the one who worked with Daedalus, and made quantum leaps in microcircuitry. He must have been 80 or something by the time Omega came, but he suited up and went to go fight. He had a heart attack in the middle of it and died.

His son and his wife were at the mall when the reports came in. Lainey Parker was killed when part of the building collapsed on her, and Sean Parker... he must have been a mutant, because he not only survived, but he fought off parademons barehanded to get his children out. They're with u..." he says, when Foreshadow cuts him off.

"Enough! It is we four for now, Earthbender," Foreshadow says. He softens. "The Parker children lost nearly their whole family that day. The death of Gravitor was one of the most notable, and Centurion himself gave the eulogy."

"No. No no no no." Lynn drops to the ground shaking her head, a queasy disbelieving look on her face as she murmurs to herself.

"He married my mom." Then she shoots Icarus an accusing look. "You married my mom! I don't even exist anymore!"

Her anger quickly dissolves into tears as she curls into a fetal ball of despair on the cavern floor.

[Veiled Malice]

Ren whipped his head back and forth between the now seemingly crazy Icarus and the weeping Grim, completely without a clue of what had just happened. "Okay, everyone hold on!" he shouted. "Alright, first off, Icarus. Yes, it sucks that your dad died. That goes without saying. But we're more than thirty years in the future. He could have died from a heart attack or gotten hit by a bus in that amount of time! There's no guarantee that even if everything had gone well, you'd still have him in your life." Yes, he was giving up Icarus's identity, but at this point, Lynn had already done a relatively good job of doing the same thing.

He then turned to Lynn and knelt down by her side. "This doesn't mean anything," he whispered to her, silently enough so that he couldn't be heard by anyone else. "All of this is a lie. This future wasn't meant to be, do you understand?" He placed a hand on the girl's back, trying to comfort her. "We'll go back, we'll fix all this. We'll make it all like it never happened." A smile creased his face. "Trust me."

[Heridfel]

Icarus stands up from the ground, his eyes burning a hole through Nanowire.

"I am dead. If my dad lives, I die, and I still don't get a chance to say goodbye. I had it, but I thought that he'd still be here. You have no idea what I've lost, and you don't care," he says. His voice is cold, and his anger is controlled after his sudden outburst. He looks to Earthbender, who takes a step back involuntarily.

"That's me. Sean Parker - mutant, magic, something gave me powers. And now you want me to use them to rescue your sorry world," he says. "Why should I bother?"

"Your kids aren't enough?" Earthbender asks him. He looks over to Foreshadow. "I'm not giving anything away now. I mean, they're his." Foreshadow just shakes his head and looks to Sean for an answer.

"My... kids?" he says, having just caught up to when Earthbender had mentioned it before. He looks less likely to smash the ground apart now, and hesitates before his face softens.

"Yeah, boy and a girl, Darian and Lynn," Earthbender says. "They should know their father's alive again. We can get a hold of them," he says, more to Foreshadow than Icarus. A buzzing sound comes from one of the machines.

"I'll do it!" says Network, appearing from one of the machines briefly. The entire cavern dims as the lights fade to their lowest setting, and Foreshadow curses.

"I didn't say you should!" he says to the electricity elemental, already gone. He turns towards the three time travelers.

"You had better be worth it. The runes said you'd bring a chance to change the world for the better, and they don't lie."

[Veiled Malice]

Ren continued to stand over Lynn, offering his support to the ailing girl. It was good that Icarus had calmed down; if the guy had started smashing things in the cave, no telling what could have happened.

"What runes?" Ren asked Foreshadow.

[Heritage]

The brief mention of her own name, but in a radically different context, chills Grim slightly; despite herself, part of her wants to see this other Lynn, but part of her is sick of paradox and shifting realities, and wants nothing to do with her. However, something Foreshadow says pricks her interest, and she sits up suddenly with a concerned frown upon her face.

"Is anyone else getting a distinct ‘Ragnarok’ vibe from all of this? All of this fate and runes and people missing eyes, it's all very Nordic. What's his name, Wagner; y’know, the Nazi opera guy? He would love this."

[Heridfel]

Foreshadow snorts, but before he can answer, Network returns.

"Alright, the two of them know, and they're on their way here. It..." he says. Foreshadow's eye widens, and even Earthbender and Rant gape at him.

"They what!" Foreshadow shouts. "Bloodseeker has been sniffing around here, and they're coming to meet us? If they capture Magister and Changeling, then they could come after our cell with a vengeance." He glances to the three cross-time supers.

"We have to move now and try to intercept them. Earthbender and Rant, execute cleanup Zeta. Network, we'll discuss this later. Everyone else, get ready to move," Foreshadow says.

Icarus catches up with what's going on. "Where are they coming from? Which way do we go to find them?" he asks. Network provides the answer at the same time as Foreshadow, and their voices come in unison.

"North Freedom, near where HIT used to be," they say. Network gives Foreshadow a look (an impressive feat for a humanoid-shaped ball of electricity) and shivers. "I'm still not used to that," he says.

Earthbender and Rant are collapsing the cavern, with Earthbender doing more to prevent the dirt from coming on top of the others than collapsing it himself. Icarus looks around, and he looks panicked.

"What's going on? It's growing close in here," he says. Unfortunately, he's slipped into Ancient Greek, so only his fear can be heard, not the words.

[Heritage]

Foreshadow snorts, but before he can answer, Network returns.

"Alright, the two of them know, and they're on their way here. It..." he says. Foreshadow's eye widens, and even Earthbender and Rant gape at him.

"They what!" Foreshadow shouts. "Bloodseeker has been sniffing around here, and they're coming to meet us? If they capture Magister and Changeling, then they could come after our cell with a vengeance."

"Changeling." Grim whispers the word to herself; it was almost the name she went with, back when she was coming up with her more heroic persona; with disturbing certainty, she knows who this is, and feels slightly queasy.

Suddenly Icarus becomes visibly upset, and starts saying something in the same foreign language he once spoke the first time they met several hours ago.

Has it only been hours? It feels like days.

Deciding that the last thing you want to have in a cave is a freaked-out supervillain in a powersuit, Grim hurries over to him and lightly grabs his arms as she attempts to make eye contact; when she speaks, her voice is firm but kind.

"Icarus! Icarus! Please freak out in English, so we know how scared we're supposed to be! Talk to me, big guy, what's goin' on?"

[Veiled Malice]

While Grim did her best to calm down Icarus, in dawned on Ren that the shaking of the cavern they now stood in might not be doing wonders for the armored man's mental state. "Oi! Quit the quaking! You're freaking him out!" he yelled at Rant and Earthbender. If they didn't stop, he couldn't really do much, but at least he'd made his wants known.

[Heridfel]

Earthbender and Rant still the quaking, but not before ancient Icarus has fully taken over Sean Parker's mind. He glances about feverishly in the dark and the dim, still able to see everyone in the cavern as clearly as if it were day. When Grimalkin touches him, he jumps away and says "Get off me!"

The ceiling still seems to close in on him, even though the earth has ceased to move. He has to get out of there.

He points his hands up to the ceiling, and energy erupts from them, going directly overhead. It vaporizes. No dirt, no stone, not even any dust is in between, and light dimly shines through. Icarus leaps up and keeps going, flying through the hole that he has made. Before the others can think about following him, it begins to collapse back in. Earthbender assumes a martial arts stance, stopping the whole cavern from falling back in.

"Did the runes see that too?" Rant asks Foreshadow sarcastically. "He almost did what Omega hasn't yet." Then he looks over to Grimalkin and Nanowire. "What was his problem? You don't see me freaking out when it gets all dark and sca-wee."

"Ancient Greek," Foreshadow mutters, ignoring Rant's gibes. "Maybe... no, that's not likely."

Earthbender groans, sweat coming down his forehead. "He did more damage than he knew. It's going to take a while to clean this up and move the equipment. I can let you out, but I can't come with you."

[Veiled Malice]

"I have no idea," Ren said to Rant, shaking the dirt and other crud out of his hair. "He's never done that before, and I doubt it's just from claustrophobia. He's wearing a fully enclosed suit, after all."

"But we need to get his butt back here before he brings all of Omega's people down on our collective heads." He turned to Earthbender. "Can you let us out here? Somewhere out of the way, perhaps?"

[Heridfel]

Earthbender nods and says, "That's simple. Foreshadow, does that work for you?"

Foreshadow stares forward for a moment. Colored runes made out of some sort of eldritch energy swirl around him for a few seconds. He blinks, then shakes his head. "No. He will be safe, at least for a while, and he may even draw some of their attention away from us. The future is less clear for Magister and Changeling. They will need our help more. Let us out, but we will find the others first."

Rant frowns, but doesn't disagree with Foreshadow. Earthbender begins to form a spiraling ramp, heading up to the surface. There's no bright light this time, but they can tell that he's opened a whole on the surface as well.

[Veiled Malice]

Ren nodded to Grim and followed Foreshadow up the staircase to the what he hoped to be the surface. He didn't know the hero from before, aside from Icarus's (then Heavy's) whispered warnings about him. Still, he had to imagine the man had changed a lot from his otherworldly version. Besides the whole "missing eye" thing, of course. Being without in-depth knowledge of the various heroes and villains of Freedom City had a lot of downsides, no doubt.

[Heritage]

Grim nods and mutely follows, disappointed with herself, but really, what could she do? A guy that size, with powers and a robot suit? She's lucky she wasn't splattered like a bug on the windshield when he roared up through the roof and into the sky! The continual mentioning of these weird not-quite-half-siblings of hers continues to frighten and intrigue her, and despite herself she has to ask a few questions as they make their way out of the cavern.

"Mister, or just, Foreshadow? Tell me more about the Parker children; what are they like, what are their powers and abilities?"

[Heridfel]

"Magister can control gravity in a limited area around him. He can fly, but he's not going to when he might be seen. We'll see him at ground level," Foreshadow says. His certainty sounds like a regular man's, rather than that of a Nostradamus. "Besides, the best that Changeling can do is glide. She has some sort of shapechanging abilities, mostly form than function. She can look like anyone, anything, or even turn invisible. She usually does that when on the street with her brother, so don't try looking for her."

Rant pipes up, "She's sort of a bi..."

Foreshadow cuts him off before he can continue, "Rant, you want to know how many futures there are where you finish that thought and you don't get your butt kicked by her?" He thumbs his finger back to Grimalkin. "Five. Of course, I didn't go looking more than a minute into the future; no telling what might happen after that." He returns to business as he reaches the surface and begins to move north through the alleyway. Rant, on the other hand, gets an ugly expression at being slapped down again by Foreshadow in front of Nanowire and Grimalkin.

"If we get separated, the meeting point is back here in two hours. Icarus should be found after we get his children. We're trying to go under the radar here," he says, not realizing that one of their number actually has radar tracking them now.

---

Icarus rockets out of the ground and steadies himself as he goes nearly a mile into the sky in a few seconds. The buildings have grown smaller, and he hesitates before climbing higher. He still dimly remembers the dark and cold from when he went higher, and he... no. He can feel his flesh moving, his heart beating."I am alive," he says to himself, and he's startled by his voice. It's deeper than it should, and there's something else, too. He's flying without flapping any wings.

Anyone watching Icarus at that moment would see a credible imitation of Wil. E. Coyote discovering that he had walked off a cliff without noticing it. The feet pump, but there's nothing to hold onto, and he begins to fall. More memories threaten to break their way to the surface, and his entire body thinks "No" without words. He begins to fly again, and if he thought his heart was pumping before, now, it threatens to fall out of his chest.

Then there's a peculiar sensation, like a prickly feeling on the back of his neck. He turns around to try to figure out what it was and narrowly misses colliding with a 767 that is headed toward Jordan International Airport.

"By the beard of Hephestaus, what was that?" he says to the empty air. "It looks like something Father might have made, but large enough to hold men."

[Veiled Malice]

"Got it," Ren replied to Foreshadow. Rant's cut off warning about this dimention's version of Grim had caught his attention, however. If Grim, or at least a version of her, was in town, was it also possible there was an alternate Nanowire kicking about somewhere? Did he really want to know, especially given the fractured nature of this world?

His curiousity won out in the end. "I don't suppose you know of someone that looks like me here, do you? Or perhaps someone around seven feet tall, covered with metal? Named Nanowire, maybe?"

[Heridfel]

Foreshadow looks back to Ren, then looks forward. Ren and Grimalkin get the sense that he knows something, but that he is hesitating to say it. Once again, Rant decides to provide the uncomfortable answer to the question.

"There's a guy who looks half like you. I don't know what his name is. He's working for the Master Mage, Dr. Sin, out somewhere in Asia," he says. "The left side of the face is the same, but you guys all look a lot alike to me."

Foreshadow stops moving, holding up a hand so that the others also stop. Then he draws his hand across his throat as he looks around.