ic The End of the World (IC)

[Scuffles]

Glow stepped forwards behind Wraith and Crimson Tiger as they tore an enormous swath through the seemingly endless swarm of robots before them. The carnage wrought by the two warriors was breathtaking - for all their advanced technology the robots seemed to be merely helpless prey with the shapeshifting hunter in their midst, and that Mali could keep pace with nothing but sheer martial skill was an astounding thing. As brutally efficient as the pair were though, the robots were simply too numerous for the two melee specialists to reach them all.

Glow could reach them all. As she strode forward over the twisted metal remains that marked Wraith's first half-dozen kills the telekinetic gathered her powers around her. Green light flickered and swirled around her as she focused her will and took a deep, steadying breath. The light flared brightly as she spread her arms wide and lashed out in all directions with a powerful mental blast.

Some robots were torn limb from limb under Glow's assault, while others were lifted bodily and sent crashing into walls or yet more of their metallic brethren. Still more were left mostly intact but for holes punched through their chassis by flying debris or the sheer impact of Glow's will. The wave of force curved past Wraith and Tiger to crush foes beyond the reach of their blows, then slowly subsided and faded away.

With another deep breath the telekinetic continued to move forwards, and eyes flicked back and forth as she sought more targets.

[Avenger Assembled]

Silence fell for a moment as the last of the robots fell to the ground, Koshiro scanning the room for signs of vulnerable technology. A moment later, though, the scenes of chaos faded on the central computer bank before being replaced by three circles - the glowing white eyes of the machine intelligence known as the Curator. "Attention members-of Young Freedom." The mechanical voice was cold and flat, a machine in a way their friend Sharl certainly wasn't. "I am-aware of your-attempts to interfere-with my recapture-of Tronik and experiments-on your planet. You will-be unsuccessful. Already your-elders have turned-against each other-and have abandoned-you to your-fate. But you-need not share-it. You are-young of your-species' and are-worth preservation." The eyes suddenly focused directly not on the women who'd done such damage to his machines, but rather on the one hero who hadn't acted at all. "I offer-a token. Koshiro McMillan. If you-prevent your allies-from disabling my-vessel, I will-give you the-dimensional coordinates of-your elder male-sibling."

[Electra]

While his trio of teammates busied themselves killing massive numbers of drones, Koshiro had been focusing hard, looking for the weak point in the Curator's armor. The computer systems here were alien, but all computers had a few things in common. Inputs for data and power, vents for air and heat, screens to observe. He stood still himself, but hundreds of little cranes took to the air, prodding at every likely spot and looking for vulnerabilities. He was pretty sure he'd found something good when the Curator's voice rang out with its stunning message.

I will give you the dimensional coordinates of your elder male sibling. Koshiro didn't so much as twitch a muscle, but suddenly every crane fell from the sky as though they'd been shot as the young artist's mind went completely blank. The Curator collected information, all information, from everywhere. Surely he'd been to other worlds where Takeshi had disappeared, Koshiro knew for a fact there were more than one. He really might know what had happened, and where Takeshi had gone. Even if he were dead, and the thought of that squeezed Koshiro's chest like a fist, even if he were dead, at least they would know...

He pulled himself together, some of the cranes struggling feebly in response. "I don't believe you!" he shouted at the Curator, clenching his hands into fists. "You're a liar and a murderer! You don't know where he is!"

[Gizmo]

Gal Vanic hesitated when she saw the Curator catch Citizen's punch like it was nothing. Could she leave her friend to hold the line against that kind of power even briefly? When he shouted at her a second time, however, the electrified ghost in the machine snapped out of her surprise and shot like a bolt of lightning up toward the tentacles. She knew Sharl would have given everything in an instant to save his city and its people; she wasn't going to disrespect that by letting anything happen to them.

"Incorporeal this, jerk," she muttered mostly to herself before sizing up the mass of encroaching tentacles reaching down from the massive shape blotting out the sky like a cork in a bottle. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath. When she opened them again, they surged with neon blue light that arced down to her fingertips before launching in a storm of blinding power. Lightning caught the tentacles en masse like spears skewering eels, piecing them up and down their lengths before jumping to the next.

With an angry grunt, Gal Vanic pulled hard and the massive tendrils ripped loose from their moorings above, pulled together into a writhing, sparking ball the size of a sports arena. Drawing her arms back, she compressed the mass once more, drawing forth a protesting squeal of straining metal, before launching it upward to crash against the dome with thunderous results. "You can just keep those to yourself!" she shouted back down to the invading artificial intelligence.

[Avenger Assembled]

The robots swarmed in again, pouring out of the corridors, hidden compartments in the walls, and even the floor and ceiling! With ceaseless and terrible purpose, they advanced on the heroes and opened fire! Silver-black beams of energy erupted from their outstretched palms, peppering the heroes and sending them scattering. Above it all, the Curator's voice continued its cold, dry narration, those three eyes never wavering. "Your resistance-to offers of-alliance is standard-for the members-of your caste. I find-it a puzzling-survival response." A volley of robot fire reached up into the sky and blasted at Glow, singing her right through her forcefield from the sheer weight of bombardment. "If threats-and promises of-alliance do not-function for your-species, how can-you survive the-fate of the-universe?" He made a sound that meant nothing to the humans in the room, and indeed it had been a while before Wraith had heard her birthname spoken aloud. "Have you-also adopted this-negative survival trait?"

---

The Curator punched Citizen in the midsection, driving him down into the roof of the nearest sector. The cold steel rebounded as they impacted faster than the speed of sound, and Sharl had time to calculate that the mad cybernetic god could have shattered the mile-high building if he'd really put his mind to it. Gotta stop him, gotta stop him... He tasted blood in his mouth, and he knew that the Curator wasn't pulling his punches. "Your design-is inefficient," said the Curator with cold, dispassionate evaluation. "You have-the infinite capacity-for improvement and-instead you cling-to an organic-form in imitation-of your human-allies." He looked Sharl in the eye and said, "It was-you who attracted me-to this planet-again, Shar-l Tulink. The knowledge-that my creations-had left their-womb raised my-curiosity."

Citizen felt cold guilt and fear strike him to his core, before he rallied with his "Because I'm not a machine, and I am not your creation!" spat Sharl, "and neither are they! Being a computer program is an accident of my birth, not who I am!" He pointed at the Curator, thinking of every heroic speech he'd ever seen. "You talk a good game, but you're just a machine some old aliens cooked up in a box. You're just carrying out programming they put in you ten million yearse ago. That's what _really_ makes you want to get us, isn't it? Because we took what we are, and we stayed _people_. We dreamed, we hoped, we cared! And we even have a superhero now. You don't want Tronik, you want ME! Let's finish this!" And with that, he rocketed up into the sky, breaking the sound barrier again as he went.

[Gizmo]

Once she was sure that more tentacles weren't going to descend from the cracked dome over the city, Gal Vanic turned her attention back down to the fight just in time to see Citizen take a devastating blow. "Oh no..." the phantom whispered in shock. "Get up, get up get up...!" And then suddenly Sharl was back in the air with a punch of his own. Even from high above, Kimber could tell that the often aloof teenage genius was putting everything he had into each blow, pushing past all his limits simply because he had to to protect the people he cared about. Gal Vanic's eyes sparked with power and the space where she was hovering was abruptly empty save for another sonic boom rattling the ravaged city below.

A lightning bolt that ended in a diamond hard fist cracked into the Curator's jaw before solidifying into the blue haired powerhouse, flying next to Citizen with a resolute expression. "You can't win this," she shouted furiously at the invading artificial intelligence, "because he's not alone! Our friends are gonna take apart all your little toys and I'm going to hold you down while Citizen wipes that dopey look off your robot face! How's that taste in your morning cereal, creepazoid?!"

[Avenger Assembled]

The Curator's head rocked back against Kimber's powerful blow, clearly hit hard. But then he focused on her directly. "You are-less than an-organic life but-your peers feel-emotions for you. One who-is even not-a peer. If I-destroy your corporeal-manifestation, will Daniel-Storm feel despair?" The Curator shook his head, three eyes still focused like lasers on the two heroes. Kimber had done some damage, enough to put a crack across those triple lenses, but he was still very much in the fight. "I will-learn all in-time. But yours-has ended." Suddenly, a militia hovercraft rose from behind the arcology and opened fire on the Curator, lasers peppering harmlessly off the armored shell that after all was no more real than the hovercraft itself. The Curator turned, and too late, Sharl divined his intentions.

"NO!" he screamed, and was a second too late as the Curator gestured and the hovercraft simply disintegrated: first the machine, then the people inside, until nothing was left but air. "What have you done?! They were no threat to you!"

"I am-a machine, fulfilling-my programming, as-were they," replied the Curator expressionlessly. "That I-have not deleted-them all is-a compassion defect-that I-will cure. I go-now to begin-the retaking of-this lost program." And he took off again into the air, wooshing back towards the sky overhead where his assimilation subroutines waited and...

I understand now, thought Sharl, who knew better than anyone how well every moment in this place was recorded. Tronikians knew they lived under each other's watchful eyes, but not that every aspect of their lives was on a computer program somewhere. I know what I have to do. "Gal Vanic, listen," he said urgently, looking from her to the distantly hovering Curator. "Even if we beat him down here, he has the power to kill millions just like he did those soldiers, and I'm not willing to take the chance. No one else dies on my watch. We have to keep him up there, by his own programs, whatever happens. Are you with me?"

And with that, he took off into the sky, rocketing after the Curator. "Hey, you! This is it!" He took the Curator by surprise and smashed him in the midsection, feeling that armor crack ever so slightly. "We're going to beat you and make sure you NEVER come back here! NEVER!"

[Thunder King]

Mali looked at the coming robots, and sighed. This was going to be a long, long fight. She bolted towards the robots and caved the chest in of one and turned and kicked the head off the other. She was doing okay, but it was clear that the rampage she'd gone on a few moments before had made her slightly sluggish, so she wasn't nearly as effective this time. She had to pace herself a bit, take a few out, but didn't feel as good for it as she had before. She just hoped her allies would be able to pick up the slack. She was disappointed in herself a bit, but shook the doubt from her mind. Have to stay focused, have to stay on the ball. Simply cannot give an inch.

[Fox]

Wraith watched the second round of foes pour in with an eerie, feral calmness, standing ready among the bodies of their failed first attempt to bring the heroes down. Her eyes snapped into thin, angry lines when she heard her name, though - when the almost literal wave of robots hit her they may as well have been leaves in a blender. Metal tore, frames bent, and limbs flew as she danced through their ranks, a lashing, never-halting engine of alien destruction.

When she had a moment, a break in the rush of the fight and the metaphorical breathing room, she looked up at the Curator's image from a small field of his minion's inorganic corpses. "My people were born on a planet that would have killed any others, and we survived. The Grue attempted to claim our planet as their own, and we survived. We were trapped between the Lor and the Stellar Khanate in their war, and we survived. I fight alongside my friends against strange and powerful enemies, and together, we survive."

She pointed one bladed limb straight at the three-eyed display on the screens in direct, unmistakable challenge. "You do not offer us anything we want, and our rejection is only a negative survival trait if you can stop us."

[Gizmo]

Stunned by the disintegration of the hovercraft and off-balance from the mention of her mentor, it took a moment for Gal Vanic to remember that the giant dome and all of the Curator's technology in Tronik were technically 'programs' as Citizen said but she understood his plan immediately, nodding and shooting off after him, legs blurred by the streak of neon blue lightning she left in her wake. Hanging back to give Sharl room to land a solid punch, she gathered crackling energy about both fists and lined up her shot. "You bet your shiny head they 'feel emotions'," she called over to the dazed invader. "I'm jammin' adorable." The last syllable was almost lost in the roar of released electricity that pounded into the Curator like locomotive, leaving Gal Vanic breathing heavily.

[Scuffles]

Glow emerged from the torrent of laser fire with several smoking scorch-marks on her costume and matching welts beneath. Despite the pain her injuries seemed minor, and she raised her arms again as she gathered her powers around her once more. The flood of robots was daunting and Mali's assault seemed to have stalled against the sheer numbers but Wraith's defiance and the unmatched destruction the shapeshifter wrought gave her heart.

The shattered remains of the first wave of robots lifted off the deck as the telekinetic reached out with her powers, then launched them at the still functioning members of the horde. Robots fell as the maelstrom of spare parts crashed into their lines, but for each destroyed there seemed to be dozens more that still pressed the attack, and Glow growled in frustration as she braced herself in expectation of another volley of lasers.

[Electra]

While his companions took on the endless wave of robotic drones, Papercut focused in on the computer itself. If they could just shut down the computer, maybe it would shut down the drones, maybe it would shut down the things attacking the Sanctum and potentially Tronik. Several of his cranes had managed to wedge their way into an access hatch and stop a fan in one big unit, so that was what he concentrated on. "Come on," he muttered to himself. "Get it together, damn you." The fallen cranes began to flutter to life from where they'd fallen, forming up into a swarm, then into a sort of sideways funnel like a tornado turned on its end. With deadly accuracy the point of the funnel drilled into the open access point, sending cranes and paper bits flying everywhere.

[Avenger Assembled]

To Papercut's surprise as much as anyone else, his attack on the central computer was tremendously successful - perhaps too successful. Paper cranes slipped their way through tiny crevices and fell amongst the interior of the temple of cosmic science, and suddenly the speakers were shrieking as something green and viscous poured from the cracks. The lights flickered and the ship began vibrating violently, robots staggering and failing around as the heroes rallied and began to shatter their previously well-organized formations. "You will-be-defeated." came the Curator's voice again, now sounding distinctly cracked and broken as the computer hub continued to leak a fluid that even from a distance they all could feel was icy cold. "You may-disable this vessel-but my program-is regeneratively eternal. The loss-of one ship-is as nothing-to me as-the-loss of one-of your cells. I will-succeed in my-efforts-to-" And then the central computer flickered one more time, gave a distinct hiccup, and went dark. The ship began rumbling as, with the drive severed, it began sliding off its metal perch atop the Sanctum to the icy surface below!

[Avenger Assembled]

Together, Citizen and Gal Vanic confronted the Curator far above the distant spires of Tronik, the sky above them eerily silent beneath the black-silver dome that represented the Curator's growing power over the world of Sharl's birth. Battered though he was, the Curator was still game and in the fight, cracked three eyes shining with an intelligence that Sharl had come to understand as quite mad. "Look at the-two of you. With all-of your power-you still take-the forms of-organic beings. But I-remind you that-this is not-the world-of flesh. This is-the world where-I am and-you will be-no more." And with that, he brought his hands together with a thunderous boom, and something like pale green fire rushed from his palms and blasted at Citizen and Ghost Girl, the wash of heat and concussion blasting not at their bodies but at the very essence of what they were. "Even with-the connection to-my ship severed I-am still a-god among insects-in this place. I will-rule it forever-and whatever damage-you do to-this body you will-be unable to-stop me. This is-the reality of-the Curator."

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl's nose had been bleeding already, but now he could smell something he never had before - his own blood, burnt. He nearly fell out of the sky as he fought to stay in the air against the soul-scorching heat of the Curator's attack. He listened to the monstrosity's words and thought of Gina, of Miss A, of Dragonfly and Supercape, of Daedalus, of all the technologically savvy heroes who could turn their own cyberkinesis against the Curator and strike him at his source. But I can't! I don't have that kind of power! a voice in his head screamed, and he shot Kimber a wild-eyed look before rocketing away down into the city below. He had one destination in mind, one place where he could turn. Thousands of feet above Tronik's distant surface, he found the window he'd grown up looking out of. His parents and sister were there, as they always were on days when Citizen was in the air, shouting to him through the irised-open window.

"It'll be all right!" Sharl yelled to them in the air, trying to meet their fear for him for reassurance. "Stay inside the building and opaque the shutters, he can't target you directly as long as he can't see you!" Looking through them would be easy enough for something of the Curator's power, but it would be a momentary delay. Perhaps they would need no more than that. "I love you, Mom, I love you, Dad, I love you, Sis. We're going to stop the Curator, and we're going to make sure our city is safe! I'll...I'll tell you everything when I get back!" he shouted, before erupting into the sky with a hypersonic boom as he rocketed back towards the Curator and Ghost Girl mere seconds after leaving, plowing shoulder-first into the Curator and driving the manifested entity back against the silvery dome overhead! Metal rippled and hissed as it seemed to reach out for both its master and his victim, writhing around them like silvery tentacles.

[Gizmo]

Kimber flinched as the flames rushed toward her but when the strange green fire washed over her, arms crossed defensively over her face, she found herself standing strong against it. She could feel something like vicious claws ripping at the edges of her essence but compared to the trauma of necromantic attacks and psychic onslaughts the poltergeist had been training to withstand this was no more than a flesh wound on her soul. Whatever had struck Citizen so powerfully, she was someone insulated from it. The Curator might have been breaking all of the rules in Tronik but it seemed that Gal Vanic wasn't even playing the same game.

"You want to talk reality? 'Cause I'm not an organic being and I'm sure not a computer program!" she shouted up at the writhing dome overhead. Turning to Sharl, she gave him a game smile. "I'm an incorporeal, post-mortem, psychic echo-entity causing disruption in electrical circuits and cascade failure in computational devices while occupying the same multiphasic relative coordinates!" Zipping forward in the air, Gal Vanic grabbed one of the longer tentacles with both hands, pouring lightning into it. As she did, neon blue cracks ran up its length, glowing from within like eggshells trying to contain a sun. Like shattering glass, the cracks continued upward, picking up speed and spreading in spiderweb patterns across the entire dome. "In other words: BOO!"

[Avenger Assembled]

The dome shattered beneath Ghost Girl's attack, the giant 'structure' of energy falling apart like so much shattered glass over battered Tronik. Though Sharl's heart skipped a beat at the sight of the falling debris, the pieces sizzled away and vanished before they could hit anything, sending up a whoop of celebration from below Sharl could hear through his connection to the electronic devices around the city. He shot Gal Vanic a smile, her words ringing in his ears, and appreciated them for what they were - the words of a friend. And then the whoops were turning to screams, and Sharl screamed too, in rage and frustration, as the Curator appeared before them again, big as life and with his injuries healed. He knew down below the whole city was watching them, his family and everyone he loved, watching them try and save them from this unstoppable cosmic threat. Above them the dome began forming all over again as if all their efforts had been for naught, tentacles erupting towards as they reached for Tronik all at once in a single wave of annihilation.

"You still-fail to understand-the nature of my-threat. I am-" And as the Curator told them of his invincible regenerative program and of how he would make Tronik his own, then claim the Erde-Tronik, and how Sharl's people would never be safe from him, Citizen stopped listening and started _looking_. Looking at the fat lines of alien code in the system with him, the thinking, plotting, incredibly powerful cosmic entity that at his core was really just a computer program. Sharl raised his hands and looked down at them, no, not _at_ them, but at the lines of code that were Sharl Tulink, the sophisticated program that he was. And he saw the way out, and so he interrupted the Curator.

"No, no, we're not going to do that. Gal Vanic fried your circuits and overwhelmed what you built here, and I beat you down. It's time for you to go."

And the program before him sent back lines of code that became words. "I am-a god in-this place. Who are-you to-stop me?"

Cyberknife's hand pulling him from the crucible. The battle against the Conquering Mind. Seeing Gina's face for the first time.

"A citizen of Tronik." From Kimber's perspective, Citizen flew directly into the Curator's midsection, passing _into_ his body, and suddenly the air itself began to vibrate as reality in front of her warped and woofed almost impossibly fast, the Curator reaching for his chest like a man having a heart attack -

Patrolling with Koshiro. Talking about space with Wraith. Reaching across dimensions to save another Tronik. Understanding Kimber. Eliza's lips on his

Code flashed before Sharl's eyes impossibly fast, pulling at his own matrix, reaching inside him and transforming him even as he reached out and transformed it. He fell deep into the heart of the Curator's systems and core programming, abandoning his body to navigate into what was no longer the physical. He pulled things from himself and plastered them against the Curator's matrix like a sculptor building from his own soul. Never again. Never again come for Tronik. This experiment is a failure. These people don't belong to you. KEEP THEM SAFE The last thought, buried deep in the Curator's core programming, altered the very heart of the system. And took Sharl's with it.

The Curator, his dome, the tentacles, suddenly everything vanished into nothingness, and Sharl fell backwards into Kimber's arms. He looked up at her, his eyes wide, and said with a smile, "Hey, Kimber, where do you think a program goes when it

[Gizmo]

Gal Vanic caught Citizen reflexively as he fell back, shock written across her face. "Sharl?! Sharl!" She shook the still form gently at first then with increasing distress, brushing brown hair away from wide, staring eyes and searching for some sign of life. "No! Nonono, this isn't... this..." The paragon's lower lip quavered and tears sparked against electrical energy in the corners of her eyes. Slowly drawing her hand back to close his eyes took the last of her composure and Kimber let out a mournful, wounded sound as she clutched her friend tightly against her. "This isn't fair..."

[Fox]

Wraith stumbled as the floor under her feet shifted, looking around as the ship began to slide. If they could get back to the bus they could escape, but even if the ship had artificial gravity the odds were good that it wasn't working now - those hallways were going to be walls if they didn't move, and if they hit the ice....

"Now we must leave," the alien insisted, shifting down onto four powerful, clawed legs. Two long tendrils sprouted from just behind where her shoulder blades would be if she had a proper skeleton, whipping out to snag Papercut and Crimson Tiger by the waists. "Come on!" she shouted to Glow, launching herself across the room and along the path toward the Wonderbus, teammates in tow.

[Scuffles]

Glow let out a triumphant whoop as Papercut's cranes tore into the main computer of the ship, but the moment was short-lived as she felt the deck shudder and tilt to the side under her feet. "Get the bus out!" she yelled at her teammates as Wraith swept past at a remarkable clip considering that she had Mali and Koshiro in tow. "I'll give you time!"

Two steps had the teenager in a full sprint towards the hole the Wonderbus had punched on the way in. Her third was a powerful jump off the wrecked torso of a robot and she wrapped herself in a cocoon of telekinetic energy at the height of the leap. Within moments she shot past her friends at full speed and blasted her way back out into the frigid Arctic air outside.

She whirled in mid-air to face the Curator ship as it started to topple and slide towards a disastrous impact with the ice below. There was no time for thought, no time for doubts. That the mighty vessel was many times heavier than the largest thing she had ever lifted didn't matter in the slightest. With the lives of friends on the line Glow centered herself and reached deep into the power within herself, took a deep breath and turned it all loose.

The skies above the sanctum lit up in a spectacular flare of fluorescent green that reflected almost painfully off the ice below and the clouds above. As she floated serenely at the center of it all Glow reached out and took hold of the falling craft. The hull groaned as she adjusted her mental grip to secure it then took the strain of the enormous dead-weight. Slowly the ship shuddered to a halt, then even rose slightly as the telekinetic sought to level it out so that her friends could make good their escape.

[Thunder King]

Mali hopped into the driver's seat of the Wonderbus and shifted it into reverse. She practically kicked the accelerator through the floor as she backed out of the ship and into the open air. She turned the bus around and took off like a shot, moving the vehicle as far out as she could, so Glow could let go of it now that they were safe. She was amazed at the sheer power her friend possessed, holding up the entire ship so that they could escape. She wasn't about to let that opportunity go to waste.

Once they were inside the bus, and she figured Glow could get out safely, she wondered what Sharl and Kimber were up to. They'd gone to stop the Curator, but, had they been successful? What exactly was going on in there?

[Electra]

Koshiro practically tumbled into the front passenger seat as Mali started the bus, whooping with excitement as they blew backwards out of the ship like they'd been fired from a canon. He let out a few delighted swear words, leaning against the dash to look down below them. "That was insane! Who knew it was just gonna blow up like that? Stupid bastard must not have put any internal shields on it at all. Gonna have to make some new cranes, between that and the helicopters I'm way down on population. Holy crap, look at Glow!" His eyes widened as he took in their telekinetic teammate lifting the massive piece of Curator tech. "That's hardcore. I didn't know she could lift anything near that much."

He settled back a little as the adrenaline began to wear off and the gravity of the situation to return. "We better get down to the Sanctum," he told Mali. "Looks like the Curator was wrecking it up pretty good. I hope Sharl and Kimber got to Tronik in time." He turned in his seat and looked back at Indira. "Thanks for the grab, by the way."

[Gizmo]

The corporeal members of Young Freedom smelled the acrid scent of ozone even before they reached the room housing Tronik's computer. Inside a spike of the Curator's invasive circuitry pierced the ceiling overhead but crumbled away to nothing a few feet from the simulated city's home, wisps of smoke rising from electrocuted circuitry as the computronium continued to flake away, falling like ashen snow. Apart from the almost inaudible hiss of singed wires, a daunting silence filled the space.

All at once Ghost Girl was there, stepping into sight as through walking out of a darkened room. The hood of her reaper's cloak hung low over her bowed head, and in her arms she carried a still form. For a split instant she floated slowly forward before her ethereal nature in the real world caught up to her and the body slipped though her insubstantial arms to the floor, revealing Sharl's lax features. Kimber let out a strangled cry as he fell, grasping futilely and obviously too distressed to manage with her telekinesis. Shaking like a leaf about to fall from a branch for the winter, she looked up to the others just long enough to shake her head mournfully once, then collapsed to hover on her knees just an inch from the ground, hands over her face as she sobbed.

[Scuffles]

With the Curator ship safely lowered to the Arctic ice Glow knuckled her temples in an attempt to ease the nagging ache the effort of supporting such an enormous weight had caused, then swooped down to join the rest of her teammates as they entered the battered Sanctum. The foreboding silence in the room that housed Tronik and the wreckage wrought by the tentacles of the Curator vessel made her ill at ease, and she nearly jumped out of her skin as Kimber appeared seemingly from thin air.

That Kimber carried - and then dropped - the lifeless form of Sharl took a moment to register, and the realization was like a dagger to her heart. "Oh no," she whispered almost inaudibly as she looked back and forth between the distraught ghost and their fallen friend.

Tears welled in her eyes as she brushed past Mali and crossed the room and dropped to her knees next to the sobbing specter. The bright green light of her telekinetic barriers faded into a dim blue and became feather thin as she adjusted it into a form she had once seen Eve use. The concentration it required set off a fresh wave of headaches, but the young Australian gritted her teeth and brushed the discomfort aside as she reached out tentatively towards Kimber's shoulder.

The adjusted barrier wouldn't have even been enough to stop a light breeze, but it was solid to the ghostly teen's usually intangible form and Kristin's hand met resistance as it touched her shoulder. A moment later Kimber found herself wrapped in a tight hug.

[Fox]

"Oh. I---...oh." Wraith slumped, her body nearly melting as she looked at their fallen comrade. With the fight in the Curator's ship done, she'd thought they were home free - after all, the only ones who hadn't been with them had been the ones who were literally untouchable. They were supposed to have been safe. They were supposed to be invincible.

The alien had no tears to shed, instead crouching down near his body and recalling the person who used to be in it. "He died to save his people, against impossible odds," she noted sadly, the hum of her voice quiet and slow. "That makes him as good as anyone, or better."