ic Until You've Crossed

[Gizmo]

"When on an aircraft carrier..." Midnight muttered under his breath, too quiet to be overheard amidst the sounds of hydrokinetic battle. Flying wasn't his preferred method of transport during a fight but there it was certainly the most practical atop the turbulent waters. Sprinting over to one of the fighter jets parked atop the carrier, he pressed Redbird's egg against its side. The Furion technology melted into the airplane, disappearing as it merged with the Earth vehicle.

The jet's silver hull darkened to a matte black, obscuring identifying marking and tinting the glass of the cockpit. "Primitive but serviceable," the autonomic machine intelligence's voice opined from within as a stylized feathered design emerged along the Rafale's wings in a deep crimson in aggressive contrast to the black. The cockpit opened and the plane somehow lowered itself almost like an animal kneeling its front legs, inviting the laconic vigilante inside.

[Avenger Assembled]

"That woman!" detonated Typhoon, drawing back from his daughter as the family closed in around him like so many ravening birds. "She has poisoned you against me, just as she poisoned our very bedchamber!" A stormcloud had formed overhead, great and terrible, the lightning in the massive thunderhead a glowing counterpoint to the arguments just a few meters above the carrier's flight deck. 

 

"In the name of God, father, I don't want to hear about your bloody bedchamber!" Nina shouted back, the two al-Darsahs like a symphony of familial rage to everyone listening! 

 

"-knew it was a mistake to send you to the den of the enemy-" 

 

"-this is not how a king acts! You are being a petty and spiteful-" 

 

"-dare speak that way to your father and king, you miserable-" 

 

As Midnight took off behind him, Edge fired - his burst seeming to come from the sky itself as a tremendous bolt of lightning. "Hey! Fathers shouldn't talk to kids that way!" At his last word, the bolt struck Typhoon, the sheer power of his blast nearly knocking the archvillain from the sky. "Now get out of here before more people get hurt!" 

[Avenger Assembled]

But when Typhoon didn't fall, and the villains closed on the heroes, that was a rather different kettle of fish. "Nina, get out of there!" he called as her family united in a sphere around their father. "They're not on your side right now!" Crapcrapcrap Mark knew Nina was powerful, enough to easily be a superhero in her own right - but so was the rest of her family, and they were much bigger jerks than she was even on her worst day. After all, it wasn't that long ago they'd all been fighting them together. "Get back with us and we've got your back!" Hope she's not mad I blasted her dad! Oh well, I owed him one - jerk blindsided me today. Man, I bet normal people never have these problems with their relationship...In the privacy of his own head, Mark had to smile at that - now if they just could avoid a fight to the death here, he could actually smile on his face! Over the commlink, he called "Wander, don't try and jump on them, they'll just dive with you hanging on! They're cheating jerks! Throw something big and heavy! Midnight, make a Midnight Jet and blast them! You've got the Furion tech, you know how to handle these things!" 

[Electra]

"Hate fighting flyers," Wander muttered, fighting for footing on the slick deck even with her superhuman grace. "Hate being wet, hate waking up in the middle of the night, hate that the lawn is a swimming pool." She broke open a hatch and hauled out a rather large missile, balancing it on one shoulder. "Hate politics, really hate being wet with salt water. Hate how it's so itchy." She hefted the missile, testing its weight, and lifted it over her head. "This is all your fault!" she yelled, and launched the missile at Typhoon at a very respectable rate of speed. It wouldn't detonate, but it was much more aerodynamic than most of the debris on the deck. As the missile flew, she saw it lift a little, seemingly out of nowhere, and home in directly on the dictator. She nodded in approval. "Now you can have a crappy night too." 

[Avenger Assembled]

As Wander's hurled missile struck home, Typhoon staggered back, battered by the speeding impact of the thrown weapon! Now that combat was truly joined from below, two of the al-Darsahs focused directly on the one who had attacked their father. There were two of them at first, one a man riding a wave detached from the sea as Nina al-Darsah sometimes did, another a woman who seemed to be staying in the air through sheer cussedness, her costumed body wrapped with a sheen of water that clung to her like armor - and with two simultaneous gestures they began pulling columns of water right out of the ocean dozens of feet below, rapidly intertwining the self-sustaining pillars of the sea together into one large, rapidly growing column of seawater that was beginning to spin with impossible speed!

[Gizmo]

Edge's suggestion had barely left his lips before Midnight proved he was a step ahead, the now shadowy Rafale roaring down the length to the listing carrier at tremendous speed and pulling smoothly into the air despite the uneven runway. "Armament successfully upgraded," Redbird's voice reported within in the cockpit as the fighter pulled into a tight circle that brought it around to face the levitating hydrokinetics. "Reintegrating on-board targeting systems."

"Forgetting title Furions gave me," Midnight drawled dryly, pulling up hard on the yoke and letting a barrage of rockets loose without waiting for any assistance beyond his reticule. The projectiles streaked forward trailing black smoke tinged with ruby light that betrayed the improvements made by the autonomic machine intelligence and unerringly struck each of Typhoon's heirs who didn't happen to be dating one of the masked pilot's best friends. The al-Darsah siblings had not been raised to be weaklings and the deafening explosions of the rockets were mitigated by watery shields, fantastical armor and quick wits but in rapid succession each and every one of them was taken out of the fight.

"Ha! I love my job," Redbird crowed contentedly.

[Avenger Assembled]

Nina balled her hand into a fist, psionic hydrokinesis making the air ripple around her fingers, and punched her father in the face - driving his armored head back but doing no serious damage to the tyrant. "In the name of God, Father, your dynasty is crumbling around you! This day is not the work of the Lion of Socotra or the Lord of the Sea, this is petty rage and bickering across an ocean full of people! I will help you take the others home, but you must put aside this madness!" She was pleading; the rain in the air bending around the two hydrokinetics as they shouted at each other over the sounds of thunder and lightning and explosions; the French military having resumed its offensive now that the bulk of the al-Darsahs were in no shape for a true super-battle. "These people fought ancient gods in your name! And now you turn on them because they seek to stop _you_ from a war that could doom us all? What cause is so great to make you do this?" 

 

Running across the deck of the ship, Mark dived low like a baseball player sliding into home, his costume carrying him across the rain-slicked deck until he nearly went over the edge! "Oof!" Catching himself against a a stanchion at the last minute, Edge pointed and cast a gigantic life raft out across the ocean below, a huge rubber contraption that kept Nina's siblings from falling unconscious into the ocean (they wouldn't drown, but they might be struck by a ship otherwise)...and kept them from having the direct connection to the ocean that would deny them access to much of their powers, at least for a few moments. And maybe a few moments would be all they needed...

[Avenger Assembled]

"My cause is the cause of Typhoon and fair Socotra, girl!" hissed Typhoon, the tyrant's crackling rage terrible to behold. "If you would stand with our enemies against me, then see how easily _they_ fall!" As he spoke a gigantic fist arose out of the water, big as a small house, as it rocketed upwards to grab for Midnight's speeding jet! The grasping hand, made of solidified sea water like the great green fist of an angry god, erupted into the sky with terrible speed and lethal force!

[Electra]

Erin swore and raced across the deck at Typhoon's last words, realizing at the last moment what was about to happen. She began to glow very slightly in the darkness as she hit her top speed, then jammed her bat against the deck rail and vaulted into the air! She braced herself as she flew, closing her eyes and holding her breath as she intercepted the giant fist mere yards from the jet Trevor was flying. Briefly, irrelevantly, she wondered if this was what the lawn had felt like, and then everything was noise and tumult and crashing water, till it was hard to think at all. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Wander felt movement, fast movement, and crushing pressure all around her body for several agonizing seconds before she smashed into an unyielding surface hard enough to almost - but not quite, drive the air from her lungs. The pressure was intense, a squeezing, crushing fist as tight as the watery hand had been, and it was damnably cold all around her. When she forced her eyes open, even against the intense pressure, all she could see was darkness. But she could feel the mud her boots had sunken into and as she pulled them free, she realized where she was - where she HAD to be. Typhoon had hurled her down into the lightless depths of the Indian Ocean and she'd just struck the bottom. Two miles down. 

[Gizmo]

Midnight gritted his teeth stoically as the massive fist raced toward his plane but his throat contracted in a moment of genuine, gut wrenching terror as Wander vaulted over one of the Rafale's wings and intercepted the blow. In the coolly dispassionate part of his mind, the calculating observer that rotated facts like three dimensional puzzle pieces until they fit together seamlessly, he knew that Erin was more than durable enough to weather the impact and withstand the crushing force of the ocean as she was dragged downward. He knew that she could hold her breath for tremendous lengths of time and that she'd made a tactically sound decision.
 
The rest of him just knew that he was going to wipe the smug expression from the waterlogged, pontificating @#$%'s face with extreme prejudice.

"Redbird, lock jet configuration to maximum thrust and disengage," he instructed, pointing the nose of the borrowed fighter directly at Typhoon. "Edge, send the princess to help Wander. Now." The clipped words were almost lost over the communicator's channel against the roar of engines as they output far more raw power than their human engineers had ever intended. With one hand on the yoke and the other on the eject handle, the vigilante glared through the cockpit's window at the despot, rapidly growing nearer. "See who falls."

The tip of the Rafale's nose smashed into Typhoon's chest plate and began to crumple only to be followed by the rest of the jet, compacting briefly and then exploding in a furious ball of flame and twisted metal!

[Avenger Assembled]

In a moment she would later hotly deny, Nina screamed in involuntary terror as the speeding fighter jet swatted her father out of the sky like the fist of an angry god. Flaming jet and armored megalomaniac smashed into the water, safely away from the body of the French fleet, with a decisive BOOM. She stared down at the water for a moment before turning to Edge as he jumped to his feet at the edge of the deck. "Help me!" As if he'd been born to it, Mark opened a door inside his mind and poured out power that crackled in the air around Nina al-Darsah, the air rippling around her hands as half-visible strands of psychic energy lashed out from first her left hand, then the right, impaling the water on either side of the still-bubbling ripple that had taken Wander. She strained under the onslaught of Mark's power as it augmented her own, magic fueling mutant hydrokinesis as the strands of energy pulled tight - and then suddenly the princess of Socotra smashed forward into the water with a sound like a sonic boom, a column of water erupting in the air as she vanished beneath the waves as fast as Wander had disappeared down it! 

 

"Oh, crap, Typhoon!" Edge exclaimed. He turned and ran for the other side of the deck so fast a cramp hammered him in the side, staring down at the place where the tyrant had hit - a smoking wreck and a spreading oil slick was all that could be seen of the old conqueror. Mark didn't believe it for a minute. "Craaap...Midnight, I'm on this!" Of all of them, he stood the best chance of fighting a rampaging Typhoon, even an injured one. "Nina's gonna get the job done!" 

[Electra]

For the first few seconds, all Erin felt was panic, trapped in the dark freezing cold with no air, as effectively entombed as though she'd been buried alive. Then the crushing pain hit as well, literally crushing, and she started to see sparklies in the darkness from the blood vessels bursting in her eyes. It was the most effective slap in the face she could've asked for. Leaving her boots behind in the sucking mud, she used them as a pushoff point, arrowed her arms above her head and shot for the surface as quickly as she could. The first hundred feet passed by in a blink, and then she began kicking her legs furiously, settling in for what was sure to be a most unpleasant trip. She didn't even entertain the idea that she might not make it at all. 

[Gizmo]

Redbird's voice came from the silver egg nestled in Midnight's arms as they fell through the air, swearing in a language he didn't recognize. "This is... irksome," she added in English for her bonded partner's benefit, increasing the volume of her audio over the whistling wind around them.

"Hnn," Midnight agree flatly, tucking the egg away in his jacket. "Hold on." Short notice though they'd had before rushing off to battle al-Darsah and his progeny, there was something to be said for knowing that one was going to be fighting hydrokinetics over open water ahead of time. Taking a moment to reorient himself in the air as the surface of the water rushed up to meet him at alarming speed, Midnight pressed a button on his belt near one of his hips. With a faint hiss his cuffs formed a watertight seal with his gloves and boots while the oxygen scrubbers in his mask whirled into life. A quick shake of his wrists snapped semi-rigid webbing into place between his finger and extended hydrodynamic scoops on the end of each foot.

Somersaulting gracefully mid-fall, he pointed himself facing the water and placed his arms tight to his sides. When he hit the water an instant later he shot downward beneath the surface, a human torpedo looking for any sign of Typhoon.

[Avenger Assembled]

Nina had always been intellectually aware of her boyfriend's vast, nearly untapped power. She had never been shy about admitting it was one of the things she found very attractive about him. But now, channeling that raw power through her own as she plunged into the depths of the ocean, she thought it would be the death of her! The water parted before her and to the sides like a continuous explosion, the sound a deafening roar in her ears - her heart pounded like a jackhammer in her chest, her breathing coming in fast, rapid pants, as the water that had always been a warm blanket around her even in the most crushing depths flew away as she flew at speeds like nothing she'd ever known, nothing she'd ever experienced. Even augmented by Mark, this was pushing her physical frame to its very limits! 

 

As the bottom approached, she veered wildly, barely able to control herself at super-speed, and inches away from the cratered bottom went zipping upwards! And then, gasping for watery breath, she found herself in the depths of the briny deep - the cold, the pressure, the crushing darkness of ten thousand feet, meant nothing to a daughter of Typhoon, though the cloud of receding bubbles she'd left behind her (a clearly visible trail, at least to her eyes) was certainly new. She hurt all over, from the effort of coming here so fast, and of holding in the energy that Mark had poured into her flesh, and knew she'd have to work quickly to find Wander! She'd rarely gone this deep before - not when it normally took so long! 

 

"Where...where...ah-hah!" It didn't take her long to find Wander, speeding up out of the water herself faster than a swordfish could fly, but at the sight of the other woman's closed eyes the princess realized something. "Damn it! She can't see me!" She'd seen Wander in action and didn't want to approach her in the darkness. "She'd rip my bloody arms off!" Finally trusting fate, or maybe her boyfriend's luck, she zipped up in the water directly behind Wander and yelled, "Wander! Hold still! I'm taking you back to the surface!" 

 

-

 

On that very surface, it took Trevor a moment to find Typhoon - the old dictator, surrounded by a rapidly whirling wall of water that enclosed him like a mini-whirlpool, had taken a position directly under the raft that held his semi-conscious children. His shoulders against the liferaft and his hands against it above his head, his intentions certainly appeared clear enough!

[Electra]

Wander was already slowing rapidly by the time Nina approached her, the pressure and cold of the water taking a toll even on the supertough young heroine. She still plowed doggedly through the water, but her movements were becoming jerkier and less coordinated, dropping her speed and increasing the churn in the water around her. She still looked up, albeit with closed eyes, when Nina called to her. 

 

Erin was indecisive for a second; how much could she really trust the daughter of the man who'd thrown her down here in the first place? Holding still would make her a sitting target for any attack the water-controller wanted to unleash. Just as important, stopping would kill whatever momentum she'd managed to build up, jeopardizing her ability to get to the surface at all, even if Nina provided no hindrance. But her arms were already numb and aching, her head pounding, her leg muscles cramping. To get herself to the surface would take a miracle, and she suspected her situation wasn't going to get any better. Ignoring her more paranoid instincts, Erin went limp in the water, concentrating on holding her breath and listening. 

[Avenger Assembled]

A column of water erupted from the sea, then expanded outwards into a whirling tornado of water that towered above the aircraft carrier's deck like a mountain above the plains. Edge gasped in surprise as he was cast into darkness by a roiling storm that loomed over the now-desperately scrambling sailors on the deck. "No!" Without hesitation, Mark blasted into the heart of the thing - streams of whirling magical energy that made the watery mountain erupt into a cloud of cool white mist that poured down over the carrier deck in a torrent of cloud! Down below, the severed liquid mound sunk back into the water beneath, sending whirlpools and wild currents through the water under the boat that shook Midnight to his core but still let him see Typhoon - zipping along under the water, escorting his battered minions. Fleeing the scene of the crime! 

[Gizmo]

Midnight managed to stabilize himself with considerable effort, using a breathing technique his grandfather had taught him to counteract the tide of nausea that rose up as he was tossed about the turbulent waters. He clenched his jaw tightly as he recovered enough to see Typhoon escaping back toward Socotra with most of his many children. There was still enough time for one shot, perhaps from a tight beam sonic device he knew he had in his belt, aided by the dense medium of the sea. The black clad vigilante very much wanted to take the tyrant by the collar and explain to him just how many lines he'd crossed that day but ultimately the fight had clearly been knocked out of the old hydrokinetic. Trevor had more important things to worry about.
 
"Edge. Can't see them. Status." The words were as soft as ever but subtly quickened by urgency and worry.

[Avenger Assembled]

Nina and Wander didn't surface so much as they erupted from the water like flying fish shot from a cannon! They arced up high in the air, well above the surface of the carrier, before they landed on the deck with a loud thump. Nina, still in control of their flight for these last few seconds, automatically took the impact for her passenger and instantly realized the mistake when she felt a rib crack. "Gah!" She shoved Erin off her and clutched her side, pain shooting through her body in intense, numbing waves. She'd taken hits before but this was worse - every nerve was on fire from the energy she'd absorbed from Mark that was still shooting through her like mainlined heroin. 

 

Edge was at her side so fast he didn't bother running. "They're here!" he called, having grabbed a deck emergency medical kit on the way. "Need you on deck, Midnight." he added, automatically falling into Trevor's shortened speech patterns for a moment. 

 

"All the way to the bottom!" Nina was gasping as she looked up at Mark. "You sent me all the way to the bottom...what did you do?" 

 

"Let you save the day, babe," said Mark, snapping open the kit. He knew Nina was much more fragile than Wander, but she wasn't looking so good either. "Wander, you..." He didn't ask how she was. "Midnight's on his way up." 

[Electra]

Wander kept her eyes tightly shut for the entire ascent, lest the pressure and speed do even more terrible things to them, so the flying impact onto the deck was doubly shocking and enough to finally drive the air from her lungs. She sucked in a wheezing breath, coughed up a mouthful of blood, and automatically rolled herself onto her side in the recovery position. All those first aid classes hadn't gone to waste after all! Everything was still sparkling with weird lights when she opened her eyes, so she kept them closed. "Thanks," she whispered to Nina. 

[Gizmo]

The sound of metal scraping on metal came from the side of carrier moments before a black glove appeared over the edge of the ship, retractable climbing claws protruding from the palm. Midnight hauled himself up onto the deck with a grunt, taking a moment to catch his breath before pushing himself to his feet with obvious effort. Stepping quickly over to the others with a sureness that came more from force of will than strength of limb, he knelt next to Wander and took her hand in his own, squeezing gently. No one else was close enough to hear the faint sigh of relief that escaped through his featureless mask. Glancing over to Nina, the taciturn vigilante gave Edge a wordless look, inquiring after her condition.

[Electra]

"Careful," Erin murmured without opening her eyes, a very small smile curving her lips. She didn't need to open her eyes to know who held her hand. "Think I broke a couple fingers down there. 'N mosta my ribs. 'N some other stuff. Gonna lay here a minute." She coughed, wincing at the motion, and spit out more blood. For once she'd finished a tough  fight with her uniform largely undamaged, if wet, but nearly all her visible skin was rapidly purpling with bruises to match her outfit. "Joo finish the fight without me?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

"They're gone now," said Edge with determination. "Typhoon, the other al-Darsahs...they've all retreating back home." 

 

"They're gone," agreed Nina, her bloodshot eyes staring at the distant horizon - at the direction of distant Socotra. With the fleet's battle done, the French force was heading as far away from the rogue nation as possible! "...they're gone." 

 

-

 

Down in the carrier's sickbay, the De Gaulle's doctors did their best to treat the American superhero and the Socotran princess who'd taken a thorough beating at their hands. This wasn't easy since the first was bulletproof (even with her broken ribs and ruptured blood vessels) and the French military personnel were clearly uneasy around the latter. 

Around the time Erin's injuries were slowly, ever-so-slowly, beginning to heal up, one of the doctors turned on the sickbay's television - the carrier's satellite TV was turned to al-Jazeera Socotra. In front of his still-visibly water-damaged palace, Typhoon announced that he would be entering into negotiations with the French government to "offer charitable aid on behalf of the French sailors injured during their misguided attempts to detain the Socotran royal family." He turned to what was evidently more serious matters. "Typhoon's methods are a means to an end, no different than pruning weeds in order to let a garden flourish. Those who stand in the way of my vision oppose me because they fear me, but more than that they fear what I represent. Let those who have walked away from that garden-" 

 

A water bottle levitated from the table next to Nina and hit the off button of the television so hard it nearly cracked the plastic. She stared at the television and Mark remembered suddenly his own father's words, twisted with grief and rage. 

 

Fathers who abandon their children don't deserve to live! 

 

He looked at Nina and said, "We'll get him for this. One of these days...he crossed a line. Not just us, but with the world. The next time...we'll be ready." His face crinkled. "You were amazing today. I love you." 

[Gizmo]

Midnight didn't stray far from the sickbay from the moment the two young women were brought there for treatment, his quietly dripping uniform somehow adding to the aura of menace that radiated from the silent, black clad figure even under the harsh artificial lights. Any of the Charles de Gaulle's staff who seemed hesitant to treat the unexpected arrivals or suggested detaining al-Darsah for questioning received a steely glare that penetrated the vigilante's ruby lenses and imparted all the chill of being submerged in the seawater outside.

 

Once the staff had done what they could, he took a seat nearby Erin and waited while she recovered. Redbird attempted to start up a conversation a few times, bemoaning how short her flight time had been, but it was clear that the laconic Hunter heir was occupied with his own thoughts.

[Electra]

The first fifteen minutes of Erin's convalescence were mainly occupied by thoughts of how much her body hurt. She was certainly no stranger to pain, but if nothing else, her advanced healing meant that most of her injuries were over and done with very quickly. Apparently getting shot to the bottom of the sea by an angry water controller was a little worse than the average tussle with a Freedom City bad guy. So for awhile she was content to lay quietly and let the spots recede from in front of her eyes. The doctors dithered a bit about what to do with her, but after they ruled out an IV or any of the painkillers they had on hand, she let them wrap her ribs and leave her alone. 

 

After fifteen minutes, though, she started to get bored. Laying prone in an exposed and unfamiliar area bothered her combat instincts, and there wasn't even a TV to take her mind off things, after Nina's little temper tantrum. Erin debated getting up, but suspected she would fall, and besides her boots were now fish food.  She looked over at Trevor, still inscrutable behind his mask and totally silent. "Hey, you okay?"