ic What's Eating You?

[Avenger Assembled]

Passing through the glowing mystic portal, the heroes felt a moment of vertigo and a distinct sensation of nausea - followed by the faint, unmistakeable sound of insects buzzing. And then the wispy darkness of the portal cleared and the heroes found themselves in a deserted downtown street, one that from the skyline was clearly a close double of Freedom City. The sun shines brightly in a clear sky. Shop windows look out on wide sidewalks; skyscrapers tower on either side. It is only above and below that anything looks abnormal. The upper reaches of the various skyscrapers all look infested by something, a pale waxy growth that has blotted out most of the top stories. Things flew overhead, and crawled on the surface of those massive buildings - things that were not planes. 

 

And then there were the bodies.

 

Businessmen, derelicts, ladies in furs, even pigeons and stray dogs -- all dead. Some looked pale and ghastly, completely drained of blood. Others still had blood in them, or rather around them, pooled around their bodies, but their eyes and the soft parts of their bodies were eaten away as if by animals. Lines of bloody circular welts mark the skins of some. Frost cursed at the sight of the horrors around them, as a sign of his distractedness actually crossing himself in the Eastern Orthodox fashion, and cleared away for the rest of the heroes to arrive. For their part, the bees took up an uneasy guard around the portal, deferring first to Fleur de Joie, and then to Super-Bee, about what to do next. 

 

"Well...this is less pleasant than it looked. Living people are here," he insisted, "in this place, in this very city. some close by, some more distantly, but this is..." Frost whitened slightly. "This is recent. Days, or less." 

 

Just as they were all on scene, the heroes heard a distinct metallic clanking around a corner. A hunched-over bag lady, dressed in a ragged overcoat, pajamas, and galoshes, wheeled a shopping cart onto the street as if carnage, superheroes, and giant bees were all a perfectly standard thing.  The vagrant ignored the heroes and set to looting the corpses, babbling to herself all the while. When she passed a manhole in the street, the cover burst high into the air. Suddenly a long white tentacle shot out for the screaming woman - just before a breath of flame from Super-Bee set it alight! With a terrible shriek from beneath their feet, the giant limb retreated back into the sewers. 

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel's eyes widened a bit at really glimpsing the sheer scope of the problem here. And they then narrowed when he saw the death around them. 

 

When the old woman came along, he turned to speak to her...and was suddenly in front of her in a blur of motion, having tried to interpose his body in front of hers! But he was too slow for Super-Bee to resolve that problem. So instead, he opted to try and calm the woman down. 

 

"It's all right, ma'am. It's okay. We're here to help. Please calm down. You're safe. My name is Gabriel. What's your name? Can you tell us where we are?"

 

He glanced at the others, hoping they would watch his back while he was occupied keeping the bystander calm and talking.

[Fox]

"That's a lot of damage for 'days'," Gaian Knight noted, grimly pulling his cloth facemask up. He'd brought a fair host of stone shards with him through the portal, and they bristled behind him like spines, turning to follow his gaze as if he expected an attack from anywhere.

Which, to be fair, he did. "Tiamat, probably best to stay grounded for now; we're going to be attention-drawing enough without getting the attention of the hives up there. I'm going to see if I can't get a feel for what's under our feet."

As the dragon grunted in response and turned a careful eye upward, Gaian Knight planted his feet and sent his senses into the earth, hoping to whatever gods were left on this world that the whole thing wouldn't be one giant hive.

[Electra]

Fleur took a long look around the ruined city, taking in the death, the senseless ruin and decay that seemed to be everywhere. Abruptly, she swung her leg over Superbee's side and slid to the ground with the ease of long practice, just in time to vomit into the already-choked gutter. When she finished, her face was white against the green of her hair, but her eyes were full of determination. "We need to know how far this has spread. I'm going to look around at the edges of the city. I'll be right back." She touched the flowers in her hair and disappeared, heading for some of the places she knew best at Freedom City's outskirts. . Lonely Point, Wharton Forest, the seafront boardwalks, the fields outside the airport, something had to be outside the reach of the bug swarm. 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Oh, Montgomery it Juneau was Phoenix horrible Little Rock," the old woman babbled at Gabriel, terror blazing in her rheumy eyes. "They Sacramento came Denver out Hartford of Dover the Tallahassee sewers Atlanta, the Honolulu skies Boise, just...eating Springfield everyone Indianapolis! That was Des Moines just a few Topeka days Frankfort ago - but the war is Baton Rouge already over! I heard Augusta them eat Annapolis the President Boston on TV! I've lived by Lansing scavenging this St. Paul long but Jackson I'm starving and Jefferson City I don't have my pills Helena." She looked back at the sewer grate guarded by the bees, where a distinct cover of filthy slime lay over the spot where the manhole had once been. "A man I was hiding with Lincoln gave himself to them so Carson City he could die quickly - but they just Concord turned him into one of them Trenton!" She focused on Gabriel and spoke clearly, "Sonny-jim, are you an angel?" 

 

-

 

The old Earth was still there and not so dissimilar from the one Gaian Knight knew - hell, it wasn't as alien as the Earth of 65 Million BCE that he'd visited earlier in the year! Closer to home, though, things were grim - he could feel vast underground tunnels just below the level of the city's sewer systems, tunnels full of things scurrying about like giant lumbering versions of ants or termites. There were young seething not far beneath their feet - the creature that had lashed out at the woman they had rescued was placed directly over one of those youngling hatches. Perhaps a feeder? 

 

Behind them, in an electronics store window, a voice suddenly started speaking - a human voice! A television had flared to life just behind them and a pretty, smiling journalist was looking back at them. Her story sounded like the usual mix of foreign policy crises, governmental squabbles, and local crimes and disasters - almost identical to what the heroes might have seen at home - with the exception of no mention at all of the Freedom League, or any other superhero for that matter. The broadcast began going grainy halfway through, and cut out just as the woman declared, "And now, a word from our sponsor - Kulikorps, your super-store!" 

 

"I might have seen this," Frost conceded, turning his back on the devastation and crossing his arms. "When I gazed between the worlds. But that broadcast is false!" he protested. "That had today's date!" His scowl blackened. "Someone is pretending all is normal. Among all these horrors!" 

 

-- 

 

The scene was grim wherever Fleur went - grim enough that she couldn't stay in any one place long. Lonely Point was smashed, the base itself overrun by what looked like gigantic army ants, and the ocean itself swarmed with unnameable waterbugs that ranged in size up to that of cars. Those same bugs had probably killed the people who had tried to flee by boat on the waterfront that Fleur found. From here she could see beneath the bridges - see the webs, waiting, and catch a hint of the spiders stirring within. The fields in the airport were clear enough of large predators, albeit swarming with large quantities of smaller insects. As she watched, outsized flies and bees writhed against each other in the overgrown grass - almost as the swarms were fighting over territory!  

 

And then in the Wharton State Forest, she stepped out of a tree on Happakuk Hill in the middle of a crowd of human survivors! A ragged bunch in black turtlenecks, they screamed in utter despair at the sight of her, eyes wide with mortal terror. "They've found us! Don't let it get the children!" Amid screams of unnatural anguish and mortal dread, men and women with assault rifles opened fire on her while others ran to gather up five or six terrified, raggedly-dressed children.

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel's face was sympathetic as the woman recounted her plight, but inside, he was...displeased.

 

A few fleeting seconds had him wishing his powers were more...flashy...in nature. His heart burned with a need for justice, vengeance even, and his normal shouts didn't feel sufficient against such terrible creatures. 

 

Instead, he spoke gently to the woman.

 

"My name is Gabriel. I've been sent by angels to help you, ma'am. These people are my friends. We're here to..."

 

He stopped, trying to decide how to say this.

 

"We are here to help whoever we can however we can. Just stay calm. If you know of where any other living people are, that would help."

 

He could not help himself at this point, and Frost, GK, and Tiamat would hear his voice in their ears, tight with leashed anger, even as his gentle smile graced his face, and the elderly woman didn't see his lips move for these words.

 

"We're going to find whatever survivors we can, pull them out, and then grind as many of these accursed bugs to paste as we can."

Edited November 9, 2014 by KnightDisciple

[Electra]

"Ouch! Hey!" Fleur threw up her hands as the bullets began hitting her, looking more than a little put out. The bullets bounced off her skin, leaving little red welts like mosquito bites wherever they hit. "Stop that!" She threw up a screen of vines between herself and her aggressors, not quite opaque enough to block sight, but enough to block some of the bullets. "Somebody's going to get hurt! I'm here to help you!" She heaved a sigh at that, looking at the ragged group. Booked to capacity or not, she couldn't exactly just leave these people here like this. 

[Fox]

"....we need to not be here," Gaian Knight said, his voice careful, even, and not the least bit relaxed. His attention pulled back up out of the earth, the glow of his eyes through his goggles fading back away, but he could still feel them - like seeing a spider and feeling it on your skin, only these things he knew were actually there. In a very real way he almost felt like they were an intrusion in him, and not just the new Earth he was connecting to, and the feeling was starting to make him more nauseous than even the local carnage had.

"That bad?" Tiamat queried, though she didn't take her eyes off the sky.

Gaian Knight frowned, thoughtful and grim. "That bad. There are nests down below to match the nests up in the buildings; they've got what're probably young growing down there, by the size and movement of them. Stay away from sewer entrances - I'm betting that thing from earlier was trying to gather...food, for the next generation. I could probably collapse the tunnels down on top of them, but it'd take a while and it'd be like smacking a beehive. Literally, if it brought down some of these buildings, too."

The dragon hrrmed to herself for a moment, finally glancing over at the television sets. "Modern infrastructure is more robust than what I'm used to," she observed, "but the power shouldn't last that long without humans to maintain it, especially with an infestation all over. And you humans are too interconnected, now; even after mere days of no contact, or observation of the slaughter, would your people not act? Drop those bombs you are so very proud of?"

"We need to know how far this has gone," he replied. "If it's contained to the city...maybe not yet. But it should have at least been on the news."

[Avenger Assembled]

Through the vines, Stesha could see confusion on the faces of the ragged group that had opened fire on her - at least for a moment. "Bullcrap! Nobody wants to hear what you have to say, you skeletal freak! You-" The bearded man in the torn brown beret who was the group's evident leader was interrupted by a younger man in sunglasses - perhaps a subordinate? 

 

"Hey, hang on!" the younger man called. "Iron maidens don't just travel alone, right? If she's one of them, they should be swarming us right now. Maybe she's some kind of...defector, or something!" 

 

"They're monsters, Junior! Don't you get it!" Stesha could hear the fear in their voices, barely restrained - and see the even worse panic on the faces of wide-eyed children clinging to their parents. But they weren't firing now. "There's no negotiating with them!" 

 

"Then why is she negotiating with us? She didn't even kill anyone with those vines!" 

 

- 

 

"Hmm." For his part, Frost kept his own council as he walked away from the dying television, carefully picking his way through the sea of corpses that surrounded them, trying to avoid the attention of the wary ring of watchful giant bees that surrounded their little group. Only the icy footsteps he left behind showed his distraction. "With this in streets and skies, Russia _would_ have destroyed city with nuclear weapons if global threat was posed. If there is Russia left...Or ever was one." He turned and looked back at the others. "Greater measures are within our power that we must consider." Must be careful about this! "They are insect swarm. Like locusts. If we allow swarm to expand, they will again seek to feed. Just as they did on Sanctuary." 

 

He snapped his fingers and turned, looking back at the ruined skyscrapers of Freedom City before he picked one out. "There! That was GBN News, and there is GBN Tower!" As they spoke, distant black shapes crawled visibly on the glassy surface of the building. "That was no holdover broadcast." 

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel caught the poor old lady as she fainted, struggling a bit to get her to the safest place he could (right by the portal, ready to evacuate in a hurry).

 

Then he turned and walked up to stand next to Frost, a frown on his face and his arms crossed over his chest.

 

"Should we wait for Fleur to get back? Or try to slip in now?"

 

Gabriel himself seemed to be of two minds on the subject. On a world infested with demon insects, there was safety in numbers. But getting information rapidly was also valuable.

 

"I'm just worried about what happens if we accidentally raise the alarm while we're in there. This whole place could get really nasty really quickly."

 

He clearly meant in the "actively hostile forces roaming the streets" sense, not the "it is nearly enough to make you want to vomit up in this hizz-ouse" sense.

[Electra]

Stesha dropped the barrier of vines when the shooting stopped, lowering her cowl and removing her mask to look at the survivors. "Listen, all of you! I'm not here to hurt you. I'm  Fleur de Joie, I'm with the Freedom League." There was a moment of silence as the people regarded her with utter incomprehension. She sighed. "Right. My name is Stesha Madison, and I'm not from around here, but I want to help you. Do any of you know anything about where these giant insects came from, or if there's anybody out there working to try and get rid of them?"  

[Fox]

"...my vote's for slipping in now," Gaian Knight admitted, frowning up at the building. "On the one hand we risk causing trouble, and I'd rather have Fleur at our backs if we do. But the longer we sit around in the open, the more likely we are to get noticed...or attacked, which'll amount to the same thing. Time's of the essence."

Tiamat snorted, though not entirely disapprovingly, and was wreathed in fire as she compacted to a more...building-suitable form. "Refreshingly aggressive," she chuckled, though there wasn't much humor in it. "Y'realize that walking into a nest isn't a great way to stay subtle, though."

"....yeah, I know. If we do cause trouble, we make sure it stays on us. Worst case, we want attacks on the super-powered invaders, not whatever innocent people are still running or hiding in the area. If this goes bad, and we can't keep the alarm from spreading, we cause a scene."

[Avenger Assembled]

A low chuckle ran through the group - but it was a sound of despair more than amusement. "Young lady," replied the bearded man. "We...we know exactly what they are. They are the Anopheles, the dread servants of Ar'Beh, the fell lord of locusts and all that crawls, and feeds, and bites upon the Earth. Ninety years ago, my grandfather Dr. Albert Daniels formed a group called the Survivors to try and fight a cult of human worshippers of the damned Things that-" He paled beneath his greying beard before he went on. "For ninety years we fought them behind the scenes and we won! We won every time, until-" He looked away, and the younger man in sunglasses spoke up - removing the shades to reveal a boyish set of baby blue eyes. 

 

"They had been...undermining us. And everyone else, the whole time. They built tunnels under the cities, they built up their cults in the Third World, they subverted people in the military...and just a few days ago, suddenly they were everywhere. We heard the military nuked a few of their nests, but ultimately it didn't matter. They got us." 

 

"We were already in the hills when it happened. We were on our way to meet with one of our cells in Freedom City to see if they had found the primary gateway here..." He looked around at the small group of scared, huddled survivors. "When there were fifty-seven of us..." 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Gentlemen, ladies, we have giant bees in our company and also dragon warrior princess," Frost opined. "Stealthy arrival impossible and I hesitate to leave these innocents unguarded," he added with a sympathetic look at the gigantic firebreathing insects. "Let the mightiest of us kick the hive and see what swarms out, eh? While meanwhile the more stealthy of our number enter the skyscraper and see what we can see." He looked up at the tower again, at all the towers, swarming with gigantic insects amongst broken windows. "In 1950s it required multiple nuclear detonations to close Anopheles hive for good," he admitted softly. "And then the spells to do it. But then...I am not alone today," he added. "None of us are. Come, let us do what we can to save broken world."  

[Electra]

Fleur bit her lip at the news that this invasion had apparently been long-planned and comprehensive, but set aside that bad news in favor of immediate action. "All right, then. The first order of business is to get you guys someplace safe. I have a holding area I can send you to, it's not fancy but it has food and medical supplies and it's far away from the monsters. Any of you who want to help us fight and have more information we could use are welcome to stay and help me and my friends."

 

She tossed a seed to the ground and grew a long green vine that looped over itself and made a portal the size of an average door.  Looking around, she saw skepticism she wasn't really used to dealing with as a hero of Freedom City. "Look, I know you don't know me and it might sound a little crazy to do what I say. But you know you can't stay here. I've looked all over the city, and it's entirely overrun. Please let me help you." 

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel hummed thoughtfully.

 

"So Tiamat and the bees make a lot of noise, fire, and trouble. While the three of us left over try to slip into the tower unnoticed? Seems workable."

 

He glanced at the bees as well, much less nervous than the first few times he'd been around them. Then he looked at Frost, a frown forming at the thought of nuclear detonations.

 

"Putting aside how much I don't want to use nuclear weapons in general, we don't really have access to any of them here. Not easily, that is. That said, maybe we can focus enough power on a portal to let you close it anyways."

[Fox]

"Seems suicidal," Gaian Knight countered, with a questioning glance Tiamat's way. The expression on her now-human face implied that she agreed. "I'm sure this will all end in fire and city-wide alarms, but let's not rush our way there. If this whole city is basically a massive hive then who knows what kind of response we'd stir up by intentionally causing trouble...not to mention the trouble that'd cause for any innocent people still out there."

"If you would like to attempt such a thing," Tiamat added, looming over Frost (and admittedly not so much Gabriel, though it wasn't for lack of trying; at the very least she matched every inch of his height), "then you are welcome to it. We shall build you a charming memorial back on Earth. I did not survive three centuries by rousing the entire guard every time I wished to spy on lesser creatures when I had other options available to me."

"...ah, right, then. Our bee friends can at least potentially blend in...or be confusing, which may serve them just as well. But let's save the distraction option for a more opportune time, or as a strategy of last resort. For now, let's make our way to the tower and see what we can find there."

[Avenger Assembled]

Natives of a world without superheroes, the Survivors were loathe to jump through the portal - but Stesha's pleas and their own desperation finally solved the dilemma for them. William Daniels, the son of the beret-wearing Arthur, tested it for everyone to prove it wasn't "a gateway into the clutches of an iron maiden" - and then he and most of the other Survivors, and all the children, went through the gateway to Sanctuary. Arthur, however, stayed behind, refusing any offers of escape. "My family and I, we made an oath we would fight these things to the end - whatever happens. Our cell in Freedom City told us they were going to plant charges in the GBN building, where those damn Kulikcorps bastards made their stronghold. Maybe they didn't finish...but if we can get there, we can take out the biggest batch of them and give hope to whoever's left in this poor world." 

[Electra]

"Sounds like a plan to me," Fleur agreed. A wave of her hand disintegrated the vine and collapsed the portal, leaving them alone in the clearing. "Don't worry," she assured Arthur, "they're safer if I don't leave that door open here. I'll make a new one after we've zapped the bugs." Lifting her communicator from her belt, she thumbed it on. "Freedom League, this is Fleur. I've got a survivor who has some valuable information for us, but I'm not sure how secure our communications are here. Where should we meet up with you?" 

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel nodded as Gaian Knight and Tiamat spoke, looking a bit abashed. Honestly, he felt a bit out of his depth trying to plan out complicated military manuevers. Negotiating with criminals? Sure. Talking down an emotionally distressed potential jumper? Right up his alley. Defusing tense political talks? He had a plan for that. 

Assaulting insect-infested office buildings? Not so much. 

 

Then Fleur called, and Gabriel decided to bypass his earpiece and use his own powers more directly. The various FLAux members would hear his voice in their ears, but no one else would.

 

"This should do in a pinch. Just come back to the portal; we're still talking tactics right now. If you've got information that would help us figure things out a bit."

[Electra]

"All right, here we come." Fleur returned her communicator to her belt, then reached her hand out to Arthur. :"Don't worry, this won't hurt a bit." With a touch of her fingers to the flowers in her hair, they were off, traveling through a world of green that seemed to Fleur to be buzzing just a little (or perhaps that was just her overactive imagination.) In seconds, they were stepping out of a flower almost exactly where she'd left from.

 

"All right, the bad news is that Freedom City is overrun in all directions, sea and land, even overhead and underfoot," she told her friends and Comrade Frost. "The worse news is that apparently the bugs have been planning this for decades along with some human collaborators, so this isn't just some alien invasion we can scare off and go home. The good news is, I found some of the resistance. This is Arthur Daniels, and he told me that some of his friends may have already wired the GBN tower to blow, if we can set off the  detonators." 

[Fox]

"Nice to meet you, Arthur. And, well, that's fortunate, after a fashion," Gaian Knight mused, glancing over toward the GBN building. "We were about to head that way ourselves after seeing a calm, normal news broadcast - yes, really - supposedly from there. We were kind of hoping we could get a little more information on this whole mess, either from people there or whatever records were still on hand. And, well, standing around here for much longer isn't likely to do us much good."

He gave the surrounding carnage one last look, shivering for a moment before regaining his composure. "...right, well. Shall we?" he asked, gesturing over-grandly in the direction of the tower as if inviting the entire group for a pleasant stroll.

[Avenger Assembled]

The GBN building, a place all the heroes had visited many times, was a horror. The lobby was filled with more corpses, these primarily of city animals like cats, dogs, and pigeons, stacked in careless heaps and practically writhing with gigantic houseflies and their maggoty young, a sight to make even the hardened Andrew Daniels almost immediately vomit. "Birthing ground," commented Frost without a trace of levity in his posture, the omnipresent decay freezing over to ice with every cold step. The doors were too small for the giant bees to enter, leaving Super-Bee and her escorts to take up a watchful position at ground level, nearly filling the ruined avenue outside. They were close enough, and the bees big enough, that surely _someone_ in the skyscraper had seen their approach - but so far the monstrous insects inside the building had taken no notice of them. 

 

Despite the horror all around, the TV monitors in the building were live, playing the same soothing pap that had briefly appeared in the electronics store near where they'd first arrived. A filth-streaked map on the lobby wall, amid all the carnage, showed where they needed to go - the studio was on the 87th floor of GBN. 

 

"Suggest we take the stairs," said Frost expressionlessly. "Would not trust an elevator in this place." 

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel had offered quick greetings and a handshake when introduced to Arthur, before proceeding with the others to the GBN building.

 

When they opened the lobby doors, his face paled (no mean feat considering his normally pale complexion), and his gave a small gulp, clearly managing to only just hold down his most recent meals. Unconsciously, he began floating a few inches above the ground, his legs still walking as if on solid ground.

 

His eyes were half-lidded even as there was a slight white haze over them, the blessings of his armor giving him sight that made the shadows clear as day, while his ears listened for things the others wouldn't hear. He stopped as they gazed at the map, giving a slight sigh.

 

"Any reason Knight couldn't lift the rest of you up while I fly point? Save a bit of energy, anyways."

[Fox]

"It's a...it's going to be a little too narrow to maneuver that many people at once without being able to see them all," Gaian Knight answered, his voice a little hoarse at the all-senses offense. The streets had been bad enough, but in close quarters like this.... "I could do it in a pinch, but it wouldn't really be any faster without making it a little...rough-and-tumble. I can make us a clean path, though."

At his gesture, earth from outside flowed inward, folding out of itself like a living thing, a growing pathway hovering couple inches off the floor to give them a solid, carrion-free footing across the lobby and up the stairs. "Come on," he said, striding forward with as much composure as his sense of smell would allow him. "The sooner we figure all this out, the sooner we can get out of this place."