ic Dream Team (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

June 2017 

White Sands Missile Range 

New Mexico

 

"Mayday, mayday!" came the alert as the plane descended towards the base runway, the beings surrounding it jetting back and forth like mites attacking a bird. But these mites had teeth - and super-strength. "This is Air Force One with a Code Uniform Mayday, repeat, a Code Uniform Mayday! We are in distress and about to make an emergency landing at White Sands Missile Range!" 

General George Bradley, the overall commander at White Sands, was a scientist more than a warrior - but he knew a Code U Mayday well enough. He'd been a young second lieutenant assisting Colin Powell the last time a Code U had been called - when the man it had been named for, the Ubermensch, attacked the White House during the first Gulf War and only barely been defeated by the Centurion. Superhumans were attacking the President! 

 

"Clear the runaway, now!" he called, running out the door from his office to his command post at top speed. "Get Kirtland and Cannon to scramble their jets now!" The Air Force bases weren't that far away, not at jet speed. The moment he stepped outside, he heard the battle in the air - Air Force One was screaming in for a landing at breakneck speed, smoke pouring from its engines, the zipping forms of attacking metas on either side now taking fire themselves from White Sands' small MP force. "And put out an alert - White Sands is under attack by unknown hostile forces!" 

 

There was no point in letting the world know the President was arriving - not yet! 

[Kolohehonu]

The computers in the Attometer all went bright red at once. Six monitors all flashing for a base in New Mexico being under attack. That put that out of Waco Warrior jurisdiction. It also was not a code he recognized. Which was when it dawned on him. This was that new FEND bill stuff. An attack on a military base that hit his radar almost certainly meant Meta involvement. Well there was a solution for that. 

 

There was a flash of light as Hyperactive crossed out of the Shadowzone back onto Prime. He was in Haiti, but distance meant nearly nothing to the Superluminal Speedster. The world seemed still as he shot westward across the rapidly red shifting landscape. It would take but an instant to arrive. He was jumping straight into the action. 

 

"Alright so flying metas..." Hyperactive said as he took in the whole scene at his max processing speed. Well they'd come down soon. "Hey ummmm is the plane attacking or are the metas attacking, the message was unclear." Hyperactive slowed himself down and asked a soldier nearby, realizing he really had not taken in that message's contents. 

Edited July 14, 2017 by Kolohehonu

[TheRedGuy]

Quote

heres one of the sunset yesterday, gonna take some aerial shots later. xoxo, Aní

 

 Aníbal tapped out a message on his cellphone and attached a photo before sending it to Raina. It was a pity she couldn't join him, but he had called her every day and sent her at least three dozen photos of stunning vistas (day and night), interesting wildlife and the odd unexploded shell from the nearby missile testing site he took during his camping trip in the White Sands National Monument. Perhaps it was overkill, but the place was genuinely interesting. He sat on a blanket in front of his tent, his bare feet half-buried in the cool sands. School was out for summer, and it felt good to get away from Freedom City a bit and clear his head. As he lazily rummaged through the portable cooler looking for a can of soda, he planned the rest of the day. Flying, definitely - he'd packed his flight suit for the trip and fully intended to use it. Then, another night under the stars, maybe horse riding tomorrow, and on to the next stop on his itinerary. That said, his itinerary was less a structured plan and more a set of suggestions. Maybe he'd go see those Pueblo clowns he read about online, those seemed cool. The only other certainty was Vegas, and then back to FC to fly home to Mexico. He cracked open his last can of soda (there was still enough water left to last him the day, though) and lazily sipped. It was still relatively early in the day. The dunes weren't going anywhere. He finished his drink and, suitably refreshed, crawled into his tent to retrieve the flight suit.

 

A few minutes later, El Huracán was in the air, soaring on the warm air currents at an altitude high enough to avoid being recognizable to anyone down below. The dunes looked just as cool from above as they did on the ground. He reached towards his side, and cursed at himself. Idiot. Stupid idiot. Knew I forgot something. The flight suit didn't have pockets, unfortunately, and he had left his cellphone down below. "Sun must've fried your brains", he muttered to himself. No matter, he thought. There was nothing stopping him from making a second flight and taking some photos later.  

 

He was nearing the White Sands Missile Range. According to the map, there were also some military airbases nearby. It occurred to him it might not be a good idea to fly over a military installation. They probably didn't take kindly to civilians, even superheroes - especially superheroes - invading their air space, even if it was just harmless fun. The last thing he needed was flak cannons firing at him. He looked around. There was an airplane relatively close by. Aníbal always enjoyed doing a flyby and waving to the passengers and the crew. It was one of the simple pleasures of being a superhero, it was good PR, and besides, according to LegalAdvice.com it was technically not illegal, so there. Cracking a smile, he banked towards the airplane, and quickly noticed something weird. It seemed like something was spinning around it. He would've chalked it up to a mirage, the desert sun playing tricks on his eyes, but then the airplane started to nosedive towards the missile range, its engines smoking. Something was definitely not right. 

 

Terror attack?, he thought. It was a distinct possibility. The range probably had a lot of ordnance, and an airplane crashing into it would cause devastating damage. Perhaps it was just an accident. Whatever it was, it seemed his assistance was called for. He swooped down towards the range and landed theatrically, his arms crossed, the winds kicking up a cloud of dust around him. Sounds of gunfire were heard through the base, as scattered groups of soldiers fired towards the oncoming plane, aiming at what was now clear were figures circling around it. Aníbal looked around for a commanding officer and spotted a guy who looked like a super talking to a soldier. It seemed he wouldn't be handling this alone. He made his way towards the pair and nodded a greeting.

 

"Hello. Can either one of you tell me what's going on here? Where is your commander?", he asked.

[Raveled]

Warren turned his hands over and over in the sun, feeling the intense warmth of the sun on his skin as he sat on the bench near the white, broad plain of sand. It stretched in every direction, blinding and endless. Nearby, an older gentleman in shorts and a dark shirt was carefully adjusting a camera on a tripod, while Marie Locke fussed around him. "Dad, you shouldn't be out in the sun this long! Are you feeling warm?
 

The older man waved her away while still looking through the viewfinder. "I'll be fine, girl! Just sit yourself down there next to Warren and just wait a bit. I'll figure out the correct lighting on this one. It's hard when there's light being reflected off the gypsum and everything, but don't you worry! I'll get it!"

Marie didn't stop fidgeting and fussing over her father though. She continued to flutter around her grandfather while Warren languished in the sun. He glimpsed up in the sky as he felt his ears being tickled by a new radio frequency. He opened his senses to the radio transmission and listene din growing horror as the distress call went out.

He glanced north, to the distant military base that he only vaguely knew lay in that direction. "Um. Mom?" The teenager stood and shook out his arms, feeling tense and loose at the same time. "I'm going to find a restroom, Mom. Don't want to be messing about in the photograph!"

Marie Locke glanced around at the barren sands all around. "Well. Okay. Just don't go, I don't know, messing the sand up or something."
 

Warren gave a laugh and a small wave and jogged north, away from the family drama going on behind him. Once he had a dune between himself and his grandfather, he touched the holoprojector on his belt and his skin shimmered, turning reflective for a moment before it shone blazing white. Warren grinned, flexed, and pushed himself against the ground as his powerful limbs propelled him forward. He landed and pushed off again, getting in a smooth rhythm as he headed straight towards the base at speed.

[Heritage]

It was nice to be back in West; Casey never realized just how much she missed home until she flew back and saw her friends and family. Of course, she loved Freedom City and the excitement of living there, but there was something about the Rocky Mountains that always called to her. Even though she'd aged out of the Scouts over a year ago (she hoped to join the Campus Girl Scouts once she started up at FCU), she always volunteered to help out with Scout activities when she was in town, which led her to a campground in Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico, where her old troop was cleaning up their campsite.

 

"C'mon, Scouts, you can do better than that! This campsite looks like a bomb hit it!" Was that a little of her father's military discipline rearing its ugly head? Yes it was! The blonde heroine was no drill instructor, but the younger girls were still a bit scared of her. "Remember, 'Leave No Trace'! I see a lot of traces over here...and over here..."

 

Suddenly Casey's head snapped up, and her gaze locked to the South, almost as though she could see something through the trees. She addressed one of the Scout Seniors without ever pulling her eyes off of...whatever was making her freak out. "Stephanie, I need you to take charge of the troop; finish camp cleanup, and then lead the girls through the navigational tutorial we worked out last night. Then I'll rendezvous with the troop before lunch. You copy?"

 

 "Uh, yes, yes I copy, ma'am."

 

"Good."  And then she turned to her 'second in command' and smiled. "And don't call me 'ma'am'; I work for a living."

 

"Yes, yes, ma'am...Casey!" The old military joke went right over poor Stephanie's head. With a nod, Casey quickly jogged down the path, out of site.

 

"Jeez, she's so intense," whispered one of the Junior Scouts to another, with a hint of admiration.

 

- - -

 

Meanwhile, Miracle Girl was now airborne, making a beeline towards White Sands; she wasn't quite sure what a 'Code Uniform Mayday' was, but it sounded bad, and if the President was involved... Tuning in to the same frequency, she replied in terse radio format.

 

"Air Force One, this is Miracle Girl moving to your location to intercept. Will offer assistance with your landing, over."

 

As she flew, Casey hummed a tone undetectable to the human ear due to being in the radio wave part of the EM spectrum, which allowed her to get an accurate radar view of the airspace over White Sands. She also took the opportunity to do a long range visual scan to see what she could see.

Edited September 7, 2017 by Heritage

[Avenger Assembled]

The heroes arrived in the middle of a battle between American soldiers and costumed metahumans - an unfamiliar scene even for those of them used to superheroic battles. 

 

On the runway, a company of some two hundred soldiers was exchanging fire with a quartet of metahumans attacking the big civilian jumbo jet in the middle of the runway. But lacking the ability to bring heavy weapons to bear, the troops on the ground didn't seem to be posing a meaningful threat to the attackers, but they were at least forcing them to keep their heads down. Unfortunately, that just pushed them closer to the plane, the one thing the troops couldn't actually shoot at. At least the gunfire was distracting the attackers from the plane! 

 

The metahumans had different powers but a common theme, black costumes with a single 0 in white painted over the hearts. One was firing blasts of energy from her open mouth at the troops, sizzling bursts of orange and red flame that erupted from her face like jets from a flamethrower. Another was bounding up and down the plane's roof, pummeling the reinforced aluminum with his fists and hands - on closer inspection, the being on the roof looked remarkably like a gigantic gorilla rather than a man. They both wore armored packs on their backs that didn't seem to be slowing their movements any. 

 

Two of the attackers were on the ground, one directly beneath the plane and chanting as he hurled a bolt of lightning at a jeep that proceeded to immediately blow up, the troops inside leaping out just at the right moment, while the fourth had his hand pressed to one side of his head and seemed to be gesturing at the plane itself. It was all hard to see in the melee! 

 

- 

 

"Miracle Girl, we are pinned down and facing hostile forces," came the radio reply to Casey. There were advantages to being on the government's list. "We have made a landing but we are trapped. Standby - please rendezvous with friendly metahumans ASAP, over." 

 

Casey could see the small group that was Hyperactive and El Huracan down below, who were themselves freshly joined by a dark-skinned, mustachioed man in a general's uniform. "-enemy came in flying, two on their own, two with jetpacks! They could have taken off the wing, but instead they did enough damage to force it down!" A BOOM as an explosion hit behind them, the firebreather having fired a shot directly over their heads that had hit a nearby warehouse. 

 

"Dammit! Fall back!" called the general to his troops. "Don't let them get you cut off behind the fire!" 

 

- 

 

Chrome's arrival at the base's perimeter got him some hard stares at first - but the few guards still watching the fenceline quickly waved him on as the sound of the battle intensified. They could use all the help they could get! 

[Brown Dynamite]

Joint Task Force training operations weren't rare between military branches or law enforcement branches.  It wasn't even rare between the two groups.  And as AEGIS sat comfortably between the two in role, it wouldn't be odd for AEGIS to send a few agents for cross training here and there either.  What was a surprise to Yves was when she was personally requested to undergo cross training.  

 

Although her record as a field agent was respectable, it wasn't standout enough for her to be an ideal candidate.  Now Argonaut on the other hand was a different story, a classified one at that.  But, here Yves was training with a Phoenix Ravens squad.  All without permission to even so much as think about donning her redesigned Omegadrone armor.

 

It was not ideal.

 

When the alarm started sounding Yves was as confused as everyone else around her.  As the explosion rang nearby, she ducked to a nearby latrine in the hopes of formally requesting permission to don her Argonaut armor from the nearest AEGIS communications relay point.  Only to find permission had already been granted.

 

I will have a word with Powers when this is all said and done.  

 

The freed drone prepared her armor.  And with it, sent out a radio communications.  "This is Argonaut with AEGIS, can I get a sitrep?"

[Kolohehonu]

"Hyperactive the Windy City Warrior and Superluminal Speedster." Hyperactive told the other hero. Hyperactive kicked his brain up to max speed. Ok so what were they dealing with? A dragon? A gorilla? A wizard? And... a psychic... nope. He was not going to get into another mind control situation. Two with jet packs, well it would be best to keep those two from running.

 

"Well if we can disable the jet packs we can keep those two on the ground." Hyperactive pointed at the gorilla and the dragon. "I've got the gorilla's pack. Speedster vs Super Gorilla, actually one of my favorite movies." He paused. "Any other suggestions?"

[Heritage]

"Copy that, Air force One. Miracle Girl, over and out."

 

Angling over base, Casey saw a whole lot she didn't like, but she did recognize two friendly faces in the fray. But then she heard the request for a sitrep from one of her dad's coworkers, and felt compelled to reply.

 

"Argonaut, this is Miracle Girl. Air Force One has been downed at White Sands Missile Range! I repeat, Air Force One is down! It is taking fire from multiple metahuman hostiles. I count four, one a possible psychic, who cannot be allowed to reach POTUS. I repeat, possible psychic threat to POTUS! Friendly metas are working with ground forces now, will move to join them, over."

 

They had to try to break the psychic's concentration; she didn't relish the thought, due to her own weakness to mental attack, but a possible mind reader (or worse, a mind controller) could not be allowed access to the leader of the free world. The blonde powerhouse dropped to the ground near Hyperactive and El Huracan, and offered them both a tight smile and a terse wave.

 

"Hi, guys. Heck of a place to meet, eh?" She jabbed a finger at the figure touching his head. "We need to take out the possible telepath asap; the President and mental powers are a dangerous mix. I can take the shot."

[Raveled]

Chrome raced towards the edge of the military base, a thrill running through his body as he felt automated guns pinging him with RADAR and not firing. He cleared the fence with a backflip and raced towards the airstrip. When he saw the other superheroes, though, he changed course and landed next to them with a cement-cracking impact. "We need to get them away from the plane," he said, his metal body reflecting the fight raging around them. "We can't let them grab the president!" He quickly pinged the two standing on the roof of the jet. "If someone else wants the gorilla I can take Firestarter. Not much on me that burns anyway!"

[TheRedGuy]

Aníbal winced as he glanced towards the firebreathing girl, and felt a tingling sensation in his right shoulder. Oh no. Not again. This was a different one, of course, but once again he was going up against a pyrokinetic and, once again, an airplane was involved. Her three companions looked no less menacing, each in their own way. Four attackers and, it seemed, only two defenders with powers to match theirs. This was going to be a rough one.

 

"El Huracán, from... ", he quickly introduced himself to the other metahuman, but his words were cut off by the explosion of a warehouse behind them. Before he could continue, they were joined by two new people, one of whom was a familiar face. At least the odds were even now, assuming the attackers didn't bring reinforcements as well. Aníbal did a double take as Miracle Girl mentioned the President, which meant this was no ordinary plane. Air Force One. Great, just great... The stakes were higher than he had thought.

 

"This place is a powderkeg. If we don't take care of the firebreather, the whole base is gonna blow.", Aníbal remarked, "OK, so Hyperactive here takes the gorilla, Miracle Girl takes the psychic, and you take the fire girl. I'll take the wizard."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Come on, Chapter Zero!" called the fire-breathing woman who was evidently the group's leader. "No gods, no masters!" Disengaging from her combat with the ground troops, she ducked behind the cover of an overturned truck to call out orders to her footsoldiers. She had a loud voice and was good at projecting it, and now that she had some cover her battlecry could be heard across the battlefield. 

 

"Mind Knight, get in their heads and heighten their contradictions! Primal, show 'em how we fight for truth and justice! Electro, give the old man in there the democracy special! We'll show 'em how the system really works!" 

[Kolohehonu]

"Chapter Zero. Great." Hyperactive frowned. Super terrorists who hated, as far as he could remember, everything. And it was a telepath. Which made this whole thing a thousand times worse. "Lets go, we can call it a win if we can beat them back without them taking the president. That's silver though." They had to stop the bad guys from getting to the president, especially the telepath. 

 

"Let's go for gold." Hyperactive said as he locked his face shield in place. The world slowed and he felt a grin spread across his face. He got to fight a (more or less intelligent, it was using a rocket pack) gorilla, he was pretty sure that was a Speedster rite of passage. "I'm moving, lets go." Hyperactive declared as he went forward to disable the jet pack on the gorilla. He was a blur of motion as he made one pass, two passes, three passes, and then reached out to fiddle with the pack. 

 

"Well ok Mr. King Kong wannabe, attacking any plane is not cool round these parts. But this specific plane? Well I will give you one chance to surrender." He taunted as he rushed around and around the ape staying well out of reach. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Primal roared a feral shout that suggested he lived up to his name and reached for Hyperactive - but he wasn't the real threat! 

 

At that moment, Hyperactive heard a word in his mind and it was

 

PAIN! 

 

And he did feel pain, his teeth biting down his tongue and his ears ringing so loud for a moment he thought he'd gone deaf, a burst of agony that stayed behind like (of all things) an ice cream headache, a sharp, burning pain deep inside his head. Locking eyes with the sneering psychic down below told him exactly where the thought had come from. Mind Knight's costume befit her name, a tightly fitting frame encasing her head like the foundations of a helmet, her Chapter Zero jumpsuit looking particularly armored as it clung to her thin frame. Her eyes were dark and her curly hair wild, and she was obviously having the time of her life. 

 

Her counterpart underneath the plane wasn't doing so well. 

 

"Ugh, stay still, ya Miss Americana knockoff!" Electro fired a blast upwards at Miracle Girl, missing by a mile. He said a particularly foul curse, heedless of the way Army bullets were richocheting off the glowing  sphere surrounding his body like bottled lightning. All flares of actinide yellow and white, he'd have been impressive to look at it if he was any good at hitting any targets. "Can't stand flying girls! Think they're so much better than everybody else!" 

 

"Dammit Electro, stick to the plan! And knock off that bullshit!" spat Mind Knight. "Get the plane open so we can get the old man!" 

[Raveled]

"Chapter Zero? The heck?" Chrome shook his head. "You think these bozos would pick a name that made them sound dangerous." He pushed off the tarmac, shining legs moving him quickly as he thumped across the space, leaving craters in his wake. He approached the plane at amazing speed and, at the last moment, pushed off the ground and leapt into a flat leap across the back of Air Force One. He was focused on the pyromancer and he hit her square on, knocking her off the plane and towards the fence line.

 

Chrome made a flip in the air and landed lightly on the back of the plane, balancing on the thin skin of it. "See? Chapter zero of a book weighs nothing at all, you can throw it around like no one's business. Now if this was, like, Chapter Eighty-seven, maybe you guys would have some push behind what you're doing."

[TheRedGuy]

Chapter Zero... Aníbal cringed as he heard the pyrokinetic shout the name of the group. He had heard of them, vaguely - a strange cult who fancied themselves rational, objective thinkers, beyond all ideology. Their sympathisers would often derail online discussions with walls of text pompously denouncing all other participants, written in that insufferably sesquipedalian, self-important register so beloved by neckbeard shut-ins. They were an almost universally loathed fringe group peddling self-contradictory nonsense, and apart from those bombings a few years back it they seemed to pose no serious threat. Now, however, they had supers in their ranks, and they were going after the President of the United States. Aníbal took to the air and flew towards the plane, arriving in time to overhear the electricity controller's comments about Miracle Girl.

 

"Yeah, Electro, listen to your boss. She's probably smarter than you are. Which is not saying much, but still...", El Huracán taunted, banking to the enemy's side, "So, what's your story, huh? Couldn't get a girlfriend so you decided to become a terrorist? Awww, I bet you're secretly pining for Firecrotch over there, but she only sees you as a friend. And you're such a nice guy... with cool thunder powers and everything."

 

He circled over Electro's head, trying to draw his attention away from the plane, and from Miracle Girl. "My advice? You gotta play in your league, holmes. I think if you play your cards right you might have a shot with the gorilla."

Edited July 24, 2017 by TheRedGuy

[Heritage]

Casey had read about 'Chapter Zero' as part of her regular newspaper binge (she read the Denver Post, Miami Herald, New York Times and Washington Post front to back every morning with her breakfast); basically they were terrorists who wanted to tear everything down without offering any sort of alternative, which made exactly no sense to the blonde powerhouse. After all, you might fervently disagree with a group as horrible as ISIS, but at least you knew they had an ideology of some kind that you could try to understand. These jokers just seemed to want chaos for chaos' sake!

 

Once again, Miracle Girl took to the air, only this time her eyes glowed brightly as she targeted the mentalist, who's costume burst into flames at her right shoulder.

 

If I can at least break her concentration, that can buy the POTUS and his team some time! 

Edited August 13, 2017 by Heritage

[Brown Dynamite]

Miracle Girl's explanation of the situation was all Argonaut needed to jet out of the base.  She did not take long to survey the situation.  In fact, it almost seemed as if the freed drone hadn't even done so in the first place before she fired two bolts of entropic energy.  One aimed at the giant gorilla man, the other at the villain who Miracle Girl was currently engaged with.  Both hit their mark, with apparent varied results as the scorching red and black bolts left a plume of black smoke billowing off the gorilla's chest.  Mind Knight's armor seemed to fair better much to the agent of AEGIS' chagrin.

 

"You are in the middle of committing a federal crime.  I would advise you to surrender.  I will not ask a second time."  Argonaut spoke unhurriedly.  Her detached mannerisms, skull faced helmet, and distorted robotic voice did not confer up quite the image of a "friendly." 

 

It was a conscious choice on Yves part.  A lack of banter didn't exactly reassure any of the frightened soldiers.  Much less the potential it had to dissuade the youthful allied supers nearby into trusting her.  But, it sure served to make her an attractive target.  After all, every "hero" wants to be the one to slay the monster.  Especially when the heroes of that narrative are some rag tag group with a deluded cause.

[Avenger Assembled]

Under assault though he was, Primal kept it together - driving his massive fists through the side of the plane and ripping away a hunk of metal about the size and shape of his head. It was instantly clear that Air Force One was no ordinary plane - from his position clinging to the plane's flank above the wing he was exposing circuits and wires underneath, but not yet the interior of the plane proper. Still, he was doing significant damage - especially when he leaned back to let the firebreather spit a gout of flame directly into the hole he'd just torn, her pin-point accuracy (she was some seventy-five feet away as she made the shot, knocked backwards by Chrome) matched by her ability to burn things! 

 

"You'll never save the old order, boy!" she spat at him. "We're burning down the old and ringing in the new!" 

 

Electroman, in the air, threw a bolt of lightning at Argonaut, one that (from the way it made her systems ring as it passed) would have fried every circuit if it had hit. "I know you!" he declared, "you're the bloody cyborg! Think you can come here and work for Uncle Sam and nobody'll bring ya down?" Meanwhile, Mind Knight's efforts to bring down Miracle Girl weren't going well - Casey could feel the insidious psychic fingers tugging at her mind, but so far her brain was tougher stuff than Mind Knight's smoldering costume. For now! 

[Raveled]

Chrome balanced on the airplane, dropping to put one hand on the skin of the craft as the gorilla and the pyromaniac tore into it. He gritted his teeth, feeling fear and guilt as Chapter Zero kept pummeling Air Force One. He had gotten the firecracker away from the plane, but she was apparently perfectly capable of hitting it from a good distance away. But it seemed like the gorilla, at least, didn't have a ranged weapon! Chrome charged down the length of the airplane and leapt at the last moment, striking the ape square in its hairy chest. He landed easily and took up a boxing stance. "Fasten your seatbelt, Magilla," he said. "I'm about to take you for a trip."

[TheRedGuy]

El Huracán's taunting appeared to have no effect on the lightning slinger. Still, the guy seemed easily rattled, probably the weakest link of the team in terms of mental fortitude. He'd get to him, eventually. Aníbal quickly scanned the battlefield, feeling the adrenaline pumping through his veins. His eyes fixed on the psychic, who was sitting behind, using her powers to threaten from a distance. She was, he felt, the most dangerous of the super-terrorists. Raw physical strength and bursts of energy could easily be matched, but how do you beat an enemy who attacked you from within, wormed its way into your very mind? Determined, he swooped down and landed next to Mind Knight, who was busily attempting to overpower Miracle Girl's mental defenses.

 

"Hello.", he looked the psionic in the eye with a cocky smirk and raised his arm, balling up his fist as the winds shifted unnaturally around them. El Huracán pulled his arm back, as if yanking back a rope, and a precisely calibrated, powerful gust of wind struck the psionic woman, knocking her off balance and blowing her away 500 feet away from the airplane. Looks like mind doesn't always triumph over matter, huh?, Aníbal thought as he watched Mind Knight's frame recede into the distance. 

Edited August 12, 2017 by TheRedGuy

[Heritage]

"Thanks," Miracle Girl called out cheerfully as El Huracán knocked her opponent into next Tuesday. She had no concept of possessiveness or 'killstealing' in combat; whatever took out the bad guys the fastest was the best option to her. Seeing as she no longer had a dance partner, Casey decided to have a go at the pyrotechnic, whose aim at long ranges was disturbingly accurate.

 

Dropping down in front of her, the blonde powerhouse hoped at the very least to provide a tempting target; regardless of how this fight went, it would keep the flamethrower focused on her, not the President's plane.

 

"Hi there; hope you don't mind getting your costume dirty!"

 

And with that, Casey launched a powerful punch right at her target's face!

Edited August 14, 2017 by Heritage

[Avenger Assembled]

The pyrokinetic woman didn't so much dodge as simply step out of the way like a long-practiced dance partner, as if she'd known the punch was coming the whole time, a sneer on her face as she did so. "You won't get me, girl. We've got your number." She tapped the side of her head. "Mindknight is going to crack you open like a piece! of! cake!" 

 

With a mighty roar, the simian Primal came under fire from the troops on the ground - bleeding as bullets tore into his super-tough hide, he leaped and wrapped his gigantic arms around Argonaut. Drone and ape crashed into the tarmac and began trading blows, their melee too intense for the allies of either to intervene. That left the gorilla off the side of Air Force One, but did nothing to fix the substantial hole he'd ripped out of its side. 

 

"Time to melt, steel boy," hissed the firebreathing leader of the Chapter Zero group before inhaling and unleashing a jet of searing hot plasma that erupted over Chrome's flesh like a blowtorch against steel, driving him backwards despite his own mighty puissance. Seeing her opportunity, she turned and ran for the plane, calling back one last taunt as she did. "Maybe they'll put you two kids in a museum when we're done. The morons who let the President die!" 

[Kolohehonu]

Hyperactive saw the gorilla go flying and spat blood against his face shield. Oh he hated psychics. He could not stand people getting in his head. Hearing the mockery below he charged down below. 

 

"Don't. Mess. With. My. HEAD!" He shouted punctuating each word with a round house kick aimed at the psychic's head. He hated people messing with his brains. After raining a barrage of blows down and not really seeing if they hit, he dashed out of reach and back atop the plane ready to try and defend the dent in the hull. 

[Avenger Assembled]

"ENOUGH!" In the sky, Electroman hurled a bolt of lightning at Air Force One, then another, machine gun bullets and explosions detonating harmlessly against the glowing shield of blue-white electricity that surrounded his body. "If I'm gonna go down for hitting the President, I'm gonna go all the way!" He threw another bolt at the plane, and then another, energy crackling all along the jet's flank, a hole beginning to gape open in the tough metal surrounding the passenger compartment. It wasn't quite big enough for a human to enter yet - but it was certainly big enough for another lightning bolt. "C'mon! Hit me! Hit me!" he shouted, raising his arms in the air as bullets and bombs burst harmlessly against his protective shell. "I'm the biggest thing around!" 

 

Mind-Knight concentrated again, focusing her mental energies on Miracle Girl, and once again the paragon felt the oily touch of psionic power invading her thoughts - only to be driven out by her sheer mental power! "Agh! Take down the flying one!" the psychic called to the others. "She's too strong, I can't break her! I know where _I_ need to go," she added, turning and running for Air Force One as fast as her legs could take her.