ALPHA TEAM (Greystone and Shiver; NPCs: Candyman and Viscosity)
The sight of the French speedster caught in his web brought a smile to Greystone’s face. Finally, it felt like things were beginning to go their way…
Key reappeared in the hall behind him. “I need to teleport her back to the school,” he said, kneeling beside Eve’s body. “The doctor’s powers might be able to heal her.”
Greystone knew Doctor Bacon’s powers wouldn’t let him help her and realized what Key meant: the doctor at his school. Key was saying there was a chance, but he would need to take her to his dimension. With the bridge up ahead, the conclusion of this nightmare was drawing nigh. If they were successful, it might leave Eve stranded there.
“Do it,” he told the tall boy, “but take the others with you and drop them at our school. Then come back for me.”
“I’ll stay,” Shiver said, “you might need help, Jack.”
“All right,” Greystone said, impressed at her tenacity, “your call.”
She helped Key to gather up her best friend and took a moment to take one last look at Eve. “Please hurry,” she said. “She’s my best friend.”
Key nodded to her, then looked to Greystone. “I will return,” he said, taking Eve, Viscosity, and Candyman away.
“I can’t help Eve,” Shiver said, wiping her eyes, “but I can help make sure she has a world to come back to.”
Greystone nodded, but didn’t tell her what he feared: that it may very likely have been the last time she saw her friend. “Good way to look at it.”
He marched forward and looked Tristan in the eyes. “I’ve seen enough death today, so I’ll make you a deal: how about we go our separate ways for now? You’ve got a legit beef with me, but we can settle up with each other when several worlds ain’t on the line.”
Shifting a talon, Greystone cut the speedster free. “Go home to your family, Tristan.”
Tristan hesitated for a moment. He was grinding his teeth; his fists shook. He wanted nothing more than to avenge his brother, but knew how futile it was. “This isn’t over,” he growled before speeding off.
Greystone turned down the hallway, and led Shiver to the bridge.
The doors opened. There were only two members of the Armada here: the Adversary and the Admiral.
Every villain Greystone had faced—Iconoclast, Laputa, the mages, Blackguard, Caballero… They liked to talk. They liked to lord over their opponents how much more powerful or smarter or stronger they were. They never wasted an opportunity to boast.
The moment Greystone and Shiver came through the doors, a black spike ruptured out of the floor between them. The two dodged it, but the message was clear: Chen-Lei had nothing to prove to either of them. He was simply going to bring an end to this fight.
Michuru wrote:
The Order, Round Four
- Shiver (F6 - 25)
- The Admiral (E3 - 23)
- Key (7)
- Greystone (E6 – 6)
- The Adversary (G2 – 1)
First, hero point to Jack for letting Tristan leave. That caught me off guard.
To save time, I figure we can just recycle the initiatives. I’m just putting Jay last.
I’m cheating a smidge and having Chen-Lei toss a spike just to kick things off. No attack roll. No saves. It’s not hitting anyone. We’ll start the round with Violet, Shock.
ALPHA TEAM (Key; NPCs: Argento)
After leaving Candyman and Viscosity at their school, Key teleported with Eve’s body to his home dimension. He had earned some startled looks and mortified expressions showing up with her in his arms, but Viscosity had started to tell them the plan as he left.
Now he teleported to the infirmary, placing Eve at Rosalynda Argento’s feet.
BETA TEAM (Lex; NPCs: Kirstie)
"Her name is Ultramauler and she's $*#(ing adorable!"
Kirstie shot him a deadpan look. “Doctor Bacon wanted to run some tests. She’s my daughter. Sure, she’s adorable, but she’s also…” She sighed and let her arms fall limp at her sides. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
Lex sighed and propped his aching head in his hands. “I get it, okay. I’m sorry. I know what it’s like. I’ve been there. I’ve lost somebody too.”
“You don’t get it,” Kirstie said.
Lex talked over her, holding up his phone so she could see the date and time listed. “But I saw you less than four hours ago, see? I’m not trying to be mean. I’m really not. I thought it was hours, not months. Drifter must have teleported us through time or something.”
“I don’t love her!”
Her exclamation took him off guard.
“Ultra Mauler. I… She’s adorable, yes, and according to Doctor Bacon, she is my biological daughter, but I’m not her mom, Lex. Her mom is some other woman in some other dimension and every time she sees me, she calls me that and I get that she had a rough life, but that doesn’t make her my problem, does it?” She was breathing heavy. She seemed on the cusp of hyperventilating. “Everyone acts like I’m a terrible person because I don’t want her around me, but I just…” She threw her hands up in defeat. “I can’t be who she expects me to be. I don’t want to be with Jack. I don’t want her to stay in my room. I…” She broke down crying. “Everyone keeps saying I’m a horrible mother, but I can’t be because I’m not a mother period.”
BETA TEAM (Otso; NPCs: Beatrice)
He wrapped his arms around her and she hugged him back. He heard her sniff. At first, he mistook it for a sniffle, only to realize she was sniffing him—trying to take in his smell.
His eyes went to her bed. There was a book open next to where she’d been sitting. It looked ancient: worn, yellowed parchment showed pages written in a language he wasn’t familiar with, showing a drawing depicting four robed men stabbing another figure—a naked man—and catching his blood in chalices.
Before he could question it, Beatrice grabbed his head and guided her lips to hers. “Tu m'as tellement manqué,” she said between kisses. “Tu m'as tellement manqué.”
”I have missed you so much.”
GAMMA TEAM (Imago; NPCs: Hemophiliac)
“I guess it all did work,” Imago said as he surveyed the scene. “Now we hope everyone else to make it back.”
“I don’t know about your friends,” Hemophiliac said. “Mine?” She let out a short chuckle. “They’ll be fine. It takes more than interdimensional pirates to kill us off.” The short girl cast him a smile that seemed so out of place given all they had just gone through. “I’m Bianca, by the way.”
GAMMA TEAM (Prehistoric; NPCs: Paramour)
“I don’t think I could pilot one of those things very well. Let’s fly ourselves down.”
Paramour nodded and followed David through the energy field that separated the interior of the ship from the atmosphere outside. She immediately regretted such a decision. This high up, the air was thin. She suddenly felt nauseous and dizzy headed. It was hard to discern which Earth they called home. It was all she could do to follow Prehistoric.
As they drew nearer to the ground, it became easier to fly. They left the higher elevation for something more tolerable. She realized now that they had a tail—a ship flying after them. Fearing the worst, she fired at it. It must have been the altitude sickness that left her aim off: she missed the ship by a wide margin.
DELTA TEAM (Taheka; NPCs: Cacophony, Ogre, Prodigy, Tantivy)
Taheka’s words were filled with as much ice as his stare was. “So how do we get off this ship?”
“Follow me,” Prodigy said. “There’s a docking bay not far off. If we hustle-”
“What about them?” Cacophony asked, looking to where their enemies were laying.
“Didn’t they just kill Shakes?” Prodigy asked. “Trust me: they deserve this. We need to move.”
Prodigy led them back through the ship and up into a docking bay. “Right now, the ship is running on reserve power,” he said. “It started to fall, but some stabilizers kicked in. We’re probably breathing what’s left of the oxygen. Lights are down to a power-saving setting.” He continued to rattle off points about the Elpis’ power-saving mode before getting to the important part: “Really, the batteries will only keep enough power in it for a final shift. Once it does, they have a-”
“Can you please talk about something else?” Cacophony asked. “Anything.”
“Fine,” Prodigy said. “I’m curious about your respective home worlds.” He looked at Cacophony. “Yours, especially. Your parents are Viktor DeGallow and Sarah Nelson?” When she nodded, he nodded in return. “They’re classmates of mine. Your world is a possible future for me. I’m curious where things went off the rails for you.”
The dark-haired girl shrugged. “Maybe a few years ago—two or three. Things had gotten kind of peaceful. There were so many teams of Vindicators all around the world. They’d pretty much eradicated super-human crime. Nobody needed the Vindicators, so they decided to start taking them out.
“I was asleep. Mom screamed. There were men—soldiers—in our home. We lived on campus. They came for us. Mister Murphy was leading them.”
“Murphy?” Prodigy asked. “Lex?”
“No,” Cacophony said. “His brother. He knew the school. He grew up there. He led the strike. Mom was fighting them off. She told dad to get me to safety. Dad grabbed me and we went through the wall.
“It was the last time I saw her.”
“I’m sorry,” Prodigy said as he opened a hatch. “I know what it’s like to lose your mother.”
“We found Rosalyn—Ultra Mauler—and dad told me to take her and keep going. He said he was going back for mom. He never came back. We ran into some of the others—other students who were fleeing. The men caught up to us. I thought we were done for. Then Paladin showed up. He just… appeared. He just came right out of the air. He saved us. Took us all in. Not a lot of us made it. Sometimes, they would find us—pick a few off. In the end, the five of us were the only ones left.”
Prodigy led them through a door and onto the floor of a docking bay. “Everyone climb aboard,” he said, leading them onto a ship. In moments, the ship rose up and flew out of the Elpis.
EPSILON TEAM (Fluxx)
Continuing on his way through the ship, Fluxx ran into another member of the Armada. The man looked like an older Peter Dragunsky—one of the students of the New Vindicators Academy of Asia he had helped. Peter’s power allowed him to emit an explosive burst of power from his body that he could command to only affect things that met criteria he decided.
“You need to get off the ship,” the Russian said to him. “The ship is losing power.”
He didn’t wait for Martin to say anything else—simply continued on his way to leave the ship.
EPSILON TEAM (Cooker; NPCs: Ion)
“I’ll go where they’re going,” Cooker said, watching Prehistoric and Paramour flying off. “Shouldn’t you be going with Fach?”
“I’m not from her world,” Ion said as the shuttle door closed. “Honestly, at this point, I don’t really have a home world. I guess it doesn’t matter where I go.”
Paramour took notice of them following her to the ground. She turned and sent a bolt of cosmic energy flying past them. “Dammit,” Ion hissed, “your friend thinks we’re the bad guys. Got any ideas?”
ZETA TEAM
Eric reappeared in the Wreck Room, followed by Mister and Missus Forbes and their daughter Kim. As they appeared, John put his arms around his girlfriend before she moved to introduce the boy to her parents.
Eric made his way to Dirk. “Who’s next?” he asked.
Dirk looked nervously to Allegra. “My father,” she said sadly.
Eric sighed. “And I get to cross ‘break into Alcatraz’ off my bucket list. Awesome.”
As he disappeared with Allegra, Dirk looked around the room. Most of the students were gathered here. A few of the more powerful ones had gone to the front lines—to help the Vindicators try and prevent Apocatastasis from making his way to the school, where a veritable smorgasbord of abilities awaited him.
Looking down at the clipboard he carried, he saw that there weren’t very many family members for Eric left to rescue. It made him sick—having the teleporters work retrieve the loved ones of the students. It was taking too long to individually locate each and every person when they could be evacuating large swathes of people.
Fortunately, while Eric and Abe worked to grab individuals, their respective mothers were working to evacuate the city, to minimize the number of casualties the battle with the immortal Nephilim would cause. It had been a few minutes since Abe’s mother had checked in, leading Dirk to fear that she may have been caught in the battle.
Abe walked out of the air, accompanied by Wendy, her parents, and sisters, and nephew. As Dirk checked them off the list, Abe looked over his shoulder. “Lucia!” he called out. “You’re up! You got your family?”
The young woman made her way up to him and held up her phone. She was in a video chat with her parents. “Show me the room,” Abe told them.
The moment he could picture their front room, he was ready. “Let’s go,” he told her. The two walked forward and were instantly transported away. Dirk just hoped that they made haste. He wasn’t sure how long the Vindicators and the faculty could hold the monster off.