Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

**Zelphas** · 2018-07-14, 10:27 PM (ISO 8601)

The process has already begun; Gethsemane is not sure if she has the time to answer the Builder's question aloud. Instead, she utilizes the mental link to speak quick as thought. Compassion. Side effect of healing is intrinsic to Indigo Lantern healing power itself; is not a choice. Even so, can be important teaching tool.

You are all heroes. All of you fight for good reasons--protection. Honor. Necessity. In this world, most of the time, it is necessary to fight. However, fighting still causes pain. Not a condemnation of fighting. Not a call for pacifism. Simple fact: when you fight, you cause pain. Knowing this, understanding this, important to ensure you continue to fight for good reasons. Feeling pain dealt to others allows you to gauge the weight of your strikes, and understand where they must land.

Be calm. Am told for most sentient species the process is instantaneous, quickly over with. It is hard to tell given her calm, cool voice, but her last statement seems somewhat colder than the others.

**Quellian-dyrae** · 2018-07-15, 10:49 PM (ISO 8601)

The good news was, the psychic pain of Gethsemane's healing didn't pass through the link; Shared Awareness provided a general awareness of what those involved were experiencing, but it didn't actually allow any direct sharing of senses.

The bad news was, Spider-Man had thrown a pretty decent share of pretty hard punches in his day.

"I'LL NEVER TALK!" Spider-Man shouted wildly as he came to, springing to his feet in a strangely jerky - and yet, still somehow graceful - snapping motion. "HIT ME ALL YOU WANT! I'LL NEVER TELL YOU-! ...Tell you...whatever you're...trying to get out of me?" Spidey blinked as it started to become clear that his initial assessment of the situation - someone had been relentlessly beating him to try to get him to reveal some presumably-important piece of information - turned out to be off the mark. "Uh...hey," he said a bit sheepishly, reaching up to scratch the back of his head.

Reassurance. Bemusement. But, like, really, though?

--

"I'm glad to hear the matter has been resolved," Keys replied. "And yes, I just had a few questions about how the energy gets refined and processed. Will the generators be giving off any radiation, are there any risks of electromagnetic pulses that might damage other sensitive machinery nearby, that sort of thing? And what measures are taken to protect against such things?"

--

Katie...was not entirely sure how to respond to Sarah's comments regarding the scientific value of having a Kryptonian arm in your lab. That was...that was well above her level of scientific understanding. Yes. She just...did not feel qualified to speak intelligently on the subject, was the thing. Fortunately, Rene offered her an alternative to respond to.

~Yeah I'm good! Just some, you know, ninjas, pirates, zombies, and robots. But, like, separate. They weren't all mushed together or anything. I'm on my way. Actually I'll be there before-~

A silver streak shot across the sky above the fairgrounds, quickly resolving as it approached into Katie riding on her Helping Hand. She herself didn't look injured at all, but there were still some silvery runes on her skin glowing about as brightly as light bulbs, so evidently whoever had attacked the San Francisco fair hadn't been a complete non-threat.

~-I finish this sentence.~ Shared Awareness was fast, but it wasn't fully-augmented-Flying-Hand fast.

She landed by Fred and Rene, because A) Katie knew to just ignore the words "I'm fine" when they were coming from the mouth - mind, whatever - of one Frederick Allan Broll and B) because uh given Gethsemane's description of the side effects of her healing...yeah Katie felt it miiiight be prudent for her to handle Fred's healing. Call it a hunch. She winced a bit at the sight of Fred's injuries - the clinical status awareness of her spell didn't really prepare her for the physical reality - but she didn't make a big deal of it, just laying her hands on Fred's shoulders and pouring her healing magic into him.

**SuperCracker** · 2018-07-15, 11:41 PM (ISO 8601)

The Indigo Lantern Demon/Brood (two of those things, despite his better nature, sometimes put him on edge) was kind in its offer of healing; but the catch was... undesireable.

"Uhhhh," went Starsoul in a tone of voice that implied cringing.

"Pass," he said loudly and firmly as Gethsemane approached, holding his hand up in a halt sign. In the future, if I'm hurt and you're the only one around, just let me bleed to death.

He moved over to the nearest chair (they did have booths here before the chaos) and sat down. Then thig big old lizard Builder came running over with a first aid kit. Fred's eyebrow raised skeptically.

"Do you know how to use that?" He already suspected his answer.

Fred was going to just suck it up and wait until he got home, but then Katie arrived. Seriously, she's in his top five favorite people. "Okay. You. You can heal me. Thanks, Katie."

**Starsign** · 2018-07-19, 10:50 PM (ISO 8601)

Rene... paused to consider Gethsemane's words. They were surprisingly deep, or at least as surprising as it gets from a demon who is who-knows-how-many years old. The words kept the often-quiet, often-manic reptilian silent briefly. There was a bit of her words that resonated with him. He got, to some extent, the point of learning and growing from pain; but it's also done a lot of damage to him psychologically, some of which he may never recover from. The concept of learning from pain, of understanding your strikes by taking them yourself, is one which Rene... didn't quite understand. He handles pain really badly and, especially in this battle, he has a habit of completely losing his mind and letting his bestial instincts take over when under a great deal of injury. How was he supposed to learn from that?

His silent, somewhat mindless thinking, even right in front of Fred as he made a rhetorical question that he already knew the answer to, was wonderfully cut off as a much-needed sight finally comes down.

"Katie!" A sudden green blur very briefly appears as Rene dashes up and hugs Katie, forgetting that she came down to help Fred with his bleeding wounds and forgetting that Rene himself is covered in his own blood. His hug lasts only a moment before he remembers both of those minor things and backs off. "...Oh, oops," the reptilian sheepishly responds in his coarse voice, looking at his scaly, blood-covered self and the magus whose chrome armor might be in need of washing after this. Slightly embarassed, Rene walks away to help with the cleanup.

Thanks, however, to Shared Awareness, Rene can still communicate while working. ~Hey, who were those guys?~ The reptilian's voice is slightly shaky and concerned as he thinks back on the enemies they fought. ~There was this huge t-rex guy that attacked me and he knew who I was. I think his name was Roarin'. Did any of you recognize anyone else?~

**CandyLaser** · 2018-07-20, 09:12 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Quellian-dyrae

"I'm glad to hear the matter has been resolved," Keys replied. "And yes, I just had a few questions about how the energy gets refined and processed. Will the generators be giving off any radiation, are there any risks of electromagnetic pulses that might damage other sensitive machinery nearby, that sort of thing? And what measures are taken to protect against such things?"

"Happily, all the actual mechanism for power generation is located in the hearts of distant stars. They're all on main sequence and stable for billions of years. We're just tapping into a natural power source. In principal, it's no different from using a geothermal tap; it's just much more efficient and powerful. In any case, the Saturn generators currently in use are going to be replaced by a new generation that won't even need to tap into the power of the stars. I don't believe there's any substantial risk of EMP or radiation. If you like I can send you the literature compiled by the Foundation on the subject."

**Quellian-dyrae** · 2018-07-27, 02:12 PM (ISO 8601)

"I see, I see. Yes, that would be most appreciated, thank you," Keys responded.

Katie returned Rene's hug. When he apologized, she looked briefly confused, until she noticed the blood. "Oh.
Uh...no worries!" she said, a little gesture prestidigitating the blood gone, first from her costume, and then from Rene.

"'Course," she replied to Fred with a little smile while she finished healing him up. Telepathically, she answered Rene, ~I'm...not sure on the larger end. I mean...they sure seem to have an eclectic enough group assembled. T-rex called Roarin', though? I've heard about him. He's an Inhuman, actually. Just...his terrigenesis transformed him, as well as giving him a sonic voice. Something of a rebel, as I understand it, with ambitions of ruling? I might have only skimmed his manifesto...~

**Quellian-dyrae** · 2018-08-06, 08:52 PM (ISO 8601)

While the fair didn't really manage to pick back up in the aftermath, cleanup and everything went just fine. And while the usual anti-hero talking heads went on their usual spiels, overall the news coverage and social media reactions tended towards the fact that pretty much nobody save the attackers had been seriously hurt, and also seriously how crazy were these guys trying to attack a fair run by superheroes?

While the police, FBI, and Interpol (all of them were involved since the fair had been an international event and, while not every location had been attacked, several were) were keeping publicly quiet about the investigation...well, let's just say, the superheroic community had its means of gathering information. What interrogations had been revealing so far was that the various forces who had attacked the fairs had been coordinated, but weren't strictly coordinating. They each had their own reasons, most of which could be traced to some manner of external influence, information, or suggestion. Most of them had known to varying degrees that there would be other forces involved, but they hadn't known who or why. While the individual rationales varied, the working theory so far was that whoever was directing things behind the scenes had mainly been trying to cause enough damage and chaos to break Project Tomorrow's support before it could build momentum. But who was responsible and why were quite unknown. Whoever it was, they knew how to stick to the shadows, and they knew how to motivate supervillains.

...They didn't, maybe, know how to properly judge probabilities of success. While they might have kinda ruined the fair, if anything they had only made Project Tomorrow come off as that much more badass. Katie had been kinda tickled pink when #StillSuperheroes started trending.

In any case. It was early morning, a few days after the attack on the fair...

Gethsemane

When you had initially been looking into a local occult bookstore in Metropolis, most of the information you had gotten had pointed you here. Arlington's Bookshop was run by a wizened old man who seemed perpetually clad in a brown tweed suit and bowtie, and never went far from the oxygen tank that rolled along with him. Word was that much of the store's inventory had been lost in a fire several months ago, but the owner had been hard at work restocking. These days, the shop had an extensive collection of mundane books of all varieties, but when you had expressed interest in occult works, the owner had - after murmuring a few things under his breath and seeming to study you for a few moments - guided you to the back rooms where he kept such volumes.

The supernatural selection was solid enough, if not a complete treasure trove. But the big advantage was that, since Mr. Arlington was actively working on restocking, he was making a lot of orders, calling in old connections and contacts, and so on. He was, thus, an excellent source for rare works even if he didn't have them in stock. You had gotten an email this morning informing you that a volume you had requested had arrived, and you were welcome to pick it up at your convenience.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Saves me from having to come up with some other occult bookstore!

For the record, I'm operating under the assumption that Gethsemane would have just learned about the bookstore through her own asking around, rather than like Katie having given her the tip or anything. That said, it's up to you whether she discovered in her research that he's Katie's instructor or not. She probably would have heard at least rumors that he's a retired wizard of some kind.

Thunderstruck

It was early morning. You are a rock star. Ergo, you were sleeping peacefully. I leave it to your discretion whether or not you were alone.

Regardless, your sleep, which had been nowhere near eight hours, was tragically assaulted by a cacophony of insistent, possibly urgent, knocks on your door and rings of your doorbell. It was the sort of near-frenzied knocking and ringing that made it quite clear that the person responsible was unlikely to just politely go away.

Sarah

"-so I connected the thingamajig - I mean, the first thingamajig, not the new one - to the whatdoyoucallit-"

Of course, people who knew you well enough knew by this point that you occasionally got advice, information, in some cases even direct assistance, from your alternate selves from other points in time or even other timelines entirely. But this wasn't a one-way street. Many of your alternates regularly called on one another - or you personally - for help and advice.

"-almost positive it wasn't supposed to start moving until the doohickey was inserted into the sockety bit-"

Some needed assistance more often than others, but most of them didn't need it often. After all, whatever the variations of their personal experiences, they were all at the end of the day some variation on the base template that was Sarah Saturn. Some were more or less experienced than others, some were in much different situations than others, and some were quirkier than others. But generally speaking, the various Sarah Saturns of the multiverse could be counted on to be brilliant, competent, and rational.

"-know why it started breathing fire. THERE WAS NO FIRE BREATHING IN THE SPECS BUT LO AND-"

And then there was Sarah-27663. Sarah-27663...had it rough. Evidently, her version of Sylvester had been more of a computer and cybernetic specialist. Rather than being genetically engineered for brilliance via retrovirus, she had...basically had all of her grandfather's future knowledge, technological blueprints, whathaveyou, downloaded into her brain shortly after birth. Her Sylvester's plan had been to gradually program a neural network in parallel to her own developing brain, to give her a sort of artificial second intelligence that could bridge the gaps between her natural knowledge and the implanted knowledge, but of course that couldn't really be fully completed until her brain had fully developed.

"-swears the server room was locked. Spoiler alert? The server room was not locked and now-"

So, you know, dying of natural causes when she turned fifteen had kinda thrown a wrench into that whole plan.

-not a single bloody blueprint for a giant self-reloading fire-extinguisher. Portal-powered smart missiles, sure, but-"

So Sarah-27663 was basically alone, responsible for a giant tech company and oh, also, saving the future, with a head full of hyper-advanced super-science devices and a half-functional intuition for constructing them, but no actual understanding of how they worked and what they were really meant to do, and only a low-genius intellect (hey Saturn genes were Saturn genes, retrovirus or not) with which to figure them out. Also, she was only seventeen years old (and that as of three days ago, her time). Fortunately, one of the first devices she had managed to successfully build allowed her to make video calls to other Saturn Foundation offices in other timelines. It was probably the only reason her entire world wasn't on fire.

"-now everything's and fire and-"

Or, well, I guess it had been, anyway?

"...Help?" Sarah-27663 finished pleadingly.

Ronin

The knocking on Fred's door had somehow managed to be both hesitant and desperate.

Like, it had started hesitant. The barest rap of one knuckle, so soft that it might have been missed entirely, or mistaken for some bump elsewhere in the building. A couple seconds later, a quick pair of follow-up taps. And then a persistent, rapid knocking that would not stop until the door was opened.

Outside was Kayla Alden of all people, in her pajamas of all things. That's weird, but it might deserve some attention as to how weird. Granted, it wasn't like Fred and Kayla hadn't met. Kayla was part of the bi-weekly Shadowrun group, and actually seemed rather fond of Starsoul (admittedly, she also found the sentient sword's experience intellectually fascinating, but she seemed personally fond of him as well). So it wasn't like they were strangers or anything, but...

Well, it wouldn't be unfair to say that Kayla's fondness for Starsoul did not extend to his wielder. Granted, Kayla wasn't exactly the most outgoing person in the world. She was pretty much as introverted as her sister was extroverted, if that clears it up. (Katie had mentioned to Fred once that she was pretty sure Kayla had said more words to Starsoul than she had ever seen her say to anyone but, like, her.) And she had always been perfectly polite to Fred and all but...

Fred had a pretty good sense of people. There was definitely more than shyness there, a certain almost resentful tension simmering just beneath the surface of the relatively few interactions she had had with him. So, yeah, she wasn't in the Top 100 Likely Candidates for showing up unannounced at the X-Mansion knocking on his door.

And...yeah, he could see it. Just for a fleeting moment, a flickering wince in her eyes, a flutter of doubt across her lips, when he first answered the door. She absolutely did not want to be here.

So, obviously, she had a good reason for coming.

In a voice tight and shaky with barely-withheld panic and a faint trace of tears in her eyes, Kayla said, "I think Katie's in trouble."

The Builder

Katie Alden was late.

And Katie being late was pretty weird. She was a big believer in punctuality, due in large part to how ludicrous it was for anyone who could fly at Mach 3 and augment their speed as needed to be late ever.

But she had set up a meeting with some Project Tomorrow volunteers to meet with the Builder in Gotham. The supers were planning to do some work helping the homeless in various cities, and Katie had set it up so the Builder could give them advice, help them plan things, let them know what his experience in the field had been, etc. And they had all showed up on time and as planned, but Katie was late.

Well, really, late was being kinda generous. Because that meeting had actually happened almost twelve hours ago, last night. And while everything had gone well enough...Katie had never actually showed up.

She also hadn't called to cancel. Or texted. Or sent so much as a mindlink (which she could do at a hundred times communication speed from anywhere in the world). She hadn't made contact to explain why she wasn't there any time during thee meeting. She hadn't followed up after to see how it had gone.

Now, almost twelve hours later, with the sun having risen over the next morning, she still hadn't gotten in touch, to apologize or ask if it had gone okay or anything. By phone or text or email or mindlink or app or post or any of the countless means of communication she had both easy and virtually-constant access to.

That...just wasn't normal. Not for Katie Alden.

Spoiler

Show

Shared Awareness is OFF.

**Starsign** · 2018-08-07, 03:42 PM (ISO 8601)

Where IS she?

Rene's mind had been rattling over that question all night while slithering from area to area in Gotham. He had effectively taken over the meeting himself when Katie didn't show up;; he was, after all, suggested to prepare for anything and improvise on the fly. Thankfully the large, yellow-ish green-scaled reptilian happened to be in his comfort zone twelve hours ago. Rene knew a bit about living with and helping the homeless in Gotham, a city painfully bad for the poor. Helping those people out isn't something you could solve with a magic trick; sometimes you couldn't even fully solve a problem regardless of effort. Rene made it clear in the meeting that any progress, even minor, could help more than not doing anything. As such, he emphasized the importance of giving the homeless the basic essentials: food, water, a home, and heat for the cold nights. Building a home was easy for Rene; his scaly clawed hands and speed built one in an instant during the meeting. Food? Water? Heat? Those were always an issue for the reptilian back when he lived among Gotham's homeless; but for a fire controller? A water wizard? A guy with a ton of resources? Those were what the homeless need, not just throughout Gotham, but also around the world. It was a huge deal for Rene to help organize and lead the meeting and it had frankly been one of the most relieving things that the not-quite-sane reptilian has done in the past year.

As good as it felt, however, the complete absence of Katie wore down Rene over the night. She's just busy, he once thought to himself. His own thoughts had become clear in the past recent while after being brutalized while fighting Roarin'; the Beast, as Rene kept thinking it as, had been quiet. Not that it does anything to a relentless sense of anxiety and paranoid. She's just busy! Project Tomorrow's a big thing. She must just be working on a big project right now. Or maybe she's just sleeping. She always seemed busy and even I need rest!

Says the reptilian who spent the entire night, the whole twelve hours, working on housing and homes for the homeless in Gotham. Over the past year, Rene found that the more he spent not doing something, the more he worried and the more crazy he got; his normally thick and lumbering reptilian tail would fidget and twitch in his more mad moments. Having something to do, whether it's construction or crime-fighting, helped his sanity from breaking yet again. He had enough of seeing rainforests and wading in swampwater for a lifetime.

But as the green-and-yellow-scaled reptilian sees the morning rays of light between Gotham's skyscrapers, Rene remembers that Katie still hasn't sent him a message of any kind, much less showed up. She must be with a friend, he thinks again, throwing out one theory for another. She had a sleepover with the X-Men, or she spent the night helping Sarah! Or maybe she set up neon lights with that Zach guy! The wild thoughts correspond with his reptilian slits as they twitch and ache uncomfortably. Clothed in his simple but comfortable super-suit, his clawed feet rest on a thick support beam on one of Gotham's half-built apartment buildings; the stone bricks barely placed a few feet off the cement ground. It's the dawn of a new day.

And it doesn't feel like a normal day.

Rene's clawed hand shakes briefly as he pulls out his little phone, redesigned by Sarah so it wouldn't crack or puncture under Rene's sharp fingers. The device makes it easy for him to hold in his scaly hand and type with the tip of his thumb as he sends out a message to Fred, Sarah, and Zach:

~Morning. Haven't seen Katie. She with you?~

Rene feels no satisfaction from sending messages. There's no guarantee any of them would be up at this time! He gives off several hurried breaths, desperately awaiting a response. And it's only a minute later that his patience wears out. "I can't wait," he says in his coarse and scaly voice. "I gotta visit her."

---

The trip, or rather dash, to Metropolis was not a long one. Once Rene learned how to utilize his super-speed, getting around from city-to-city is a significantly quicker endeavor. He may have been panting and out of breath but he got there while it's still morning. Unfortunately his visit to Katie's house was fruitless, largely because it had been empty. Rene spent a good ten minutes waiting, becoming a most peculiar sight as a large reptilian humanoid waiting in front of a small house in Metropolis.

So following those ten minutes and a rise in panic, the reptilian goes to the next and only real other place he knows is connected to Katie: Dr. Arlington's library. Rene has never quite been there himself, only heard about it from Katie before. It's the one place Rene imagines Arlington being in if not at home.

So it should be no surprise that he's a bit desperate nearly charged into the small occult bookstore, wildly look around at the many books with his reptilian-shaped head, and then look at the owner with the oxygen tank as Rene tries to hide his many small teeth. "Uh, Dr. Arlington?" the reptilian asks, turning his head slightly doing so. This... is the guy Katie knows, right?

**CandyLaser** · 2018-08-09, 08:29 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Quellian-dyrae

"-so I connected the thingamajig - I mean, the first thingamajig, not the new one - to the whatdoyoucallit-"

Of course, people who knew you well enough knew by this point that you occasionally got advice, information, in some cases even direct assistance, from your alternate selves from other points in time or even other timelines entirely. But this wasn't a one-way street. Many of your alternates regularly called on one another - or you personally - for help and advice.

"-almost positive it wasn't supposed to start moving until the doohickey was inserted into the sockety bit-"

Some needed assistance more often than others, but most of them didn't need it often. After all, whatever the variations of their personal experiences, they were all at the end of the day some variation on the base template that was Sarah Saturn. Some were more or less experienced than others, some were in much different situations than others, and some were quirkier than others. But generally speaking, the various Sarah Saturns of the multiverse could be counted on to be brilliant, competent, and rational.

"-know why it started breathing fire. THERE WAS NO FIRE BREATHING IN THE SPECS BUT LO AND-"

And then there was Sarah-27663. Sarah-27663...had it rough. Evidently, her version of Sylvester had been more of a computer and cybernetic specialist. Rather than being genetically engineered for brilliance via retrovirus, she had...basically had all of her grandfather's future knowledge, technological blueprints, whathaveyou, downloaded into her brain shortly after birth. Her Sylvester's plan had been to gradually program a neural network in parallel to her own developing brain, to give her a sort of artificial second intelligence that could bridge the gaps between her natural knowledge and the implanted knowledge, but of course that couldn't really be fully completed until her brain had fully developed.

"-swears the server room was locked. Spoiler alert? The server room was not locked and now-"

So, you know, dying of natural causes when she turned fifteen had kinda thrown a wrench into that whole plan.

-not a single bloody blueprint for a giant self-reloading fire-extinguisher. Portal-powered smart missiles, sure, but-"

So Sarah-27663 was basically alone, responsible for a giant tech company and oh, also, saving the future, with a head full of hyper-advanced super-science devices and a half-functional intuition for constructing them, but no actual understanding of how they worked and what they were really meant to do, and only a low-genius intellect (hey Saturn genes were Saturn genes, retrovirus or not) with which to figure them out. Also, she was only seventeen years old (and that as of three days ago, her time). Fortunately, one of the first devices she had managed to successfully build allowed her to make video calls to other Saturn Foundation offices in other timelines. It was probably the only reason her entire world wasn't on fire.

"-now everything's and fire and-"

Or, well, I guess it had been, anyway?

"...Help?" Sarah-27663 finished pleadingly.

Sarah - the local Sarah, not Sarah-27663 - was in her lab when the call came in. Tucking some of her toys away, she answered and listened to her counterpart's plea. Biting back a sigh, she said, "Short-term, it looks like you need fire suppression drones. I've got a few I can loan you, and I can send you the schematics for them as well. No weapons, so if you can follow instructions it'll work. Long term, you need to learn what you're doing. I can help out there too. I've enhanced my own brain in a few different ways - a superconductive corpus callosum, enhanced memory, improved spatial processing, you name it. It can be done via nanotechnology, and while it's not going to be a substitute for the sort of training you should have gotten it'll help. Or if you prefer I can leave you an AI based on my neural patterns to help out until you get things under control." While she spoke, she tapped a few keys on her wrist computer, calling up the promised specs and sending them to her alternate-universe duplicate.

**Thokk_Smash** · 2018-08-09, 11:17 PM (ISO 8601)

Although a deep sleeper, Zach's ~~paranoia~~ sense of self-preservation means that from the first frantic knock he is roused from his slumber. He doesn't get out of bed immediately. He just enjoys the warmth of his bed and his bedmate beside him.

Finally, with a silent sigh of aggravation, he rises. With supernatural grace he is able to move off the bed without waking his most recent partner. He pulls on a pair of sweatpants and doesn't bother to drag a shirt over his head before he reaches the door.

"Okay, okay," he says, audibly unlocking the various locks on his door to tell the person to back away. He opens the door halfway and leans on the doorframe. "What?"

**Zelphas** · 2018-08-15, 05:59 PM (ISO 8601)

The Internet is a strange thing.

Since many other species in the galaxy had technology at least as advanced as modern Earth, the last fifty-or-so years of progress was not as strong of a culture shock to Gethsemane as it could have been. The biggest culture shock was. well, culture; when she had left Earth, Rock-and-Roll had only just begun to be popularized, and that's only a tiny shred of the many culture shifts and transitions that America alone went through in the past half century. Being a demon who had lived for several millennia meant that she was used to adapting herself and changing with the times, which helped, but it would have been a much slower process without a connection to the World Wide Web.

There was so much information to find! Historical records on any topic you can think of, firsthand accounts, current events, new music, old music, old videos, threads, forums, comments, flame wars... Gethsemane wasn't sure if one of her kind had a hand in creating the Internet, but she could tell that they had certainly exploited it. Still, it was a remarkably useful tool for her, and every moment not spent reading through ancient tomes, observing the crowds of Metropolis under a careful Glamour, or updating her wardrobe for the current century found her on the best computer she could find, combing the Web for an understanding of the world she had come back to.

This meant that when Arlington's sent her an email about her volume arriving, she saw it at once. After crafting a quickly reply email thanking the store for the notice (she has not quite learned some parts of email etiquette yet), Gethsemane signs out of her computer, places a Glamour over herself so as not to disturb the passers-by in Metropolis, and makes her way to Arlington's store.

"Builder," Gethsemane states as she sees the reptilian man within the store. "There's a problem?" The question comes out closer to a statement.

**Starsign** · 2018-08-17, 02:05 PM (ISO 8601)

Rene's reptilian-shaped head nearly shifts a full 360 degrees as he hears the familiar voice of a demon from behind him. The reptilian has yet to get used to her rather British voice given the twisted form of a demon and an alien insect. The sound, however, is so recognizable to him. It's impossible to separate the voice with her form.

"G-Gethsemane?" Rene's coarse and scaly voice speaks out as his body turns away from the old man and to the demon by the front door of the library. His tail fidgets slightly before restraining its swishing movement. "Wait, what are you-?" His snout and lizard-forked tongue mouths off a question halfway before he stops himself; he has a bad habit of trying to speak out of panic before actually answering what he had been asked. Gethsemane's appearance was a surprise to him, though not an unpleasant one at this point. Insane as it is, and insane as he is, the humanoid reptilian is finding Gethsemane more of a relieving sight than ever.

"I'm... looking for Katie," he says after a pause. "She was supposed to be in Gotham for a meeting but I didn't hear from her. She didn't show up. It's been a day since I've heard anything from her! And I haven't heard from her sister either!" There is a clear, if minor twitch from the eye in Rene's left slit. It has yet to occur to him today that he doesn't need to meet or see his friends all the time. If Katie hasn't missed the meeting, Rene might not be so worried. "I had some time to check up on her. But she isn't home so I thought Dr. Arlington might know." He pauses, turning his head again to look back at the old owner in the brown suit before looking back at Gethsemane and finishes his earlier question.

"What are you doing here anyway Gethsemane?"

**SuperCracker** · 2018-08-17, 06:10 PM (ISO 8601)

Fred was asleep. His day had started with an urgent message from a priest in Shibuya regarding an evil spiritual presence in an urban shrine. (You thought we forgot about the monster-hunting angle, didn’t you?) One container of Morton’s salt and a few well-placed swings of a sentient supernatural sword later and there was no more evil spiritual presence. What followed was morning/evening sushi. It was Fred’s breakfast but it was deep into the night in Shibuya. When you can teleport into any timezone, time of day starts to lose all meaning. Fred then got called up by Dani Moonstar, who needed someone that could peer into the past. After that he had his normal X-Men duties followed by coaching the Xavier Institute’s Kendo Club. This is all on top of hunting a mutant-hunting vampire the night before.

When the door was knocked upon, Fred was passed out asleep in his bed with the blanket over his head. His phone was on silent.

Tap tap.

Knock.

“Psst! Get lost! Boss needs his beauty sleep.”

Knock knock knock.

“You’re gonna wake the baby! The murderous, magically empowered baby, that is.”

Bang bang bang!

Fred jumped up from the bed in a tangle of blankets, pajama pants, and not much else. His body was no longer ridden with scars thanks to his brief joinder with the Phoenix. However, a few new ones had already taken their place.

He dragged himself over to the door and opened it up. His kaleidoscope eyes were dull with sleep. Kayla? Not who he expected or necessarily wanted showing up at his door. He’s smart enough to know where he isn’t wanted.

“Hey kiddo,” Starsoul piped up cheerfully.

“I think Katie’s in trouble.”

Fred’s eyes cleared. Sleep was replaced with the clear sharpness of one who is determined to act. Fred grabbed Starsoul from beside his bed and pulled the closest T-Shirt on, a shirt with multiple dice stating “Choose Your Weapon.”

“Tell me everything,” he said calmly as he started to put on his shoes. He mentally took stock of who was available at the school.

**Quellian-dyrae** · 2018-08-18, 04:23 PM (ISO 8601)

The Builder and Gethsemane

Mr. Arlington did not appear surprised or even startled as Rene burst into his shop. Well, the man's specialty was divination, after all. He opened his mouth to give the lizard-man a polite welcome, but closed it when he addressed the other customer, waiting patiently.

When Rene explained what he was doing here, a brief frown of consideration passed over the old shopkeeper's face. Katie was not one to miss a meeting, less so without explanation. It was anomalous, although not necessarily cause for concern, particularly considering how busy she was recently.

"Rene, isn't it? Did you go inside her house, or just knock on the door?" he asked with patient calm, taking a guess at his identity based primarily on Katie's stories. "If she were tired enough to be sleeping late, and Kayla already down in her lab, they might not have heard a knock."

Sarah

Sarah-27663 flushed slightly with maybe-just-slightly-resentful embarrassment. It seemed like every time she called one of her alternates for help with what seemed to her to be an intractable problem, they not only had an idea for a solution, but had it all worked out already. "Yeah, if you could, I'd really appreciate it," she answered.

The suggestions for how to enhance her intellect were...not particularly new to Srah-27663. Most of the other Sarah's she had contacted had suggested the same or similar. And while she appreciated the offer and understood the logic behind it...the thing was, technological cognitive enhancements were kinda what had gotten her into these messes in the first place. She was very leery of altering her own brain, doubly so considering she had no idea how it would interact with the partial neural network that already existed. She was...pretty confident there were security measures in place.

But just as she was gearing up to explain that, Sarah offered a different solution.

"Wait, an AI? Like, that can be installed in a computer and just give advice and stuff? That would be amazing! ...Um, but, it wouldn't like, realize how much smarter it is than me and try to take everything over, right? I've seen 1999: A Space Odyssey and I don't want to be Dan..."

Thunderstruck

Your rather terse method of answering the door provided no particular impediment to the cheery greeting that your mom gave you when you opened it. "Hi honey!" she said as she gave you a big hug. "Did I wake you? I know it's early but I have something to tell you and I just couldn't wait!"

Technically, your super-hearing doesn't include like Extended or Penetrates Concealment or whatever, but it does include Auditory Danger Sense and so you definitely heard a bit of stirring movement coming from back in your room.

(On a related note your mother sounds, just, super-excited. I mean, kinda both to normal hearing and detect emotions hearing but whatever. Although from the latter, you can also tell that its burying a pretty healthy chunk of confusion and, buried deep deep down, a niggling sense of dread.)

Ronin

The school was actually a touch understaffed for the past couple of days. Cyclops, Emma, Storm, and Rogue were all out, each leading a small team of some of the more promising students. While all of the members of both gangs that had been there had been arrested, there was little question that the X-Bones had pretty much dominated Terrorgenesis in their fight, and there were plenty more of them spread throughout the country. The mutant gang had been sufficiently emboldened to start making some attacks on their rivals throughout the nation, and the X-Men were working hard to curtail the damage.

Nightcrawler was still around (as a teleporter like Fred, he was able to return home after a day's work, rather than having to hunt around for a motel that didn't have a "No Mutants" sign in the window). Kitty and Pete might have been around, depending on if they were up and out already - Kitty had been working on Project Tomorrow with as much dedication as the Misfits themselves. Not too surprising considering that on top of the general positive ramifications of it, Project Tomorrow's success had a direct positive correlation with, you know, her best friend surviving Darkseid's impending attack, and all. But Beast would certainly be around, since he was handling most of the school-related matters at the moment. And of course Rachel would be there, holding down the fort and playing telepathic Mission Control.

Kayla was, conveniently, way too worried about her sister to even notice the state Fred answered the door in, let alone be embarrassed at it. Not that she needed any particular help being awkward. "Um, hi, uh," she answered Starsoul a bit haltingly, not exactly being in a mental state conducive to social niceties (which weren't exactly Kayla's strongest suit in the first place). When Fred told her to tell him everything, she said, "I mean, I don't really, that is, um-" she began awkwardly. Kayla had a superhumanly enhanced speed of thought, but right now all of her mental horsepower was pretty much being dedicated to conjuring up horrible imaginings of what sort of danger Katie might be in. "When I woke up her door was open. And her bed was made. But she wasn't in the house and the Shared Awareness spell wasn't on! And she hadn't left me any like notes or texts or anything. I called her and texted and emailed and sent her messages on all of her social media accounts she has so many... and I even tried her comm frequency but she hasn't gotten back and if she were expecting to have to leave unannounced she would have told me she always tells me so that I'll worry less! I don't...I mean, she was meeting some of the Project Tomorrow people in Gotham last night and she told me she'd be out late, but she should have come back by now and there's always some way I can communicate with her and nothing's working and I just didn't know what to do or where to go but but Katie told me you can like see the past and stuff right so I thought you could maybe track her or something?"

**SuperCracker** · 2018-08-18, 05:13 PM (ISO 8601)

Katie incommunicado. In her case, that was cause for concern. What level of concern was yet to be known, but Fred didn’t waste time trying to work out whether Kayla was overreacting. He immediately treated it like something worth looking into, despite the lack of details. He tied his sneakers and stood up. He was still wearing his pajamas but he didn’t seem to care that much. Every piece of his wardrobe was unstable molecules so it didn’t really matter in the end.

“She’s right, I can see visions of the past within a certain area, but there may be a more direct way to track her down.”

Fred grabbed his shades off of his desk and handed them to Kayla. “I need to go see a telepath. Do me a favor. When you get a moment, rig a camera to these. She’s your sister so today, you’re Otacon.” Kayla wasn’t someone he wanted anywhere near the action, so letting her have a POV angle for today’s events might keep her from being tempted to get into harm’s way. Plus, she is Katie’s sister. Her insight might be helpful.

Ronin stepped out into the hallway and headed down towards the basement. If Kayla came along he wouldn’t stop her. There was a quick way to track down Katie… but it was going to come with a price. Fred slipped his commlink into his ear and spoke over the local school frequency. “… Rachel,” saying the name sent a stab through his chest. That wound had not healed, “meet me at Cerebro. Potence has gone missing.”

Starsoul hissed like one would when wincing.

**Starsign** · 2018-08-19, 03:09 PM (ISO 8601)

Rene's reptilian slits lie still briefly at Arlington's question. Enter the house? Rene thought briefly over why he didn't actually consider that back when he was knocking on Katie's door for a good ten minutes. The answer should be rather obvious: it'd be breaking and entering. It won't be in one's good nature to do that just out of concern of someone missing. At the same time, if this really is an emergency like his worst instincts believe, then Rene should have kicked down the door and done a thorough search.

...That's what a hero does, right?

Still hesitant, the reptilian looks back again at Arlington; Rene's clawed feet subconsciously dig into the wooden floor as if tightening out of anxiety. "Oh, yeah, I'm Rene," he responds, slightly shaken in his coarse tone. "Did Katie talk to you about me before?" He never considered the idea that Katie might talk about Rene to others. There should be nothing strange about it; but at the same time it's unusual for him to be a positive topic for others to discuss, what with him being a large, yellow-and-green humanoid reptilian. Funny what having friends can do for a beast.

"I just knocked," Rene continues, wiggling his eyes between Arlington and Gethsemane; the rest of the library may as well be black space to the reptilian, given these sort of places usually have an extensive set of information and history that Rene's never had time to read through. "But I can take another look. But even if they don't mind, I'd rather not just force the door open and enter..." Rene can't even recall if he actually tried turning the doorknob. With a slowly-desperate look, the reptilian asks Arlington, "Do you have a spare set of keys I can borrow? I promise to bring them back when I'm done."

It can't take long for someone with super-speed to search a house, right?

**CandyLaser** · 2018-08-23, 12:54 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Quellian-dyrae

Sarah-27663 flushed slightly with maybe-just-slightly-resentful embarrassment. It seemed like every time she called one of her alternates for help with what seemed to her to be an intractable problem, they not only had an idea for a solution, but had it all worked out already. "Yeah, if you could, I'd really appreciate it," she answered.

The suggestions for how to enhance her intellect were...not particularly new to Srah-27663. Most of the other Sarah's she had contacted had suggested the same or similar. And while she appreciated the offer and understood the logic behind it...the thing was, technological cognitive enhancements were kinda what had gotten her into these messes in the first place. She was very leery of altering her own brain, doubly so considering she had no idea how it would interact with the partial neural network that already existed. She was...pretty confident there were security measures in place.

But just as she was gearing up to explain that, Sarah offered a different solution.

"Wait, an AI? Like, that can be installed in a computer and just give advice and stuff? That would be amazing! ...Um, but, it wouldn't like, realize how much smarter it is than me and try to take everything over, right? I've seen 1999: A Space Odyssey and I don't want to be Dan..."

It took Sarah a brief fraction of a second to recall the more incidental transdimensional differences between her world and Earth-27663 and thus translate between her counterpart's idiom and her own. "I don't think it's a major worry. Minerva's based on my neural patterns, and she runs much of my operations here, including the more far-flung elements in the past and the future. I'd say it's no more likely than I am to try to take over." That was, perhaps, less comforting than it was supposed to be.

**Quellian-dyrae** · 2018-09-06, 12:12 AM (ISO 8601)

Ronin

Kayla took the shades with a determined little nod, pausing only to pluck a lightbulb from the nearest lamp or reachable fixture before following Fred. (She...might have forgotten to ask permission, but she kinda assumed it was given as part of the request. Again, not exactly a master of social niceties, this one.) She tinkered with the bulb and the shades a bit as they walked, and there was...a kinda weird wavering in the air around them as she worked. Nanites? At some point she started tapping some things into her smartphone. There was a...twitch of amusement at the corner of her lips when Fred said she was Otacon. She was too worried (and honestly found Fred too intimidating) to actually manage a smile or laugh. But Kayla was a gamer, she got the reference.

When Fred spoke into his comms, a flash of hope lit her eyes. Look, Kayla lived with Katie, she knew a thing or two about the various superheroes in the world and their capabilities. She hadn't even considered that the X-Men might be willing to dedicate Cerebro to this task.

Now, Fred wasn't in the same room as Rachel, so he didn't see that when his voice came through her comm, she momentarily...paused. Not stiffened, quite, or even tensed. Just...became still for a brief instant. When she answered, though, it was in a perfectly normal tone of voice. There was no hesitance, no little sigh, no awkward pauses. I want to make this perfectly clear here. Rachel. Was speaking. In an entirely normal voice. 100%, unquestionably, indisputably normal. Her voice was normal with extreme prejudice!

"On my way."

Now, Kayla was no Sarah Saturn, but she was still a super-scientist and Katie had mentioned a time or two before wishing she had her sister's speed of thought. By the time they reached the hallway to Cerebro, Kayla handed Fred back his shades. He could see in the periphery of his vision that the feed of what they were pointing at was showing on her phone.

Rachel was waiting for them in the hallway. She blinked once at the sight of the two of them, but didn't comment. However, Fred could notice the flicker of a concerned frown when she saw Kayla. "I tried to reach Potence telepathically," she told them. "I made contact-" Kayla let out a huge breath of relief. At the very least, that meant Katie was alive and...well, probably on-world, although Rachel was such a powerful telepath that that technically wasn't certain. "-but she didn't respond." That news was less good.

It didn't stop Kayla from answering, "I- Just- Thank you so much!"

To Fred alone, telepathically, she added, ~I don't want to worry her sister, but you should know. I was picking up some...weird activity in her brain. There's only so much I can get from here, but I don't think she's...fully unconscious. Something kept her from noticing my contact, though, so she's probably not entirely conscious either. She could be drugged, or mind-controlled, or under some sort of phantasmal effect, or...something. And...she's scared, Fred. And I think she's in pain.~

Aside from a notable touch of concern, that information, too, came in an extremely normal voice.

She didn't await a response, though, since obviously this was now a matter of some urgency. She headed down the hall and opened the way to Cerebro.

The Builder and Gethsemane

"You've come up a few times in her stories of her adventures," Mr. Arlington replied with a gentle smile. "I do, yes," he added when Rene asked him if he had a spare key. "Although there may be a somewhat swifter, and less intrusive, option available to us."

Mr. Arlington reached into his pocket, withdrawing a tiny zip-loc baggie that held what looked like a few strands of blond hair. Holding the baggie, he narrowed his eyes in brief concentration and murmured in a rhythmic cadence, "Absent friends, though space may part us, be you not alone..."

(Mr. Arlington didn't advertise his wizardry, but he didn't consider it strictly secret, either. And, well, considering that Rene knew Katie and knew of him at least well enough that he had come here when he was concerned about her, and the sort of tomes Gethsemane had come to his shop looking for, he rather expected that they already knew about his magic in any event.)

But the moment the old wizard completed the spell, his face got deathly pale.

When a wizard got angry, sometimes their power might leak out some. When you were talking big-name reality warpers like Zantanna or the Scarlet Witch, that could be...bad. For more modest practitioners, the results were far less significant. An evoker might cause the room to heat up several degrees, or build up a static charge in the air. A transmuter like Katie might unconsciously grow a couple inches, or take on more bestial features. A necromancer might send chills of dread running down the spine, or produce a charnel stench.

Mr. Arlington was a diviner. His anger could be felt in the memory. For just an instant, Gethsemane and Rene would suddenly recall a moment in their own lives where they had been overtaken by fury or lashed out in anger.

Mr. Arlington was silent for a second or two, before dashing down several bookcases at a speed that would have been hard for a man half his age to achieve, leaving his oxygen tank behind. "Map...I need a map!" he said, though whether he was talking to you or to himself was...debatable. There was an obvious wheeze in his voice.

Sarah

Fortunately (or maybe not!) Sarah-27663 took that reply in the manner it was intended. After all, if you can't trust your future self from an alternate reality and/or an incomprehensible AI based on their neural patterns, who can you trust? "Okay, um, yes, definitely! How, I mean, what do I do? Oh man I cannot even begin to thank you!" the relief was plain in her voice. Sarah-27663 definitely didn't have anything like the natural, rational calm of most of her alternate selves.

**Starsign** · 2018-09-06, 10:03 AM (ISO 8601)

Without much to direct him, Rene waited on his crooked and bent scaly knees as he watched Arlington pull out a... baggie. Briefly the reptilian confused; what would an old man need a few blond hairs for? It hadn't occurred to the Builder that a man who owns a library of ancient texts and iss a friend to Katie might know some magic as well. Rene would never understand the specifics and powers behind magic but if it helps find Katie then-

The old man's face goes deathly pale. Oh god, oh god what did he-

Brother will DIE. Father will DIE. The fittest survive! The strong kills the weak! The beast forces you strong! The beast forces to KILL. There can be ONLY ONE if you EMBRACE!

"No, no. Where's Croc?! Where's Brother?! What have you DONE with him?! Don't take them AWAY from me!"

Lunge! Claw! Bite! Lunge! Claw Bite! Lunge! Claw! Bite!

"NO! I WILL NOT EMBRACE YOU!" Holler! Shout against the mountain! Shout against the titan! Shout till your voice creaks and breaks under your will! "YOU TOOK ANSWERS FROM ME! YOU'LL TAKE BROTHER FROM ME! YOU'LL DESTROY THEM! GIVE THEM BACK! GIVE BACK BROTHER!"

"Aaaugh!" Rene hisses in pain as he slams his clawed hands on his thick-plated forehead; the hardened scales are the only thing keeping him from accidentally tearing into his own skull. God, why did he remember that?! To him, it isn't even like recalling it; he was reliving this moment of painful, insane anger. Little of his past this last year hasn't been painful in some form. He still lives with the pain of those memories day-by-day. He won't sulk in his past; he won't live in it; he won't let it continue to make his life hell; but the damage his past has done to him will remain for a long time.

Thankfully, the pain of the memory passes as Rene takes his clawed hands off his skull. His hissing, hasty breath slows down as his thick tail slowly weaves across the old wooden floor behind him. The momentary shaking of his whole body starts easing off as well. His lizard-shaped head, however, expresses pale worry as he sees the horror-taken Arlington rush down the bookshelves. "M-Map? ...A MAP?!" The implication dawns on Rene; an old man wouldn't leave his oxygen tank behind like that unless he saw something truly terrible. With that in his mind, Rene helps Arlington by rushing around the library looking for maps, any map. Local, global, whatever! Being a green-blurred hurricane through a messy library will be worth it if it gets what Arlington needs!

**SuperCracker** · 2018-09-07, 10:09 AM (ISO 8601)

Fred was prepared for awkwardness, hesitant silence, or any other combination of social torture. He was not prepared for Rachel to do whatever this was. She was either trying to avoid the whole situation just as much as he was or… and this was the possibility he found truly unacceptable… she was trying to make him feel better by acting so normal. That bothered him; but he said nothing and tried very hard not to let anything bleed through the psychic link.

Focus on the mission, Broll.

When Kayla held out the shades, Fred took them and slipped them over his eyes. Just in time for his encounter with Rachel. “Do me a favor, don’t record anything you see inside here. I’m trusting you.” ...and I know where you live.

Fred’s arm twitched slightly, almost imperceptibly when he saw Rachel waiting. The last time he’d said a whole lot to her was… well… it was that time she read his mind, saw him have a sham relationship with an alien imposter, then they both walked away without another word. (And a whole lot is maybe three sentences. It’s relative.)

She reached back into his mind. She’s done it hundreds of times. It used to be a daily occurrence. He was extremely anxious about it and couldn’t quite hide it from her. Katie couldn’t be contacted psychically. Drugged, mind-controlled, or magicked… and hurt.

~Alright. Find her and I’ll take it from there.~ He paused… the normality was getting to him. ~You don’t have to do that, Rachel.~ Chest... tightening. ~Nothing that happened was your fault. I failed you by not seeing through it and helping you sooner.~ When in doubt, torture yourself – that’s the Ronin way. Naturally, the conversation wasn't even remotely closed to being finished in any meaningful way. He was smart enough these days to even realize it.

“Kitty,” Fred said across com\ms as they walked down the Hallway, “Potence is missing. We don’t know what it is but we know it’s probably hostile. Get everyone you can. We’ll be down in Cerebro.”

**CandyLaser** · 2018-09-07, 08:49 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Quellian-dyrae

RoninFortunately (or maybe not!) Sarah-27663 took that reply in the manner it was intended. After all, if you can't trust your future self from an alternate reality and/or an incomprehensible AI based on their neural patterns, who can you trust? "Okay, um, yes, definitely! How, I mean, what do I do? Oh man I cannot even begin to thank you!" the relief was plain in her voice. Sarah-27663 definitely didn't have anything like the natural, rational calm of most of her alternate selves.

Sarah paused for a moment. "Hmm... I suppose the best thing to do would be for me to visit. It might be necessary to upgrade your mainframe in order to support Minerva. Or you could come here and get the specs that way. I don't think it's wise to send it over a transdimensional channel, if only because this mode of communication isn't very high-bandwidth."

**Quellian-dyrae** · 2018-09-15, 11:15 PM (ISO 8601)

The Builder and Gethsemane

Even moving with panicked speed and the advantage of a near encyclopedic knowledge of his bookstore, Mr. Arlington wasn't even to the first shelf he had wanted before Rene had collected half a dozen maps. A gesture of the wizard's hand forcibly yanked one of the small reading tables over - almost knocking over one of the bookshelves in his haste (if you knew how much respect Mr. Arlington usually showed to his books you would know that that was probably the clearest sign of desperation he had showed since casting his spell). Once the maps were laid out, he quickly scanned one of them - a US map - and after some quick mental ciphering said, "Gotham. She would have to be somewhere in Gotham! Oh..."

Mr. Arlington was breathing heavily after his brief but intense exertion, and the wheeze was clear. He swayed slightly, but took a laborious breath and pressed on, clinging to the little baggie as he cast another spell. It was so much gibberish to Rene, but Gethsemane would recognize it as a thaumaturgic scrying spell.

Evidently something went wrong, since the mage just cursed and began casting again. It was another scrying spell, but subtly different than the prior one, targeting a specific location by direction and distance rather than a specific individual. Without using a thaumaturgic link to create a connection, that one had to be more energy intensive, and the old man's breath was coming in deep gasps after casting three spells in rapid succession.

The effort it was taking to breathe did not slow him down any, though.

This time Mr. Arlington's gaze went distant for several moments. Even as it did, Rene's phone would chime with an alert - a private message from the Project Tomorrow app, as it happened. He could see that Sarah Saturn and Thunderstruck were also included in it, and it was coming from a hero who went by the codename Shadowcat. This is Shadowcat with the X-Men. Just got word that Potence is missing. Ronin's getting some more intel, I'll shoot it along soon as it comes through. But if you guys can get ready to move that'd be good.

Mr. Arlington's gaze refocused on Rene. His face was pale and sweat was dripping down his forehead, though how much of that was from his fatigue and how much was from fear for his student was hard to say. "A building on...Longbranch. Maybe a...museum of...some kind. The building itself had...had protections. Wards. Some sort of...forcefield. Couldn't...scry...inside..." He had to pause a few seconds to catch his breath. "A bit...far for my...typical teleport spell. But I know a...stronger spell. Won't take...but a moment..." He reached out for Rene (being unaware of exactly who Gethsemane was, it didn't occur to him to try to involve her). But, um, honestly? The poor guy looked like he was kinda on his last legs here. Truth was, he might not be able to cast an upper-level teleport spell in his current condition. Even if he could, and even if he took some more oxygen before doing it and recovered some, if he had been winded this badly by a quick sprint across his bookstore and a few utility spells, he probably wasn't going to be able to hold out long in a fight.

Ronin

Kayla tapped her phone twice, and then tucked it into her pocket with a nod. Fred and Rachel were...obviously going above and beyond for Katie here. And they weren't even hesitating about it. She came in here half-panicked and probably not very coherent, and they hadn't even hesitated to go straight to Cerebro if that's what it took. Kayla didn't know much about what Cerebro was or how it worked, but her understanding was that it wasn't something they just used on a whim.

That...mattered.

(Also there was something in Fred's voice that told her that she really didn't want to refuse that favor.)

Rachel didn't make a sound or a shift that would have revealed anything to Kayla, but there was definitely a sense of tension in the link when she answered. Although what there wasn't was a sense of her own feelings. She was holding them back, but whatever they were, they were strong enough that keeping them out of the link was creating a definite sense of psychic pressure. She'd have been happy enough to avoid this conversation, but if Fred thought he was allowed to just commit social seppuku and call it done with, boy-howdie was he gonna learn. Fred had just "gone there", and now there was no turning back. ~Honestly? I don't know what else to do, Fred. It's not about fault, although I will say you might want to review what you know about how those body-snatching ******** work before you go ahead and absolve me completely,~ she said it in a kinda sarcastic deadpan, as if it were a joke, but the psychic pressure on the link spiked as the said it to just this side of painful.

"What!? When? How!?" Kitty answered over comms, surprise and concern warring in her voice. "Right. On it. Let me know when you've found her."

~But that's not what matters anyway. It's...damn it, Broll. We were friends! And since we got back, you've barely said five words to me!~ The pressure was building up again. If it was the same or a different emotion behind it, you couldn't say, but the cord between your minds was taut as steel.

Outwardly, Rachel led the way across the bridge to Cerebro. Kayla was looking around the room with unmasked curiosity. Maybe not quite the sense of awe that many showed the first time they came into this room. Kayla was no stranger to the wonders of science. But even for a scientist of her skill, Cerebro was an impressive piece of work.

~And Fred, I may have been stuck on some spaceship for most of it, but I know as well as you do that this wouldn't be the first time.~ The reference to the several months you had gone without speaking to Kitty was clear. Of course, Rachel knew about that. The X-Men were significantly better at spreading gossip than they were at educating, and almost as good at it as they were at saving the world.

She picked up the helmet and...hesitated. It was only for a moment. If Kayla noticed, it would only have been because of her hasted speed of thought. You only did because you knew Rachel so well. The use of Cerebro was dangerous, of course, but that was hardly the reason for her pause. Rachel was a powerful telepath; she could handle it. And more importantly...she was one of the X-Men. A superhero. She wouldn't shy from danger. But Rachel was always cautious about using her powers to track people down. It brought back memories of a less-than-pleasant time in her life, and she was all too cognizant of the moral concerns.

But there was no question that it was the right thing to do here, so the hesitation lasted barely a moment before she slipped the helmet on her head.

Using Cerebro was dangerous. Really, it wasn't a great idea to do it in an emotional state. And you...should probably be giving it your full psychic concentration. But Rachel had hosted the Phoenix, once. Her control and concentration were absolute. Cerebro greatly enhanced the user's telepathic abilities, but the only difference Fred felt in the mental link was that the pressure eased some. Not only was Rachel channeling everything Cerebro gave her exactly where she needed it to go, none of it leeching into the mindlink with you, but if anything the extra mental energy was just making it easier for her to keep her emotions from leaking into the link.

~And look, don't get me wrong. I'm not fragile. I don't need anyone hovering around making sure I'm okay, or walking on eggshells around me.~ A couple of the X-Men had been doing just that. ~It happened. It sucked. It's over.~

As powerful as Cerebro was, from the outside, it didn't look like much. The wall plates shifting around was kinda cool, but there wasn't too much of a visual display for onlookers. It was all in the mind. "I've got her," Rachel said out loud (and with not a hint of the mental conversation in her voice; again, let's take a moment to respect the level of control it takes to host the Phoenix). "She's in Gotham. Some sort of abandoned museum on Longbranch. Six others in there with her. All human. Or, well, non-mutant, anyway." Cerebro's ability to distinguish between types of people other than human and mutant was...inconsistent. Although if they had managed to kidnap Potence, it certainly suggested they weren't baseline human, anyway. Katie may not have been at her best in a solo fight, especially without her wand, but six baseline humans? They'd have been having pleasant dreams in comfortably under half a minute.

~And you went through something that sucked just as hard,~ she said. ~Heck if I know how to make that better. Heck if I think you'd have wanted me to try. I know you don't want my pity any more than I want yours. Neither of us were gonna be crying on each other's shoulders. That's fine.~

"Oh **** them!" Rachel growled as she pressed her vision deeper. Rachel on Cerebro was simply unfair, frankly. Any telepath could use it to trace minds, sure. But when you add her projection powers to the mix? Please. "They've got her hooked up to...I don't know. Some kind of machine. I don't know what it does but..." Kayla gave a little, trembling gasp. Her eyes, which had been softening with relief when Rachel located her sister, went wide with fear.

But her hands...her hands hung by her sides, and were clenched with such anger that her knuckles were white.

~But I just want things to be normal again, okay? Back to the way they were! I know what happened sucks and I know you have..."baggage" as you put it. So I didn't want to make things harder. But Fred, you're still my friend, and I don't want to lose that because of some body-stea-~

"I'm trying to get in touch with her again. Should be able to get through with Cerebro. Let her know help is on the way at least. Maybe even wa-"

Rachel's voice, verbal and telepathic alike, suddenly stopped. The link between your minds snapped.

She was just...standing there. She was breathing normally. You could make out her eyes moving rapidly under their lids. But other than that...

Rachel Grey had gone completely, utterly still.

"...Um?" Kayla prompted, confusedly. "H-Hello?"

Sarah

"Right. Right. Um... Okay, yeah, right, portals. Good at those. I can get there.
Pretty sure I can get there. Um, I need to...get those drones set up first, I think. Do damage control here. Can I come by later today?"

That...turned out like it might be a convenient request, since a couple seconds later Minerva pulled up a message for you from the Project Tomorrow app. The Builder and Thunderstruck were also included in it, and it was coming from a hero who went by the codename Shadowcat (Minerva helpfully brought up her file as well). This is Shadowcat with the X-Men. Just got word that Potence is missing. Ronin's getting some more intel, I'll shoot it along soon as it comes through. But if you guys can get ready to move that'd be good.

...Okay, yeah, "If you guys can get ready to move" was probably a polite way of saying "If you, Sarah Saturn, can collect your team so you can teleport to the location as soon as we have it."

Thunderstruck

It was early morning. You are a rock star. Ergo, you were sleeping peacefully. I leave it to your discretion whether or not you were alone.

Regardless, your sleep, which had been nowhere near eight hours, was tragically assaulted by an alert chime from your phone. A direct message from the Project Tomorrow app, sent by a hero going by codename Shadowcat and including the Builder and Sarah in the message. This is Shadowcat with the X-Men. Just got word that Potence is missing. Ronin's getting some more intel, I'll shoot it along soon as it comes through. But if you guys can get ready to move that'd be good.

...Evidently your mom being at the door was a dream. Which honestly made sense, since it was like, she lived in Greece, why in the world would she fly all the way here to tell you something rather than sending you a text or giving you a call? Like, sure, maybe if it was something big she might have wanted to tell you in person if she lived, say, in Metropolis herself. Then it was just a fifteen minute car ride or whatever. But from Greece? Totally implausible. Dreams were so weird sometimes.

**SuperCracker** · 2018-09-16, 08:24 PM (ISO 8601)

~I know how they work and it doesn’t matter,~ He said with futility, though that probably just made things worse. He was trying to keep Rachel from accessing his feelings too, but he wasn’t a trained psychic. If she wanted in, she would get in. He didn’t respond to a lot of what she psychically said. It stung that she confronted him with ghosting Kitty. He was starting to see a pattern.

To prevent himself from showing any signs of discomfort, Fred pulled out his phone and hit the settings for his X-Men costume. The clothes on his body shifted and shimmered until he was in full samurai mode. He tucked Starsoul into his belt and rolled his shoulders. As they received information, Fred was parroting it to Kitty through the comm. “Gotham City. Abandoned museum on Longbranch. Six non-mutants. Suspect metahuman threat level.”

“That’s gonna be six chunks of meat when we’re done.”

~I’m ok,~ he lied, ~I only care about you.~ Not a lie.

Ronin’s stoic expression turned positively steely when Rachel said Katie was hooked up to a machine.

Rachel was imploring him to be her friend again. He was waiting for her to stop before he would say something like It’s hard… because I thought it was you and what I felt was real. But then she just stopped. And his steely exterior broke. Fred stepped in towards Rachel and put a hand on her shoulder. “Rachel…” He shook her gently, then placed his other hand on the side of her head, just below the helmet. “Rach!”

“F***,” he said, “Kitty, we’ve lost Rachel. We have to go in hot. Kayla, keep an eye out for that machine when I’m there. I’m going to need your help to deal with it.” He started to run out towards the hallway and raising his right wrist up with the mirror on it. If he ran into Kitty, he’d grab her and teleport. Fred’s heart was pounding in his ears. Katie was in trouble and he’d just walked Rachel into the same trap. (When in doubt, torture yourself). He didn’t have time to wait for the Misfits to gather. He had to go in swinging, even if it was 1 v 6 or 2 v 6. It wasn't just his samurai code; this time, his friends' lives may depend on it.

**CandyLaser** · 2018-09-21, 11:04 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Quellian-dyrae

"Right. Right. Um... Okay, yeah, right, portals. Good at those. I can get there.
Pretty sure I can get there. Um, I need to...get those drones set up first, I think. Do damage control here. Can I come by later today?"

That...turned out like it might be a convenient request, since a couple seconds later Minerva pulled up a message for you from the Project Tomorrow app. The Builder and Thunderstruck were also included in it, and it was coming from a hero who went by the codename Shadowcat (Minerva helpfully brought up her file as well). This is Shadowcat with the X-Men. Just got word that Potence is missing. Ronin's getting some more intel, I'll shoot it along soon as it comes through. But if you guys can get ready to move that'd be good.

...Okay, yeah, "If you guys can get ready to move" was probably a polite way of saying "If you, Sarah Saturn, can collect your team so you can teleport to the location as soon as we have it."

Nothing is ever simple, Sarah thought. She carefully maintained a neutral expression, so as not to spook her interdimensional doppelganger, and said, "Certainly. Minerva will notify me when you arrive. I may be a bit late - I've got some urgent business to attend to here, as well. Worst case, you can come join us when you get here. I've always found that two Sarah Saturns are better than one." At that last, she smiled - although she also recalled when that wasn't true. There were versions of her that didn't have her rigorous moral code and respect for the rights of others. They were - not to put too fine a point on it - terrifying.

With that, she signed off, and asked Minerva to bring up the team's locations on her communicator. "Try to locate Potence, as well," she added. It was always possible that the others just weren't looking in the right place. While the AI worked, she sent everyone else a message over the comms. "Hope you're decent. Potence is apparently missing, and I've been asked to get the band back together. Prepare for a portal."

**Starsign** · 2018-09-23, 09:13 AM (ISO 8601)

Oh no. Oh nonononono. Katie's been captured. She's actually captured.

Rene's been worried about this worst-case scenario. It's not like Katie to suddenly disappear. He had all these assumptions that it wasn't as bad as it is; all these theories on what else could've happened. All that hope burnt away at the sight of Arlington's desperate, dying eyes. The reptilian's slits twitch and fidgets at the words. A gaping hole in his mind expands in him as he feels an overwhelming sense of feeling lost. What can he do?

At this time he expects the Beast to speak up, to guide him on what to do. Those harsh, brief, but essential words have helped guide him ever since he's fallen into insanity. Yet his mental state has been exhausted since fighting Roarin'. Rene's can't hear the voice anymore; he's unable to comprehend it at this point. It's not even like he's 'recovered' from his traumatized madness; a part of his mind, way back in his subconscious, simply doesn't work now.

All said, however, besides the twitching eyes, the slight chattering of his many teeth, the shaking clawed hands whose fingers are rapidly breaking and repairing due to being bent too much, and the notable color on his green-yellow scales losing color and going a brief ugly pale, Rene is handling things relatively well.

Rene only barely has a grip on his mobile phone; his shaking claws lacking the steadiness to take it out of his thin super-suit pocket without dropping the device. His slits are more focused on Katie's old friend, looking as if he's aging by the second just trying to find a map. It's telling that he really shouldn't be doing more like casting ma- oh god he's casting magic what is wrong with him?!

Running on hope, panic and sympathy, Rene gently grabs Arlington's stretched out arm in a momentary green blur. "Wait, wait!" he pleads. "You don't- don't need to do that! I can go. I've got friends to help me. I can go on my own if needed." The chances of Rene doing the latter are pretty minuscule between Gethsemane being here and the ability to contact portal-slinging Sarah Saturn on a whim.

...Whenever Rene's clawed hand stops shaking violently.

"Please don't strain yourself," the reptilian insists wildly. "I can handle it. I'm supposed to be a hero." The word keeps dragging on in Rene's insane mind: "Hero." It's never fit him, as much as he tries to be one for Project Tomorrow. He does, however, step up to be one when the time comes. Today is one such example.

The reptilian helps get Arlington's life support system back in place, giving him a moment to breathe and... try to relax. It's not worth getting himself killed over Katie's situation. "We'll get Katie back. Just, please, relax." It's hard for the reptilian to think that Arlington might be alright without anyone around. "She'll message you as soon as we've got her safe and sound." Compassionate as Rene is, the green-yellow hunched reptilian isn't exactly one who can guarantee what he says. All he can do is try.

Sarah Saturn's communication message comes right after. Super geniuses have a really good sense of timing. His head turns to look at Gethsemane; the small cracking sounds indicate he's stretching his body more than he should in anxiety. "Gethsemane, can you help us? I don't know if you're busy, but..." It's a wonder how often Rene ends up asking a demon-insect creature for her assistance so much. She has, however, been so willing to help before; would she mind coming with Rene or just keeping an eye on Arlington?

**Quellian-dyrae** · 2018-09-28, 10:11 PM (ISO 8601)

Ronin

Well, turned out you and Kayla might have had more in common than it seemed, at least if the pained, guilty look on her face was any indication. "What should-" she began to ask, but you were already moving.

Kitty was, fortuitously, still at the Mansion, and came striding towards you as you left the hall to Cerebro, already suited up. She was striding along a gentle incline through the ceiling while typing furiously on her phone, mind, but still. She finished as she reached you, putting her phone away with one hand and snagging your outstretched hand with the other. There was no need for discussion.

Just as you vanished, you saw the blue-furred form of Hank come racing in from another room, no doubt going to do what he could for Rachel.

You arrived in Gotham, and the first thing you realized was that whoever these people were, they clearly knew exactly who they were targeting and exactly what the likely repercussions would be. Because you didn't arrive in the museum. You didn't arrive right outside the museum. You didn't even arrive across the street from the museum. You appeared on what at first glance appeared to be some random street in Gotham. Now, it wouldn't take long to check a street sign and get your bearings, and you weren't far off from your target point, maybe a block or so south. But as you approached, you couldn't help but notice.

Smashed, empty windows, with not even a shard of glass beneath them. Destroyed cars with nary a mirror left in-tact. Not even a single glimmering puddle on the ground.

Someone had gone out and painstakingly made sure that there was not a single solitary reflective surface within a block of where Katie was being held.

Now, if you had been trying to reach Katie indirectly somehow, sure, that might have slowed you down. But since you knew where you were going from Rachel, it was an inconvenience at most. The somewhat more formidable obstacle was the dome of silvery light that was surrounding the building. Kitty eyed it for a second, picked a piece of scrap metal from one of the ruined cars up, and phasing it out, tried to poke it through the field. It stopped just as surely as if she hadn't used her power at all.

Still, it couldn't be completely impenetrable. It hadn't so much as slowed Rachel down. (See above re: Rachel on Cerebro is completely unfair.)

Spoiler: Expertise (Supernatural) DC 20

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The barrier looks like it might be magical, and the silver light it's made out of is precisely the same color as Katie's magic. But this seems way larger and more...substantial than her typical shields, even her higher-level ones. If this is her magic, it's clearly being augmented somehow.

Spoiler: DC 25

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Even so, you have a pretty solid understanding of what Katie is capable of at this point, and a shield like this...it's not that it's necessarily beyond her, quite, but it's not her style. Katie's getting better, but she's never been big on raw oomph, and a barrier like this would take a lot of it. You suspect that she could pull together the raw energy to cast a spell like this, at least on a smaller scale...but it wouldn't be easy for her, and it might not be safe.

Sarah

Sarah-27663 looked...frankly kinda astonished that you so much as suggested that she could possibly be able to assist you. She...definitely didn't have the typical Sarah Saturn self-confidence, and that was pretty much exponentially more true with regards to her alternates. Granted, she did also seem just a bit confused, since she clearly had a lot to do to get things back in order. The odds of her finishing soon enough to help with anything short-term seemed remote.

About a second later, Minerva would inform you of another message over the app (We've got location. Abandoned museum on Longbranch in Gotham. On way w/ Ronin. Get here ASAP.) and that your alternate from universe 27663 had arrived.

(Not too surprising, really. The Asynchronous Timeline Theorum does state that unless two universes are interacting directly, the relative rates at which either would experience the flow of time cannot be accurately predicted.)

Minerva would, of course, see to it that she was comfortable while you handled things. But if you wanted some extra firepower...well, who knows, maybe working alongside you would help with her self-confidence issues. And to be fair, while she may not have fully understood all of it, from what you had ever seen of it her combat tech seemed perfectly solid.

Minerva was also able to pull up some information on Katie's disappearance. Checking security feeds around her last posted location (Katie's tendency to use her social media geotagging when she was doing Project Tomorrow stuff was convenient for situations like this, although to be fair it may have also been part of what led to a situation like this), Minerva soon pulled up video of the attack. There were six people involved, all of them wearing some manner of powered armor of what looked to you like an alien design. It certainly didn't match any established power armored developers from Earth. The armor did enough to conceal the overall builds and identities of those within that you couldn't rule out aliens, but their overall shape was definitely humanoid.

Of some note, each one also carried a specific weapon, which...were odd. They were archaic weapons, but they had the same material and design as the armor. One had a frankly unnecessarily-large hammer, one was wielding a pair of axes, one had a mace and shield, one had a single longsword, one of them had a crossbow, and the last fought with their gauntleted fists. The weapons did seem to be technologically advanced; you could see them discharging various energies during the fight. With your technological savvy, though, it didn't appear to you that the weapons or armor were being used to their fullest. Just based on the design and materials, you would have expected them to pack a bit more oomph than they were displaying. Best you could tell, they didn't have enough power to go full-strength. Like they were working off of reserves or something.

The fight itself was fairly protracted and brutal. It appeared the six of them attacked her while she was flying - or at least, the first sighting of Katie was of her falling into camera view, runes already glowing on her skin, although she landed lightly. Then the six attackers landed around her. She cast a shield and said something, but they didn't appear to reply, just keeping up the offensive. They weapons had some trouble getting through her wards and shields - due in no small part to their weapons being only partially powered, you were pretty sure - and she made them work for it with her healing. The battle definitely lasted long enough that she should have been able to call for help with Shared Awareness, so they must have been blocking that somehow. It was also loud enough that it should have attracted notice but...well, Gotham. If there's not a hero close enough to personally notice you're in trouble, don't expect any passers-by to call anyone.

Katie played a pretty good defensive game, but the one with the crossbow was pretty consistent about shooting her off her Flying Hand every time she tried to escape, and between the six of them, she never really got a chance to fight back effectively; she had to devote all her energy to healing and shielding. After several barrages, her wards broke and she was knocked out by a blow to the head from the mace wielder. Hammer-guy picked her up and they flew off with some manner of rocket boots.

The Builder

Mr. Arlington lost his spell as you grabbed his arm, and for a moment it looked like he might argue, or even force you back with his magic. But then his features softened, a regretful look carved into his features. When you brought his oxygen tank back over, he whispered, "Thank you," in a thready voice, before taking several deep breaths from it. "Please," he said. "You have to get her back. They're...she's..." he took another breath through the mask in lieu on finishing, but you had been linked to Katie's Shared Awareness spell often enough to know that it included not just a mental link and sharing of position, but also a sense of the bonded subjects' physical status.

Another message came through the app. We've got location. Abandoned museum on Longbranch in Gotham. On way w/ Ronin. Get here ASAP.

Gethsemane looked at you as you requested her help, and then at Mr. Arlington. "Should stay here. Look after him. Will be able to heal him if required. Once he is okay, will join you."

The old wizard grimaced at her words. "Don't worry about me. I'll be fine! Katie needs help!"

"Both you and Katie need help. Think she would say same as you are. Rational response is to help both. Will help you. Builder will help Katie."

--

Spoiler: General OOC

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Okay so, per chatpad discussion I'm gonna slip some extra NPC assistance to you guys in the form of Kitty and, if you want to bring her along CL, Sarah-27663 (who was totally intended as a one-off joke character but whatever) to make up for Gethsemane and Zach.

I'll post their statblocks once I get them finished. SC, CL, you're both welcome to control Kitty and Sarah-27663 respectively in combat if you want to. But that's a non-trivial amount of additional posting effort required, so I'm also happy to. They'll more-or-less follow your leads either way.

**Starsign** · 2018-09-29, 09:08 AM (ISO 8601)

Rene looks relieved, if a bit concerned, as Gethsemane offers to help Arlington. The reptilian didn't like the idea of leaving the old man here after nearly exhausting himself to death. "Thank you," he says to the demon as she begins tending to him. Leaving a demon of all people to help someone might be about as poorly thought-out as it gets; after all, when did demons, much less demon-alien hybrids, have a good reputation on Earth. As crazy as it is, or because it's as crazy as it seems, Rene will happily trust Gethsemane with this; she's helped so much after all.

He grips the wrist of his right clawed hand using his left to get it to stop shaking. He needs a moment to calm down before taking out his small mobile device and read Sarah's messages. Oh thank goodness she'll be coming to help. The other Misfits should be there as well to help Katie.

~At Arlington's library. Hurry and get me. Gethsemane will be coming later.~

He taps the extra-durable glass with the clawed points of his hand to send a message back to Sarah. She probably knows his location, as he expects super-geniuses to know everyone's location at one time; but may as well let her know just in case. He's reliant on her to get to Gotham as quick as possible today.

**SuperCracker** · 2018-09-30, 09:18 PM (ISO 8601)

Fred came sprinting down the hallway and met Kitty midway, hands connecting just as he looked into his wrist-mirror and started the teleport. The move was clearly practiced.

They appeared in Gotham (clearly… just look at the city architecture) but not at the Museum. A brief investigation would tell him why that was. Not going to save you. It was, though, time wasted.

Ronin, being the faster of the two, picked Kitty up in one arm and dashed through the streets of Gotham until they reached the Museum. Then they met the force field. Also not going to save you.

Now Fred was not a wizard. He could barely be called a spellcaster. His very essence was in tune with the magic of the Fey. To turn invisible, he smiles. To become a shadow, he breaths. To see the past, he opens himself to the spirit world. These are things he just does. He’s never studied incantations and read weighty tomes.

Oh, except for that book Katie gave him in which he dog-eared the chapter on magical barriers. He read that while Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was downloading.

This spell is the same style as Katie’s barriers, but stronger and not quite her style. Either someone was tapping into her magic to achieve this, which would be putting her in physical danger, or it was a more powerful mage who knows her tricks.

Either way, he needed to get through the barrier to cut them down.

Kitty found an answer to the obvious question by using a piece of rubble, and when that didn’t work he posed a question.

“Dome or sphere?”

Kitty took a breath and phased into the concrete like she were submerging in water. While she was under, he took the opportunity to ask the spirits to show him what has happened here… and what perhaps will happen.

Spoiler

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Speak with spirits: Perception roll for Post and Precognition (1d20+21)[37] ; (1d20+21)[30] if a second roll is required

She came back up and let him know that it was a sphere. There wouldn’t be any surprise attacks from below today.

“Lemme guess, it’s my turn?”

“You guess right. Cat, get behind me in case this thing is trapped.”

And unless his Speak with Spirits showed him that doing so was a terrible idea, he unsheathed Starsoul, gripped it high in both hands, and swung down at the barrier with a power strike.

Spoiler

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All-Out Attack 5, Power Attack 5 – Power Slash, (1d20+12)[28] vs. object – DC25+Multi-Attack+Possible Crit (object) Parry vs. damage (+5, crit with improved critical even if it isn't following object rules

**CandyLaser** · 2018-10-02, 06:35 PM (ISO 8601)

Sarah saved the footage to her wrist computer, then got suited up. Her gear flashed into existence around her as she abandoned her lab coat in favorite of her shunt field generator. Next, she opted to pick up her duplicate, opening a portal to her and saying, "You coming? There's no substitute for practical experience."

From the messages she'd received, it seemed like the only person she needed to pick up was the Builder. So her next destination was Arlington's library. One step for her and her counterpart covered all the miles between Saturn Foundation HQ and the library, and before she'd even finished the transit she was already punching in the next set of coordinates. Businesslike as always, she said, "Builder? You ready? This is Sarah-27663, by the way. She's with me."

**Quellian-dyrae** · 2018-10-02, 08:01 PM (ISO 8601)

Sarah-27663, less up-to-speed on...well, everything, really, than her 616 counterpart, had not expected that what had been a few hours for herself would be mere seconds for her. When a fully kitted-up Sarah asked if she was coming she...well...

To say she hesitated was accurate without really being correct. While Sarah-27663 might have lacked the breadth of knowledge and sheer towering intellect that our Sarah (and, really, most Sarahs) had, the partially-complete cybernetic framework in her head did offer her equivalent speed of thought. So, yes, strictly speaking, she did hesitate. And Sarah, able to process information just as fast, would recognize the hesitation. Sarah-27663 was not, at the end of the day, all that confident or decisive, and not without reason. She tried her best, and she had done some good work back on her world. But she had also messed up before, and her mistakes had come with consequences. She didn't have Sarah's sort of certainty that any given problem would be made better by her presence.

At the same time, there clearly wasn't time to get more information. Obviously, something urgent was happening, and while there was a part of her - even a big part of her - that said there was no way she could really be of use in a situation where one of her older, smarter, more experienced, more competent alternates was on the scene...there was an even bigger part of her that just couldn't stand idle while there was trouble. That wasn't what she was raised to do. It wasn't what she was born to do.

So the question, really, is does it actually count as hesitation, if it only lasts a few miliseconds?

--

The stop in Mr. Arlington's library was brief, but it still gave Sarah-27663 just enough time to ask in surprise:

"You work with the Builder!?"

And the tone of her voice...was probably not one that Rene had encountered often before. She sounded impressed, but it was more than that. She sounded almost...awestruck. Honestly? She said those words the way you might expect someone to say, "You work with Superman!?"

--

Some magical barriers could be all but impervious to physical attack, but there was little physical that could stand up to Starsoul's edge. If this forcefield had been your basic conjuration of magical energy, the sentient sword would have sheared right through it.

It was more advanced than that, though, reinforced by a deflective field that, while not quite strong enough to completely turn Ronin's strikes aside, at least managed to deflect his attacks enough that Starsoul didn't hit edge on, glancing off the barrier without harm. The bad news, for those taking shelter behind it, was that on his next attack Fred would be expecting it.

Although, let's be honest, probably the worse news was that it would give him the time to see the full vision of the past, and draw conclusions about what it meant.

But really, from a tactical standpoint, the worst news was that it gave the rest of the team time to catch up. By the time Fred's vision was fully back in the present, he and Kitty had been joined by Sarah, the Builder, and...someone who looked like another Sarah, only a teenaged version who didn't appear to be carrying any weapons and was wearing a kinda ill-fitting business suit under a grease-stained labcoat. When they stepped out of the portal, the younger Sarah doppelganger looked around at her surroundings in confusion.

"Is this...Gotham?" she asked. The skyline seemed about right, but...

"What happened!?" she asked in kinda aggrieved concern.

"Gotham's so bright and shiny where I'm from...!"

...Infinite possible universes, indeed.

Kitty had as good a weirdness censor as any X-Man (and she had at least a general understanding of the Misfits' capabilities and allies from her talks with Fred and Katie in any case), but she wasn't quite as proficient at the no-sells as Fred, so while neither the sight of two Sarah's nor of the reptilian Rene provoked much of a reaction, she did still give a solid blink at the idea of bright-and-shiny Gotham. However, that was very much on the lower end of her priority list right now. So, she couldn't phase through the barrier, but there also hadn't been any harmful reaction when Fred had struck it. Magic could weird out Kitty's powers sometimes - as her sparring with Fred and Starsoul had proved time and time again, much to the advantage of her development of faster physical reflexes - but just because she couldn't phase through the wall didn't necessarily mean her powers couldn't affect it at all. She stepped a bit aside, so that if any of Fred's attacks deflected she wasn't in the way, and set her hands on the barrier, trying to use her phasing powers to destructively disrupt it.

As she did so, from off to the side, a dark-winged form shot across the sky. At a glance, it might have been mistaken for a member of the Bat family, especially considering the locale. But it was moving a good bit faster than their tech generally allowed. When the form landed, it resolved into a pretty woman with dark hair and brown eyes, wearing some manner of dark, form-fitting armored stealth suit. Black wings - they looked more like a glider, really - extended from her back, but seemed to dissolve back into the suit as she landed. The slender, slightly curved, tapered hilt of...presumably some sort of small sword or sword-like device was sheathed at her side. She was also wearing a...very strong perfume. In itself not an unpleasant one, really, but it smelled like she might have accidentally spilled the whole bottle over herself or something.

"Ronin? Sarah Saturn?" She asked, in a calm, almost emotionless voice. Not quite the dry monotone that, say, Gethsemane's translator achieved, but within spitting range of it. "Convenient. You guys were going to be my next call." She drew a badge and ID from her pocket, showing it to you. The name on the badge was Kara Anderson, but she introduced herself as, "Serum. Agent of SHIELD. We got word that your wizard might have been abducted last night? Director Fury assigned me to investigate. How can I help?" she asked, giving a politely-neutral, professional nod to Rene.

Spoiler: The Builder

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You'd never met Agent Serum in your time at SHIELD, but you had heard of her through the grapevine. She was a member of some manner of task force you weren't really up to speed on the specifics of. You were...pretty sure though that they weren't generally the "search and rescue" types. Their name had been...pretty aggressive-sounding, you seem to recall? Deathbringers or doomreapers or darkfingers or something? Something along those lines, anyway. So this was maybe a bit out of place...but hey, maybe Fury was trying to make nice for a change.

Normally, it would probably be hard to smell anything of Agent Serum past that perfume she's wearing. To a normal nose, it would have been cloying. To yours, it was just this side of headache-inducing. But right now, your instincts were attuned to your senses and surroundings. It didn't matter how strong any overlapping scents were - your nose would detect them, sure, but you'd also detect any underlying scents as well, and with the sensitivity of a beast's nose and the clarity of an animal's instincts linked up to the big whole hyperprocessor that was a human brain, you could easily analyze them all.

And the scent beneath that perfume was familiar to you. At first, it actually reminded you briefly of Katie, until your brain fully placed it. Back when you had left SHIELD, after all, Katie had let you stay at her place for a bit. And while you were there, you had met her sister.

And while Kayla had the same blond hair and green eyes that Katie...those features were easy enough to disguise. But scent markers were a good bit harder, and unless your nose was completely mistaken, the SHIELD agent before you smelled exactly like Kayla Alden.

Spoiler: OOC

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...And now you know why I asked what array slot you were defaulting to!

(I did not expect it would be Evasion. Until you told me that this was going to require some pretty tough Perception checks, but what can I do? Counters Concealment [Overlapping Scents].)

Thread: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

Re: Project Tomorrow - A Reassembly Filler Arc

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