Author Topic: As the Light Faded, an Immortal Game short story  (Read 2563 times)

Omega Force 1990

  • Minion
  • **
  • Posts: 20
  • Police Officer, National Guardsman
As the Light Faded, an Immortal Game short story
« on: February 28, 2013, 11:34:19 PM »
When I saw how many people had missed the chance to fight the Coming Storm on Beta, I decided to write a short story to flesh out the battle and help them experience it vicariously.

I'd like to thank Cende, dabrinka, Electric-Knight, and Samuraiko for letting me borrow their characters to bring you this story. 

Thanks of course to Arcanaville, without whose work none of this would be possible.

Dedicated to the posters.

Omega Force 1990

  • Minion
  • **
  • Posts: 20
  • Police Officer, National Guardsman
Re: As the Light Faded, an Immortal Game short story
« Reply #1 on: February 28, 2013, 11:35:32 PM »
As the light faded, Dan walked away from the Atlas Park portal and down the concrete hallway toward the stairs.  He stopped when he reached the metal railing and looked out over the dull gray walls of the cavernous Vanguard base.

Armored troops hustled along the catwalk above him, their boots ringing against the metal grates.  Below him, at the foot of the stairs, stood the Ship Investigation Officer, fluorescent light reflecting off her armor.  She looked up and saw him, clad in black powered armor with purple and silver trim.  She consulted her datapad.  "Buzzsaw?"

Dan nodded, and hopped over the railing.  His rocket boots flared once before he landed lightly beside her, the padded soles making no more noise than sneakers would.  "That's me."

"You're one of the first supers to arrive," she said.  Glancing at her watch, she added, "And early.  We were told you heroes wouldn't be here for another hour or so."

He shrugged.  "There wasn't anything good on T.V.  Where is Gaussian?"

"I believe he's in conference with the Lady Grey and Colonel Tavarisch.  Your Omega clearance gives you full access to the base, of course, but it will get very crowded soon.  If you need any gear, I'd check with the quartermasters now, before the armory gets cleaned out."

"Thanks, I'll head on over," Dan said.  He walked down the wide hall, past the motor pool.  Around the corner, leaning against a shadowy bulkhead, was a pale-skinned redhead wrapped in a leather coat.  A foreign superheroine he'd met in Dark Astoria.

Dan pushed up the faceplate of his helmet as he approached, grinning.  "Hola, Cende!  I haven't seen you since ... Moth cemetary," he said, smile fading at the memory.  Supers from across the world had gathered there to overcome an ancient evil intelligence, and not all of them survived.  "You have been well, I trust, since we parted?" 

"I have been ... fine, Buzzsaw," she said, her face unreadable.

"Your teenage sidekicks, they okay?"  He had been flying over Argo highway when he saw a group of ninjas struggling to keep an enormous hulking zombie with burning green eyes away from cowering citizens.  Several ninjas had already been struck down before he reached them.  After helping them banish the zombie, he learned they were teenage Nepalese templars in training, and not Tsoo gangsters, as he'd originally thought.

"They have returned to my temple. I appreciate your assistance to them; they had gotten overconfident in their abilities and had overstepped their mission guidelines. If you had not intervened, the result would have been much worse. Some of them were badly injured, but the healers are confident they will fully recover, and they have all learned a lesson about their limitations."

"That's a relief.  I kinda liked them," Dan said. 

Cende moved and her coat fell open, revealing a dark, star-spangled bodysuit.  He asked, "New costume?"  He looked her up and down with a critical eye.  "Reminds me of ...," his voice trailed off.  There had been several articles in the Paragon Tattler romantically linking her to the Statesman.  He hadn't given the tabloid much credence at the time, but seeing her in that pattern made him reconsider.  He shook his head.  "Not wearing your Star Patrol uniform?"

"No.  We had a ... no."

"'It's complicated', huh?  I can dig it."  Changing the subject, he asked, "Were you called here by the dream, too?"

After a long pause, she replied, "In a sense.  My dreams warned me of the coming storm, even before he tried to reach me."

Dan had no doubt who she was referring to.  "I'm not thrilled about working with the Dream Doctor again," he admitted.  "His heart is in the right place, but his plans have fallen apart more than once, and I'm skeptical of the company he keeps."  The doctor had once employed the murderous Protean, until the shapeshifting supervillain finally abandoned him in a tight spot.

"I don't trust Dream Doctor, either," Cende said.  "He is a powerful magician.  Too powerful, with too many secrets.  Who knows what his plans are, or how far he'll go to see them come to fruition?"

Dan thought about that.  Reluctantly, he said, "You're not wrong.  He's made some shady deals.  But he's always played straight with me, unlike Big Blue.  That darn Smurf is the smurfiest smurfing smurf I've ever smurfed."  Seeing her confusion, he said, "Sorry, cultural reference.  Prometheus, the Titan."  Shaking his head in disgust, he continued, "He said he returned to 'help' us during the Praetorian War.  Apparently in ancient Greek, 'help' means 'hold back information, threaten, and treat us like children.'"

"That 'Smurf' and I have nothing to say to each other.  I'm here in service to Ratri, the goddess of night, not as one of his lackeys," Cende said vehemently.

"Er, yeah.  No offense taken, by the way" he said, surprised by her emotional outburst.  She'd always seemed unflappable to him before.  Looking around, he noticed that the previously empty hall was beginning to fill.

Regaining her composure, she said, "We should head to the briefing rooms."

"Yeah," he said.  "Wouldn't wanna be late for the end of the world."  He turned to follow her and bumped into an athletic heroine.  "Oops, sorry!  Excuse me."  She brushed her bangs out of her face, looked up at him and acknowledged his apology with a nod and smile.  Dan got lost in her stunning grey eyes.  By the time he had recovered, she and Cende had already reached the main briefing room and were talking with a Vanguard soldier at the doorway.

"Due to the unusually large number of supers, we're using a version of Longbow's Practical Utility Group program," he explained.  "When you scanned your ID for the portal guard, you were presorted into PUGs."  Consulting his datapad, he motioned to the grey-eyed heroine.  "You'll be ... in league 3, through the door behind me.  Cende, you and Buzzsaw will be in league 2.  They're meeting in the next room."  Dan nodded, and he and Cende moved on to the next room.

It was a small auditorium with a large display screen flanked by purple banners.  Sitting close to the door was a large, powerful woman wearing a red cuirass over a dark mail bodysuit, with silver pauldrons and greaves.  She had her feet propped up on the back of the chair ahead of her, and her eyes were closed.

Dan and Cende walked past her and found seats, careful not to wake her.  Quietly, Dan said, "I think I've seen her on T.V."

"As have I, actually," Cende said.  "During a Rikti raid, she used an automobile as a club to batter bombs back at the drop ship."

"Yeah, I remember that," Dan said.  "The reporter called her 'Babe Ruth' and ...."

"'The Amazino Bambino,'" said the woman with a sigh.  Eyes still closed, she said, "I can't believe that guy - that's not even a real word!  I'm never gonna live those down.  Call me Alexa."

"Sure, Alexa.  I'm Dan, and this is ...."

"Cende," said Alexa nonchalantly.

Cende blinked in surprise.  "You know me?"

"Sure.  It made quite a stir when we opened a F.B.S.A. office in Nepal, of all places.  Without you, it never would have gotten off the ground."

Dan asked, "You're with the Bureau for Super Affairs?"

Alexa nodded.  "MAGI Special Operations."

"You're a wizard?"

"No, I was a clay statue until Zeus breathed life into me and sent me into Man's World to bring peace."  She opened one eye to see their reaction. 

"Uh ...."

"Oh ...."

Laughing, she waved it off.  "I'm just messing with you!  My parents were superheroes, I got it from them."  Suddenly serious, she said, "My mother was in the Alpha Team.  She went by 'Cavalliere.'"

The Alpha Team were the supers who willingly sacrificed themselves during the Rikti War as a diversion for Omega Team, who successfully sealed the invasion portals and ended the war.  Somberly, Dan recited, "For their service we will remember them ..."

"For their sacrifice we will avenge them," Alexa finished. 

They sat silently for some time, watching the arriving supers grow from a trickle to a flood as H-hour drew near.  Not all of Vanguard's super-powered allies were heroes, however.  "Uh-oh," Alexa said.  She motioned with her chin.  "See that huge winged demon?"

Dan had been watching a fiery karateka in orange, a tiny hero in green armor, and a super sentai trying to decide on the best seats.  He looked to the door.  "The succubus in the bikini?"

"How does that even stay on?  No, the one chomping on a cigar.  I heard a Rogue Isle mutant gang calling themselves 'The Sinister Seventy' broke into his mansion while he was away."

Dan winced and sucked in his breath.  "How'd that work out for them?"

"Let's just say they're called 'the Sinister Three' now," she said, shaking her head.  "One of them can even eat solid foods again."

A dark-haired woman wearing black and grey Vanguard armor under a long coat entered the briefing room.  Cende spoke up.  "Over here, Commander."  Turning to the others, she explained, "That's Commander Sorina Tavarisch of Star Patrol, my former supergroup."

Sorina approached with a smile, stopping just short of hugging Cende.  "Cende, how are you?  I haven't seen you around the base in months."

"I have been helping Gephel update our teachings, so the our people will be fully prepared for the outside world.  Since I have become queen, I have found little time for personal concerns."

"Anil stops by all the time."

"He sometimes forgets he is in Talos to get our remote compound properly networked,"  Cende said.  Suddenly remembering the others, she said, "Sorina, this is Daniel, and Alexa."  Sorina moved closer to greet them.

Dan leaned over his chair and shook her hand.  "Dan Ortiz-Hamilton.  Your paper on xenoengineering was superb, Doctor."  Looking at the rank on her armor, he continued, "Or should I call you 'colonel'?"

"I was a colonel when I was active in Vanguard, a commander in Star Patrol, and a doctor in the civilian world.  I still can't figure out how I collected so many titles.  Just 'Sorina' is fine."

Alexa grinned.  "Ray Sharpe speaks very highly of you, Sorina.  I've seen you at DATA before, haven't I?"

"Sometimes, yes.  When Joelle is busy."

A slim man clad head to toe in a black bodysuit closed the door and walked to the podium at the front of the room, horsehair crest swaying.  He cleared his throat and waited for the room to quiet down.  "H-hello, everyone.  I see a couple of faces that are familiar to me, and others that I haven't, uh, had the pleasure to meet.  Ya might know me from the Praetorian War.  I'm the Electric-Knight, and I've, er, volunteered to serve as a task force commander for league 2."  After a brief coughing fit, he continued speaking in a stronger voice.

"Years ago, the time-traveling Menders of Ouroboros arrived, warning us of a 'Coming Storm' that would end the world.  The Dream Doctor has discovered that it has gotten closer than anyone realized.  Mender Silos, the master of Ouroboros, says the storm will take the form of battalions of alien Shivans and their incarnate masters.  The Midnighters have developed a spell that will banish the Shivans and their masters forever.  However, Prometheus has warned us that the Storm will know when the ritual is started and attack immediately.  So we, um, must be ready to intercept them."

Murmurs spread across the room.  Sorina saw Alexa stiffen and leaned over to check on her.  Alexa whispered, "Shivans killed my cousin during the evacuation of Galaxy City."  She flexed her fingers and rubbed her knuckles as if warming them up.  She slowly shook her head.  "They're gonna ...."

Knight motioned for quiet, nodding to the room.  "Yeah, our job is a diversion.  We'll leave the Vanguard compound and fly west, to Fort Plum in Point du Hoc, close to the Rikti ship.  Once there, Prometheus claims, 'We will behold a wonder.'  Then we just gotta keep the Storm off of the Midnighters until they have finished the spell.  Frankly, the odds are lousy, especially after our losses during the Praetorian and Astorian Wars.  With the help of the Menders, though, we've had more time to get ready than we should.  Gaussian will address all three leagues at once on Vanguard's preparations."  Knight turned to the large viewscreen at the front of the room behind the podium.

The screen lit up, showing a stern cyborg in a light gray uniform.  "Greetings, defenders of Primal Earth.  I am Gaussian, Vanguard's chief tactician.  Your task force commanders have covered our overall plan and what little we know about the enemy.  They may have little difficulty disrupting our technology.  With the assistance of Mender Silos, we have improvised some possible countermeasures."

"When you entered the base, your Vanguard commlinks were patched by Dr. Orts.  Literally.  He has the power to spread his mind across computers, and will be standing by to relay messages cyberpathically should they disable our radio communication network.  He and I will remain in the tactical operation center to provide all of you with target information.

"It is also possible they will attempt to negate our mediporter technology, so the Lady Grey has enlisted the aid of Shadowstar and her warshades, in addition to the Paragon Taxi Service, to teleport the wounded back here.  Waiting in the infirmary will be a number of magical healers as well as Dr. Fayte, who is a gifted surgeon and nothing more.

"Alpha Team lives on in you, Task Force Umbrella.  May fortune favor the brave."  The screen went dark, and the sounds of chairs scraping echoed across the room as supers stood up and began filing out of the briefing room.

Omega Force 1990

  • Minion
  • **
  • Posts: 20
  • Police Officer, National Guardsman
Re: As the Light Faded, an Immortal Game short story
« Reply #2 on: February 28, 2013, 11:36:53 PM »
In the courtyard outside the bunker, under the protection of numerous Vanguard missile batteries, the leagues began organizing.  Task force commanders conducted comm checks while team leaders made tentative plans based on the varied talents and powers at their disposal.

Soon it was time, and nearly two hundred supers hurtled skyward in waves.  The usual paramilitary gangs of scavengers lurking throughout the zone fled before the awesome sight, and the supers flew unopposed toward the shallow, sterile valley gouged out a decade ago by the crash of a Rikti mothership.  Overlooking the crash site were the guns of Fort Plum, and under their shadow the leagues landed to meet the Dream Doctor.  Beside him stood the Titan Prometheus, and three of his angels, Christie, Michael, and Gabriel.

Addressing the assembly, the Dream Doctor said, "The ritual will begin presently.  This spell is too powerful for the Midnighters, which leads me to a difficult admission.  Mender Silos was right.  To survive the Coming Storm we must draw on the power of my counterpart.  This won't be easy, not by a longshot, but it's the only option we have.  With the assistance of Faathim and Prometheus, Rularuu has agreed to assist us."  The Dream Doctor looked up at the Titan.  "Let's get started."

With a seemingly casual wave of his hand, the Dream Doctor pulled away the veil of invisibility to reveal that Rularuu the Ravager was hovering overhead.  There were audible gasps of horror from the assembled heroes.  Most heroes and villains scattered out from under the shadow of that alien god and rose into the sky to swarm around him.  Some cowered from the giant who stood over a hundred feet tall.  Staring at his face, Cende simply asked, "Marcus?"

Prometheus said, "Humans, I Once Brought You Fire.  Now, I Bring You Lightning."  The assembled supers were raised to their full potential.  Some to the peak of their abilities, many others beyond that to rise to wield cosmic power.  Such power had been working its way into humanity for some time: it was this very fact that attracted the Coming Storm.  But they would not be facing children, working their way to becoming incarnates.  They would be facing the full power they had hoped to tap. 

"Defenders Of Primal Earth.  Behold The Power Of Rularuu."  For a minute, nothing happened.  Then there was a bright flash from the Rikti Mothership and it was consumed by an immense fireball.

There were cheers from some of the supers.  Others were silent, wrestling with conflicting emotions or haunted by memories.  Alexa glared unflinchingly into the explosion and shed a tear for her mother.  Cende wondered what would become of the surviving Rikti.  Dan bowed his head remembering the first alien bombing raid.  Sorina stood in a daze, feeling her dogtags shift against her skin.

As the light faded, the Titan broke the silence.  "The Advance Guard Comes."

Few of the assembled supers had recovered before Shivans, radioactive giants made of ectoplasm and hate, began teleporting in by the dozens.  Knight immediately created an electromagnetic barrier to protect nearby heroes that were caught off guard by the alien alpha strike.  Beside him, Dan flung a roiling torrent of darkness through the nearest giants to draw their attention and leapt toward them with his boot jets. 

Alexa noticed the distortion caused by the alien portals almost as quickly as Dan did.  She slammed a boot into the ground when they arrived, sending out a magical shockwave that knocked down several of the giants.  She taunted them as they got back to their feet, crying out "For Paragon" as she raked them with her heat vision.  In tribute to her fallen cousin she added, "And for Dory!" 

Sorina used her high-tech gauntlets to distort gravity, trapping over a dozen Shivans.  Turning to another group of aliens, she siphoned away their kinetic energy, leaving them weak and slow.  In a practiced move, she quickly redirected the energy into Cende, boosting her old partner's already superhuman reflexes.

In a flash Cende had zipped through the drained and trapped aliens, lashing out with spinning back hook kicks.  She moved between her foes so fast that it looked like she kicked them all simultaneously.  The few that withstood her blows were brought down by bolts of electricity snapping off a ball of lightning that Electric-Knight had sent hurtling down.

As Dan touched down a hundred feet away, he thought, "This is a good spot.  Mostly level, far enough from the others I cut loose, close enough I can jump back to help."  He squeezed shadows into a disc with his left hand and used a long-distance pull throw.  The smokey black void struck an enormous Shivan in the side of the head.  It turned and lumbered toward him, hurling radiation as it closed the gap.  He smiled as a score of aliens surrounded him.  "Big AND dumb.  What an unusual combination."  Rising to the challenge, he reached for the darkness deep inside and flung it outwards in a wave of deadly negative energy that left them reeling.  With deep concentration, he stopped and reversed the wave, sweeping it back through the aliens and pulling out some of their life force on the way.  He normally hated using that technique outdoors, because it killed plants and sometimes even small animals caught in the radius.  But nothing lived under the shadow of the mothership, so he could use it freely to injure and weaken the aliens. 

Knight drifted overhead.  Satisfied that the Star Patrol duo had matters under control, and with his two indestructible fighters rampaging through the few aliens that remained free, he took the opportunity to assess the field.  The league had recovered quickly from the ambush, and was holding firm despite being outnumbered.  He fired a tremendous bolt of lightning that jumped from Shivan to Shivan, leaving dozens of them smouldering.  The aliens were powerful, but the supers had fought off their kind before, most recently when asteroids had crashed through Galaxy City.  Knight took careful aim and zapped another one with a built up charge.  He was more concerned about the mysterious leaders of the Shivans.  During his meeting with the task force commanders Mender Silos had named them, but was evasive about how he'd gotten the information.

Filled with stolen energy, Dan slammed punches into the nearest Shivan until it burst into goo.  "This is like fighting radioactive Jello," he thought, as he blocked several strikes that would have smashed him to the dirt if not for the robotic strength of his battlesuit.  An enormous Shivan tried to irradiate him, but he easily cartwheeled out of the way.  He rocketed up into a flying backflip to dodge the next few blasts. 

Cende rolled into a mob of giants and flew upward, striking one giant with a thunderous kick.  She crippled a second with a kick to the neck, then returned to the first with a palm strike that left it stunned.  She whirled around and dropped a third with a sweeping kick before it even realized she was there.  In a flash she was gone, leaving the other aliens swinging in vain at an elusive target.

Sorina reached out with her gauntlets and summoned a Nissan forklift that she sent hurtling into a Shivan that was aiming up at Dan.

"Ooh, a Platinum II," Dan said as he landed behind Alexa, who had just leveled a giant with a haymaker.  "Those aren't cheap."

Alien forces continued to teleport in, but the incarnates of Earth had found their battle rhythm, and were destroying Shivans faster than they could arrive.  Then a quartet of alien slave lords exploded onto the field, armor-clad, wrapped in force fields and wielding dreadful cosmic energies.  They shone so bright that it was almost impossible to say exactly what they looked like.  They dove headlong into the fray, scattering the defenders and giving the Shivans time to regroup. 

Knight and the other task force commanders struggled to coordinate a response on the battlefield, while Dr. Orts and the Plum Tactical Operation Center fought through the electromagnetic interference to maintain communication and targeting information. 

One of the slave lords casually raised its left hand and emitted an energy burst that left a half-dozen heroes stunned and helpless.  It was moving forward to finish them off when Dan landed in its path, his forearms streaming with negative energy.  "I'm Buzzsaw," he said, "Fight me first."  He flung a backhand shadow disc that splashed harmlessly against the alien's chest.  The alien retaliated with powerful force beams from both hands.  Unwilling to dodge with wounded heroes behind him, Dan stood his ground.  For a time he blocked the beams with his armor's impervium vambraces, but the alien's relentless assualt drove him to his knees.  It laughed as it focused on obliterating this stubborn obstacle.  It was so focused that it was caught off guard when Alexa rocketed into the side of its face fist-first, flying at over a hundred miles an hour.

The alien staggered back a step as Alexa landed lightly beside Dan.  "You okay?" she growled, frustrated at the alien's resilience.

Dan slowly got back to his feet.  "I'm groovy; got a high pain threshold."

Knight was attempting to rally his league, saying, "Fight strong, we can do this," when there was a bright golden flash.  His words came out as, "!siht od nac ew, gnorts thgif"  Dan slowly focused on the clock in his HUD, which showed him that it was currently 38:72 A.M. on both Tuesday and Saturday.  "Fi-fi-fi-fight strong, we caaaaaan do this," Knight said, as the flash faded and time wobbled back to normal.  The alien demigods were not as lucky as Earth's defenders.  The dimensional warp continued to affect them, reducing their incredible speed and agility.  Incarnates who saw the Ouroboros portals close realized the Menders had joined the battle.  Silos arrived, shining and draped in power.  Lazarus backhanded the nearest Shivan and sent it flying as Ramiel and Tesseract drove back the other aliens with lightning.

**********

Meanwhile, in the Fort Plum TOC, Silos and the Kheldian Twilight's Son appeared in a golden flash to Dr. Orts and Gaussian. 

"Master Mender."

"Doctor." 

Silos and Twilight watched the video footage with the Vanguard officers.  Twilight pointed out the slavers as they appeared onscreen.  "That's Gamma.  He devoured my clutchmates.  That one is Delta.  Upsilon.  And Phi, called the Herald."  As he did, Dr. Orts updated the holographic display broadcasted by the Vanguard commlinks.

"Gaussian, I suggest you assign one league to handle each of them."

"I only have three leagues, Silos."

"Yes.  The Dream Doctor and I will handle the fourth."

"Are you sure?"

On the screen, a unit of aliens had foolishly elected to fire on Rularuu.  Silos thought it was unlikely that Rularuu/Cole felt it, or even knew it was happening, but all the same, scores of Rularuu's noble brute soldiers planeshifted to Primal Earth and began mauling the Shivans who dared strike their master.  "Time will tell."

***********

Back on the field, Knight's voice came in clear across the league's airwaves.  "Form up on the slime fountain!"

Alexa and Dan looked at each other in confusion and they asked, "Slime fountain?"

Knight nodded to Sorina, who used her powers to reverse gravity, sending a dozen Shivan falling far into the sky where they were ripped apart by the brutal claws of a laughing demonic supervillain.

"Slime fountain," they said.  Alexa and Dan flew northeast to rejoin the team.  Along the way she snatched a Nissan forklift out of the mud and hurled it into a Shivan Destroyer.

"We've gotta work together to fight these things," Knight told his assembled teams.  "Alexa, I want you, Cende, and Tavarisch to try and pin down Upsilon," he said.  "Buzzsaw and I will try and drain his shields.  The rest of you, keep the Shivans off us and get ready to back us up.  Ready?"

From across the net came his league's response.  "Ready!"  "Roger, boss."  "F7!" 

"F7?"

"On a chessboard it is the defender's most vulnerable square."

"Oh my god, Leroy you are such a nerd."

Knight sighed.  "Hit it, ladies."

Cende struck first, using her superior speed to evade Upsilon's attacks and lure him into overextending himself.  When Cende did create an opening, Alexa would strike with a sudden blow.  Most of his counterattacks hit the slower but indomitable Alexa, because Cende would simply vanish when he tried to strike her.

Sorina created a gravitational anomaly that tugged on the fighters in random directions, making it difficult to escape by flying.  She also began using her gauntlets to try and siphon the energy of his force fields.  Dan flew closer to Upsilon and raised a hand that erupted with ribbons of dark energy.  "I doubt you've seen enough hentai to know where these are going," he said, as his tentacles tried to devour the alien's shields.  The shields flared brightly in response, which is what Knight was waiting for.  He poured electricity into them, trying to overload them.  The three heroes alternated their attacks, trying to find the right frequency that would break through. 

Cende flash-stepped behind Upsilon and struck him with a powerful kick to the back of the head.  Disoriented and battered, he finally lost his concentration and his shining force fields failed.  The heroes redoubled their efforts, with much of the league turning from the Shivans to engage Upsilon.

"Is he a robot?" Sorina asked, warping space to keep him off-balance.

Alexa blocked a force blast with her bracers and countered with a quick jab to his core.  "Feels like chitin, maybe an insect?"

"I guess that makes us bug hunters," Dan said as he struck Upsilon again and again with shadow discs.

Upsilon released an explosive blast of energy that sent them all flying.  He spoke for the first time, asking, "You thought we would be so easy to defeat?" as his shining field shimmered back into existence.

Fire burned in Alexa's eyes, and she growled as she rose up beside Sorina.  "Kinda hoping, yeah," Dan said as he and Cende flipped back to their feet.

Worried, Knight checked on the rest of the supers.  The other league commanders reported having trouble fighting off Gamma and Delta and their battalions of Shivans.  Dream Doctor and Mender Silos were fighting back-to-back with glowing staves against the elite Shivan Decimators that surrounded them.  The Menders and the Titan's angels were struggling to contain Phi, and still the Shivans were teleporting into battle.

Then Rularru spoke.  "It Is Done."

Knight didn't notice a change, but Upsilon clearly did.  The slave lord was frozen in shock, the panic visible on his alien face.  The league quickly brought down his force field once again, and Upsilon himself fell to the claws of the laughing demon.  The Shivans milled about in confusion, and Rularuu and his monsters faded away like nightmares.  The Menders returned to Ouroborus, leaving Knight and the others with blurry doubled vision.  Briefly, they saw the Statesman as he was a decade ago, hovering nearby as the Rikti ship fell from the sky, before the postcognitive vision cleared.

"Against all odds, we have done it," said Alexa, as the others surveyed the field.

To the incarnates' dismay, out of the ectoplasmic goo covering the battlefield rose the Hamidon, an enormous amoebic ecoterrorist kaiju.  A scientist who used black magic and black science to become a god with one ambition, to devour the people of Earth.  As one the gathered supers turned and engaged their enemy, trying to drive it back to Woodvale, where it was once contained.  Had it come alone, they might have succeeded.  But with Hamidon came an endless horde of monsters, from towering beasts of crystal and flora to virus swarms.  The incarnates fought hard, but the battle against the aliens had been too fierce, gone on too long, and supers began to fall.

Knight quickly conferred with the other leaders and then addressed the leagues.  "We held off the Storm, Task Force Umbrella!  Now everyone back to base!  We'll heal up and drive the Devouring Earth out of White Plains another day."  The defenders of Primal Earth flew back to the Vanguard compound, reluctantly yielding the field to Hamidon.

********

When Shadowstar reported that the incarnates were clear, Gaussian commanded, "All batteries, fire for effect."  Countless shells and missiles poured from Fort Plum to cover the supers' retreat.  The monsters turned their rage toward this man-made volcano whose eruption dared to challenge the Will of the Earth.  As the monsters drew near, Vanguard soldiers retreated deeper into the fort and escaped through the teleportation portals, leaving HVAS robots and computer-controlled gun drones to serve as rear security. 

In the Plum TOC, Mender Silos, Gaussian, and Orts watched the monitors impassively as the monsters began pounding on the walls.  Lady Grey, the leader of Vanguard, appeared on one screen.

"We are pleased with all you have accomplished," she said.  "Have all our soldiers evacuated?"

"Yes, milady.  Twilight's Son and Borea left with the last wave.  Only we three remain."

"Excellent.  Do not tarry overlong.  Your deaths would displease us."  She vanished from the screen. 

Gaussian and Dr. Orts turned away and reached the door before realizing that Silos was standing still.  "Mender?"

"You two go ahead.  I have one last thing to do."

Long after they left, Silos continued to watch the monsters' advance until the ceiling collapsed, crushing him under tons of rubble.  The clockwork gears inside him whirred briefly before stopping with a click.

*****

Inside, the Vanguard base was filled with merry chaos.  Supers huddled in groups all over, swapping tales of their exploits and laughing over their mistakes.  Relieving tension, letting go of their adrenaline.  The clawed demon lit his cigar on one hero's fiery hair.  Another had flown up to the catwalk and began spouting impromptu poetry and acapella karaoke.

Knight could barely make it three steps before someone would slap him on the back congratulating him or praising his leadership.  It was true that no one in his league was killed, but taking credit for their own luck and resilience didn't feel right.  Finding a quiet alcove, he took the opportunity to slip away from the others and make an important call.  "Cara?  It's Eric.  I'm okay."

****

Sorina walked to the locker room to change out of her battered armor.  Along the way she heard Positron, leader of the Freedom Phalanx, speaking with Gaussian about the new Devouring Earth infestation.  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and released it.  Opening her eyes, she turned away from the locker room and walked over to them.  "Raymond, Gaussian.  I have a theory about how we can contain the Hamidon again." 

"Do tell, Colonel."

***

Alexa sat on a cot in the infirmary, her mail shirt and red cuirass laying beside her.  She winced at the cold ointment as she smeared silver sulfadiazine on the worst of her radiation burns.  The gifted surgeon Dr. Fayte had a point, she thought, even healing magically fast has limits.  There was a commotion nearby.  "I'm sorry, Talon X, but you can't go in there," the nurse said.  Alexa hurriedly slipped on her shirt and pushed open the curtain.  "Dad?"

"Princess!"  The older man rushed into his daughter's embrace.  "Oh Alexandria, I was so worried."

"I'm fine Dad," she said, gently patting his back.  "We ... I ... we got 'em."

**

Cende stretched out on a padded bench in the locker room and let her muscles relax.  Soon she was asleep.  In her dream she felt her husband's arms around her.  "I was worried about you, Dina," he said.  "In the old days I would have been there fighting by your side."

"You were, in spirit.  We of all people know the power in that.  I needed your body elsewhere this time."

"The kids are fine," he said.  "I'm not so feeble that an Arachnos hit squad could get past me.  Oddly, they didn't want a fight.  The Night Widow leading the raid handed me a spider figurine made out of silver and they left without a word."  He felt her suddenly go tense.  "Dina?"

"I'll be right there," she said, and woke up.

*

In the armory, Dan stripped off his battlesuit.  Clad in a black jumpsuit, he handed his armor to a Vanguard quartermaster, who took it reluctantly and held it gingerly at arms' length.  "Ugh, there's slime all over it."

"Hey, that's not just any slime!  It was exposed to Hamidon's nucleolus," Dan said.

"Not better."

"Maybe it will give you superpowers," he offered.  The soldier rolled his eyes.  "Look, Colonel Tavarsich needs that goo for an experiment.  Just scrape it into a bucket or something."  Reluctantly, the soldier took the armor away to clean it.  Humming to himself as he waited, he noticed a slim woman with dyed blue pigtails standing in the doorway tapping her foot and looking pointedly at the clock. 

"Ack!  Er, Annette, hi.  Hey man," he said, leaning over the counter.  "I've got a ... another appointment.  I'll be back for it tomorrow."  Before the quartermaster could object, the pair had teleported away in a shadowy haze.  As they faded out, Dan asked her, "Jim already picked up the tickets, right?"