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?"