Box of Peas (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

November 5, 2011

Hanover

The fifth of November was a holiday in some cultures and a Saturday in Freedom City in 2011, which meant Sharl had the day off. For once, that meant he wasn't stuck on campus training or on restriction: he got to go visit his mentor Miss Americana at Archetech, her brand-new digs! (And Gina at her house, but of course he hadn't gone there yet today!) There was plenty to do around the Lab while Miss A teleconferenced with Dr. Ayesha Rao, a colleague of hers who worked at the ASTRO Labs facility out at Star Island. Dr. Rao was working on Prospector, a robot designed to dig under the Martian ice caps and permafrost for possible signs of life, which made her a valued colleague for Miss Americana's work in artificial limbs and long-distance computer control of said digits.

Sharl had spent a lot of time exploring the new building in the guise of helping Miss Americana, and had obviously been very impressed. It was evening, and the adults were getting ready to turn in for the evening. Dr. Rao was even brushing her hair while she and Miss A wrapped up a conversation about control wave transmission through soil, having explained somewhat awkwardly that she had a date that evening, one who was coming to pick her up straight from work. With her thick glasses and heavy-set frame, the doctor probably didn't get a whole lot of dates. "So if I think we pick this up on Monday, Miss Americana, I should have a working model to demonstrate for you. If you can adapt the control surfaces, it..." Sharl glanced over from the computer where he was working as the image of Dr. Rao seemed to vibrate: it took him a moment to realize what Miss A already had; the vibration was no signal artifact but was actually happening!

There was noise outside at Star Island, people shouting and gunfire from the military guards. Startled, Rao rose and looked out the window of her lab. "What in the name of...Oh my God!" she exclaimed, turning wide-eyed to the screen before suddenly another vibration, bigger this time, shook the whole room and the transmission went black!

[Electra]

Miss A was out of her seat an instant after the transmission cut out. "That's not good at all," she said mildly, even as she raced to a bank of monitors that would give her satellite images of Star Island and its environs. "Turn on the police scanners, would you, Sharl? I think we may have to go out there, but damned if I'm going out blind. We can't let any villains get their hands on this sort of tunneling technology, to say nothing of all the other stuff they've got out at Star Island."

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl did just as Miss A said, not even bothering with the switches: sticking his hand in the row of police scanners in Archetech quickly gave them the confused reports coming out of the civilian and military police there about a "Code 11961," an earthquake, and someone attacking Star Island! Given that a Code 11961 referred to a "Large Unknown Creature-Underground Subtype", it wasn't hard to put two and two together and realize what was going on. Sure enough, her live satellite feed confirmed their fears. The island that Miss Americana and Sharl had last visited together while it was overrun by a mind-controlling alien's minions was now a scene of wild melee again as a huge shiny black insect, easily twice as big as the light tanks scrambling on the other side of the island, was sliding back into a tremendous sinkhole in the middle of the parking lot next to Dr. Rao's building, which was damaged on one side as if a giant limb had punched in the window!

[Fox]

What in the world....? The vibration was a bit more subtle over at Freedom City University, attenuation and all, but it wasn't nearly subtle enough to escape the notice of someone who could literally feel the earth move. That someone frowned, looking off in the direction of Star Island and wondering just what in the world had happened to make...no, it wasn't an earthquake, it was really more like-

"Uh...Mr. McLeod?"

He blinked, snapping his attention back into the room. His office. Office hours. Right. "Right, uh. I just realized that I have a...thing," he said, not very convincingly. In his defense, he was awfully distracted. "We'll finish up another time - sorry about the inconvenience." He was up on his feet now, grabbing a long brown bag off the shelf behind him and heading for the door as politely as he could. "I think you're mostly on the right track anyway, just pay a little more attention to the less obvious visual clues when you're trying to figure out what the make-up of a sample is."

He was partway down the hallway, by then, a very confused student still sitting in his office. "And when in doubt," he called out as he tried to remember where the nearest stairwell was (why were they always moving offices around?), "never be afraid to lick the rock!"

[Avenger Assembled]

The duo from Archetech arrived over Star Island about the same time Gaian Knight did, as usual Citizen tagging along with his transmitter in Miss Americana's pocket to allow for her much faster speed in the air. The trio of heroes found what looked at first like a very grim scene; a massive crater in the middle of the base parking lot and a giant divot torn out of the site of the lab where Dr. Rao worked. The marines posted at the base were on scene, for all that there wasn't much they'd been able to do to stop the monster. "A giant beetle thing!" said one of the men with stripes on his sleeve, his face red with impotent anger. "It just tunneled out through the asphalt, stuck its jaws in the window, and grabbed the civilian!"

Upstairs, an examination of the lab was oddly reassuring, despite the tremendous damage done by some car-sized insect jaws shoving their way through fragile glass and steel like a knife through butter. : there was no blood, suggesting Rao hadn't been seriously hurt in her capture, and her research was still there, even the high-tech laser tunneler she'd been in the middle of building. Whoever had been riding that bug, or commanding it, had evidently only had an interest in Dr. Rao, and they'd wanted her alive. But for how long?

[Electra]

Miss A gave Gaian Knight a genuine smile, despite the grimness of the situation. "I think you're just the man we need for the job," she told him. "We're very likely looking at a subterranean threat, either preternatural creature or some kind of tunneling villain. Dr. Rao's latest project was deep-bore laser tunneling. We could make a mock-up of her prototype design, but having someone who can take us underground right away would be much faster. Do you know anything about giant underground insects, natural or otherwise? "

[Fox]

Gaian Knight had to chuckle a little, even as he grimaced at the damage this thing had already done - to say nothing of the damage it might do unchecked. "Yeah, well. The 'giant beetle thing' put out quite an invitation - I felt that tremor clear back in downtown."

He frowned out the window, assembling a small platform of rocks to climb out onto so he had a better view down the way the bug had left. "Giant underground insects? A little. You've got some pretty unique ones here or there - y'know, radiation-fueled giant monsters, some scientist's escaped project, or whatever - but those are usually weird or flashy - worms, moths. Beetles....hm."

Rubbing the back of his neck, the hero ran his mind back through some of the stuff he'd had to deal with - or learnt about in the inevitable event he'd have to deal with it - and frowned. "I wanna say this is more Sub-Terran. There's some other stuff a good ways away from here, but I know Terra-King likes giant, armored insects for...well. For being giant, armored insects. They're strong, they're hard to put down, they were bred to be trainable, and they're expendable - what's not to like when you're invading some surface city or another?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Citizen thought for a few moments, sorting out the sort of impossible things that seemed to happen every day on Earth-Prime. "The man with the underground kingdom, with the subhuman descendants of...Atlantis?" His eyebrows furrowed as he tried to figure out the truth from several ridiculous-sounding stories. "Well...can we just go down there and find him, and rescue the doctor?" he asked the adults, a little uncertainly. If he wasn't at home on the surface of Earth, he was hardly at home deep beneath its surface! There would be no comforting steel tunnels below, of that he could fairly be sure. "It stands to reason that if he took this doctor alive, she must be alive now, and there to be rescued. Do we have time to wait for anyone else?" He thought of his Young Freedom allies, but they were scattered to the four winds for the holiday.

The soil hereabouts was good for tunneling, Gaian Knight knew, with enough deep caves he'd have no problem with ensuring an air supply for any passengers.

[Electra]

"If we need anyone else, I'll send you back for help," Miss A told Sharl, "but for now, time is of the essence. If we can catch up with that beetle before it makes it to any of Terra-King's strongholds, we have a better chance of recovering the doctor without significant danger. They obviously want her alive, but if we send an army down there, she becomes a hostage. That's a complication we certainly don't need." She looked to Gaian Knight, then over to the torn up and disrupted ground. "If you'll do the honors?" she asked.

[Fox]

"Heh! Well, then - don't mind if I do." Gaian Knight adjusted his goggles and cracked his knuckles, looking down - through, really - the torn-up ground underneath them for a moment before sitting down cross-legged on his platform. Said platform quietly floated away from the building and down to ground level, little chunks of rock lazily orbiting. "I'll probably be a little ahead of you two, making sure stuff's stable and we don't run into too many problems. There ought to be air, if I remember the area right, but you're own your own for light. If you see any water, give me a shout...I'll shore the thing up before it floods us."

And then he just dropped, falling out of the air like...well, a stone. The earth in the way of him and his platform didn't so much tear or dig as part, almost soundlessly getting out of his way as he approached and leaving a long, broad, and (when necessary) reinforced tunnel in his wake.

[Avenger Assembled]

Citizen flew along in Miss Americana's company, his projector tucked away in an artfully concealed pocket in her costume. Geology wasn't really Sharl's science, much less the terrestrial variety, but he was still impressed at the elaborate cave network they were passing through. Tronik had none of this; the volcanic rock that the island sat on (and that the 'new island' would sit on when it was discovered) had few internal features. There was more light than he'd expected, but Gaian Knight had positioned the burrow well to catch the sun overhead, and of course Miss Americana was carrying light bright enough for all of them. When they were deep, he judged, deep enough that someone not raised beneath billions of tons of steel might be feeling claustrophobic, he heard a sound.

When they paused, everyone else could hear it too. "Is that...singing?" Sure enough it was, coming from beneath their feet (inside a massive lava tube that dated back to the Jurassic period), with a tunnel down below showing where the beetle had gone. Sharl didn't speak Sub-Terran, but it was certainly no language he knew. Peering down below, they could see inside the cavern a group of two dozen Sub-Terrans surrounding the beetle and two figures atop: one slumped over the beetle, another, a hunched, squat-looking man, waving his arms at the Sub-Terrans: the Terra-King himself!

[Electra]

"We're at a tactical disadvantage down here on their turf," Miss A murmured with concern. "But the doctor looks like she's injured or unconscious, so there's little time to waste." She looked to Gaian Knight. "You have much more experience with functioning underground than Citizen or I do. Do you have any ideas? Perhaps we could burrow beneath them and come up from below to surprise them? Their ears might be sensitive enough to hear us coming, though, and we can't afford to give them time to hurt her."

[Fox]

Gaian Knight frowned behind the cloth that covered his lower face, looking down at the group and weighing the odds. "Yeah, maybe, but I dunno. A lot of things that live down here where it's dark rely so much on their other senses that trying to sneak up on 'em is....difficult. I'm a little concerned about the beetle, too - dunno how smart they are, and I don't want to startle it when it's carrying the doctor. If it was just me, I'd probably just try to reason with him, see why he started kidnapping scientists. With the lot of us...I'd still prefer diplomacy, honestly. If that fails, we could always try a pincer - you two from above, me from below."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Why don't you two try diplomacy?" suggested Citizen, shooting a glance at the others. "I can come up through the floor and take them by surprise, since I don't make any vibrations coming up through the floor." He'd taken the time on the way down to figure out exactly how it was all the Sub-Terrans saw down there. "If they don't start a fight, I can just come up through the floor like nothing happened." Since Miss A could communicate with him via computer link either way, Citizen went into action, disappearing into the walls and flying down slowly and carefully (since he couldn't see where he was going) to get close to the Sub-Terrans and their anxious king.

[Electra]

Miss A nodded, still not looking entirely happy. "We'll try diplomacy first, but keep Citizen as our ace in the hole," she agreed. "Get as close as you can to the doctor," she instructed him, even as he began sinking into the floor. "If anything goes south, your mission is to protect her, all right?" With Sharl gone, she looked towards Gaian Knight. "Why don't we make a little production about appearing in front of them?" she suggested. "I've got a pretty face, but I think they'll be far more impressed with a little display of your power."

[Fox]

"Heck, why not." Gaian Knight grinned a little despite both himself and the situation, adjusting his goggles a bit with one hand. One glowing hand, a quiet, earthy golden glow to match the little bits and loose pebbles that lifted off the ground into lazy orbit as the earth began to move.

When the ground down below flattened out a bit, it didn't lurch, but sighed; when it and the ceiling moved together to form a stairway it moved with a sense of purpose, like a pair of grand and stately castle doors being thrown open in times of old. And grand and stately the stairs were: broad and deep, well-supported and flanked by heavy, sculpted balusters of dark obsidian - no less stately than the stairs themselves, and smooth enough that one could probably have slid down them without fear if they weren't occasionally broken up by pillars that grew straight out of the ground to support the (now somewhat opened-up and less substantial) ceiling Gaian Knight and Miss Americana had been occupying not a moment before.

The only thing it lacked, really, was a proper carpet; that being somewhat outside of his domain, the geomancer rather belatedly settled for taking some of the darker stone from their surroundings and letting it 'unfurl' into a thinner, carpet-like covering down the center of the stairs that preceded the pair of heroes as they made their way down. "Hello," he greeted, rather friendly, his eyes still visibly glowing through his goggles even after the glow around his hands had settled down. "It's a rather nice day for spelunking, isn't it?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Sub-Terrans were blind, of course, a legacy of their millennia of life underground, as was their surface-born king Jerris Trent. They might not have gotten much from the lovely Miss Americana, but as Gaian Knight casually shaped the very flesh and blood of their universe with his own doughty abilities, they knew that a mighty foe had arrived! Though some reflexively surrounded their king, raising spears and other weapons to defend his person, others began running around screaming in high-pitched voices as if the very end of days was upon them! (And indeed, by a close listen, they were indeed shouting something just like that in their own language.)

Terra-King, standing protectively over the fallen body of Dr. Rao, raised his staff in warning and called out nasally, "Keep back! This is my realm, and I am armed with mighty weapons!" He seemed to hesitate, his hand shaking. "Un...nless one of you is a doctor!"

[Electra]

Miss Americana raised an impressed eyebrow as Gaian Knight showed off his rock-rearranging prowess. Since it seemed to suit the new decor, she put a hand on his arm and allowed him to escort her down the stairs as though they were descending into a ballroom. When they reached the bottom, though, she frowned at the words of the subterranean monarch. "I'm a doctor," she said, taking another step forward and looking towards the fallen woman. "What did you do to her?" she demanded. Now that she'd actually seen Gaian Knight in action, she felt much more confident of their position here.

[Avenger Assembled]

"I didn't do ANYTHING!" exclaimed the king of the Sub-Terrans guiltily, stepping back at Miss Americana's approach to let her view the unconscious Dr. Rao. Citizen took this opportunity to appear as well, drifting up through the floor and startling the Sub-Terrans: luckily they were too focused on their king and the awesome power of Gaian Knight (not to mention the lovely-voiced Miss Americana) to panic or go on the offensive. On closer inspection, Rao wasn't quite unconscious, but she was pale and sweating, close to going into shock, and stared up at Miss Americana with wide eyes.

"Miss A..." With nothing coming up on Miss A's scanner, it looked like Rao had simply fainted.

"Ohhh..." exclaimed the Terra-King, pulling nervously at his hair. "Is she all right? I'm a geologist, not a medical doctor! I was trying to get her to the medical machines below in my mighty stronghold!"

[Fox]

Gaian Knight had rather enjoyed showing off and playing the part of a lady-escorting knight; though he would never admit it, some part of him also rather enjoyed watching some of the Sub-Terrans scatter and panic. That last bit made him feel a little guilty, too, but guilt was better saved for peoples that hadn't used beetles to steal women from research labs, so he tried to ignore it in the name of a fun moment.

The call for a doctor certainly killed the levity, though, and his eyebrows betrayed his frown as Miss Americana moved to aid Rao. "....okay, I'll ask the obvious question," the hero piped up with a tone of deference to the self-appointed ruler of this place...though his voice was also tempered with a resolve that implied, the villain's territory or not, he really wasn't planning on going anywhere until things were resolved. "Why'd one of your beetles steal the nice woman from the surface world, Terra-King?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"I did no such thing!" exclaimed Terra-King. "I came to pick her up for her date, and when I arrived she fainted for some reason!" He patted the giant beetle's head affectionately, like a man would a large, favorite dog. "I was concerned, but I couldn't take her to some surfacer hospital! Who knows what might have happened, or what your PARANOID minds might have suspected?"

"You...you had a date?" asked Citizen, more baffled at the concept than the absurdity that Terra-King himself had a date: the man was odd, but he'd met plenty of odd people, and criminal though he was, who was Sharl to say what people here might think was attractive. The logistics were the real strange part.

"Yyes, I have an OKCupid account," admitted the king as Dr. Rao began to rouse under Miss Americana's ministrations, looking concernedly at her. "I may have omitted a few things, but..."

[Electra]

Miss Americana, who'd commandeered a flask of water from one of Terra King's subordinates, looked up from bathing the fallen woman's forehead. "Hold on one minute," she said, sounding disbelieving. "This whole incident, the tremors, the damage to the building, the giant beetle... all of this was you trying to impress her as you picked her up for a blind date? And you didn't mention any of it ahead of time? Didn't you stop to think that you'd be scaring the hell out of her and a lot of other innocent people?"

She returned her attention to Rao as the doctor moaned softly. "Dr. Rao, can you hear me? It's Miss Americana. Don't worry, you're safe now."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I'm...I'm all right," said Rao. "I just saw that thing coming up out of the ground and coming for me, and I must admit that I fainted," she added, putting a hand to the side of her head. She paused a moment, taking in the scene around her, before her attention focused on Terra-King. "...OH. So you are undergroundking1066." She fell silent for a moment as she processed this new information. "So all that you said about liking club music, that was false," said, sounding more than a little annoyed. "Your name was not because of your musical tastes, but because you live underground-"

"No, I swear! I have all those noise rock albums you mentioned! The name was a double-pun, a double one!"

Rao sighed, and shook her head, shooting a look at the heroes around her for support before she spoke to the villain. "Jervis, I'm sorry, but I don't think I can date you. A man has to be honest with a woman if he seeks to win her heart, and you have not been honest with me."

The king of the Sub-Terrans looked away and sighed heavily. "I...I suppose you're right. I'm sorry about the mess. I just...I just wanted to impress you with how cool my ride was."

[Fox]

"It's not like the giant riding beetle isn't cool," Gaian Knight said, looking and feeling awfully awkward about this whole thing. This wasn't quite as sinister as I was expecting. "But having it burst out of the ground and carry you off is probably not as romantic as you were going for. I mean, the dating world's rough, y'know, but maybe try something with less property damage and injury potential, next time?"

Not that he looked forward to the possibility of a 'next time', of course, but even underground-dwelling, beetle-riding semi-crazy people deserved to get a date now and again. .....right?

[Electra]

"Honesty is the best policy," Miss Americana agreed, helping Dr. Rao to sit up on the smooth floor of the tunnel. "You want women to be attracted to you, not the underground lair or giant beetle, right? Let them get to know the real you, and then disclose about all the rest of it. You can't count on your superpowers to make someone like you." She looked over to Gaian Knight. "I think Dr. Rao is all right, but I'd like to get her into observation for a few hours, just in case. Could you give us a ride up to the surface?"