Twinkling of An Eye (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

Hours of Bloody Work Later 

McNider Hospital 

 

A very fatigued-looking Tesla Atom looked around the table at Naomi and Gretchen, looking fine (albeit worn) for a woman whose doppleganger they had worked together to bisect with a wormhole's event horizon. "It was all very...targeted. The coordinates for Woodsman's home dimension were fed into the wormhole's control mechanism - then the portal's power systems were sabotaged so it was left on. We're still picking through the damage now, but they must have had minutes to take whatever they wanted from the lab - even while their creatures did those horrible things." From the looks on the faces of first the Atoms, then the other heroes that had followed, Naomi wasn't alone in having her personal threshold of horror exceeded. "Now neither of you tested for radiation exposure; and Waverider, your superior is here to take you home. You can both leave. Before you do, do you have any questions?" 

[EternalPhoenix]

Naomi had managed to calm down. It had been several hours. With that said, even now the memories made her twitchy. She had changed out of her completely ruined costume into something the Atoms had been kind enough to lend. She’d taken three showers, and was finally starting to feel clean again. She even had an appointment with Claremont’s shrink tomorrow. Everything was going to be fine. And then she’d remember something, and everything would not be fine for a while.

 

She signed, since her notepad was soaked in blood and other things, and heaven only knew where her pen was. <I won’t have to pay for the machine, will I?> A shaky smile indicated that this was a joke. <But seriously, is Nighthawk going to be all right?> She twitched involuntarily at the memory. <She was badly hurt.>

[Heritage]

The Shrike had gently but firmly refused all help in cleaning herself up; she wanted to be somewhere safe and familiar before she washed away all this death and allowed herself to feel anything. On the other hand, she grimly worked for hours alongside the Atoms, the other young Heroes and the surviving building staff to make sense of the horrible aftermath of the day's events.

 

In response to Tesla's statement, she blankly stared off into space for a fehisw seconds before finally speaking in a hollow voice. "So this...was just a distraction to someone. They opened a hole into hell and sacrificed countless lives just to steal something." She could barely find the words. "How...how does someone like that come into the world? How does someone raise a child that grows up to be capable of that?" A shudder passed through her body as the emotions she'd been trying to repress all day made a run for the exits, and she suddenly stood up. "I have to go."

 

And with that, she stumbled for nearest exit, hoping she could find her way back to the bookstore, and a kind face.