Avenger Assembled

"It's fine," said Jack easily. "I was there when all this started on my end of things. Despite all the horrors that happened there, it's really not that hard to look at." And it wasn't; it wasn't as if Jack had never walked into a room covered in blood and singing with the aftermath of pain and terror. "I'll be fine. You worry about you, Taylor." He reached down and stroked her face, giving her a wry smile.

"Then let this evening burn forever in your mind," Jack murmured, falling automatically back on the easy cliches of romance. "So that the flames of passion may be forever kindled on your heart." His dance with her was passionate and fast, his incredible speed and grace making up for his lack of training in the dance itself. When the dance itself was done, Jack left Angel at the edge of the dance floor, a smile on his face. "Remember always, senorita, the lesson of the evening. In the end, there can be...only one." With Queen swelling in his ears, Jack turned and headed off the floor to wait for Taylor. If she was ever going to finish.

Mark squeezed her hand and looked at the light, doing the only thing any hero could at that point. "Hey! Over here!" he called, waving his hands to try and get their attention. Any surviving threats in this region had become friends the moment the city burned. He believed that; he had to believe that if he was to retain any faith in the human race. "We're from the League!"

Even with Argent there, Mark put his hand on Erin's arm. How could he do otherwise, after so many years together, and faced with this horror? His uniform wouldn't protect him if he went much farther, but the danger to himself was the farthest thing from his mind. "They died saving the world," said Mark quietly, his voice full of conviction. But he couldn't go the other step; he couldn't pretend they'd have wanted it this way. Not with Zoe..."We can come back with more equipment," he murmured. "Something from the Lighthouse or the Manor that we can use to trace her."

Though it was perhaps an inglorious moment for the city's superhuman population, fortunately the many explosions in front of the courthouse had destroyed the security cameras in the area. So there was no one to see the daring Ace Danger be shot in the back (just like in Ace Danger #405 "Aces and Eights!", available from a Castle Comics retailer near you) or the radiant Dark Star take time out to heal his badly wounded comrades, thus giving the bad guys the window they needed to charge the courthouse and rescue the unfortunate Captain Knievel. With a flash of light and a roar of patriotic rocket engines, Knievel and Malice flew away together into the sky, a lucky reporter for an out-of-town newspaper catching a single memorable photograph that would later lead to a complicated series of online supervillian fan-fiction and flamewars that would ultimately culminate in the mysterious destruction of an entire server hub (as if by cannon fire) in Connecticut. But all that was weeks in the future; what mattered for the moment was the destruction of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Freedom City property and the successful escape of Taylor Rogers, aka Captain Knievel, and the gang of his minions who'd come to break him out. --- When the Vestige woke up, the first thing he sensed was the powerful anti-magic field permeating the specially reinforced cell all around him, suppressing the energy that suffused his being. The second thing was the face of Bill "Bulldog" Maddicks, the commanding officer of STAR Squad, and the massive stun rifle in his hands. "Hey there. You're under arrest." And with that, he fired the rifle again, and the Atlantean sorcerer once again slipped into the deepest unconsciousness of all.

"I can't sense anyone else," said Argent, shaking her head. "I will reach out and find what minds I can." While she concentrated, walking after them slowly, Mark joined Erin at the front of the party, his handlight cutting into the smoke and ash before them. "Erin, do you remember when those Grue shot Jenni Rocket full of Max serum and she ran into orbit?" Mark called to Erin, hoping as fervently as she was that something else must have happened. Something besides the obvious story of a girl who'd run to save her parents a second or two late. "Do you think Zoe did something like that? She ran so fast she wound up somewhere else, maybe where her beacon doesn't work?"

Mark's attention span was beginning to waver, but his friend's concern for the new arrival got him to pay attention to her again. It was always so difficult focusing on problems he couldn't do anything about immediately. "In fact, you don't have to tell us a thing," said Mark artlessly, guessing it was better to avoid any more arguments about who was lying about what. "We owe you lunch after helping us out with those guys, so eat up." He waved his hand. "We'll let the grownups worry about the hard stuff." Uncle Mark had said those exact words to Zoe on multiple occasions. It was a little weird when a fifty year old man said that to a teenager, but it made more sense coming from him now.

"That's not a bad idea," said Jack, a little reluctantly. "I have so many people coming and going here that it's not a great place to get any rest. And with the two of you there, you could both feel secure. I could go in and get out anything you needed, Taylor, so you wouldn't even have to set foot back in your place." He looked at the two women for confirmation on that.

"My name is passion," Jack told her with perfect smoothness, "and yours is desire. And tonight, the dance floor is ours." When Jack saw Taylor step out onto the dance floor with Ace, his eyes widened. Well, that's productive, he thought irritably. Here I am doing what _you_ wanted. He wouldn't have minded seeing her step out with anyone else, but Ace Danger was, well, danger. "Tell me, my delicious flower of the desert, will you carry our passion back to your handsome boy of a little while ago?" he enquired, leading the way across the dance floor to the implausibly happy Taylor and Ace. Where did she learn to dance like that!? "Will you show him the pure, undiluted power of a beautiful woman over the most powerful of men?"

Mark had changed by now into emergency survival gear, fitting the air filtration unit over his face and passing one to Argent as well. Though she had good genes, Argent didn't have the same kind of protection against aging that Erin, or for that matter even Mark had. She was too old for this; they all were. But they had no other choice than but to be where they were. "It..." Argent called through the mask on her face. "Here! Here is where the trail changes! Stop moving!" At her words, Erin brought the bike to a stop, and the three of them all exited together. "The trail, it...it begins to phase here!" Mark was the first to switch on his torch, the light from the three of them cutting through the smoke and ash around them. "As if she was...running up invisible stairs! Or running elsewhere!" "Could that be an effect of the bomb?" called Mark to his wife. "Changing the profile?" "No...no." Argent shook her head, her voice muffled by her mask. "No, this is something different. This is something she was doing herself!" At those words, Mark reached into his jacket, pulling out a portable sensor he'd just thought to bring along. "Alex showed me how to tune this!" he called, peering close over the shining controls as he tried to keep his eyes through the darkness around them. "It's tuned to Zoe's powers! Not enough to track her in all this, maybe, but enough to see what was happening..." But none of them were scientists, and putting words to numbers wasn't easy without Psyche there.

"I can," agreed Argent, her arm around her husband. Mark had recovered already, but what could he say? He had nothing to add now. Outside, there was room for all three of them in the motorcycle, Argent taking a seat that popped out of the side to better guide their travel. Mark should have expected that she'd point them towards Freedom City, but even so it was another blow when his wife pointed that way. Together, the three of them headed off into the darkness, the darkness in the sky spreading wider as they approached it.

"Not psychic. She left a psychic aura around a physical message." Argent led the way back inside the house, the usually nigh-pristine structure scarred by the shockwave and by what Mark guessed were the effects of Erin's search. Argent led them not down to the facilities beneath the house, but to the vid-screen on the wall, black with the connections to Freedom City severed. As the three adults approached, though, the image crackled to life. The vid screen crackled to life with Alex's image. Sometime in her mid to late twenties the Terminus energies that powered both Mike and Alex's powers began to retard their aging processes. There was no real way to tell how old the image was as the face was the same one they'd seen for the last twenty years of their lives. Alex's somber hazel eyes, however, held the weight of her years behind them. "If the manor is running the omega program, then you're currently seeing a prerecorded message geared to the bio-signs of the remaining living occupants of the manor. Yes, of course, I planned for this contingency. Did you really think I wouldn't?" Her lips flickered in a tiny smile. "I've recorded a message for everyone but I knew it would come down to the two of you. I don't have volumes to say as I've always known that we picked the dangerous path and I'd rather you remember my life than this all too brief message." "I do, however, have a few things I felt were important enough to record. Zoe's going to be a handful. Even more so than usual. Make sure she knows she was loved. That she is loved. That we have always been so very proud of her." "I'm not going to ramble on and on. You're the dearest friends I have in the world and so I trust you with the one thing in the world I value most." Her smile turned wry, "And probably the only people who can figure out wherever she's run off to." "Don't worry. Everything's going to be okay, again. Someday. Even if our battles are over." Alex reached for the button on the screen and paused one last time, "Freedom forever. Alexandra Harris - Psyche - Out." Mark staggered at the words and nearly fell, his hands clenched tight to the wall for support. "Oh, God..." There were no words. There was no space for them, nothing beneath the crushing wave of grief. He'd seen so much death in his time, but this was more than anyone could absorb without flinching from it.

"She shouldn't be out there unprotected," Mark murmured. "You know how fragile she is. It..." The words were too painful for him to say, so instead he simply stared up at that black cloud for a long, uncertain moment. "I was so...so happy that we'd caught the bomb in Dakana so fast. When Star of Africa blasted it apart, I thought we were done until we caught the broadcast from America. And then when the cars didn't work, all we had was the live feed. And when the signal went out and the EMP wave hit, we knew it was the end." "I sense her recent presence," said Argent suddenly, her head coming up. "She was here. She was frustrated and angry, and fearful for her parents. She came out and ran but...but it is not like the others." Unexpectedly, the former supervillian who had so often bedeviled both Erin and Mark (though evidently in different ways) scrubbed her hand across her face. "I felt them. There is a psychic presence at the house that is making it difficult for me to scan. I think...yes, it is Alexandra Harris. She has left a message."

"Our car broke down," Mark murmured, his voice painfully quiet. "Every car in the Dakana airport broke down, Erin. And I tried them all." He shook his head, remembering how well his former wife took it when he blamed himself for anything. "They found Chris's family," he said suddenly, looking at her, his eyes outlined by the shape his goggles had left beneath his grimy face. "Their airship met up with one of the Dakanan ships over the Atlantic. He put them all on board, his wife and his kids, and sent them off. It must have just been minutes before..." He shook his head again.

"God." Mark stared bleakly at the remains of his childhood home, rising high into the sky. He'd seen that column of smoke from near-orbit as they approached, and knew it would be a pillar of fire when the sun finally set on this terrible day. He was glad, terribly glad, that neither of his parents had lived to see this day. "Did you check the medbay? I wouldn't put it past Alex to put her to sleep if she was fighting it...Honey, can you sense anything?" Argent took a step away from the other two and concentrated, opening her mind wide to encompass the depths of retrocognition. Studying the past was never easy for her. "Is Clara all right?" was Mark's first question for Erin when Argent was occupied. "I only caught her for a second or two as she was getting back in the air with the team from Japan when we were in transit. Something about their trans-booth going haywire?" There'd once been trans-mat booths linking together every Freedom League regional office. Maybe there still were, except that their central hub was gone. Along with so much else...

This thread takes place in 2039 in the timeline Zoe left behind her.

Z-Day Ten hours after Zephyr's departure from 2039 The big Dakanan hovership powered its way through the massive black rain clouds like a bull in a china shop, the huge daka-powered engines cutting through the massive turbulence in the middle of the atmosphere. There was good reason for the clouds. Not too far away, all things considered, all that was left of Freedom City and all the land for miles around was burning. A powerful nation, more powerful now that a chunk of the American east coast had been blasted and irradiated, Dakana had sent a fleet of ships to help with the relief efforts in America in what promised to be among the worst disasters of the heroic age. Without planning or thought of his own hardship, one man had come with his sole companion to help save the day. There was no time to land; as the great ship lowered itself down to within a few hundred yards of the Manor's roof, Mark Mason Lucas rappelled down a grappling line to land firmly on his feet. At fifty-six, Mark's face was lined with cares, more so now than on perhaps any day of his life. His wife joined him a few seconds later, Argent Psion-Lucas flying down under her own power. The teenage psychic had gone from one half of a "creepy-twin set" to a mature, responsible woman in her early sixties who had adapted her grandfather's philosophy to an understanding that one day the superhuman would simply supplant the human. Arthur, her son with Mark, was watching the family house and Mark's younger kids, the ones he'd brought with him from his marriage to the late Tess Atom. They were far too young for such horrors. This was a place for family. And maybe, if they were very lucky, for one family member in particular. "ZOE!" Mark put his hand to his lips, walking away from their landing site in the browning front yard, his unstable moleculed costume protecting him from the dangers of fallout as surely as Argent's force field protected her. "ZOE HARRIS! It's Uncle Mark!" Overhead, the Dakanan ship pulled away, speeding towards Freedom City and the relief efforts there. Mark was confident they'd be able to find transportation there. Surely his luck would hold. "And Aunt Argent!"

How did Wesley get down below? Cunningly. ;)

With the children saved and safely deposited on a remote tropical island, Phantom could return to rejoin the rest of the group in the tower of Arachnos. Magpie seemed to be a safe guardian for the kids, already gathering them around her on the white South Pacific beach to tell them how they'd come so far and who was working to liberate their world. With the children's corridor left freed of its unhappy prisoners, Avenger took the liberty of stuffing each and every guard into their open equipment locker, gently closing it with a resounding finality. "No problem." Down below in the prison corridor, Wesley cunningly released a knockout gas from his pores that subtly, quickly, and quietly knocked out the guards in the lower level before they could do more than sigh. "Human sleep hormones," he said, looking a little embarrassed. "Tuned it right to 'em with my lifesight. Saw it on the Discovery Channel." That left only liberating Columbia to be accomplished, a task that would be much easier with the help of the one hero there who'd had a chance to work with her.

16

OK, folks, I've gotten some requests about just bringing this thread to its most likely conclusion. As I am completely onboard with this turn of events, I've written up some of my thoughts on the outcome of the thread, feel free to add or subtract as you see fit. - Though it was perhaps an inglorious moment for the city's superhuman population, fortunately the many explosions in front of the courthouse had destroyed the security cameras in the area. So there was no one to see the daring Ace Danger be shot in the back (just like in Ace Danger #405 "Aces and Eights!", available from a Castle Comics retailer near you) or the radiant Dark Star take time out to heal his badly wounded comrades, thus giving the bad guys the window they needed to charge the courthouse and rescue the unfortunate Captain Knievel. With a flash of light and a roar of patriotic rocket engines, Knievel and Malice flew away together into the sky, a lucky reporter for an out-of-town newspaper catching a single memorable photograph that would later lead to a complicated series of online supervillian fan-fiction and flamewars that would ultimately culminate in the mysterious destruction of an entire server hub (as if by cannon fire) in Connecticut. But all that was weeks in the future; what mattered for the moment was the destruction of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Freedom City property and the successful escape of Taylor Rogers, aka Captain Knievel, and the gang of his minions who'd come to break him out.

Jack made a scratchy gesture in the air at James and mimed a miaow, a wicked smile on his face as he swept Angel out onto the dance floor. He was all dashing charm and charisma, his eyes magnetically warm as he studied Angel's, the gleam in his eyes promising untoward delights as the music kicked up. I hope Ace and Taylor are getting this done fast. "Tell me, mi amour, have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight? Because tonight, I can show such wonderful things that you'll forget your own name." Because I have no idea what yours is. It...I swear, I've seen your face somewhere! Not Paris... "

Down an HP 15+17=32 Jack's intentions are evidently to sweep Angel away for his own masculine purposes. ;)

Jack was briefly at a loss for how to cut his way into this situation before ultimately settling on the natural way. If Taylor thought he needed to get the couple's attention and make sure they didn't go anywhere, well, there was only one obvious way to do that. "Pardon me," he said, appearing smoothly by James and Angel's side, "I couldn't help but notice the most beautiful woman in the room." He took Angel's hand and said warmly, "Mi corazon, will you do me the honor of a dance most...divine?" His smile was warm, his eyes magnetic as his hand smoothly went for hers.

"If we're lucky, the field won't affect us as badly as it does the civilians," said Mark, looking around at the other kids. "We're superheroes, we can handle that kind of stuff. Hitting them from all sides sounds like a good idea, anything to keep them confused. There's one more thing; I think we should target somebody with taking out whoever the leader of the cult is. When my dad and the Black Avenger fought the Scions of Sobek in 1971, they took out the top guy and the whole pyramid went down like a box of cards." He nodded at that. "So if you see anyone important, hit them hard. Everyone ready?"