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April 4th, 2015 The door to the convenience store swung open with a chime from the bells hung above it and the resounding impact of the boot smashing into it. "Hey! I need a hand over here!" In her customary crimson and black, Jill O'Cure burst into the store in enough of a hurry to almost knock a rack of corn chips over, a boy of about ten or eleven unconscious in her arms. The heroine set the child down of the counter in front of the shocked cashier, unceremoniously sweeping a display of novelty butane lighters to the ground. "He got hit with some sort of fever," she explained, losing patience as the teenager behind the counter stared at her blankly, mouth agape. "Hey! Pay attention! I've got him stable and he shouldn't be contagious but he needs water and an ambulance, got it?" "Ah, r-right, I'll call for one right now, right," the cashier stammered, snapping her mouth shut over braces and reaching for the yellowing corded phone with chipped nails. She took a second look at Jill and worked up the courage to blurt, "Is this, like... a super thing?" The masked EMT-B paused for a moment, her shoulders dropping slightly in her dark red jacket. "...not sure. Maybe. This is the fifth case I've run into tonight and the symptoms are getting worse." She looked down at the unconscious boy for a moment before heading back for the door. "I need to get back out there. Take care of him, alright?" The teenager nodded more resolutely this time and Jill was out the door again in a sprint.

Wading Way 10:00 16th June 2015 It was a warm but overcast day and Freedom City was getting on with the important business of getting things done. But being Freedom City things never seem to be able to happen without supers getting involved. And with a flash of anti-light and the smell of sulphur someone who looks like he’s come from a fantasy film or video game, staff and all, appears in the middle of the road which would be dangerous to him if it wasn’t for the two large demon flanking him. With words in a strange language he gestures to an Armored Car stuck in traffic and the two demon make their way through the traffic to do his bidding. Just another normal day in Freedom City.

Monday, April 13, 2015 10:30 AM Earth It was a Monday morning when Erin made it back to Earth, nearly six full weeks after she'd taken off for her first space adventure since her Curator-enforced vacation. She blasted in out of a clear blue sky, her life-support suit holding in both her oxygen supply and her wildly triumphant shout as she and Redbird made their re-entry at white-hot speeds. As soon as they dropped enough altitude for there to be atmosphere, she pulled off her helmet and drew in a deep lungful of air. "God, it's so good to be home!" she crowed. "Space is nuts. Let's leave it to the aliens for awhile," she suggested to her AI companion as they arced towards the familiar skyline of Freedom City. She was half-tempted to dive off the motorcycle at twenty-thousand feet and splash down in the Great Bay, wash away the grime of a month and a half without a proper water bath. Sonic cleaners did an adequate job of keeping dirt and smell at bay, but she never truly felt clean after using one. That would wait, though. Instead, she steered the motorcycle northward, towards home. "I guess maybe we should've called ahead," she decided. "He'll probably be in school at this hour. But that just means we can surprise him when he gets back." In just a few minutes they were touching down on the smooth paved roundabout in front of Hunter Manor, which was currently picturesque with a full spread of carefully tended flowerbeds and green lawn. Erin took another moment to enjoy solid Earth beneath her feet, then vaulted the front steps to go in the front door. "Hello, I'm home!"

April 20, 2015 It wasn't that Kimber didn't think Eve would have agreed to fly them all out to Thunder Bay if the poltergeist's hometown hadn't also been where their fearless leader had met her girlfriend but it had certainly made pitching the trip easier. She had an errand to run in the woods outside of the city and while she could have probably performed it alone she had little desire to do so. Accepting that she had died and everything that came with it was one thing, actually visiting the resting place of her corporeal remains was something else entirely. The harder sell had been getting Tarva included in the outing. The trick wasn't so much convincing Eve - the Martel heiress wouldn't have let the sorceress work for her in the first place if she hadn't believed Tarva was worth taking a chance upon - as it was negotiating the paperwork involved in transporting an Annihilist defector across national borders. Ultimately while the Freedom League may have had their politely unspoken doubts about just what Eve and her Claremont classmates had done to earn the Furion's regard they couldn't argue that that regard existed and that made her more or less the de facto authority. If she said they'd keep an eye on Tarva in Canada, then an eye would be kept. The flight, meanwhile, gave Kimber an opportunity for a conversation she'd admittedly put off for too long. Floating over to Indira in the spacious cabin, she folded her translucent legs beneath her and cupped her chin in her hands. "Hey, so, I know I've been kinda acting weird since we got back in space. S'okay if we talk?"

Cline Home Port Regal, Freedom City, New Jersey 7:22 PM Saturday, February 21st, 2015 During Next-Gen's weekly training sessions, which had increased to bi-weekly since alien robots failed to destroy the planet, Will had expressed to his teammates that his parents needed a babysitter for his sister. Professor Psion's recent bout of being alive had left the family on high alert. Though before their teammate could spit out the request in full Thaelia had already gleefully volunteered. It went without saying that there was a moment of relief when Errant volunteered afterwards to help the overly ambitious demigoddess. The ever optimistic Glamazon was many things. An experienced hand at watching children was not at the top of the list. The fact that her mind was an open book was equally a mixed blessing in that she'd be someone not bothered in the slightest about watching over a telepath. As her telepathic partner in arms could attest. The princess of Atlantis had neither the patience nor the inclination to wait for a taxi, Thaelia had sped alongside traffic from the academy to the private Cline estate. A blur charging in an out of traffic without even the slightest notice of the below freezing temperature. Upon arriving she gave the premises an excited visual scan from the outside. Thaelia's familiarity with the living situation of her friends was mainly limited to the academy dorms. The Cline house was no dorm room for sure. The powerhouse babysitter would take a rare moment to wait for the other youth before starting a trek to the front door. Despite his lack of ability to encroach upon the sound barrier, Thaelia had never known Errant to be anything less than punctual.

Outer edge of the Sol System The Communion's attack on Earth had been repulsed by many of the planet’s heroes, working alongside several military and extra-governmental forces. For the moment, the planet was safe. But the Communion's world killer weapon was still positioned at the outer edge of the solar system, barely held in check by the Freedom League and their allies. With reports reaching back to the Freedom League and Earth's heroes from the Star Knights about a fleet of Communion ships headed towards the Sol System, possibly to try to assist in getting the world killer free, it was decided that merely holding the world killer at bay was no longer a viable solution. So the remaining League members on Earth had begun gathering a number of volunteers to try to help destroy the world killer before the Communion relief fleet could arrive. The gathering of the various heroes coincided with the return of one of Earth's Star Knights, Kyle Steward, who had firsthand experience against the Communion's deadly weapon. Now, Geckoman was behind the controls of one of the League's Pegasus spaceplanes, flying a rather odd collection of heroes to help in the fight against the world killer….

GM Harvest Supermarket/Alleyway directly across from Harvest Supermarket The Fens, Freedom City, New JerseyFriday, May 15th, 20158:17 PM Foreshadow had been driving through the Fens when all of a sudden a vision took hold. Dozens of gangsters breaking into a Harvest Supermarket in the Fens. Men and women armed with serrated knives. Each stabbing a victim three times. All wearing a bright red cap on their head and smiling sadistically. Everyone was dying around him. Foreshadow had to act, sprinting forward to the nearest gang member...Foreshadow was stabbed in the chest. Looking up at his reflection in one of those robotic claw games he saw his reflection. Or more specifically, that of the store's managers. One of many victims of the night. If Foreshadow couldn't put a stop to it before it was too late. With a quick swerve into oncoming traffic, Foreshadow set course for the Harvest Supermarket Terrifica had a different sort of forewarning. She had been tracking the activity of a new gang to the city for the past month. Unlike Foreshadow she knew for a fact there would be some undertaking tonight. It was a massive initiation night for this new gang. She hadn't been able to piece together the gang's name. Or their active leadership. Just that their habits were comparative to that of a cult. But, she knew just where to be if she wanted to get answers. The Supergenius just had to make it to the Harvest Supermarket in the Fens. Well before the three vans holding wannabe gangsters wanting to butcher multiple people. As for the hero with absolutely no warning of what would be transpiring? Danny was walking by an alleyway when he heard a woman scream. Seeing as a scream never meant anything good in the Fens of all places, Danny peered around the corner. She was surrounded by three men. Each wearing a Red Cap and holding a serrated knife.

Freedom City, New Jersey December 3rd, 2014 Afternoon It always began with tentacles. That was a lie. It usually began with a poor fool who stumbled on some book that no soul should ever read or even consider. Such books usually had ideas that were not simply intriguing, but were actually infectious. The ideas were impossible to get out of your head, to bury under the everyday and dull with mundanity. They strove to get out, to be expressed, to be birthed into the material world in all their hideous glory. It was one of those hideous glories that burst out of a third-floor window, tearing a hole in the wall as it fell to the street below. It landed with a wet splat and shivered, curling back into itself as it gathered its glutinous mass together again. The creature seemed impossible, a squid-like mess of tentacles that lashed and pulled and moved without any apparent intelligence. Asli Sadik found herself staring at the monster with the rest of the crowd. When the first stirrings of panic swept through everyone else, though, she merely stared up at the hole in the building for a moment, her stomach sinking as realizations piled up all of a sudden. Still, there was an eldritch beast to deal with, first; she put her bag down and stepped forward and shaking her arms free as she gathered her power to her. “Okay, big boy,†she called out, doing her best to get the creature’s attention. “It’s time to leash you back up and take you home.â€

The Democratic Republic of the Congo Kinshasa University of Kinshasa campus April 1, 2015 There was no sound on the security feed, but Terrifica and Miss Americana could see what was happening well enough. The MIT scientists flicked a row of jury-rigged switches on the desk in front of them, bringing to life the machine before them. Row after row of panels lit up, vacuum tubes and relays flickering to life, and suddenly a long-dormant machine was alive again, casting a glowing light around the bunker that was its home. "It doesn't make any sense," muttered Dr. Carlos Perez, his long hair in the same ponytail he wore on the video. Crossing his arms, he looked away from the play. "VI has the computing power of a microchip! A _small_ microchip!" His labcoat, and his demeanor, had taken some beatings since the footage was taken two weeks earlier. "She may be the second oldest computer in the world, but the Vivre Informatique had no capacity for sentience! It just didn't!" Suddenly things were happening on screen - the scientists were talking to each other rapidly, their happy faces turning to alarm. Carlos's assistant Felicity was typing frantically at an Archetech laptop slaved to the system, a laptop that began flashing alarmingly, in time with the overhead arc lights in the basement they occupied. Suddenly the lights on VI began flickering in time with the laptop as well - and now, as the heroes watched, doors were sliding open on the far side of VI, doors disgorging primitive humanoid robots! At the sight of the robots, the scientists sensibly packed it in and fled, the camera feed cutting off as the red-eyed metal automatons began advancing toward their work station and the laptop that went with it. Pressing a few buttons on the digital playback, Felicity, who like the other half-dozen scientists looked tired and worn, pulled up a phrase on the laptop's screen. "MAINTENAT, JE SUIS LIBRE!" "We tried contacting the original project team," said Franklin Wright, one of the graduate students on the project, "but of course they're long dead! And most of the records about VI were destroyed during the wars hereabouts." "Those damn Belgians," muttered Perez. "Why would they build a computer _here_? Especially right after the war?" "To keep it from prying eyes," said Dr. Chambord, the goateed, bespectacled man who was one of two actual Congo natives on the MIT team. "The Congo was the jewel of their empire, a shining beacon of European progress in Africa." He sneered. "But no one cared to see the brutality at the heart of it then. Men died in building this. We found the records of it, in the old offices down below." "It's my fault," said Felicity Jones, looking very haggard. "I'm so sorry, I just...I should have pulled the plug! But when we saw those robots, we ran! We thought we were going to get our heads crushed!" "It's not your fault," said Perez, patting his assistant awkwardly on the shoulder before looking at Miss Americana and Terrifica. "But whatever is in there, it made it right through our firewalls and it locked down the whole Computer Science building. All our equipment, all the university's equipment, including the seized supertech from the wars, is now in the hands of a Belgian computer from 1946. That's when we decided to call you."

Ueno Park, Tokyo, Japan 29th March 2015, Hanami With the Cherry blossom in full bloom it seemed that the whole of Tokyo was in the park enjoying good food and good company. The corner of the park you find yourself is a huge public part put on by Sanshain KinpÅge. Sunshine Buttercup was an idoru an sophisticated AI, that maybe fully aware, that wrote record and sung her own rather bouncy J-Pop. Right now she was chatting to and signing "autographs" with a bunch of excited fans, soon she was due to perform to the delight of many gathered in the area. The sun was shining people was happy and the food and entertain were flowing frely, what could possibly go wrong?

GM High Earth Orbit The Lighthouse December 25 th, 2014 9:40 PM Greenwich Mean Time (4:40 PM Freedom City) The last nearly two months had been busy ones aboard the orbital headquarters of the Freedom League. With so many of the senior league members off in space trying to help against the Communion, the work load for the remaining League members had increased, the team feeling rather stretched at times. The information sent back by the League members in space had done little to easy the stress of those remaining behind. As shocking as it had been to learn of the destruction of Lor-Van, what the Communion had done with the planets and peoples they did not just outright obliterate was perhaps even more horrific. But there had been little time to fully dwell on things, as there had been crises around the world and coordination with heroes across the world to try to be ready should the Communion turn towards the Earth. And then a few hours ago, the League members in space had sent a message back to the Lighthouse, stating that they had located the Communion's world killer spacecraft, and it was heading towards Earth. The remaining League members on Earth had moved into action, contacting the various heroes they had spent the last two months connecting with and getting people moving to various parts of the world to prepare should the Communion make it past the League members in space. Freedom Hall had served as a launch point for many, teleporting them up to the Lighthouse, and then back down to Earth to the various League teleport locations that had been set up over the years. For a time, everyone had been so busy organizing things, there was little time for anything else. But once they had coordinated setting things in motion, there was little to do but wait for news from the League members in space, of for the Communion to just arrive if there was no one left to hear from.

Amazri IV, formally Lor Space March 1, 2015 (Terran Calendar) Amazri IV had long sat well inside the boarders of Lor space, many light years from the contested area with Khanate space. The planet had long been a colony for the Lor, established in the early years of their expansion from Lor-Van. It had developed into one of the Republic's primary centers of industry and manufacturing, with vast automated facilities that covered the northern and southern landscapes of several of its vast continents. Most of the large cities on Amazri IV had been located around its equator, where lush green forests spread out around the cities before giving way to high mountainous zones. Now more than half its surface had become silver colored metal, and even from space it appeared as if veins of the silver metal were continuing to spread towards the rest of the planet. Amazri IV was one of the most recent Lor planets to fall to the Communion, the cyberforming of the planet still underway. A group of the Coalition's top scientists had determined that the cyberforming process provided the most direct access to the Communion's central data centers, with the least protections in place to prevent unauthorized access. In short, if the Coalition was going to learn the whereabouts of the Communion's mothership, it would be by gaining access to one of the central relays on a world being cyberformed. So a small group of Coalition forces were aboard a Grue stealth ship, making their final approach to Amazri IV. "We will be at our target location within ten microcycles." Stated Gur'ul, the Grue Metamorph in command of the stealth ship, turning back to look at the odd collection of beings that he had been ordered to transport to Amarzi IV.

Southern QueenNorth End, Freedom City, NewJerseySaturday, May 16th, 201512:22 PM Princess Thaelia was glad to be done with her week long excursion to the Pine Barrens. She had no qualms with nature. And even less qualms about spending a week with her schoolmates. But, there was something to be said about the surface world's restaurants that was missed. Which was how Thaelia found herself in the Southern Queen. Students had mentioned it here and there before. But, Thaelia had never attended the establishment prior to the trip. Dressed in green armored toga style dress the Atlantean was a hard sight to miss. Especially when she swung the door open with way too much force. Though not enough force to rip the door right off. "The Daughter of the Seas accepts your gauntlet." Thaelia was referring to an ad in the paper that referenced a gut busting challenge a customer had an alloted amount of time to eat a giant sized meal that could feed a family of five. If complete the food would be free and the winner's picture would be added to a wall. If incomplete, then the loser had plenty of leftovers to take home. This was not an establishment that believed in wasting food after all. The challenge was a temporary promotion fro the day seeking to drum up business. And judging by the Atlantean's reaction, drum up business it did.

The Weizenstein family were as old as Freedom City itself coming here almost as the first foundations were laid down. Over this time they had managed to climb to the top by having fingers in many of the cities major businesses, with a knack for picking the right investment at the right time. Some even suggested that they used magic, often black, to gain their fortune. Then in the 1980’s the family seemed to fade from public life after a private tragedy only now with the return to public life with the return of Carl Weizenstein from one of the top universitie. Currently he was everywhere over the television and newspapers, and even talked about on the Internet, whilst some it was about new business and charity works most of the buzz was about his ghost. It started with a off handed comment about the family ghost but had snowballed to the point that the former Weizenstein was now in the background of most of the photographs of Carl. The poor ghost Samuel wasn’t questioned on his thoughts and apparently couldn’t even leave the stately Weizenstein manor.

Lor Timemark 1329.8 - March 1, 2015 Garron-9, Garron System Trooper Ekna Veiu sat strapped into the back of the transport ship between a Lor mentat clone with a lantern jaw and a member of a scale covered species he couldn't name and tried to steady his breathing. He'd never planned to be a soldier but then the Communion had ripped through the Khanate, leaving the precious few survivors to flee or be turned into monsters. The Lor loved to talk about never forgetting Lor-Van but they hadn't been the only people to lose a homeworld and they weren't the only ones who'd wanted to fight back. Ekna was seventeen stellar cycles old; that had seemed like so long sitting around on his family farm waiting for his life to start, old enough to enlist with the Coalition forces, certainly. As the ship shook from atmospheric turbulence and he clenched his grey-green hands all he think about was whether or not he'd see his eighteenth cycle celebration. There weren't any enemy ships in the skies above Garron-9, at least. There didn't need to be. What had once been a densely populated border world with almost a billion inhabitants was now a solid sphere of computronium, a planet-sized server to add to the Communion's processing power. A billion people converted into raw materials and 'antibodies', the mindless, shrieking foot soldiers of the enemy. This was only Ekna's second deployment but he'd already gotten to see those up close and personal. They'd lost that moon but he'd acquitted himself well, getting his wounded sergeant to safety. They'd given him a commendation for that. They didn't mention the rest of his squad when they shook his hand. He didn't mention the night terrors he'd had ever since. That was how he'd ended up as part of one of four squads deploying to Garron-9 with a simple mission: fight their way through and take down a communication relay, in theory briefly blinding the Communion in the adjacent sector long enough for something apparently above his pay grade. Troopers didn't need to know the big picture, he guessed. He looked up from his knees and immediately regretted it as he saw the Grue strapped in across from him scowling right at him. At least Ekna thought the Grue was scowling. It was hard to tell with no mouth. He immediately looked back down regardless. Most of the other troopers were more experienced soldiers and most of them had experience fighting against those who were suddenly their allies. Tensions were always high but the calm before the storm was always the worst. Then again, at least he knew what a Grue was. Each squad had been assigned a commander for the mission, though Ekna got the impression the rank wasn't exactly official. One of them was a stern Lor officer with no patience for excuses; he'd met a lot of those in the past months. The Zultasian told a lot of jokes and laughed loudly, all swagger and confidence. Ekna had never seen anything like the grey skinned woman with the cybernetic tail, though, and even though the forth commander didn't look all that much older than him he'd heard some of the other soldiers say she wasn't really Lor but Terran and everybody had a friend of a friend with a horror story about a Terran. Ekna risked glancing up again to the back of the transport where all four of them were standing, holding onto handing straps and conversing.

GMLacandan Jungle Chiapas, Mexico Monday, June 1st, 2015 3:04 AM Six hours. It took Six Hours and onetime zones for Miracle Girl to fly Blodeuwedd into Mexico under the cover of night. And it would take another six hours to fly back. Casey was the only other student on campus who could cross the distance that the Welsh ninja could find despite it being so early in the morning. The senior was on a bit of a timeline as it were with the festivities later on in the day. But, when the Raven herself shows up in the middle of your dorm explaining there is a situation. Well, one didn't argue. The family of a pro Zapatista diplomat had been taken captive by mercenaries in an unknown location within the confines of the Lacandan Jungle. The diplomat was also being held captive. Supposedly, they wanted him to make a press conference filled. Or at least that's what the few people in government who had. The Raven presented Cerys with more information. The captors did not in fact political goals in mind. The Zapatistas had uncovered a Preserver artifact within a Mayan ruin and had chosen to hide it, deeming the artifact too dangerous and far too untrusting of the central government to hand it over to them for safe keeping. Only someone caught wind of the discovery. And they wanted the artifact badly enough to kill. An explosive situation that found Casey and Cerys in the middle of the jungle. Silently making a ground approach to try and find the mercenary camp site.

The Hunter Museum of Natural History, Freedom City 10:00am, 23rd February 2015 With a silent roar the skeletal head of the dinosaur popped out of the door just behind those fleeing the museum. It snapped lazily at them as they leaved, not showing any particular desire to show them harm. A few students had to been gently hustled away from such an amazing sight. With a final push it freed itself from the museums wooden door and stood on the stair marble stairs looking around with empty eye sockets at Freedom City.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015 Freedom City, New Jersey, Earth Morning Archetech's North American headquarters saw more than the average amount of parahuman weirdness in a work week, even more than most places in Freedom City. Being the home of highly advanced sciences, the regular working space of superheroes, and the epicenter of a world-wide attack meant that a place started to attract a certain type of attention, and the security team had developed procedures for all sorts of situations. Like when a falling star landed at the top of the building. Corona glowed gold and red and perpetually angry, floating half a foot above the helipad. She glared as the security guards spilled out of the rooftop access and surrounded her. No one was pointing weapons at each other yet, but if looks could kill there would murder. Corona crossed her armored arms and rotated slowly in place, finding the one guard who looked the most in charge of his emotions. He was an older gentlemen, with a bushy mustache and an Archetech cap on his head; Corona inclined her head infinitesimally towards him. "I need to speak with your genius," she said, her voice amplified through the suit's speakers. "I have a trade for her."

April 3, 2015 9PM It's springtime in Sapporo and the tourists have departed. The winter season that brings so much snow to this city of nearly two million has ended, bringing an end to the snow sculptures and snow festivals, and the cool moist spring has settled in comfortably here on the shores of Ishikari Bay. The big news in the city today is the recent beginning of baseball season - the famous Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters are playing a special exhibition game with the visiting Freedom City Comets, who themselves are on their way back to Freedom City tomorrow to begin their North American season with a game against Detroit. The 40,000 seats in the Sapporo Dome are packed with local fans and American "super-fans" from Freedom City who have flown in for the special game, many of them following the usual Freedom City pattern of wearing exaggerated superhero costumes alongside the usual Comets merch. It's a big day, and much to the delight of the home crowd, the Fighters are pulling ahead of their American antagonists. (The team's rivalry is old and arcane, as the best sports rivalries are, dating back to the early days of the Comets franchise in the 1950s when they clashed with the visiting Nippon-Ham Fighters in the West Coast of the US) Outside the rest of the city is bustling along quietly, though the cool, wet fog that's settled over most of the town tonight has kept many of the usual late-Friday-night crowd home or at least inside their favored establishments. Fishing is big here and you can walk into a local restaurant to find freshly-caught sea urchin, salmon, or crab on the menu, or perhaps the famous local jingisukan lamb barbecue. From the taller buildings in town you can see the mountains rising off to the east. Hokkaido has been 'tamed' since the late 19th century when American experts helped the Japanese government exterminate much of the local wildlife during the Meiji period, but at night when the Moon rises over the distant mountains of the island, glimpses of the old Hokkaido can be seen in the forest beyond. Inside the stadium, it's the seventh-inning stretch; a good time to wander up to the concession stand and get a beer or some soup curry, or maybe just sit in the stands and curse that bastard Kataoka and his murderous right arm. Errors by his own team have meant that the Nippon-Ham Fighters pitcher hasn't quite thrown a perfect game - but he's come close! The Comets have kept the Fighters dancing too, but the score is 18-9, and the Comets are going to have to pull off a miracle to win this one!

March 1, 2015 51 Pegasi 50 light years from Earth 51 Pegasi is an LV-type star, the kind of small yellow dwarf utterly undistinguished except for the simple accident of longevity and luminescence that means they are, by a wide margin, the stars most likely to support Lor-type life across the galaxy. 51 Pegasi does have one novelty - 51 Pegasi B, the gas giant trapped a little more than 4 million miles from its home star. 51 Pegasi B is a burning hot world, wracked by storms and super-heated winds that make the planet one of the most hostile in Lor space. Even so, the scientific research station on 51 Pegasi Ba, the single asteroidal satellite of the planet, has always been something of a backwater. The fluid dynamics of superheated gas giants is a vigorously debated scientific discipline, but one with few practical applications. The team from Ohtalv University arrived for their year-long assignment five and a half months ago, a few weeks before Ohtalv University and the rest of Lor-Van was atomized by strong-nuclear suppression from the Communion. A routine scientific posting had suddenly become a refuge, but also a cage - the picket ship usually assigned as their rescue vessel was called away for convoy duty months ago and they have nothing on the base rated to so much as leave the shadow of the asteroid. Of the five person team from the University, their world gone and families dead, supplies dwindling more and more every day, four are still alive. It's a sad story, but a story repeated again and again the Lor Republic. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Until recently. As he sat in the station's control center, Narab Zober watched what would have been the career-making discovery of a scientist a year earlier play out before him with calm interest. Only the cool discipline of his Hephestian martial heritage kept him here, kept him working, and kept thoughts of home, family, and all he had lost out of his mind. Lives had ended - but life went on. "...from deep neutrino scans, the entity has reached the rocky core of Pegasi 51b and has begun what can only be described as _feeding_ on the heavy metals and other materials within." He watched the rippling clouds, gone chaotic in recent days, and raised a long feathered eyebrow, his padded fingers folded on the table in front of him. "To survive at the heart of a super-heated gas giant, the Gorgon's energy and matter absorption abilities must be even greater than previously estimated. Fascinating. At current rate of consumption, I estimate that within seven standard days, Pegasi 51b will have lost its gravitic cohesion and begin breaking up." And then plummet into the burning heart of the star - along with this station. "This is Dr. Narab Zober of Lor Science Station #0047, ending this rotation's report. Tomorrow Dr. M'Kelley will offer her report on the fluid dynamics of a gas giant in the process of core destruction. End transmission." When he was done, he stared at the communications terminal, as if willing a reply by sheer force.

It could have been any street in Freedom City, or almost any city in the world, a crowd of people making there way to work. In the early morning light everyone looked gray and almost the same, but that was because everything seemed to be in black and white. And there was no sounds the people moved in complete silence and more unusual for a telepath no thoughts or emotions leaked from these people. Apart from the two of you standing there as the crowd weaved around you there was a flash of red of a figure moving against the flow of people.

Penthouse, Henderson Apartments, Downtown Freedom City 04:00 am 19th June 2015, First Day of Ramadan Agnus was gently woken from her sleep, snuggled against Amir, by Taylor declaring another beef about someone. Luckily she didn’t need much sleep and she quickly adjusted to the time zones she skipped everyday. And even she had been all tuckered out by what they’d done last night, probably the last time they’d get to do that for a month. “Come on sleepy head time to get up. It’s you that want’s to have breakfast at this ungodly hour.” It was around nine UK time, but she left that part out. Slipping out of bed she padded over naked to the massive window that gave amazing views over the city, without anyone else being able to see what they were doing. Which was quite useful as INS, Aegis and maybe even the League might want to know how and why she was in the country. She still felt a little guilty that this bedroom was probably bigger than her parents entire house, though they stubbornly refused to let her to buy them a bigger home. “You’ve still haven’t told us where we eating this morning.” she put the word morning i air quotes “I need to decide what I’m going to wear to breakfast, it takes a lot of time and effort to fit all this under a Hijab.” she gestured to her mass of hair.

June 18, 2015 Summer vacation had started, and, while he had plenty to do catching up with his studies at Claremont, sleeping was proving to be difficult. It was a little jarring for his roommate at first. While Ralf was very open about the fact that he wasn’t human, he still didn’t like people seeing his natural form. There was a name for that feeling too—self-consciousness. He didn’t like it at all. It made him remember all the scientists who always stared at him, constantly poking and prodding him… He shivered just thinking about it. Ralf had taken to sneaking off campus at night to explore the city. Getting around unseen wasn’t difficult. Shooting across the rooftops was far different from practicing his unusual talents on campus. Well out of sight of the public and traffic below, Amorph fired his arm like a cannon, stretching it until he could wrap it around a nearby pole. From there, he let the pressure lapse, catapulting himself across the alley below and onto the next rooftop. At least, he thought, it isn't raining. He just outright didn't like water. Maintaining his form was much more difficult--not impossible, just more effort than simply staying out of the rain. Sometimes he had nightmares about drifting into a drain and encountering some sewer gator or something. There really was no telling what was down below the city streets... probably more water. The thought alone was kind of horrifying. Better to concentrate on the run--focus on what is, instead of what might be. The more often Ralf used his unique physiology, the more he understood himself—physically, anyway. His body went rigid as he landed, and he felt his shoulder tense up as his arm snapped back to its normal length. By then, he was on the move again, throwing his arms forward to grab on to the roof’s opposite edge as he ran and slingshotting himself across another alley. It was about as tiring as running, but he reveled in the freedom of movement as a whole. He did it to distract himself; of that much, Amorph could be sure. Part of him wondered where his father was, and if he would ever see Dr. Steiner again. Only time, he supposed, would tell.

Kestevan 79 23,000 LY from Earth March 1, 2015 Temperance was seeing the ghost of a dead star pass by. There was a way to say it that was much less poetic and much more scientific. And, although there may have been some literalism to it, given her powers, there was little spiritual thrum out in the void of space. If there were entities that represented the great void, they were likely to cling to the travelers passing through it - and even then, they were keeping a wide berth from her ship. Ship. She said it like it was familiar. She was hurdling through the void on a gigantic hunk of metal, the vacuum of space surrounding her on all sides. She knew enough to know that her head wouldn't necessarily explode if she went tumbling out into the void. That was where her knowledge ended. Everything else, on the other hand, was so limited. This was not her territory. Thank God for the others, then. Three of them had reached out to Sharl. They were space travelers of a sort - that was how she understood it - who had encountered Communion forces on a planet orbiting a star near Kestevan 79. The planet had been destroyed to make way for a wormhole - just like had happened to Lor-Van. By their estimate, and given the Communion forces overseeing the wormhole, they believed that whatever was controlling local operations would be stationed nearby. And they had gathered, through said intelligence, that there had been someone who'd survived Lor-Van who had a knack for electronic frequencies. Who had been on the planet when the Communion forces had organized and attacked. And who might be able to parse their signal through the field of cosmic radiation that made all other efforts impractical. He had recommended that she might want to stay behind. This wasn't her field, and it wasn't her fight. But she'd seen what had happened to him when he had come back. She was not going to leave him to wander into Hell alone. She just had to hope that, when the time came, they could get through the fires together.

Stesha had a problem. Actually, Stesha had a lot of problems, some of which would work themselves out with time, some of which she would have to entrust to other people, and some of which she would deal with herself. But at the moment she had two problems she didn't know what to do with, and there was really only one solution. She needed a lawyer. It wasn't as though Stesha had never used a lawyer before. She'd gone to one of the League's attorneys just a few months ago to help her with the messy and unpleasant business that was even the simplest and most drama-free of divorces. She'd tried to do it herself, but had needed the help when it turned out that the court had problems figuring out jurisdiction when neither of the involved parties made their primary home on the planet. The briskly efficient League attorney had done some kind of legal wizardry involving domicile and precedent and degrees of contact, and it had all worked out in the end, but she kind of never wanted to see that lawyer again, friendly and professional though he'd been. She needed another lawyer. A little asking around in the hero community netted her a good possibility. Lucy Harker was not exactly an average lawyer, being a superhero on the side, but she had her own office on the West End and was open for business. Stesha hoped that, being a superhero and all, she'd be flexible enough to help deal with her two unusual problems, or at least point her in the right direction. She called and made an appointment for Fleur de Joie, then set herself to gathering documents. Lots of documents.