The Conquering Mind (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

The mind-controlled Blue Wall flew right up the Lab, guided far too well by the knowledge the psychic gestalt puppeteering her body had gained from the minds of Freedom City's suborned heroes. As the sonic boom of her arrival faded, the windows all along the block still vibrating, she stopped in mid-air somewhere outside of the building's medical bay. Between her hands, she formed a ball of translucent blue energy and hurled it at the building like a baseball: the force ball smashed into the steel and glass with terrific force, shaking the building and breaking the windows along the front, sending cascades of glass down. And then, she barked in a grim voice, "Come out, Americana! Come out, Hallomen! Come out, program! Come out, and be Conquered! Your minds shall speed the fall of the Collective and the salvation of Earth from the Grue menace!"

[Fox]

Dragonfly's head jerked up at the sound of the building coming under assault, but when she heard her name her head snapped around like a dog orienting on a sharp noise. no - no no no no no She glanced at the immobile, luminescent Miss Americana, but she seemed to be busy; swearing, lights danced behind her eyes as she tapped into the Lab's central nervous system and pointed it at the threat. don't use that name - not here

Panels in the ceilings near Blue Wall slid open, exposing over-sized gun-like nozzles that oriented on the infested hero and unleashed streams of a glue-like substance.

[Avenger Assembled]

The blast of electricity flashed against Protectron's chestplate, scorching the armor and overloading circuits beneath the tough outer shell, temporarily disabling the robot's flight computer. He fell...and suddenly a magnetic hand closed on his wrist. "I've got you!" Sharl's elbow shrieked as he caught Protectron in the air, his electronic muscles giving him strength he'd never have had in the 'real' world. "Come on, we can..." Sharl belatedly realized he wasn't at all sure what they could do: his body hurt from exertion, Protectron was so heavy, and Electrolux was still right there, hands glowing with power. "Come on, you wanna fight? Pick on someone your own size!"

[Electra]

Distantly, Gina could hear the commotion at the Lab, but she was too far away right now to do anything about it. Dragonfly was there, with the resources of the whole building at her disposal. She would be able to handle the disturbance, whatever it was. Right now, she needed to continue blocking progress on this rocket until they could get a better look at it and decide how to deal with it. Sliding her consciousness down the metal wires inside the gantry, she found her way to the motor that powered the gantry elevator. It was a powerful motor, with a major power connection to the wiring system for the whole thing. Using nothing but the power of her mind, she convinced the motor to rev, rev as hard and as fast and as long as ever it could! The elevator shot to the top of the shaft, where it was caught by the emergency braking system even as the cable snapped and rocketed back down the shaft. Loud shrieking metal noises filled the air as the motor strained beyond its capacity until the whole thing burnt out in a cloud of black smoke!

[Fox]

Dragonfly growled, pulling her mind back out of the Lab's cameras and defense system when she was satisfied that the threat was gone...for now, anyway; the chemical goo the Lab fought back with was good, but not perfect, and a super-powered foe was bound to break free eventually. She cast a glance back at Miss Americana to make sure the paragon was doing alright (and still, hopefully, distracted enough to have not noticed her name being announced) before bringing her force field up and heading off toward the bound Blue Wall, muttering dark and impolite things.

[Avenger Assembled]

Outside, the glued-up Blue Wall yelled, "You will be Conquered! All of you will be Conquered and serve the Mind!" She pulled back, flew directly into the side of the building, and Dragonfly heard a terrible, final splat! Looking down with the Lab's cameras, though, she didn't need to worry: the Blue Wall had managed to glue herself against the side of the building and was thoroughly, miserably stuck. She was still there when Dragonfly arrived, but now silent, her voice as still as her slack face.

[Avenger Assembled]

"The program is not in the Laboratory," said Electrolux accusingly. "He has been granted ambulatory capacity. Your intelligence will be destroyed and your technology will be integrated into the arsenal of the Mind." And with that, he hurled a bolt of energy at Sharl, the mind controlling him taking wicked advantage of Sharl's burden to blast him when he couldn't get away! Sharl tensed as the blast approached, all-too-aware of how helpless he was, and cried out "Yeow!" as it struck his beltline. The world blanked out for a second, turning all white, but when it was done Sharl was all right; indeed, now his electronic body was glowing with the same bluish light that Electrolux had hurled at them.

"Is that all you've got!?" Sharl taunted the mind. "We're going to get in there and kick your butt! And don't call me Program!"

[Dr Archeville]

ERROR ERROR ERROR

System integrity compromised due to penetration of outer by plasma bolt. Secondary systems re

booting

Tactical Analysis: Actions by digital entity Sharl prevented immersion into the Great Bay. Had I fallen in, saltwater would have entered through breach in outer shell and shorted out several systems.

"Thank you for halting my descent," the now-fully cognizant robot said to Sharl. It then turned its head to Electrolux and flew towards him again, arms outstretched.

"Attention organic being," it announced, "I do not wish to harm you, but I cannot allow you to continue in this way."

Hypothesis: Superpowered organics with electrical powers often possess a weakness to being immersed in saltwater and similar highly conductive fluids, which cause their body's to short out.

Systems Analysis: Self-Repair systems should restore watertight seal to breached area of outer shell in 9.4235 seconds.

Tactical Analysis: Grapple with Electrolux, drag down into Great Bay.

Secondary Observation: Electrolux's electrical powers did not protect him from possession/infestation by Grue/LV-13 hybrid.

Query: Did powers slow infestation? Slow establishment of control? Would any superpowers do so, or does the Grue elements of the hybrid parasite allow it to adapt to any organic host?

[Avenger Assembled]

Still supercharged by Electrolux's blast, Sharl threw a wild punch that connected solidly with the blue paragon's jaw: to his surprise, it worked all too well! The channeled energy made a crack like a thunderclap as he slugged Electrolux, the sheer force of the unexpectedly powerful blow knocking the mind-controlled Swede out of the sky. "Oh, crap!" said Sharl, watching him fall. "The fall could really hurt him, even as tough as he is, and I don't know if he can breathe underwater like some of you people can...but he's still conscious...Do you think we should catch him?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Meanwhile, Daedalus arrived on the gantry, half-visible in the security cameras mounted along the sides. Gina's work, through Miss Americana, was doing some damage, and had certainly paralyzed launch capacity for the near future. But someone, or rather, something had figured out the computers were being tampered with, and slowly the systems with which was connected were beginning to shut down. But before they did, she felt another interface in the system: the thing controlling Daedalus was using his armor to try and find her! But luckily it was evidently not her equal, and she was safe inside the system, watching the Daedalus probe hunt for her unsuccessfully, even as it began to shut down around her.

[Electra]

Oh no you don't, Gina murmured, Miss Americana's lips forming the words back at the Lab. Daedelus was an amazing technician and inventor, but he wasn't much of a computer guy and he wasn't exactly at his best right now. Suppressing a feeling of schadenfreude that at least the author of this madness had been hoist on his own petard, Gina gave up her cozy home in the gantry and homed in on the probe itself. It saw her coming, all right, an instant before her consciousness plowed through it like a freight train and straight on into the power armor itself, seizing the controls despite the dizzying triple-body feeling. She couldn't do this for long, but It was scientifically fascinating to test her own limits in such a way.

[Avenger Assembled]

Daedalus' armor was in the process of shutting down its connections to the outside of the world, but Gina was able to find one useful thing before she left: the armor had recently uploaded the schematics for the last time a Daedalus built a starship. That was no surprise, she'd seen the ship under construction on the gantry, but not the specifics. This was an interstellar ship, one with range and power to reach the edges of where Earthly scientists speculated the Grue Unity might be. This was no ship for the solar system, this was a ship for the depths of space! And then the connection shut down, returning her cybernetic intelligence to her body.

[Dr Archeville]

Protectron looked back and forth between the falling Electrolux and the floating Sharl.

Observation: Rate of descent may cause serious damage to stunned organic.

Analysis: Though Electrolux is in thrall to the Grue/LV-13 hybrid, severe damage to any organic beings should be avoided.

Action: Recalculating flight path...

The strange robot dove down, hands outstretched to catch the swandiving Swede.

[Fox]

Dragonfly looked down at the thing that had likely been a hero for a moment, with a face somewhere between pity, concern, and dispassion. Fortunately, all three problems - an infected hero, a major threat to the world, and a threat that very nearly exposed some very awkward secrets - had the same solution: she carefully reached out a hand and linked the plating on her gauntlet to its core power, discharging a carefully-measured burst of electricity into the glue-bound captive.

From there it was fairly short work to fold her into her dimensional pocket, and the young engineer was headed off to the elevators. As much as she'd have liked to take the stairs and not trap herself in a small metal box, hazard suit or no, it was a long trip down to the basement floors and their secure holding cells....

[Avenger Assembled]

Protectron was faster than Sharl in the air, so he let the robot catch the falling bad guy. Electrolux was still weakly struggling, but with a little encouragement from Protectron, it was easy enough to subdue the electrically-empowered (usual) hero. "Okay, uh..." Sharl thought for a moment, then said, "We can't keep him here, you know, uh, over the bay, and I don't think we should just let him go. As long as the bad guys are controlling superheroes, we shouldn't give them anyone back. Why don't you fly him back to the Lab, and I'll try and scout around the naval base? I mean, there's not a whole lot they can do to me, right?"

[Electra]

Miss A "woke" with a jerk as Gina's consciousness was tossed out of Daedelus' metal suit and back down the makeshift link she'd formed. Sheer habit and the comfort of the familiar nearly launched her back into her own fleshy body, but at the last moment she managed to grab hold of the cybernetic network that was the basis of Miss A's computerized brain. She gasped for a few moments, uselessly, and tried to organize her thoughts again. It was hard, much harder than it should have been for someone who was used to her mind as a high-performance machine. Twelve hours now, she thought, glancing over at the clock and wishing, once again, that she'd been better prepared for this. Even purely mental exercise took energy, especially the sort of mental exercise that involved stretching her powers this way. Maybe she needed to start giving the fleshy body some more exercise, build up a little more stamina in case of situations like this. Even the idea was unpleasant, so she set it aside for now.

Activating the commlink again, she reached out to the others. "I've just seen what they're doing out at Lonely Point. They're building a rocket to send the new hybrid lifeform out to the Grue Unity to infect them as well. I've disabled some of their equipment and bought us some time, but we need to get out there and stop them before they start infecting the rest of the galaxy as well."

[Fox]

"They're what?" Dragonfly scowled, unceremoniously dumping Blue Wall out of her spatial pocket and onto the floor of one of the holding cells, shutting the door behind her and checking to make sure the small room's locks and nullifiers were operating correctly. "Grue are...bad enough. Don't need infectious Grue. Hero who assaulted the Lab is safely contained, or as safely as possible. Heading back up to rendezvous." She leaned back in the elevator as it took her back up to the biolabs, scowling a little more, if such a thing was possible. "Kind of angry, now."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hey! Hey!" It took Dragonfly's mighty brain only an instant to realize that the voice she was hearing was coming over the communicator from the cells, the one carefully screened to make sure no telepathic or memetic commands were being issued by someone with voice powers. "Oh, thank God! It's gone! Can anyone hear me?" On the little visual feed built into the monitor, she could see Blue Wall's face as she peered around frantically. "Hey, listen! You've got to stop that damned thing in Lonely Point. It's trying to get off Earth and take over the Grue! I don't know what it did, but somehow it got its hooks in the whole damn city! If it doesn't get what it wants, Lord knows what it'll do to the rest of us! If it gets all the telepaths it has together and hooks their brains up, it could grab the whole damn planet!"

[Dr Archeville]

Analysis: Sharl's reasoning is sound.

"Affirmative," the strange robot said flatly. "However, I do advise you take caution. Though the Grue/LV-13 hybrid is unable to directly influence you or I, this confrontation has shown that we must be wary of superpowered organics under its thrall."

"Protectron to Lab," it radioed in via the Lab commlink, already heading back to the center of science with its infected cargo in tow. "Sharl and I were attacked by an infected superhero, codename Electrolux, but Sharl was able to subdue him. I am bringing him back to The Lab for containment and study. Sharl is going on ahead to Lonely Point, to continue scouting, and attempt to stop the infected; one I drop Electrolux off I shall rejoin him, barring any new asks you have set for me."

[Electra]

Miss A listened to the communication from the cell Dragonfly had filled, then activated the internal commlink that would let her respond. "Affirmative, we are aware of the situation and will be handling it. Please remain calm. You are safe where you are, and will be released from confinement as soon as the danger of infection is passed." She disengaged the commlink and engaged the one that would let her speak to her teammates. "Sharl, abort that action and move to rendezvous with the rest of the team. Nobody goes there alone." She massaged her temples,trying to think. "We need to stop the rocket, but only when we have something we can use against the entity inside. Dragonfly, any insight from the bioscans?"

[Fox]

Dragonfly tapped a finger against her leg, not replying until she'd made her way back to the biolab, though she did idly connect to the Lab's security system and tell it that, temporarily at least, Protectron was authorized for all floors and had clearance for the holding cells. mental note - set that back later "Cells on the basement levels are open to you for now, Protectron. Will automatically lock and power dampeners when door shuts. And insight...maybe. Chemical makeup is...mmh. Calcium oxide. Quicklime - weak to, I mean. Vulnerable. Caustic enough normally, would likely react violently to entity's makeup, if entity has same basic structure as the parasites." She frowned, tilting her head. "Also...very strong suspicion the parasites are useless without the central mind. Mentioned earlier that they only really receive, maybe transmit...don't think on their own. Blue Wall's post-capture lucidity is evidence. Cut off from the master entity, host's natural personality reasserts itself. Stopping, shielding, or containing the entity would likely free the city completely."

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl hesitated at Miss Americana's words, but despite his strong natural urge to head straight for Lonely Point and study the situation in much more detail, he opted to obey his teacher. Remembering the powerful defenses there, not to mention the mighty Victory, he was a little concerned at the thought of being attacked all alone. Gina had put on a rather brutal demonstration of the coherency of his body using a surprisingly realistic simulation some time earlier, and he didn't want to take the chance of running into a magnetic field, or of his intelligence somehow being used against his friends by the alien mind inside Lonely Point. "Acknowledged, Miss A. Faster if I don't fly, anyway," he muttered, and soon he joined Protectron on the return flight to the Lab. Still glowing that peculiar shade of blue, Sharl was just behind the robot as they headed for the roof.

[Electra]

"Quicklime?" Miss A asked, fingers flying over the keys of the console she was working at, doing rapid research. "I suppose in a general sense, all organic life is pretty damn vulnerable to that stuff. It's corrosive as all hell. But I suppose that with a sufficiently overwhelming quantity of it, delivered directly to the source, we could destroy the entity, then slake the lime reaction with seawater and avoid lingering danger to the civilians in the area. The problem is going to be the civilians. Quicklime is a fine powder that takes easily to the air, and Lonely Point gets some incredible breezes. We need a delivery vector that will shield not only civilians, but possessed civilians who are more than willing to die for the main entity. Ideas?"

[Dr Archeville]

Protectron deposited Electrolux into the Labs' holding cell, then contacted the others via its now-activated internal comms. Its voice, while still flat, sounded somehow clearer.

Analysis: While all organic life is to be cherished, it is evident the Grue/LV-13 hybrid is deleterious to all other forms of organic beings, and must be contained. Should containment not be an option, destruction would, with regret, be necessary.

"Do scans show Grue/LV-13 hybrid is susceptible to the extreme alkali properties of calcium oxide? If that is it, could a less-alkali solution, one that is less harmful to other organics, be utilized, to at least weaken it so it can be subdued and moved to a location where it can be safely contained? If necessary, then a more caustic agent can be used on it, without fear of harming other organics."

[Fox]

The moment discussion hard turned to designing something to kill the entity Dragonfly closed up on herself, visibly becoming...smaller, arms wrapped in around her body and head hunched down a bit on her shoulders. Her face, what of it was left exposed by her visor, was some nigh-unreadable mix of anxiety, stubbornness, and defiance.

Her mind, meanwhile, had already designed about thirteen quicklime delivery systems, each more lethal than the one that came before it. crystal injector system - ranged hollow-shell mortar for maximum wide-spread - crystal 'bullets'? would need a hardening agent - spacial warp to deliver payload directly inside target - no "...no. No ideas. Won't invent something to kill it. Subdue, maybe. But not kill. Not even this thing."