ic Interceptors: From the Ground Floor [IC]

[Ecalsneerg]

"It's not a treehouse!" insisted Chris, leaning on a wall. He paused to check the wall wasn't going to collapse behind him, and patted the stone a couple of times experimentally just to make sure. "There's also a cave."

"Anyway... where exactly are you going to be living? Tell me it's not the basement with VINCE." He glanced at the AI. "Sorry, dude." He looked back at Erik. "Because this doesn't look comfy."

[April]

"He mentioned a second floor," Willow reminded Chris. She wanted to thank the youth for guiding the subject away from the recent past. The team--more an extended family--still felt the pain at the losses and betrayals.

Some more than others, Willow thought as she glanced at Erik. She smiled at the swordsman. "Perhaps we should tour that floor as well," she suggested. Facing VINCE's monitor, she asked, "I imagine you have monitoring devices, as well as a means of communicating, upstairs as well?"

[Gizmo]

"Do I have cameras and speakers throughout the building? Yes!" Vince confirmed with a beaming smile and a pair of thumbs up. Placing one hand to the side of his mouth conspiratorially, he added, "Have they been hooked up properly so I can actually use them? Well..." The AI shrugged with ill concealed amusement.

"Aheh, yeah, well," Erik coughed, rubbing the back of his neck with a chagrined wince. "If Liz maybe wanted to take a look at those, too, that would probably be good," the swordsman admitted to Chris.

Ellie snorted as she led the way back out of the basement. "You don't mean your peerless technical skills somehow fell short of the task, do you?" she scoffed with mock incredulity. "Surely not!"

"Yeah, yeah, yuk it up, hermanita..." her brother grumbled. Reflexively putting an arm around Willow's slender shoulders, minding her pregnant form, he followed back up the stairs.

[Dariusprime]

If any of Vince's cameras were properly operational, they picked up a familiar form striding confidently up to the school. Fulcrum gave the building a skeptical once over before pushing the front door open. The distinctive hitch didn't register against her push, and that may have registered as a problem to super-sensitive ears.

Finding the Interceptors wasn't much of an issue. Fulcrum simply relied on her impeccable detective skills to deduce the location and speed directly there! Actually, scratch that, she visited Gina, caught up on the local goings on, and then zipped right over to the new school. If not for excitement overriding anxiety, taking off and seeing them another seemed like a good option. Thankfully, she was too excited, and missed her second family too much, to do such a thing.

But there she was, looking around the main room as the team came up the stairs. Her costume was different, less blue and more gold, but the heroine looked none the worse for wear considering what happened those months ago. In reality she looked better than ever: peaceful, more powerful, even regale. However he interpreted the war between her power dampers and Terminus metabolism, if Erik didn't get a feeling when she landed, he certainly did now.

Fulcrum looked to the basement stairs and smiled.

[Ecalsneerg]

"Oh come on," sighed Chris, following the Espadases up the stairs. "I could wire up the cameras and speakers, it's hardly a difficult job. I mean, for a man who makes giant swords, a sure sign of masculine overcompensation, you don't even do DIY, the sworn province of the man with something to prove?" The teenager shook his head ruefully.

"One would be forgiven for assuming th- Fulcrum?" Geckoman stopped dead in his tracks at the huge figure appearing at the top of the stairs. "Um... hi?" He raised a couple of hands to his chin, as if to push his jaw back up off the floor.

[April]

"What does he have to prove?" Willow asked, lifting her head from Erik's shoulder. The dryad didn't let that question linger in the air; the many months of company she had spent with her new family allowed her to recognize the sort of opening that question provided. Instead she filled the space by asking, "For that matter, what do any of you have to prove?"

Fulcrum's sudden appearance at the top of the stairs caused the next thing she was going to say to die on her lips. With a murmured apology--and a brief kiss on the cheek--Willow extracted herself from Erik's embrace and stalked up the remaining stairs--as well as one so obviously pregnant can stalk up the stairs--and brought herself in front of the Persian amazon.

"Mona," Willow started. "You're late."

[Gizmo]

Ellie barely shifted as Willow pushed passed her, frozen in place on the stairway, eyes wide as saucers over a face covered by both hands. It was several long moments before her body forced itself to resume breathing in the absence of any orders from a shocked mind. "Oh, Dios..." she whispered, and the words seemed to her to be coming from someone else.

For his part, Erik moved past Chris and his sister without thinking about it, reflexively moving to the fore and only catching himself a handful of steps behind Willow. Expression had drained from his face and the knuckles of the hand gripping the railing were nearly bone white. "If this... is a trick or a hedge, something Archeville cooked up," he began very, very quietly but growing in volume as he blue eyes flashed with visibly erupting emotion, "then you want to be very far away. Promise me that it's really you, Mo'. Swear it."

[Dariusprime]

"Hey, Gecks. Looking good," said Fulcrum before Willow's approach.

Fulcrum took surprise at her obvious belly, and replied lightly, "So are you, Willow. Congratulations!" Again her focus shifted, obviously seeing them threw her for a loop as well.

Ellie and Erik, their voices, thats what fired her memory. The happy smile widened into a big grin. "I swear, Erik. I'm as real as your Mom's special coffee cake."

She reached out one impossibly long arm and offered her hand. One had to be delicate about such things, considering the sword master's disbelief. Despite the look on her face saying she'd rather gather the whole team up in a huge, bear hug.

[Gizmo]

There was a pause and heavy silence before Ellie wordlessly ran forward ignoring Mona's outstretched hand to wrap her arms as far around the statuesque paragon as they could reach. Her older brother was only a few steps behind her, the wariness holding him in place bending than snapping loose as he practically tackled his long absent friend. "Mo', we thought... I really thought you were..." he attempted to make out from within the hug, for once completely unconcerned by appearances.

The fencer made a ragged sound as he stepped away finally, something that wasn't quite sure if it was a laugh or not. Rubbing his jawline, he grinned in spite of himself. "So, uh, listen," he began finally with a glance in Willow's direction before turning back to Mona. "You still babysitting?"

[Dariusprime]

"I know...I know...," she replied softly, wrapping them both in her arms and holding them. Her throat tightened, and she couldn't speak. Instead she just held them close, crying softly. Eventually, as they all slowly regained their composure, she sniffed and said, "Takes more than an Elder Evil to kill me." She gazed off into the distance.

Visions of her final battle flashed through her mind's eye. The flying horror boiling, mutating, ever warping the very existence around it. Herself, roaring as Entropy pooled within her yet did not destroy her. She remembered the sickly red light of the Terminus Stream in the distance, and the maddening idea that this god only feared one thing: oblivion.

Erik's movement brought her back to reality. She couldn't help but grin as his question. "For you, anytime." She hefted Ellie up in one arm, like she carried her years earlier, and looked around at the group, "What else have I missed?"