ic Mile in My Shoes [IC]

[Avenger Assembled]

Citizen rocketed out of the museum, propelled by the sheer channeled power of Corbin's ring. It took him a few moments to realize he was easily flying far faster than he ever had before, easily keeping pace with and catching up to the rapidly retreating, now fire-wielding Professor Fathom. He reached out with a few desultory swipes, but just couldn't close the gap with the fleeing mad scientist. Sharl knew he was overextending himself, but even with everything messed up, he was pretty sure Fathom's allies couldn't catch them either. He was scared, really scared, but pushed past it as best he could with memories of his last great existential crisis, taunting Fathom to distract himself. I've been in the crucible before.

"You think being taken apart and put back together will stop me, you primitive screwhead? That stuff is yesterday's freaking news for me! Yeah, you better run, because when I catch you, you're gonna be fixing what you did! "

[Fox]

"H-hey!" Wraith was slow to respond to the fleeing villains, but as her teammates were called to action she snapped herself out of her meat-induced cringing long enough to notice that the artifact - the apparent cause of this horrible, horrible physical body - was moving away much faster than she'd have liked. Normally she'd have stretched out a limb, or moved to four legs to give chase, but what had always just been a human disguise had enough of a faked 'bone structure' that she knew neither of those options would work now.

It didn't stop her from trying, though: she desperately reached out a hand and tried to reach out...and did. Only...not. She couldn't quite explain it - she wanted so badly to grab the fleeing fire-fueled felon, and it was like her mind was as flexible as her old body. A set of ghostly silver tentacles surrounded Fathom, fading into being from all directions and out of seeming nowhere to bind his body in place.

She seemed as surprised as anybody, if still a little ill. "....w-wait. So I am...psychic? And Cobalt Templar is a ghost, and Citizen is fire, and Ghost Girl has the cranes, then...." She trailed off, glancing around with until she spied the puddle. "I - I think you are me, Papercut. Or...you are what I was? You are going to have to...oh, how do I explain." "Do not...do not think about what you are. Think of yourself as what you want to be. ....perhaps something with legs and arms? Imagine what you normally look like, and how it feels when you are a normal...what is the word, 'biped'?"

[Electra]

The puddle on the ground lashed out a tendril of liquid metal towards Sylph as the rocky villainess ran away, but it only extended about ten feet before falling back to the ground with a wet splat. The silvery liquid congealed once again into a round puddle, still muttering vile curses in a couple of different languages, then fell silent for a moment. Ripples began to form at the center of the puddle, spreading and growing until all at once, the entire thing distended as though someone were rocketing out of the floor beneath it. A vaguely humanoid shape appeared, bipedal and four-limbed with a head on top, though there were no real features but for a collection of floating eyespots drifting around on the top of the head. It lurched forward a step, then formed a mouth to utter an extremely pithy obscenity. It didn't look as though Papercut would be joining the fight anytime soon, but at least he was no longer an oil slick on the floor.

[Gizmo]

Granite, in his current watery form, glanced over his shoulder when he spotted Fathom's predicament in the sky overhead only to see Sylph under attack as well. With an angry grunt, he surged himself back into the museum through the newly opened hole in the wall, placing himself between the now rocky villainess and the teenage heroes. "Hey, back off, right? S'like the prof'd say: you're all wet!" The elemental's outstretched arms became cannons of surging water that crashed into Wraith. Despite her suddenly frailer physiology, the alien-turned-human weathered the torrent, her warrior's training serving her just as well as it always had.

Floating raggedly through the air outside, Pyre noted the situation of his teammates as well... and took to opportunity to continue making good his escape. He was still shaken up by Sage's earlier beating, new form or no, and the powers he'd borrowed from Sylph had proven ineffective against at least a few of the do-gooders. "Tch, they'll be fine..." he muttered, looking for a convenient cloud to hide within.

[Gizmo]

"Maybe you should back off instead!" the not-so-ghostly Ghost Girl shouted back at Granite as he attacked Wraith, momentarily wishing she'd gotten some measure of Koshiro's ability to talk smack along with his powers. Oh, right! Powers! Um, okay..." Reaching back into her pockets to retrieve another handful of paper cranes, she lifted them towards the liquid attacker. "Get him! ...er. Go? Fly! Paper powers activate?" The folded birds lay lifeless in her palm. "Jams, how do these work?"

Stamping one foot in frustration, she called out to the ethereal cowboy fighting the villains up close. "Cee Tee! You can freeze him! You just have to... It's like, imagine you're in a cabin with a blizzard outside and you're opening the door and letting all the wind and ice and snow in! Only you're letting it out and the door is your face!" She gave Cobalt Templar an encouraging thumbs up with her free hand.

[Gizmo]

Only just visible in the sky through the crumbling hole in the museum's roof, Fathom raged against the psionic tentacles binding him in place. "Child," he snarled at Citizen, red flames flaring angrily next to blue, "I don't know what's happened to any of us, but rest assured, when I unlock this power, the first thing I will do with it is feed you your own cretinous fist!" His form glowed brighter and brighter as he struggled until he all but exploded in a wave of heat. With Wraith occupied by Granite's attack down below, the telekinetic constructs evaporated, allowing Fathom to blaze further away from the scene of the crime. "Ha! These powers always were wasted on Connors."

[April]

There was a momentary sense of shock at firing lasers from her eyes, but it quickly passed as Sage shook her head and brought her focus back on the more immediate problems. Moving with her customary grace and speed the talented acrobat took off after the rock infused Sylph. Slipping past Granite, a powerful leap sent Sage sailing over the fleeing villain, only to have her immediately reverse direction, slip to the side of Sylph and level a powerful punch to her head.

"Cobalt Templar is going to be upset you wrecked his museum, precious," Sage quipped readying herself to deliver another blow.

[KnightDisciple]

Cobalt Templar nodded his head faintly as Ghost Girl spoke.

"Right, wind, ice, snow, face, out, gotcha."

Corbin tried to breath a torrent of cold out of his mouth, but all that came out was a wisp of misty air. He sighed in frustration, and concentrated on the images his teammate had given him. But instead of from his mouth, he found himself reaching for the ghostly weapon on his back. A tool clearly formed from his subconscious, and his tendency to fight with constructs more so than his own body.

'Long as it stops the bad guys I guess...'

He hefted it into his hands, planted his feet in the air, and took aim at Granite and Sylph. A grin suddenly split his face.

"I think both of y'all need to chill out."

Then a torrent of icy wind poured out from the battered ethereal shotgun, washing over the two villains like the worst Arctic blizzard in history.

[Gizmo]

"Eeurgh!" Sylph raised a rocky arm to shield her face, catching the bulk of the wintery blast aimed at her. Shaking away the ice crystals that had formed in the spaces between stoney outcroppings, she glared at the heroes. "You little monsters! William, be a dear and drown them, won't you?" When there was no immediate response she turned irritably to her teammate. "I said-- oh." Granite's temporarily watery form had been frozen completely solid by the buckshot blizzard, rendered into an ice sculpture with a particularly surprised look on its face. "Blast." Turning abruptly with surprising speed considering her new size, she threw a massive fist in Sage's direction, but the white-haired Frenchwoman was ready for it, neatly side stepping the attack. "...I should clarify I didn't mean 'monster' as a bad thing, darlings," Sylph attempted with a weak smile on her craggily maw.

[Avenger Assembled]

"YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED? YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED?!?" His program embedded in Corbin's ring, cut off from the familiar worldwide network connections around Freedom City, the stark terror of wondering what had happened came surging up through Sharl at the news that the maniacal supervillain had nothing to do with everyone's transformation. The tremendous bulk of his massively projected form, held together only through the sheer force of will that he had once used to keep himself together through utter chaos and madness, seemed to give special weight to his words as he boomed, "THEY'RE GOING TO LOCK YOU IN THE CELL WITH MADAME ZERO! GET BACK HERE, YOU VACUMN-TUBE-USING GROUNDBOUND SCREWHEAD!" He rocketed after Fathom and landed a devastating blow across the other man's back, cursing as his hand burned. Of course! I'm not in Tronik, now am I? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[Gizmo]

Surprisingly enough, it seemed that with Pyre's borrowed form, Fathom was actually one of the more solid members of the Factor Four. There was a crunching sound as Citizen's giant blue fist of fire crashed into the villain like a briquette being crushed underfoot. Fathom went limp as the force of the blow sent his unconscious form sailing though the air in a downward arc that ended with a splash and sizzle in the south river surrounding the city. A sizable column of steam marked the spot where he'd sunk beneath the surface of the water, the Quantum Bauble still in hand.

[Fox]

Wraith frowned as she lost her mental grip on Fathom and he flew out of view; this psychic stuff was hard. She couldn't move herself, but she could move her...brain....?

The thought of having a lumpy grey brain floating around in her skull (her skull) made her a little ill again, and she tried not to think about it.

She'd almost given up when she finally hit on the right state of mind, her concentration rewarded with a long, curved scythe of mental power arcing off her arm. It wasn't perfect - and its weird weightlessness was no substitute for a proper metal creation - but she was delighted none the less. She wasted no time in running up to the stoned Sylph and swiping it through her rocky body.

[Electra]

Papercut swiveled his "head" from side to side, taking in the scene even as the fight raged around him. It wasn't just him having problems, everyone was different now, everyone had somebody else's powers. How the hell could that have happened? Now didn't seem to be the right time to think about that, so instead he zeroed in on Kimber, who was looking unusually healthy and holding a very familiar handful of birds. He watched as she tried in vain to shake them to life, shaking his own head. "Ghost Girl!" he called, his voice weird and echoey, but more like his own than before. "Put them on your hand and blow on them. They need you to give them life! Same with the plane!" He didn't know if she'd have his plane, since it had gotten soaked to death minutes earlier, but nothing else about this situation made a lot of sense, so who knew?

He took an experimental step, then another, feeling the strange material that made up his new body flex and flow. Just another kind of sculpture, he told himself. Only this was Silly Putty instead of paper. Wraith could do all sorts of insane stuff with this, make hammers, whips, blades, extra legs... As he thought about it, the stuff of his arms began to change again, forming long, thin blades where hands should've been. His legs changed too, becoming longer and thinner, nearly springy. He could work with that. Lurching forward with the surprising speed of his new form, he launched himself at Granite, crashing blades-first into the ice-cube man and making visible cracks in the watery surface.

[Gizmo]

For the time being, it didn't look like the frozen Granite was going anywhere. Turning her attention to Sylph, Ghost Girl gathered up a second handful of paper cranes and lifted them up. "Give them life, right! Haha, that's actually kind of ironic, eh? Hoo boy..." she laughed nervously before rolling her shoulders and suppressing a startled jump when she actually felt the physical muscles these loosen at the gesture. Taking a deep breath, she blew on the origami sculptures, sending them streaming toward the rocky villainess. The attack looked very much like Papercut's usual trick but everywhere Kimber's breath touched the birds their paper blackened until it was a flock of crows that pecked away at the gaps between Sylph's stoney surface.

[April]

Sage shook her head and tut-tutted at Sylph in clear disapproval as she neatly sidestepped the villainess's attack, chin-length white hair swirling from the sudden movement. "Sorry," the telepath said with a faint smile, "I fear I'm going to have to take that 'monster' comment personally. You know how sensitive we children can be."

Without waiting for her reply, Sage slipped inside the Sylph's reach and delivered a devastating punch to the battered villain, causing her to unbalance and fall. With Sylph down, Sage's view of Granite was clear and calling upon the burning behind her eyes she lashed his frozen form with her new heat vision.

[KnightDisciple]

Cobalt Templar looked around, taking in the situation as a whole. Two of their opponents had fled, with Citizen in pursuit of one of them.

'He'd better not lose my ring. Or I'll wring his holographic neck...'

It seemed his earlier frustration was still lingering, especially with his rather sudden switch to being, well, dead. Or dead-ish, perhaps. The mechanics of the matter eluded him, and he was still caught up in the rush of a fight. He glanced at the golem-like Slyph on the ground, then turned to the frozen form of Granite, floating to stand right in front of him. An almost apologetic expression crossed his face as he holstered the shotgun and drew back his left hand for something of a haymaker.

"Look, at this point I'm not really mad at you or anything, but there's no way I'm not going to make sure you stay put even if that ice goes away. I hope this doesn't hurt much, and maybe we can get things sorted out soon. For all our sakes."

With that, his ethereal arm shot forward and was buried up to the elbow in Granite's crystallized chest.

[Gizmo]

Sage's devastating punch caught Sylph right under her rocky jaw, tiny bits of orange-brown stone crumbling and flaking off at the force of the blow. Her heat vision cut into Granite's frozen form before the villainess' bulky body had even collapsed to the museum floor. Two wisps of water vapour rose from the points where the beams bit, sublimating the ice while beginning to thaw some of the surrounding frozen water. It was difficult to tell if Cobalt Templar's ghostly intrusion was having much affect on the water elemental one way or the other, given his lack of response.

[Avenger Assembled]

The sight of the falling bauble and falling supervillain shocked Citizen, so much so that he nearly fell completely out of the projected body he'd so carefully rebuilt around himself! The world bloomed blue fire all around him as the ring threatened to devour his consciousness again, and for a moment he was falling as helplessly as Fathom! Struggling mightily, he pulled himself back together, albeit at normal size, just in time to see the Bauble hit the water in one direction and Fathom hit the water further out to sea, falling bonelessly into the big bay. Sorely tempting as it was to leave the man who was probably the architect of the current disaster to his fate, there really was only one reasonable option.

Citizen dived from the sky like a flaming falcon and shot beneath the waves, grabbing Fathom by the wrist and rocketing out of the water seconds later, still clinging tightly to the fallen foe. "When we get out of this, and we will, I am going to have some serious words with you, mister," he said aloud as the two of them zoomed back towards the museum.

[Fox]

With Sylph down, the only villain remaining seemed to be Granite...and Wraith, try as she might, was having an awfully hard time working up the motivation to really try to hurt him. He didn't seem like a bad sort, kind of, and she wasn't entirely sure what her new powers would do to a sculpture. Did shattered ice sculptures live through the experience?

Instead she closed her eyes, trying to reach out and...talk? Listen?

Mostly she just stood there for a moment looking a little frustrated before giving up and sighing. "How is it that you do the...mind-talking thing? This is all very confusing."

[Electra]

Papercut was startled and not entirely happy when Ghost Girl's breath turned his paper cranes sooty black, but he had to admit that it did nothing to dampen their effectiveness. In fact, they looked a little more intimidating that way. Maybe, once this insanity was settled and he was normal again, he should try folding a few with black paper. But for now he had other concerns. "That's good," he called to Kimber, voice growing progressively less tinny. "Now get the plane, it should be in the hoodie pocket. Blow it out of your hand, then control it with your will. Make it come back to you, and you can jump on it and go help Citizen!"

He turned back to the fight, only to see it wasn't much of a fight anymore. Sylph was unconscious on the ground, and Granite was an icy unmoving block with Cobalt Templar's ghostly arm buried in his chest. That was just weird looking. Papercut braced, his unnaturally long arms bunching up, ready to deliver a blow, but loathe to do so unless the guy actually had some game left. It wasn't fair to gang up on a helpless guy, even a villain. "I think he's done," he called to Corbin.

[Gizmo]

Granite certainly didn't look like he was going anywhere any time soon, his frozen form failing to react to anything going on around him. Chances were he wasn't going to be happy about the treatment of his teammates when he finally thawed out but with any luck that wouldn't be until after he'd been safely contained by the authorities.

Hesitating for a moment, Ghost Girl did as Papercut instructed, pulling out the paper airplane she found in her hoodie's pocket and blowing it out her palm. It grew to massive size as it soared in a lazy arc around the damaged museum just as she's seen it do many times before under its creator's guidance, but again the paper darkened to a brittle looking black, the back edges of the plane looking tattered and scorched. The unsettling appearance didn't seem to affect its flight however, and as Kimber waved it back toward her like an overenthusiastic bowler it returned, allowing her to jump on.

Gripping the forward creases of the paper, the inexperienced pilot was rocketed out through the hole in the ceiling with a yelp, swerving about as she gradually regained control of the plane's movements. Before too long she'd managed to pull up beside Citizen's blue, fiery form. "Hi!" she called over the sound of the wind, letting go with one hand long enough to wave cheerfully. "This seems a lot higher up when you can actually fall!"

[Avenger Assembled]

"Man, am I glad to see you! Here, take him! He can't burn while he's knocked out." said Sharl urgently, all but tossing the unconscious supervillain into the plane with Kimber. He was really glad to see Kimber, and not just because it was nice to see someone more cheerful than he and Fathom had been over the last few minutes. Seeing her fly up in what looked like one of Koshiro's paper planes burnt to a crisp was disconcerting, but not even the weirdest thing that had happened in the last hour or so. "I can't control the ring without Corbin and I'm liable to-"

The ring fell, spinning helplessly through space and down towards the hole in the building, before by sheer force of will Sharl pushed himself back out into the world again. "Reticulating...yeah!" He pumped his fist, his body sizzling with blue fire hot enough that he didn't dare touch anything as he drifted inside. "Kimber's got Fathom, he's out cold. But we've got a problem. He dropped the Bauble."

[KnightDisciple]

"Sharl, stop emitting fire! You're going to burn down the priceless artifacts that didn't get wrecked in this fight!"

Before he could work up a good rant-lecture, Corbin stopped to consider something, giving a defeated sigh as he crossed his arms over his chest and floated closer.

"Okay, look. The ring responds to willpower, right? It's literally about self-control, and imposing your will on it to control what it does. It may have "modes", but really it runs off of your imagination. You have to imagine yourself not emitting heat and flame like this, then just concentrate and will it to be so. You absolutely have to assert yourself over that ring. You're the boss, not it. You have to tell it what's going to happen, then believe it's going to happen. Or else it'll sputter out on you."

His tone was serious but not confrontational; if anything, he sort of sounded like a teacher at the moment.

[Fox]

"He dropped the bauble??" Wraith's voice had an edge of panic to it, her awful, horrible, involuntarily moving meatiness returning to the fore of her mind now that the fighting seemed to be over. "Where? Can we not get it back? If it is in the water, I could walk out to find it, though it might--no, I have to breathe...this...we have to get it back! This is awful; I do not know how anyone-...."

She took a deep breath, hoping it was as calming as it seemed when she'd seen humans doing so. It helped, somewhat. "I am...sorry. I believe I am having difficulty adjusting - but I would very much like to fix this as soon as we can."

[Gizmo]

Kimber had had time to get used to Cobalt Templar's fires, enough to know that they didn't actually burn like normal flames unless he wanted them to. Even so, the difficulty Sharl was having exerting that kind of fine control over the borrowed ring was beginning to make her more than a little nervous. With the entire team only a hair's breadth from panic, however, the temporarily living girl did her best to remain calm as her giant paper airplane flew back into the museum, dropping the doused Fathom off next to the similarly unconscious Sylph by banking and letting him tumble off heavily.

"Cee Tee, don't get too close!" she yelped as the cowboy hat wearing phantom floated closer to the struggling AI. "You, um... fire can still hurt you. A lot," she finished quietly and a little sheepishly as the airplane carried her around the entire group in a wide circle. "But hey! We beat the bad guys, right? I mean, that's totally the hard part done!" Holding onto the front edge of the plane with one hand, she gave the team a thumbs up with the other as she circled. "Plus finding an artifact is probably going to be like super easy, 'cause a whole third of the gang is basically Indiana Jones already! So cheer up!"

There was a silent pause that took her all the way through another loop around the showroom. "...I don't know how to get down."