ic The End of the World (IC)

[Thunder King]

Mali lowered her head and pushed back the tears. She had no words, nothing so noble as what Indira had said. She'd seen so much death lately. First that poor soldier, and then others. Then who she thought at the time was Summers. And now, Sharl. She didn't want to be there anymore. She didn't want to be in the Sanctum, in a lonely cold place in the world. She wanted to be home, in her room. She wanted to curl up like a little ball and leave the world. She needed to in the worst way.

But she didn't.

She couldn't dishonor Sharl's sacrifice by retreating into her shell. She couldn't walk away and let the world deal with it's own problems. She had to stand firm, no matter how hard it hurt. So she bit back her tears, and looked up.

"Guys, we have to go back. We have to go home and help clean up Claremont. We have to let people know what happened." Her words were shaky, and it was clear she was trying hard not to cry, but she managed to get them out. She didn't want them to think her heartless, but they simply did not have time to stand and mourn. The day may have been saved, but there was still so much work to do.

[Electra]

Koshiro stood back for a minute and just stared, his mind completely blank. Heroes weren't supposed to die. None of them were supposed to die, especially not Sharl who was practically invincible to the million things that were dangerous to Koshiro, and who talked all the time about how he was going to go home to Tronik and be the first superhero there. And how could Sharl be dead and still be around, still be projected? He realized the answer to that a moment later, at least. The emitter was still running, and whatever had ended Sharl had stripped him of consciousness and life, but not of all those lines of code that made up the picture of the physical shell. "What happened?" he asked Kimber, his voice hoarse and tight. "Is Tronik okay?"

He shook himself from the shock that covered grief long enough to address Mali. "We can't go yet," he told her. "We still have Erde-Tronik, and all the weapons. We have to do what we came to do. If we can manage it without... without Sharl."

[Gizmo]

Kimber leaned into Kristin, pushing her face against the telekinetic's shoulder without stopping to question the mechanics of the hug. "I... I don't know!" she lamented, the words muffled until she turned around to face Koshiro, her translucent blue face splotchy and wet with tears. "The Curator was so strong in there, he was just... erasing people and going on and on about being their god and how he was unstoppable and even when we started to win he said he'd keep coming back and Sharl..." She looked reflexively down at the still form and her face screwed up with pent up sobbing as she struggled to remain coherent. "He jumped into the Curator, like a possession or... or something, I don't know! I just don't! He did something and the Curator was gone!" The phantom shuddered in Glow's arms, jaw moving silently for a few moments before she could add, "And I don't know where... He was a person but I can't feel his death at all, there's just nothing! It isn't fair!" She shouted the last word, echoing the sentiment they were all feeling.

[Avenger Assembled]

The tentacles the Curator had extruded through the Sanctum gradually flaked away into crumbly ruin as Young Freedom went about the grim duty of disposing of the bio-weapons they'd been carrying and finding a safe harbor for the city that their friend had died, in part, to protect, leaving behind corridors swiss-cheesed with holes in the walls or blocked by fallen debris. As far as Koshiro, the most experienced of them all in going through abandoned buildings could tell, the Sanctum itself was still structurally intact, but they could hear the wind howling down some corridors much louder than they had on their last visit - some parts of the structure were open to the elements and would most likely need repair. But most of the famous structure had endured this attack just like any other indignity, and had survived. They found the Wonder Bus outside in the snow, the tough craft having fallen out the eye of the fallen headship before Glow could catch it. It was intact, as far as they could tell, and powered on at their approach, ready to take them home. Casting the bioweapons deep into the depths of the Zero Zone was easy enough; the instructions for the projector being so simple that even the least technically savvy of them could do it.

Connecting the two Troniks, both saved from disaster, was beyond their resources, and probably a potential disaster anyway. But it was easy enough to find the power connector Sharl had marked and to leave it connected to the internal power supplies of the Sanctum, sharing the same room as its dimensional counterpart. Even if the young hero who'd hoped to unify the two Troniks was gone now, there was no denying that the mission had succeeded - Erde's Tronik had come home.