ic What's Eating You?

[Avenger Assembled]

"Dr. Albert Daniels," said the best-dressed of the group, for all that his bow tie, suspenders, and blue shirt were all stained with what looked to have been his own blood. Elsewhere, another colleague, a middle-aged woman, was looking for the others of the group. They were all watching Fleur closely - the suspicious looks that Fleur was beginning to realize were what people who had never seen a superhero looked like when they saw her. "My colleagues _were_ investigating the Anopheles cult when they ambushed us on the waterfront." He turned and looked at the machine, shuddering. "It was all a trap. They wanted the blood of six in one to open their gateway - which I guess was supposed to be us." He eyed Fleur suspiciously. "Are you...rival wizards? We've seen cultists fight over tomes, but never anyone who'd stop to rescue a stranger." 

 

"Pardon me, good sir and madames-" Frost began to ask, but his appearance brought an even more startled exclamation from the rescued civilians. 

 

"Great cats! What is that thing?" 

[Electra]

"Oh no, we're not wizards," Fleur said in her most calming voice, a smile still on her face. "This may be difficult for you to understand, but we're from another dimension, another world that is similar to this one, but different in many ways. We're superheroes, humans with special powers that we use to do good and help humanity." She would have added "and other sentient species," but didn't want to lay too much on these folks at once. "My name is Fleur de Joie, like I said, and I am a plant controller." She placed a seed on her palm and grew a marigold from it for illustration, then set it aside. "And my teammate over there is Comrade Frost, an energy controller." She gave herself a lot of credit for saying that in a tone completely free of unflattering inflection. "We became aware of something bad going on here that was bleeding into other worlds and came here to help. Are all of you all right?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

And then, suddenly, things were different. 

 

In a transition that came so fast the bees nearly plowed into a shining glass building, suddenly the damage was gone! There'd been not even a ripple in the air to explain it - the heroes were there, in the murdered version of Freedom City, and then suddenly the city was alive again. Skyscrapers reached up high, higher than they had before, their damaged structures and the insects that had swarmed inside them gone like a nightmare. The giant bees spun wildly around like so many startled blimps before they hastily circled around the superheroes, buzzing frantically in shock at the sight they beheld. 

 

"WHAT IZ IT? WHAT HAPPENED?" demanded Super-Bee. "WHERE DID THEY GO?" 

 

-

 

"We're all right," said Daniels, his still-silent partner having checked on the welfare of everybody. Daniels didn't look armed, but his colleague had dug around in the pockets of one of the cultists until she came up with a large, still-shining handgun - even if she had to take a handkerchief from her pocket to actually hold the now ice-cold metal. "I've seen some pretty terrible things in this business, even worse than the war, but you two, even..." He shot a look at Frost, who waved, before turning back to Fleur. "You two aren't the monsters we fight. I'm glad to meet you." 

 

"The war?" asked Frost curiously. "What war?" 

 

"The World War." And with his words, suddenly the clothes, the basement furnishings, the old-fashioned furnace, all of it made sense. 

 

"What is year?" 

 

"1927?" said Daniels curiously. "Are the years different where you're from?"

[Fox]

Tiamat gave a low, rattling growl, swooping in to perch on the edge of the nearest towering roof, Gaian Knight meeting her there only seconds later. "....so, uh. Ideas? I can't speak for everyone, but this is sure a new one on me. Convenient, but new."

"....I don't like it," the dragon hissed, head snaking around to eye the city. One clawed limb dug into the corner of the building as she wiped the other across her mouth to rid herself of the last ashes of burnt ichor and mosquito. "Life is never so easy. The bugs disappearing as some kind of last resort escape I would believe, but cities do not repair themselves this way."

"Yeah....yeah. Somehow I don't think we're that lucky," the geokinetic mused, frowning down at the newly-restored metropolis. "Feels more like the world changed than we did, but who knows...maybe Fleur and Frost did something?"

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel quickly curtailed his battle-song as the world shifted around them. Only long hours of ignoring normal senses of up and down while flying, and a couple of years of practice quickly shifting between Earth-Prime and Sanctuary, kept him from feeling more than a quick flutter in his stomach. He stood calmly on his perch on Super-Bee's back for several moments, his gaze sweeping the restored and repaired skyline, before casually stepping onto open air and floating over to land next to the other heroes. His voice carried just a bit to the bees.

 

"Peace, sisters in arms. Remain alert, but the danger may be past."

 

More quietly he spoke to Gaian Knight and Tiamat.

 

"I thought they were going to the hive-world of these bugs? This is...this is more like they went back in time? What kind of portal did they step through?"

[Electra]

Fleur's eyes widened as she looked at Daniels. "1927?" she repeated, taking another hard look at the technology around them, at the clothes on the people they'd just fought and rescued. "FROST!" she yelled suddenly. "I thought you said this was going to take us to some kind of hellish insect dimension! Not to the past! What did we just do to these people? Did we change history? Or spin off another alternate history?" She shook her head. "Time travel stuff is just the absolute worst. I did not need this today." 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Greetings!" A voice from below caught the attention of hero and bee alike - though what a face that voice belonged to. The hero wore a fairly typical superhero outfit - a spandex costume that was mostly black with green highlights, with a light green cape behind him. On his chest and cape were an arcane symbol like a warped star. Warped seemed to be the right word for this fellow. His skin was a sickly shade of green and his arms and leged were scaled; as were the wings behind his back. He smelled, up close, faintly of the sea and of salt. "Welcome to Earth, Freedom League. I'm Warlock. It's nice to meet you at last. He didn't say anything about...WHY ARE THERE GIANT BEES?" he added, shouting over their buzz. 

 

- 

 

"And I was right," said Frost, a trifle defensively. "But you see what happened?!?" he demanded of the others as he waved his hands over the arcane symbols on the walls. "It was closed time loop! The Anopheles incursion came in _this_ world. You see how they had planned to swap their bodies with the creatures?" he asked, pointing at some unpleasant-looking glyphs written in what was almost certainly blood. "Making it a native Incursion and thus guarding themselves from whatever Pact exists on this plane. Magnificent work, odious little parasites they are." 

[Electra]

Temporarily ignoring the people she'd just saved, Fleur stalked towards Comrade Frost, her remaining vines coiling around her feet like a nest of snakes. "So what you're saying is that we went back in time and we completely ERASED the entire world we were just in? And all the people who were still alive and needed our help are just what, gone now?" Her eyes widened even further as she clapped a hand over her mouth. "I have two dozen refugees on Sanctuary waiting to be able to go home! What am I supposed to tell them?" The vines did not go so far as to actually begin swarming Frost's legs, but they were pooling around his shoes in a rather menacing fashion. 

[Fox]

Tiamat crawled down the building like an oversized gecko, descending until she could snake her head out and bring her snout uncomfortably close to the newcomer; he got a pretty good look at the size of her teeth as she took a sniff, and then she turned her head to look at him with one great red eye.

"...you play with dangerous powers, child," she noted, with some small measure of distaste. "I do hope it turns out better for you than most. They do not think like you and I; evil means little to them, but only in the sense that a plague bears no malice to its hosts."

"...right. Okay," Gaian Knight mused, coming down on his platform and apparently deciding the best way to address Tiamat's observations was to...not. "Gaian Knight, Tiamat, Gabriel, Super-Bee," he introduced in turn, gesturing at each. "It's a pleasure to meet you. The bees are friends, here to help - we came loaded for metaphorical bear because...well. That's kind of a story, but I get the impression you might know more than we do at this point, if you were expecting us."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Yeah, I know," said Warlock with an air of patience. "But it's more like they played with me. You know how they say if you make a face long enough it'll stick that way?" he looked up at the gigantic draconic face near his and added nervously. "Hah-hah, okay, let's move on, can't spend all day talking about my face! Anyway," he added to Gaian Knight, looking grateful for the rescue, "I'm from a group called the World Freedom Society. We defend Freedom City, America, and the world from monsters beyond space and time, evil sorcerers, alien horrors, and everything better left unburied." It sounded like a memorized speech, but one he believed with all his heart. "Eighty-eight years ago, two of your group helped save our world from an extradimensional invasion. When that happened, they said you would be here on this spot, on this date. Normally more people would be here," he admitted, "but there's a big interstellar war going on. My job is to make sure you and your passenger...s get back to your home dimension." 

 

-

 

"Oh, is fine!" said Frost, a little awkwardly, taking an involuntary step back from Fleur's anger. "Other history was product of extradimensional infiltration, was not cosmologically legitimate." She didn't look like she liked that idea very much. "We have saved entire dimension from Anopheles invasion! Who would want to go back to such horrors?" he inquired of Fleur. "Besides, porheps they have been merely recreated in home timeline, or they can be moved in to fill whatever holes are left. No need to fret when we are on the case," he said brightly.  

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel blinks, sighs, and then rubs the bridge of his nose as he mutters, mostly to himself.

 

"I hate time travel."

 

He spoke louder now, addressing Warlock. 

 

"It sounds like all of you are doing a fine job defending this place. The, ah, transition was a bit startling for us, but we're glad things are better, not worse. So from the sound of things, the two of them got back safely, but aren't going to be able to return here and go back with us? If that's the case, help getting us home would be good. I can move myself back to where we need to go, but I don't really have the "oomph" to move everyone else back."

[Electra]

"Oh, I think there are a lot of reasons to fret," Fleur fumed, but recovered her good sense enough to drop her voice, at least. "I suppose stopping the insect invasion is a good thing, or at least I hope it is. But we still ruined peoples' lives, erased peoples' lives! There's a reason we're not supposed to tamper with history if we find ourselves flung into the past, and now we've changed everything and we're stuck here-" She cut herself off abruptly, face going pale. "We're stuck here," she repeated, her voice no more than a murmur now. "Mitya, how are we supposed to get home? My portals don't work to travel through time!" 

[Fox]

"Well, getting home isn't the problem," Gaian Knight mused. "Fleur might be the premier teleporter of our little group, but I can pretty easily make a portal that'll get the lot of us back - big enough for the bees, even. It's how I get back and forth to Sanctuary, after all."

"The problem," interjected the wall-clinging dragon, "is making sure we all get home."

"...right. Ah, no offense, Warlock," he apologized, offering the man a smile, "but when the whole world's snapping in and out of crisis I find it hard to take things on faith. Fleur and Frost can take care of themselves, but all the same I'm not keen on leaving without them if I have the option."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Ah, well, Stesha," said Frost, feeling a rare flush of shame when he heard the fear in Stesha's voice. "It will be all right," he told her reassuringly. "Will need some time to gather relevant supplies, but relevant spell will send us to where we need to go, aheheh," he added, lacing his fingers together and unlacing them. "If you go and secure supplies with help of new friends," he offered, "I can do preparations down here." As they had spoken, some of Daniels' party had gone around and had handcuffed the half-frozen, heavily drugged cultists. "You are pretty lady with green hair in world above, I am hideous ice monster." He tapped the side of the building's furnace and added, "I will be fine." 

 

"You may look like a couple of escapees from pulp fiction, but we do owe your lives," offered Daniels, who had heard part of the conversation as he came over to join the pair. "What do you need?" Frost gave a list for the doctor, ticking off points on his fingers - it sounded to Stesha mostly like a collection of various herbs, spices, and the kind of chemicals you could find in a particularly dangerous chemical supply company - i.e., one you'd find anywhere on the streets of Freedom City in 1927. "We can do that," said Daniels with a nod. "We'll make it happen." 

 

- 

 

"That part I knew about!" agreed Warlock, who despite his own monstrous appearance was still watching both the giant bees and the giant dragon with some trepidation. "Comrade Frost and Fleur de Joie are already on their way. If you'll follow me to the Invisible Pyramid, I can show you where they'll be arriving. We have all the equipment there to make sure you all get where you need to go." 

[Electra]

For once, Stesha had no argument to make with Comrade Frost's plan, and headed out with the doctor and his friends to find the needed chemicals. The herbs, at least, were easy enough for her to come up with herself, a timesaver that she especially appreciated once she noticed all the looks she was getting on the streets of 1927 Freedom City. She was used to getting second glances, her intricate green braids made certain of that, but now it was for her clothes too, for all it was just a somewhat dirty sweater and blue jeans. People were actively glaring at her wherever she went, and it was rather unnerving. Dr. Albert's quiet companion, a middle-aged woman with a no-nonsense set to her chin, was an unexpected help, glaring right back at the passers-by and finally giving Stesha her own cloche and beaver coat so she wouldn't stand out as much. 

 

Even with the local expert guidance, it took hours to acquire all the ingredients on Frost's list, and even Stesha was tired by the time they returned to the site of the abortive ritual. "All right, we've got everything," she informed her colleague. "What do we do now?" 

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel knew he was going to have a headache when this was all done just from trying to wrap his head around the time situation. The answer would be coffee. Lots of coffee. Probably with some Bailey's in there. Outwardly, he showed none of his hopeless frustration, and just kept up his friendly, charming, calming smile. He knew how intimidating the bees were, and Tiamat definitely had a certain presence to her august personage. So he made sure his spear was stowed away for the time being as he took a step forward and kept his body language and hand motions open and peaceful.
 
"Meeting up with them would be good, but could you clarify what you mean? Are they coming here via time travel, or something else? And how do you know all about what's going on with this?"
 
Nothing in his voice is accusatory; he's just inquisitive, trying to know and understand more. He begins floating in the air.
 
"How about you fill us in a bit more on the way over to the...Invisible Pyramid, was it?"

Edited February 26, 2015 by KnightDisciple

[Avenger Assembled]

The police had arrived by the time Fleur returned to the Quitman Building, which is what the GBN tower seemed to be in 1927. Luckily this seemed to be something that Daniels and his crew were more than familiar with. While Fleur and her no-nonsense companion went through the back, Daniels and the rest of their group took charge of explaining to the Freedom City police what all these frozen, drugged cultists had been doing in the Quitman's basement. 

 

Inside, having reemerged from behind the furnace, Frost was working quickly. "Good good! Just in time!" He had a yellow legal pad in hand, one covered in scribbles, and he tore a sheet free before handing the rest over to Fleur's associate. "Make sure your authorities see this so that cultists have no further chances to crime, eh?" When he had the notebook away, he used the sheet he'd torn free as guide to sketching out a big circle on the stained, half-frozen floor, chalk in his hand to begin tracing the circle itself. 

 

"Most of work has been done already! Need only inscribe circle, just so, to open gateway through this world's Nifleheim..." 

 

---

 

Warlock told the heroes the story of the World Freedom Society on the way to the Invisible Pyramid, which from the look of things seemed to be located in the middle of Liberty Park. The World Freedom Society had been formed back in the 1920s by Dr. Albert Daniels (which, come to think of it, explained where their companion from the warped version of this timeline had gone) to combat cultists like the Anopheles, Aeonists, and the others who would use evil magic or alien science to destroy the world. When the age of heroes had begun in the 1930s, superheroes had joined the WFS - giving them the muscle they needed to stave off threats like Malador, the Unspeakable One, Hades, and "other things too terrible to mention!" Warlock himself was a recent graduate of Eldritch Academy - the training school for heroes around these parts. Some names were familiar, some were not, in the history of heroes and villains he gave. For the most part it sounded like this world had been threatened by things outside of the usual human experience; for example Hitler had been killed by a swarm of star vampires escaped from their Nazi captors. 

 

In some ways this was a world like theirs - a dragon escorted by a flight of giant bees (not to mention a flying man and an earthen knight) certainly got stares and attention, but the people mostly took them for granted the way they did back in Freedom City. There were pictures and waves, but they could have been visiting any city back on Earth-Prime. 

 

 

The Invisible Pyramid, despite the name, wasn't actually invisible - it turned out to be a big Egyptian-style pyramid (as big as the top of Pyramid Plaza) right in the middle of Liberty Park, a spectral eye floating over it like the symbol on the back of the dollar. "Good, you can see it! It's only invisible to invaders from beyond space, so you must be all right. Anyway, I know about this because eighty-eight years ago, a message was left for us that the Freedom League would be arriving on this spot, on this date, and that we needed to be there to pick them up." As they headed inside through doors carved with the signs of Horus the Avenger, Warlock went on, "This was actually a very important day, but like I said, most of the Society is in outer space right now, fighting the Star-Cannibal Horde." A smile crossed that tentacled face as they stopped in the middle of the marble foyer, engraved with the seals of various magical societies. "So you just get me!"

[Fox]

"Well, we're glad for your help," Gaian Knight replied; his platform had been returned to the earth outside the pyramid, the hero opting to walk rather than threaten to trail dirt inside a building of such apparent importance.

Tiamat, too, had opted to leg it - two-leg it, that is, having reluctantly taken her human form before entering. She didn't say much, aside from pointedly ignoring pretty much everyone, though the seals at least caught her eye and received critical and interested study as they went.

"I am very sorry for the earlier concern. Last we knew, we were fighting man-eating, flesh-warping bugs; the city was just about in ruins. The sudden adjustment to having everything be bright and shiny...took us by surprise, to say the least."

"Barely got to kill anything," his companion noted, with the barest hint of disappointment hiding somewhere in her otherwise apathetic voice.

"Yes, I think it turned out for the best all around."

Tiamat's response, as she cocked her head at a seal of nested triangles, seemed to be the grunt equivalent of a middle finger.

[KnightDisciple]

"Indeed. And it seems like you and your companions are doing a very fine job of defending this city and planet, Warlock. All of you should be proud of what you do."

 

Gabriel was passively taking in the runes and symbols as well, mostly out of curiosity. Now that the excitement of battle had settled down and the questions of time travel were mostly fixed, he was happy to just take in the sights and learn a bit about the local heroes and the differences from their own world. He couldn't help but smile a bit at Tiamat's eagerness. While he wasn't that battle-thirsty himself, fighting such horrific, corrupting influences as the Anopheles tended to get his blood pumping a bit.

 

"Look at it this way, Tiamat. Thanks to the rest of us holding the line against the creatures we fought, Fleur de Joie and Comrade Frost were able to wipe all of them out in one strategic blow. I think you can at least partially count the eliminated pests on your tally, if you care to."

 

His tone was mostly teasing, but he didn't seem broken up about the erasure of all the corrupted bugs.

[Electra]

"Guess we have to go to hell and back just to get home," Stesha joked weakly, looking at the circles Frost had inscribed on the floor. They meant nothing to her, but they looked pretty menacing, especially after the bit about Nifelheim. "Thanks for all your help," she told Dr. Daniels and the others. "We wouldn't be getting home without you. I hope you never have to see us or those giant insects again!" Folding her hands, she waited for Frost to finish the inscription that would take them back to the future. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Frost snapped off a salute to the citizens of past Freedom in the middle of his chanting - then resumed his work as clouds of icy fogs came boiling out of the symbols on the ground to swallow the two time-and-dimension-displaced heroes. Cold and white, much like Frost's own misty form, the blanketing sheets blotted out the world for both heroes. And then, when they faded, they weren't in the world at all!

 

Instead they were standing on a frozen, icy fjord with dead pine trees rising up behind them to cold, sere mountains. They weren't alone, either; the forests and paths around the fjord were frozen with what looked like zombies. Pale-faced and in shabby clothes, they roamed with sightless, unseeing eyes, their bodies thin like starvation victims. "Well, let us not tarry!" declared Frost as he took Fleur's hand. "Come, Hel will not slow Hel's champion, but is no place for a lady of life, ha-ha-ha." At first he seemed nervous, but after a moment she realized he was _embarrassed_ to be seen in this place. 

 

He led her a few steps forward, chanting all the way, and just as the crowd of shambling dead noticed them the white clouds descended and they were lost to view again... 

 

...

 

And were re-emerging in the center of a pyramid decorated with arcane symbols that just happened to hold the rest of the Freedom League! The spell had taken a lot out of Frost, but he managed to stay on his feet as he limped away from the smoking circle of runes that had served as their arrival 'pad'. "Hah! I am genius! Hello, Freedom League!" he declared, a moment before falling silent. He hadn't seen Warlock before, but none of them had seen the man with him. 

 

An oxygen mask on his face, his hair snow-white and eyes cornflower blue, the very, very old man couldn't so much as rise from the wheelchair that the tentacle-faced Warlock was pushing. "It worked! Hey, that's great. Not that I had any doubt." Warlock's face-tentacles rippled as he laughed. "There, ah, there was one League member who was still here..." 

 

Frost walked over, his white face almost expressionless, and knelt down to look the other man in the eye. "<Hello, Dimitri,>" he said in Russian. "<You are still here, eh?>" 

[Fox]

"Fleur! Frost!" Gaian Knight spread his arms warmly as they appeared, all smiles - tired smiles, but smiles none the less - as they materialized. "Glad to see you made it back. Not sure what you did, but the whole city's right again - intact, populated, and bugless. Well done. It's....ahh," he trailed off, glancing at the...reunion.

He clearly wasn't sure what to say to that, hands dropping back to his sides as the two men met.

Tiamat, true to her nature, was slightly less restrained. "...gods, there are two of them," she noted, dryly and not entirely pleased.

[Electra]

The cold wind and the fog were unnerving as they  swirled around Stesha, but it wasn't until they transited that things got very bad. The second her feet touched the gray permafrost of Hel's kingdom, every link that connected her to the living world seemed to sever at once. She gasped for air, feeling shriveled, wilted, completely uprooted and left out to die. She stumbled after him as he led her forward, and managed not to fall to her knees until they were in the still chilly, but far less unfriendly environs of the brand-new future. 

 

"God..." With shaky fingers, Stesha unpinned her braids and unbound her hair, letting it soak up the weak sunlight that filtered through the cityscape. The bottom few inches had gone entirely yellow, brittle blonde split ends that would have to be trimmed away. "Well," she finally said, looking at everyone from her seat on the ground. "This looks different." 

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel had eyed the circle in the room warily, still trying to adjust to the decidedly more magically-inclined world here. But Warlock seemed a good kid, so he wasn't really upset. And when Frost and Fleur showed up in a flash of fog and fire, well, that made it all better. He took a few steps forward smiling, then frowned as Stesha started stumbling. He wasn't fast enough to stop her from landing on the floor, but he was at least by her side to help her re-orient herself.

 

"Hey, take it easy now. Deep breathes. Lord, it looks like you two got put through the ringer."

 

He'd taken note of the almost-double of Comrade Frost, choosing to stay silent for the moment. 

[Avenger Assembled]

The conversation between the two Dimitri Petrovs was almost inaudible - especially once Super-Bee's head appeared in one of the Pyramid's windows. "FLEUR DE JOIE! WE BEET THE ANOPHELEZ BUT EVERYTHING GOT WEIRD! ARE YOU OK?" It was a sign of how well Super-Bee knew humans that she could tell there was something amiss with Fleur - the bees usually had a little trouble with things like that. 

 

"<...we fought a war. I died in it,>" Frost was telling his counterpart, whose wispy voice didn't quite carry to the rest of the group. "<And became what you see now. And you, 101! Magnificent. How have you lived?>" 

 

There was more talk at that, the echoing whisper of a very old man's voice as the other Dimitri waved his hands for emphasis, and Frost smiled at the words from his counterpart. "<You old devil! Well...>" Frost stood up and the sight of himself, human and aged, seemed to crack something inside his icy heart. "<You tell those children that their other great-grandfather says hello. From another life.>"