The spaceborne Sentinels launch into action when the Nazi battleship shifts into their time and space.
Praetoria bursts into the bridge after knocking out a large and complex array of antenna. Large panels deploy to keep the atmosphere from venting into space through the hole she made in the hull. The crew all react and shout at her sudden appearance. Her words, however, don't seem to get through as all she hears is a lot of German.
Inquiry quickly closes the distance, avoiding any sort of point-defense of the ship -- aided by Horizon's quick blanketing of the area with his radiation. The wide effect dissipates fast, but lasts long enough that the smaller alien ship is able to latch on and start cutting a way into the interior.
Horizon bursts his way into the interior the instant that a breach is made. He doesn't appear to harm anyone with his sudden appearance, though the humanity and fear of the crew that flee in terror shakes him to his core.
Meanwhile, Inquiry gets a garbled message from Somnambulist thanks to the pulse of radiation sent out by Shin. ::...anomaly is the source... <ksshk> ...temporal flux is making it hard to... <shhkk>...need to...<rkrkrshk>... through the
tear. Respond?::
What do you do???
Praetoria scans the room, trying to get an idea of exactly who or what she is up against. She twirls her blade around and says ”So, ummmm...any of you boys just wanna go ahead and surrender and make this easy on everyone?”
__________
He was a monster to these men. Suddenly the idea of men and women with superpowers overwhelming poor soldiers with no powers of their own, being forced to fight for their country and their lives, didn't seem all that heroic to Shin. Especially not the way that he looked.
In fact, it was hardly any challenge for him. These men just fled from him wherever he went. He didn't feel heroic at all. But he was also concerned about how the kriegsmarine were able to build a spaceship, even in an alternate timeline. So he needed to find someone on a German ship that spoke English or Japanese. He knew a little German from his father, but only enough for brief commands.
A cool head prevailed, and keeping his cool even when he wanted to tear this place apart would mean victory in the long run. "Isaiah. Can you tell if there's a way to send this ship back the way they came?" He asks over the internal comms - a improved design. He might take this suit into battle on the surface if it worked so well.
For now, he tried to figure out how he was going to go about disabling this ship. He had no military technology experience at all, so he wasn't ever sure how to navigate here.
Hmmmm an unexpected power....*Ding*
Frostbite dodges, slips, jukes, and slides his way over to the auction area where the push/pull gauntlets were dropped when all hell broke loose. Grabbing and putting them on, he gets lucky figuring out how to activate them. Carefully the young hero aims at the orb and energy shoots out from the gauntlets. "Hmm I was expecting more kick..."
"Really? You'd turn your back on me in the place that invented hubris?"
Apotheosis chuckles sinisterly. He waves his hand and the ground flows like a living thing. Marble blocks swell up and encase Psyche's legs. "Only after you're rendered no threat to me."
He gestures grandiosely, statues of the Olympian gods surrounding him and power flowing off of him. "You could have been in my new pantheon. But you'll only be consigned to Tartarus or worse -- oblivion."
Turning away from the Tiger Eyes, Scorch shifts her focus to the Dusk Guard. Diving forward and coming up among them, her arms and legs blurring as she launches a rapid sequence of kicks and punches.
Psyche is almost amused that he bothered to shackle her body, but her mental focus on him doesn't stop for an instant.
"Go ahead, cast me into oblivion." She looked around at the pantheon of onlookers. "Ouranos, Kronos, Zeus: They all tried to shove their problems into the dark, or just swallow them up too."
She didn't try to overwhelm his mind; it would take more strength than either of them possessed to simply grab control of the other's will. Instead she lanced at his pain centers in time with her verbal jabs.
"So are you hoping to have your head cracked open?" A particularly memorable migraine spiked into his temple, To get struck by lightning? The helplessness of her worst seizures rushed into his limbic system, "Or are you just hoping for some flint-sickled castration?" She didn't have that in her personal library of agony, but almost every guy had a memory of a related nauseating pain, so she just set up a loop of Greatest Kicks.
She knew it wouldn't be remotely enough to stop him or shut him down. A psychic with half of Gothic's control would be able to tuck those pains away, but it would drain some focus, and it should wipe that smirk off his face.
::I'm having trouble hearing you. I heard something about an anomaly and the tear, but the specifics are scrambled. Should I push this back through, or should I be trying to carry the anomaly away from it? Repeat, should I push this back through, or should I be trying to carry the anomaly away from it?::
"Be careful! Our goal should probably be to try to shove this hunk of metal back when it came from, and that'll be harder if we wreck it too much. We don't need yet anouther temporal anomaly here, after all. Shin has enough of those already. Aim to try to stop it from causing any damage, and try to find the control centers. I'll see if I can hack them and put this thing into reverse."
Isaiah/Inquiry scanned the ship from its perch on the hull, trying to locate the controls for the ship's weapons and engines, and get a feel for its technology. At least if it wasn't too far divergent from this world's, he'd have a starting point on knowing how to subvert it.
"I hear you Isaiah...but..."
He could make connections here. A kriegsmarine space cruiser, and a patrol ship from roughly his time period appearing in the same place where he was testing out his powers? There wasn't a possibility that was a coincidence. Logically, Isaiah was right to try and push the vessel back. Logically, it had nothing to do with them what this ship could do to the people in the alternate reality it had come from.
How advanced were their genocidal methods now?
"Isaiah, point me in the direction of whatever this ship is using for an engine. We'll send it back in one piece - just long enough for crew to get to their lifeboats," Shin told him as he moved forward, following the guidelines on the floors and walls to try and steer himself in the right direction. He knew nothing of military technology - nuclear reactors on the other hand were a technology that he knew enough through his father's work that he was sure he could cause a time delayed cascade failure that would scuttle this ship.
He tried to ignore the thought of Dusk smiling at him as he ventured deeper into the Tirpitz II. He pushed on past frightened soldiers until he managed to find the engineering section, looking at all of the inner workings that made this ship fly. Inside, he set to his work on sabotaging the ship, bursting off EMPs from his body to wreak havoc on electrical systems as he made his way to the reactor. He might not have known how to read German, but he was knowledgeable enough to know how to disrupt containment enough to turn this place into a time bomb. It would last long enough at least to make it through the breach he expected.
Ness continues mopping up the rest of the thugs. As she does, she turns casually to the Sentinels.
"Nice to see you guys! I've missed you." ...and then fires another arrow, knocking a heavy light fixture down on a fleeing thug.
With things well in hand, the stragglers of the gang members are dealt with quickly and efficiently.
The four individuals in the business attire had stayed out of the fray. Now that the battle was winding down, one of the four strides up to the stack of crates and selects one specific crate like he owns it. He begins to walk off casually, as if a super-powered beatdown hadn't just occurred.
Two of the others business people are on their cell phones, speaking quietly. The fourth simply turns to leave.
As you double and redouble psychic pain in Apotheosis, he strikes as well, inflicting a feeling of powerlessness as your body is robbed of its ability to move.
He staggers under the pain and the entire temple shakes. The large marble statues begin to crack and the columns crumble. Huge fissures open in the floor, revealing a molten-hot glow from underneath. "Pain!?! You want to show me pain?!? I'll show YOU!!" he shouts as the ground falls away and Psyche is dropped into a sweltering hot rendition of Hades.
"Have a little torment while I go visit your less powerful friends! You've given me some excellent ideas on how to use my new telepathy!"
The fissures close up, leaving Psyche in a hellish landscape of shadows and flames. Shapes move in the patches of darkness, while the fires dance dangerously close.
What do you do???
Standing on what she thinks is the bridge, Praetoria looks around at the crew and everything labeled in German and is unable to make sense of it all.
Similarly, Horizon looks around from his location and is thoroughly confused about the best way to go and what to do.
Isaiah gets a burst of static and garbled communications as the Tirpitz II fires up its engines and electronic countermeasures -- it clearly knows it's under attack and is deploying defenses.
Given the fact that Praetoria is on the bridge, Isaiah believes that she's in the best position to take control and force the ship back through the time breach. Otherwise, the Tirpitz II would have to be pulled all the way through, and then dealt with.
Looking around at the now-pacified criminals, Scorch stares for a moment in surprise as the suited man calmly walks up and grabs a crate as if he doesn't have a care in the world. "You two just stay where you are." she says to the two who are making their way out the doors as she marches up to the one with the crate. "and drop that while you're at it. You're not going anywhere."
My body cannot move.
In darkness, my eyes cannot see.
How irrelevant.
Is there anything around me but pain and torment? Apotheosis thinks this place will hold me; does he have a reason beyond the decor? What is there here that could hurt him?
Even if not. Like I told him. First there's darkness, then...
...There's Light.
"This is bad," Shin muttered as he was cut off from Inquiry. He should have stuck with him, or Kayla. Here he was unsure on how to navigate the ship on his own. The crew weren't going to be helpful to him at any rate.
It occurred to him, that if he was looking for the power plant, he should extend his senses to detect the strongest source of energy and head in that direction. There wasn't much to lose at this point.
"Kayla, if you can read me, I'm heading to the engine room. Try to find out if any of these bastards speak English and get them to do what we need to shove this ship back."
Horizon, you detect an energy source deep within the bowels of the ship, which makes sense because the power plant would likely be far removed from the surface so it's well protected. The risk you take is that it will get you further and further away from your own escape route.
What do you do??
Rory begins to search the inventory for Silver Shield's armor.
Rory finds the largest crate has a rather convenient label that indicates within is one of Silver Shield's old suits.
Scorch's words fall on completely unimpressed ears. With a smooth motion, the man produces some sort of credential. In an Eastern European accent, he says, "This is proprietary of Uzchestani government. I will be taking it now, or you face diplomatic incident."
What do you do??
Scorch pauses for a moment before placing herself squarely in front of the Uzchestani man. "Got any proof of ownership buddy?" she says, her eyes seeming to flare. "Even if you do, I'll look after whatever that is and we're all going to wait here until someone official tells me otherwise. Clear? Meanwhile, hand it over. Now."
Without looking away she calls over her shoulder. "Frostie, Mosaic, This bozo thinks he's just walking out've here with this. Says he's got 'diplomatic immunity'. Can one of you guys get someone official here who can sort this all out?"
The man with the crate does not seem cowed by Scorch's posturing. "Silly American girl, I do not scare so easily. Stand down, and allow me to pass. You follow rules, yes?"
Rory pokes his head up from a crate and shrugs, "Sounds legit to me, good luck comrade...". He then confirms the contents of the crate and loads it on a nearby pallet Jack, stashing the gauntlets in with the armor as nd heads to load it into the rhino.
Holly closes all the exits with her shards, and takes a brave stance If everyone would please calm down, and have a seat until the police arrive to sort this all out. Holly says, lookig over the flight risks, and saving an extra hard glare for mr. "diplomatic Immunity".
Frostbite, have you called the shield? I bet she'll appreciate getting her tech back. And a little extra for the Alliance lockup.
Sighing, Praetoria points to the ginormous rift in space the ship came through and points at it. ”Look. I don’t want to have to hurt any of you. Just turn this giant hunk of metal around and go back through that creepy tear in space you just flew here through, and that’ll be that. I’ll cut my way back out and none of you will have to get hurt. Do any of you even speak English?” she says, growing more frustrated.
_________
Inqiury found out the hard way that it had parked in a bad spot when an ECM module fired up directly underneath it. Normally it wouldn't be harmed by such things, but at this kind of proximity... Inquiry/Isaiah was briefly scrambled, and fired its engines more or less at random for a second before regaining composure.
"Praetoria, Shin, be careful not bre---AAAKHSSH---"
Whatever Isaiah was trying to say gets cut off in the disruption, and the comms get completely overwhelmed by static for a while, cutting the team's communications.
Inquiry/Isaiah retreated inside the Tirpitz II's hull to get away from the worst of the ECM. He'd have to navigate through the halls to reach the bridge, it seemed. At least they knew where they were headed.
Leaving a quick patch over the entry hole, Inqiury began to fluidly slide through the halls, headed toward the bridge.
The semi-liquid vessel flowed through the passages with surprising grace, gently nudging aside confused crewmembers, slipping through doors, and generally moving too quickly for internal defenses to catch before arriving at the bridge.
With a whisper, Gallowglass says to Holly, "Psst, Mosaic, it's been great to see you all...but I'm trying to keep a real low profile right now. I only put on my costume because I heard sounds of trouble. I should disappear before the police get here.
"With luck, it won't be too long til my undercover gig bears fruit."
With a hug, she adds, "Great to see you though!"
Bear gives Frostbite and Scorch a friendly lick, and then the duo duck out.
Patting Bear on the head, "good pupper, you keep her out of trouble."
Frostbite quickly shoots of a message to Silver Shield, "Bad guys down, gear secured, need assistance with clean up."
Scorch maintains her position in front of the man briefly glancing over as Ness makes her exit. "Right. See ya round I hope Gallowglass. Thanks for the assist." She then turns back to the suited man. "You want a 'diplomatic incident'? How about agents of a foreign country selling tech on the black market? I think that probably qualifies! You think I'll just let you go with whatever that is just because you waved a bit of paper in my face and said it was yours? Nah, I think I'll wait for someone with some real authority to make that decision. Like I said. You're not going anywhere."
It seemed quite impossible to get to the engine room in time, away from the rest of his allies, by winding through the ship's corridors and the like.
So he might as well try to go through a direct path instead. Dusk could cut through concrete and steel easily with his powers - cutting through a few bulkheads with that vantablack radiation blade seemed easy enough. Dusk wouldn't feel guilty about this, either.
No, he'd be .
One. Two. Three. He was causing damage, but a ship this size had shown it wouldn't be done in by the minimal amount he'd been doing. Cutting straight through the floor and keeping his momentum going was all he could do.
He couldn't afford to think of these people as people. No, they were wolves. Vicious man-eating wolves who wouldn't think twice about killing Kylie or Hoshiko. He would never let them reach his precious people.
Psyche opens up her mind and is assaulted by a discordant, confusing realm. It shouldn't exist this way, it felt tiny, but looped on itself so that no matter how far you traveled in one direction, you'll never reach the end.
And with that revelation, it may be that there's nothing specific within this bubble of hellish reality that can hurt Apotheosis except for the fact that he can't affect a very large area with his powers.
She powers up once more, and the light she generates illuminates a horde of skinless, eyeless creatures crawling on misshapen limbs and odd joints directly toward her!
With the exits blocked off by Mosaic's light, the business people and diplomats look at the young heroes impatiently.
Silver Shield responds to Frostbite. "Good job. I hear the SRT is inbound. Looks like more than your run-of-the-mill gangs were in attendance. I'll be there as soon as I can."
The one from Uzchestan glowers at Scorch, not seemingly swayed by her words. "You know nothing, little girl. I can make life very difficult for your mistress. So step away."
Before the tension can get any thicker, one of the ones in suits cuts off her cell phone and puts it away. "They're coming," she announces.
"Finally. I was getting tired of amateur hour," responds another.
The sound of squealing tires echoing inside a building and a revved engine fills the auction floor. Several glossy black vehicles pull in and begin disgorging people in suits and a few in hazmat garb. These people appear to be from the same agency as the ones who appeared shortly after the Crab was defeated.
The lady in the mirrored shades, also from that first day, steps out of the lead SUV and steps toward the young heroes. "We'll take it from here."
What do you do?
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With a exasperated sigh "Ok, round two, do you have any identification or badge of authority that you would be willing to provide before I just turn over a bunch of illegally obtained supertech to you because you rolled up in black town car?"
There's nothing left for me here but pain and death. But if there's nothing here that can stop Apotheosis, there's nothing here that can stop me from leaving.
Her body didn't move a muscle, but the flare of her powers continued, boiling away her body until it was nothing but the brilliant energy of her thoughts.
One moment she was there, then she Thought, therefore she wasn't.
Praetoria does not seem to get through to the crew on the bridge. One at a high-tech station asks a question to figure at the center of the bridge in full regalia -- the captain, Kayla surmises. He shakes his head curtly.
Just then, a squad of troops burst in and open fire at Praetoria with strange energy beams instead of bullets. They tickle. The captain's eyes bulge and he says, "Das Prätor?"
Horizon cuts through bulkhead after bulkhead, causing all sorts of alarms to go off and recorded messages to say urgent things in German. A few crewmen draw sidearms and fire at Shin, but most flee from the destruction. It takes a while, as the metal is thick and reinforced, but Horizon finally cuts into the power plant. It's a massive chamber filled with a red glow built around a core like a miniature sun with heavy cables and wires emanating from it like solar flares. Everyone except for Shin in this room is in full radiation protection gear.
The burst of EM countermeasures point-blank into Inquiry fries his processors for a moment. His communications are cut off briefly, then a stream of nonsensical garbled data pours through the transmissions that threaten to overwhelm the brains of the organics connected to him.
Then the semi-liquid Inquiry bursts onto the bridge.
What do you do??
Call me 'little girl' again, and I'll make life very difficult for you!" Scorch replies, standing her ground and her eyes glowing with incandescent anger. "Life can be pretty difficult if you have to drink through a straw!"
When the mirror-shaded lady walks in, Scorch turns. "We'll see about that!" she responds. "Who the hell do you think you are anyway?"
”Das what? I...I am Praetoria. You need to...OW s*!@!” she shrieks as the comms wreck havoc on her ear. She ya is it out and stows it away before looking back to the Captain. ”We don’t want to have to hurt you. Will you please turn your ship around and go back where you came from?” she asks, pointing urgently towards the rift.
__________
It seemed odd to navel gaze while cutting through bulkhead after bulkhead to his goal. But he was struggling with his emotions, and not even the snaps of gunfire were enough to pull him out of his head.
Did he have the right to kill all these men? Knowing what their party did and would do again? He was supposed to be a hero, first and foremost. That meant holding back from taking lives. Destroying their ship would kill the hundreds on board. Could he really live with that?
One thought was clear though. He'd disappoint Kylie if he allowed himself to step onto a dark path. She was a guiding light keeping him from wading into the same mire that consumed his future self.
So staring at the engine, he realized that there was pretty much one other option. Blowing it up would kill the ship's men. Shutting it down would put it out of commission for a while yet. But he assumed their back up generators would keep them alive.
He stepped past frightened men in their radiations suits, pausing only briefly to speak to the one at a control console. "Sprich Englisch? Japanisch?" He asks, using the very minimal German he knew. "Alle aus. Nein energie. Ja?"
The woman in the mirrored sunglasses holds up a badge that projects a full hologram display with scrolling text and a 360 degree headshot of her. In bold, flashy lettering, it says, A.E.G.I.S.
"Field Director Catya Novarrun. Satisfied?" she asks testily. Then without waiting for an answer, she turns to her crew and starts giving orders.
What do you do??
The captain gives the order to stop firing. The crew who had earlier asked a question of the captain says something to him, and he nods. He responds, again in German, then gestures to Praetoria.
In broken English, the one on the bridge who must be some sort of communications officer begins to speak. "You have attacked us without provocation. Captain Klauss Schwarz demands that you stop your attack explain yourself."
In the power plant, Horizon tries to gain a measure of communication and fails -- either his German isn't good enough, or everyone's too shocked to respond.
What do you do?
Psyche recoporealizes in the safety of Kayla's home.
She can barely take a breath from the attempted abduction when she's hit with a wave of anxiety and urgency.
The trim and dapper Angela Taylor is striding past, a cell phone to her ear. She turns and looks surprised at your arrival.
"Psyche, right? Have you seen Kayla lately? Praetoria? We need to do a roll call. Her grandmother's gone missing."
What do you do?
"Yup thanks, scene is all yours. Okay ladies lets bounce." Rory heads out and loads the crate containing the armor, gauntlets, and hoverboard into the rhino.
For a moment Psyche couldn't hear Angela's question, but she boxed away the part of her mind that couldn't stop screaming, and the words came through.
"Missing? Or taken?" I don't smell like I've been in hell. A quick glance through Angela's eyes showed that the bruises of Kylie's marble shackles were gone too. But she could still feel them.
"Kayla was supposed to be on some sort of power exercises safely out of collateral range..." The glow of her eyes pulsed and dimmed, "She's still nowhere within a couple of miles. Is she off-comms? We aren't telepathically linked right now, and it could take some time to find her."
"Shin?"
Damn, he's still out of easy range too.
"Mattie? Are you there?" Are you okay? Did Apotheosis Take you? A crying laugh nearly bubbled into the link, "Something's wrong with me Kayla's grandmother and I'm not sure where to find her."
If she's even gone.
She needed to check. Angela's mind was too well guarded to get a good look without some effort, but this was too important to be polite with Judge's shields.
Inquiry/Isaiah arrived just in time to notice the start of a conversation.
They decided to hold off on the agressive approach for the moment.
"It looks like they're taking you seriously. I can translate, or speak up if you don't have something to say."
Kayla will let her weapon dissolve as she steps forward. ”I am Praetoria. You have come through a rift of some sort into our dimension. In our world, people wearing markings of those on your ship have traditionally been aggressive and threatened the safety of our people and have proven dangerous if not dealt with immediately. If your Captain is willing to return through the rift, we will leave in peace.”
She looks to Isaiah, hoping he can help with the translation and make it sound convincing:
"Isaiah? Prae? Letting you know, I made it to their engine room. Hope you can hear me, because all thsee engineers are scared to death of me it seems. Anyways, I was thinking of shutting it down. For a nuclear reactor of this size, getting it to power on again cold will be hard for them. So they'll be harmless when we ship them back. What's your situation?" Shin asks as he considers his next move. He honestly couldn't think of a plan more than to eliminate this power source. This was far more of an adventure than he'd wished for today. He'd only wanted to test the limits of his powers.
Nodding, Isaiah synced and repeated Praetoria's speech, providing a more accurate translation than the other translator could likely manage. He added a little reverb, too, just to enhance the effect.
Isaiah also managed to restore communications with Shin.
"Hold off for now. We're trying to convince them to turn around on their own, which will be a lot easier than trying to sort out their control systems, and rather requires that reactor to still be running. If you're worried about this ship being a problem back where it came from... well, after the damage we've already dealt, it will probably be in for repairs for a week anyway. Stay alert, though, in case our attempts go south."
Captain Schwarz appears to think for a moment, gauging your demeanor while the rest of the crew on the bridge look to him expectantly. He nods, maintaining eye contact with Praetoria.
He starts shouting orders to have the Tirpitz II reverse course back through the rift. The crew begins scrambling to have his orders employed.
Schwarz glances at a readout at his station, then speaks again. Translated by Inquiry, it comes out as, "Have your Japanese leave my power room, and using doors this time. I'll light the way to the closest airlock."
Psyche finds Angel's mind moving too quickly and too well shielded to find any useful thoughts.
"Words. Use your damn words," she admonishes. "I don't care much for the thought projections. They're not good for the microphone. And I don't have time to be your vocal coach, so just tell me, out loud: do you know where Kayla is? Yes or no?"
"...Fine. I should try and be the better man here," Shin muttered over comms. "I'm starving, Isaiah. I'm headed back to Inquiry. Let's go home and get something to eat. Though, what's going on with the space police?"
He turns away, marching past the cowering engineers. There's a part of him that's delighted to see such terrible men soiling themselves in front of him. But he deigns to yield for now. He's lost the taste for battle, as much as he wanted to eliminate this threat.
This was the past. A alternate past that had nothing to do with him. Perhaps the Shin Akebono of where they came from could do better. Right now...he longed for Kylie's embrace. He was famished after all of this exertion.
That doesn't mean I'll just let you,.. " Scorch begins, before suddenly stopping as Psyche's thoughts invade her head.
What? Yeah I'm here and I'm fine. Apotheosis? Kylie? What's happened?
Not stopping to wait for an answer, or even to let Rory and Holly know what she's doing, Mattie turns and suddenly runs towards the door, the agents forgotten. Moments later she is streaking towards the base....
Praetoria nods and asks Isaiah ”Can you thank him for me for his understanding? Then let’s get out of here.”
Praetoria follows Isaiah through the ship until they can reunite with Shin, then all leave through an airlock together. Once back in space, the concept still exciting to her, she looks for the OTHER ship, wondering if it is still here too or if it’s left the area, just as Shin was. She looks at Shin and says ”One down, one to go? And yeah, soon as this is over, I’m treating the three of us to a well earned dinner!”
Okay. Holly says, resenting Rory acting like the leader.
She leaves the barriers up, and the duskguard encased, though they will dissolve when she leaves them out of her range
that went well... though, Scorch, I gotta say... going off on the jerk like that doesn't look great. makes you look like a hothead. She says
"I don't know precisely, Angela, but I'll find her. What happened to Eternia?"
"Mattie, no. Come with the others. I don't want Him to have a chance to pick anyone off. Do come quickly though"
Kayla? Shin? A large telepathic pulse could let Apotheosis home in on me, but what if he's hurting them?