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Heroes don't kill people. She doesn't, can't look at Gui. "Okay." I can be her weapon.
Andromeda clenches her fists and seizes the Governess in a crushing, grinding grasp, horrible dissonance filling the air as force grinds and flares unevenly against force with only crumpling armor in-between
The armor enhanced and improved my powers. Is it because I'm a version of Chloe that hasn't awoken her powers yet that I can't use them?
Chloe shakes her head at Jessie as she attempts to lead her away. "Whatever she did to the real Chroknight, she screwed up. They told me, when you can see what's wrong, it means that the wraiths are coming!" She looks around terrified. "They'll purge everything to do with what's wrong here. Including your spiders that were changed. Including...Oh no!"
Horror dawns on Chloe. "Jessie, I need to get back upstairs! My dad is in danger!" He's supposed to have the bad leg. It was the only way he would have survived that car accident. That program is wrecking the timeline all over!
The sheen of angelic wings has the little Chloe calling put to Empyrean. "Help! We need to get upstairs!"
Empyrean tracks the strange phasing snake-entities briefly, but the call of a child for help is something she can't resist. With a quick "Excuse me," she launches herself into the air and tries to reach Chloe with a twirl of her feathery wings.
Indarius leads the charge against the infected Chroknight armor, icing it over with a lance of freezing magic. At the panicked urging of an even younger Sammy, Andromeda joins the fray with her telekinetic powers! The armor blurs and speeds up as it tries to hide out of harm's way! The Bull's telekinetic force tears after the temporally accelerated Governess, ripping through displays and into the adjacent walls! The ripped hole in the wall reveals a large adjacent chamber with a Khi'thyri scout craft hanging from the ceiling.
The resultant shock wave sends the craft swaying ponderously above the large displays! Shrieks of panic echo about the chamber from museum patrons as they rush out of the exhibit hall!
Xaiara pursues after the Governess, her wings blurring behind her as she ignores the rubble-strewn ground. She moves out of sight beyond the crumbling displays, hot on the trail!
* * *
Empyrean effortlessly lifts Chloe to the mezzanine level as the serpentine apparitions make their presence known! Screams of panic erupt from the crowd when the chronowraiths are spotted! Chloe spots her distraught-looking father fighting against the tides of people heading for the exits.
Pandemonium overtakes the atrium as at least three chronowraiths weave through the crowds! They move unnaturally, stuttering like a buffering video, and their eyeless faces sport insect-like mandibles. Several Daedalus students ready themselves for battle, with Valence and Johnny rising up into the air and Ne'veah destroys her dress by transforming into her giant panther form.
The Heralds in the crowd also spring into action. Nimbus and Half-Pipe take to the air and Ragnarok balls his hands into fists, ready to fight. Rendezvous aids in crowd dispersal by opening up large portals, ensuring those who pass through are transported to safety.
Chloe clings onto Joy as they lift off - as a terrible thought occurs to her amidst the terror. "Those things will attack anything that's paradoxical. My dad included - you have to protect him!" She points out the Korean man fighting against the tide of people.
"And-" Her breath catches as she spots the tailed girl standing underneath Johnny, apparently getting ready to join in the action. Beebee, as if Chloe hadn't interfered. Yet she knew this was as paradoxical as the rest.
"That one is in danger too," She tells Empyrean, latching on tightly around her neck. "...My dad doesn't have anyone to protect him right now. Please, be his guardian angel!"
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The angel nods to Chloe.
"I understand. Let me put you somewhere safe." She beats her wings and tries to find a place to put down Chloe, perhaps a mezzanine, where she won't be trampled or crushed in a crowd. Then she spins and tries to get eyes on the two people pointed out by Chloe. She taps the comm in her ear—she's part of a team now, and she must never forget that she can always call upon her Choir.
"I have eyes on two people in need of special protection," she reports. She gives a quick, clipped description of Chloe's father and of Beebee. Deciding between the two, she vaults over the railing of the mezzanine and extends her wings, pivoting in the air and making a sharp wingover to come down by Chloe's father.
"I am here to protect you. Please try to remain close and don't touch the serpentine forms," she explains quickly, keeping her wings out so that she can use them as a barrier against the chrono-wraiths... if that will even work. She isn't sure.
Andromeda rockets after Xaiara and the Governess. Possible locations of the fleeing AI smear the entire landscape with ghostly trails in her HUD. Too many, she blink-clicks them away, and her vision clears.
It doesn't reveal the Governess though.
"I will find you," Andromeda flatly warns, sheath flaring with wrath as she yanks aside the concealment for her HUD's first suggested hiding spot. "I'll find you if I have to tear this whole place down to do it," Her flat voice gets fully monotone as something inside her is strangled, "Even if it means hurting Sammy again."
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"Chloe!!" her dad shouts as the angelic being brings her towards his outstretched arms. "Thank you, thank you!" he says as he bows his head while scooping his child into his arms.
Empyrean stands in defense of the father and his child, watching as the spacious atrium of the Taylor International headquarters is filled with mayhem. The stuttering, half-ethereal chronowraiths attack wantonly, and are met by the various powered individuals in attendance at the Gala.
The Heralds work efficiently as a team, focusing on defense and ensuring the crowds of bystanders are evacuated safely. Nimbus directs the members of his team present, sending Half-Pipe into the air to distract the wraiths with his aerial stunts, while Ragnarok threatens anything that gets close to the crowds being evacuated by Rendezvous.
The Finals are less cohesive, but each put their talents to use in the battle. Valence's mastery of atomic forces are less effective against the quasi-real chronowraiths, but his sheer power is able to keep them mostly contained. Miss Hysteria can't abate the crowd's panic, but her hallucinations keep them directed towards the exits. Ne'veah's catlike reflexes avoid the wraith's mandibles, and her razor-sharp claws rend at their ethereal bodies!
The other Daedalus students do what they can, though a good number of them are not built for this kind of combat. Jessie gets swept up in the crowd surging for the exit, but her giant spider PanAm clambers across the wall and sends a line of silk to her, letting her pull herself out of the sea of people. Johnny and Matt, aka Chitin, lend their super strength and toughness to continue to combat the wraiths, while a furry-tailed Beebee bounds across the battlefield with remarkable agility, leading the wraiths on a chase across the atrium!
With one of the smaller wraiths snapping at her heels, Beebee bounds up to the mezzanine level, flipping over Empyrean and her charges. The wraith whips past them in its pursuit, but with a ghostly moan it abruptly changes targets to Chloe and her father! Its tail strikes like a serpent even as Chloe's father steps bravely in front of the creature to protect his daughter! Contact is made and he falls with a scream, clutching his leg in agony! The wraith then coils for a finishing strike!
* * *
Despite distant sounds of fighting elsewhere in Praetor Tower, the search for the Governess feels eerily quiet. The groaning of the swaying alien scout craft is the only soundtrack to Andromeda's threatening words, calling out the destructive AI to face her.
It's only when she contextually admits to being the one who had hurt Samantha in the first place does the Governess show herself, appearing after a blur of motion to stand directly in front of the Bull. "You--"
A silver streak comes out of the rubble, barreling into the Governess in a haze of bladed wings! Andromeda's HUD is unable to pick the two apart as time stutters, replaying events but each time Scythe's own incredible reaction speed and combat prowess manages to keep up with the Governess' time manipulation!
Scythe screams incoherently as she fights with reckless abandon, absorbing hits and not caring about the bloody injuries she suffers while the AI-infected armor's acceleration stays just ahead of the deadly wingblades.
Before Andromeda's HUD can process the two beings to give an optimal attack vector or simply decide to blast them both trusting Xaiara to heal, a massive chronowraith appears out of the aether and attempts to engulf them both!
What do you do??
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Sammy's mind races, gets derailed by panic, rips itself back on course, only to lose it again to anxiety. Others are around her, unsure, a mob mentality reaching boiling. Sammy had read articles on such things, trying to understand people, so she understood... well nothing much, other than people wouldn't notice a cell phone getting pinched. (this age of a Samantha didn't have enough to have her own).
Quickly she uses the phone to hack into the surveillance cameras, sees IT right there, making her heart thunder with her desire to be free of this hate and guilt.
Her fingers tap, calculating all the resources available to a pint sized computer nerd and finds A Thing. A Thing being the precariously swinging scout ship.
Scout ships need cleaning and maintenance even if it is just a show piece now. That means it needs to be raised and lowered. With hacking skills still budding but fueled by sheer eagerness, suddenly one side of the anchor wires let out zipping smoking slack, swinging the large craft like a massive hammer.
But doesn't strike IT, there was no way to precisely hit IT without hitting Xaiara so instead the scout craft slams into the engulfing chronowraith.
No matter the raging fury inside her tween body, Sammy will be a hero someday and heroes still save people.
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Andromeda instinctively responds to the opening Sam created with a ravening blast, detonating the melee with a rippling torrent that almost seems to refract through space-time before it collides dramatically with the Governess, scattering the combatants across the room. "You're not keeping her safe! No one is safe! Even if you locked her away as a baby she'd never be safe from you! "
Empyrean isn't sure how her physical form will interact with chrono-wraiths, but given that people are in danger, she doesn't exactly care. She whips her wings about like a bludgeon and as she does so she twists her hands through the air like she's plucking at strings, as light pulls from her halo and forms into thin, laser-like threads.
Light is funny. It's a wave and a particle. It's always moving at a constant speed relative to everything else in the universe. It is trapped, relativistically, in a bubble of its own time. (That means even stranger things can happen when it intersects with entities that warp time.) It is also the metaphysical vision that separates the universe from the Void that came before.
The light-threads coming off of Empyrean's halo and guided by her waving hands lash through the sinuous chrono-wyrms, fundamental energetic forces engaged in a way that underlies the tug-of-war between time and space. It is easy to see, as the beams flare and glow through the air, how ancient artists would draw angels wielding flaming swords.
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Indarius worked to get his emotions back under control, because damn this A.I. was annoying with how it kept coming back to bite them all in the rear. Seeing little Sammy pickpocket someone in the crowd was concerning, he was about to go after the ominously swaying ship when it's lines gave way and just so happened to slam into the oncoming Chronowraith. Unfortunately the stuttering writhing thing was sailing towards Sammy, so he proppelled himself to her with a flap of his wings and put himself in harms way. He had a few centuries to possibly get warped forward, Sammy did not. He had to stop being afraid for her sake.
"They're not exactly where you see them, they're displaced, so don't get caught unaware!" Chloe calls out to Empyrean as she grabs onto her Dad and helps to pull him out of harm's way. It's difficult with her smaller body, but she just has to get him going here.
"Dad, we need to get out of here! Can you walk?" Chloe asks him.
When the chrono-wraiths begin their assault, Max knows it's time to take action! She reaches into her clutch and pulls forth the magic wand, activating its power. Golden light suffuses her body as the divine armor manifests itself, girding her with its might. She tosses the purse aside and charges into the midst of the wraiths menacing the crowd.
"Get behind us! Make your way to the exits in a calm in orderly fashion," she shouts to the civilians. She lashes out at the wraiths, slashing with her claws, kicking with her powerful legs, and trusting her armor to protect her from harm.