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Whoops. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Works for me if Connor just said that on comms and is still on the bridge.
Herak finds this advanced technology inscrutable, though obviously formidable.
As the elevator descends, Connor stirs . He opens his eyes, taking in the situation. "What happened? Oh, right. Maggie, we have to get Kyle to the displacement device. I think you know that. He should wake up momentarily..."
Doc replies, "Right, standing by. Well, not exactly standing by, but I'll be back before you need me, I hope." He seems to be stressed, and possibly exerting himself.
Helen and Jonathan find Mato's truck on its side in a ditch beside the two lane road. He is wielding a modern Springfield model 2020 Waypoint rifle as a club as he fends off a massive attacking ant.
Hyde grabs another ant as its mandibles reach for her. She tears the mandibles from its face as dark blood oozes from the creature. It squeals in pain as it thrashes and collapses. Hathaway blasts another with lightning. The massive insect's nervous system spasms, internal fluids boil, and it bursts with superheated fluids spattering the diner.
Skull-Net moves aside with impressive speed of his own, dodging the incoming Sentry's attack. "You are truly an annoying alien, but like all biological life, you have flaws."
Skull-Net's features twist in rage as the two dots representing the missiles wink out on the bridge's screens. It turns to a console and pours tendrils of nanites into the machinery, creating thousands of spiderweb like connections between it and the console. Like Blue Beetle, it finds that the systems on the bridge are too damaged to access the Helicarrier's systems.
English: But wait, there was another way that involved a spaceship and a slingshot maneuver around the sun. Or maybe I saw that on TV. And there is also a car. And a watch. Like a wrist watch. And also a pocket watch...And a phone booth. Do they have phone booths where you are from?
我相信喺呢個現實嘅迭代中，時間旅行嘅主要手段係一個大型嘅球形裝置。佢只係能夠取代有機物質，或者你可以用機器周圍嘅有機殼嚟欺騙佢。其實係呀，我覺得係噉樣 運作。哦，但係你其實係咪問緊我嘅事？我有部裝置可以為我哋所有人建立一個出口，等佢哋可以離開呢度。 Cantonese: I believe in this iteration of reality, the primary means of time travel is a large spherical device. It is only capable of displacing organic material, or possibly you could trick it with an organic shell around a machine. Actually, yes, I think that is how it works. Oh, but were you actually asking about me? I have a device that will create an exit for all of us to get out of here.
Two nights ago, in the diner, before all hell broke loose, Helen struck up a conversation with a young man named Mat, "Mato, really, but people tend to find Mat easier." Helen had a sense that there was something to the young man. Anger, certainly, a lot of very clear opinions about his people and about the money in a resort that had been built 20 miles to the north. Mato had a battered open top raised Ford pickup in the lot outside. It had been altered to hold passengers for his sunset canyon tours. He had come from a tour tonight, and was enjoying a piece of green chili apple pie and a cup of coffee. Her naturally inquisitive nature had pried out of him that he was a keeper of the old ways, a traditionalist. He is only an apprentice, not experienced enough to be a hataalii, but experienced enough to know the proper songs for a funeral.
Sentry had only done the one. Jason shows up and steals his kill. Sentry gets to keep his Hero Points. Skull-Net to fight and/or Temporal Displacement Device to get to and control.
The stabilizers on the second missile explode into clouds of butterflies. (Butterflies who immediately begin to freeze to death and suffocate as they flutter vigorously in the thin air.) The missile itself shudders and then begins goes nose up and begins to tumble-spiral as its propulsion and guidance systems attempt to compensate. It trends generally toward the ground. Herakles floats down onto the deck of the Helicarrier, arrayed for battle.
Jason and Herak, let me know what you need to get back in the game. Let's get things moving.
She issues one more command into her commlink, hoping their kidnapper/handler. "Doc. Your mission's over unless we leave in seven seconds." Doc speaks though the communicator, sounding to Maggie's ear like an older man yelling into a phone with a bad connection..."MAGGIE...CAN YOU HEAR ME? What is happening up there? I can't get you out of the Helicarrier, you are going to have to take care of that situation yourselves. I'm working on our departure.
Jason and Herak, get on in here. If Jason can post, you can bring the two of you into the battle on the bridge (come in and swat Skull-Net), or storm in and take out the other nuke (though Sentry seems to have that in hand), or something else you come up with.
PS: ST I'm not sure what you want from Maggie in response to the comment of not mentioning all the people who can alter the timestream. She's obviously implying the people present can do so, and if Skullnet can't read between the lines, then she's not going to spell it out. I think we can get something suitably epic happening regardless. I misread your intent. I thought you were thinking of using Maggie's knowledge of the fiction to find another Marvel character who could use time travel to circumvent your need for Skull-Net's time device. And threatening Skull-Net with that.
She mentions, matter of factly to the supercomputer, "You haven't listed all of the entities who can change the timeline."
Ted finds that with all of the explosions, radiation, temporal energies, and other strange stuff flying around the bridge, the controls are shot. He can pull up a map of the Helicarrier. The Temporal Displacement Device is buried in the center of the ship, a spherical machine on a central deck.
Sentry and the missile approach each other at hypersonic speed. Sentry moves underneath it and puts his arm and shoulder under the nose, pushing it upward, driving it off course and sending it toward outer space. He releases it at such an altitude and velocity that it won't have the fuel to make it back to cause any damage.
Helen flies to an ant near the head of a line of ants, communicating through the power of Isis that she understands what it is doing and how she can lead it to a proper burial. In Navajo practices, improperly handled remains can lead to chʼííndii, lingering spirits of the restless dead. The dead would be lead to the afterlife with patterns in sand paintings. The ants have provided this. There would also be purifying smoke from burning cedar, ritual burial of bones and personal items far from where the dead lived, and a song or chant of release. The ants are carrying the bones and fragments of personal items, but they cannot provide burning cedar or songs.
Helen is, of course, an expert in the patterns of human endings. This is a funerary rite. A mass burial being performed by giant insects. The pattern in the scorched desert isn’t merely a migration route. It’s a mandala of death, an immense symbolic tomb. Its geometry echoes the underworld maps of countless cultures: the Egyptian Duat, the Aztec Mictlan, the Navajo fourth world. Except here, something went wrong. The atomic fire didn’t just kill — it disrupted the passage of souls. The blast that fused the desert glass also fused the border between the living and the dead. Those spirits never crossed over. They lingered until something living and instinctive enough could carry them.
In the same way ancient Egyptians embalmed bodies to preserve the soul’s vessel, these creatures have become the ka and ba of the atomic dead. They are performing, in their crude animal way, the work of psychopomps.
Sentry probably should get a Hero Point for his Born Yesterday Complication. In case anyone thinks this is a no win scenario with two nuclear missiles coming in to destroy you, it very much is not. You lot (even without Jason and Herakles showing up), are well capable of handling that challenge.
Hyde, go ahead and make an attack. Maybe you can tear that ant in half by its mandibles.
The wind howls around Helen as her spectral wings catch the dying light, scattering the acrid smoke of burning gas and shattered asphalt. From the air, the chaos below resolves into order. Above all, Helen is an academic and a linguist. Finding patterns is what she does. The ants are not swarming at random, their movements trace arcs and lines, spiraling through the town and the desert beyond. Faint streaks of glass-black earth form sigils across the landscape, fused long ago by unimaginable heat. The ants move along these burned pathways, converging toward a single point several miles west: a lonely expanse of desert. Amunet whispers in her ear... I hear a soft voice, like wind through a canyon, yet filled with sorrow. Voices. Hundreds of them. Fragments of a prayer woven through the earth itself. Each ant she sees carries a fragment of that echo — bits of bone, pottery, and melted glass clutched in their mandibles. “Return…” the whisper rises with the wind. “Return… the land remembers...”
Four of the five ants in the cluster suddenly swell with fungal infections, cream colored fungus sprouting from eyes and joints. The massive exoskeletons shudder and collapse, slamming into the asphalt or toppling into nearby buildings. Glass shatters, one ant smashes a car as it falls.
Skull-Net replies: "It matters not. My temporal soldiers are in place. Nothing can stop their victory. Whomever you think is still able to save you will fail. Already time bends to my will. Your champion Captain Connor lies broken on the deck. And you motley crew of interlopers will be incinerated by nuclear fire in..." he moves his wrist as if looking at a wrist watch, though you cannot see one, just an affectation...12 seconds.
The rocket fires at incredibly short range, slamming into the console that the ant sized armored man is standing on. The explosion is deafening (flavor, not mechanically) as Tiny Stark and the work station he is using are shattered and scattered, leaving only fire and destruction behind.
We most recently saw Jason on the Helicarrier where he was disrupting communications (Nullify: Communication). I built the power in such a way that it required him to concentrate on it, but that was just to keep Jason occupied since Evindyl wasn't available. Jason can easily use his godly powers to move around the world very quickly with either speed or teleportation. We left Herak at the Temple of Heracles, Agrigento, where he pushed the entire Temple aside to reveal the place where he had hidden his ancient panoply.
Hyde sees a mother and her daughter trying to find cover. The girl stumbles and falls as they run for safety, with a giant ant right behind her. The girl screams in fear as Hyde approaches, though it is difficult to know whether she is afraid of the monstrous figure approaching her or the giant insect, or perhaps both. Hyde interposes herself between the ant and the girl, ready to intercept any attack. Her mother stands by the street, unsure what to do. The 6 foot mandibles of the massive warrior ant clamp onto the defiant Hyde.
Hearing Perception area Affliction 10, Will Save DC 20, Dazed/Stunned/Incapacitated
Like most ants, these are especially susceptible to sonic attacks. Their antennae are sensitive receptors, and their pheromone communications are also disrupted by sound. The massive ant's head and thorax slam to the ground, throwing a cloud of dust into the air and releasing a noxious cloud of acidic chemicals.
The swarm of shrikes use their sharp, impaling beaks to crack the shell of the massive ant. It collapses under the assault, its exoskeleton giving way.
Ted finds that the Helicarrier doesn't have shields, though it does have a missile defense system. Basically a collection of rail guns that fire high energy hypersonic projectiles. Not very accurate, but able to throw a lot of material at incoming missiles. He can't get into it at the moment.
Jason, I'd love to have you back if you are able to post.
Not completely back together, but going to try to get back in the saddle. The distortion wave was intended to be a warning about the temporal actions that Skull-Net is taking. Info that you already know, but haven't put together in character: Ted can see that a Temporal Displacement Device has been activated a few times. This is likely causing the temporal disturbances like changing John and Kyle. Maggie knows that Skynet, at least, sends Terminators back in time to kill targets in a last ditch effort to win the war. Sentry doesn't know much, but that is his born yesterday schtick. Maybe it isn't clear, but the Temporal Displacement Device is here on the Helicarrier. Skull-Net has targeted it with the missiles because it doesn't need the device any more. I wasn't expecting Kyle and John to be knocked out. Some bad rolls there for them. Otherwise John could have helped out with the plan. As for foes, Skull-Net and a shrinkidink Stark are still on the bridge. Start is counter-hacking Blue Beetle. I think that should help, but let me know if not. |