Superhero Adventures, UK Style

It had been a quiet couple of weeks since they had taken down the Krampus and other than a couple of brief intercepts and the odd meet and greet of a couple of new Meta’s, they had been not called on for anything . As a result, the team was beginning to get bored.

Then a call came in from Mary’s pseudo-grand-niece, Mary the Younger, stating that she desperately needed to meet with the team and she wanted, no needed to bring along her Aunt. She continued that she couldn’t explain over an open line but she wanted to meet at the BASEment but she’d make sure that the location remained hidden. Despite it sounding a bit paranoid, they reluctantly agreed.

The younger Mary stated she and Jean would be there as soon as possible and she would blindfold Jean before arriving.

Mary explained briefly to Mace that technically this youngster wasn’t actually a relation because Mary’d originated on a different parallel Earth but as she’d replaced this earth’s version of herself, she’d ended up taking on responsibility for the MacCarty line.

Half an hour later, they were all sitting in the lounge. Mary the younger explained briefly about her search for her father; a father who didn’t know of her existence, yet. A father who was a freelance engineer working up North, or so she’d been told.

She was worried because she now believed her father was in trouble somewhere and she needed their help to find him.

Mary Sr. in particular was sceptical until ‘Auntie’ Jean spoke up.  She explained that she hadn’t been totally honest with anyone about Rory, who has actually been missing for some time without making contact with anyone. Although that was not unusual for a couple of months at a time he’d never been this long without making contact before… She momentarily went quiet then continued,  “You see he’s not just an engineer, he also works, worked for a secretive UN-agency called the Covert Surveillance Bureau… An agency set up when Earth was first visited by the Galactic Community; the Ziru Sirka as a secret extension to GREET; The Galactic Reception Embassy for Extra-Terrestrials.”

She explained that the CSB’s job was to make sure ET’s were monitored and tracked at all times whilst they were on Earth; it was their role to watch those alien visitors who arrived and went walkabout, arrived secretly or were from a race previously unknown to GREET. The clue as to their role was in the name, she admitted and Rory was one of their agents.

She knew she shouldn’t be telling them this except, Rory had been missing for too long and the CSB seemed to have written him off. He’d been following up on a rumour that some aliens were arriving illegally and unrecorded in the UK and were then being detained secretly. For what purpose he didn’t know though he was tasked with confirming one way or another the truth behind the rumours. If he knew more, he hadn’t share it. The only clue she had was a name he’d mentioned in passing, apparently a location known as Magonia.

She’d received a note about three months ago from Rory saying that he’d had set off to the North of Scotland to investigate a rumour. He’d been due to report back at least a month ago. He’d never missed a deadline before, never.

His agency had declared him missing and apparently had made no effort to trace or track him down. Whether they believed him dead or that he’d walked away, she wasn’t sure. All her efforts to contact Rory’s bosses had met with a brick wall.

They had sort of assumed that this might be linked somehow to the Government and some form of internal politics were being played out. Given this was a covert agency, working for the UN, perhaps they didn’t want to admit that they’d sent an agent to investigate a Government agency?

Normally if everything was going well Jean would receive a postcard once a month from him. It never contained any real information but it confirmed he was ok. This time there had been nothing since the note. That was not like him at all.

That was all she had, the name of Magonia and a direction, the Scottish Highlands or Islands. Jean agreed to leave it with them and allowed Adam to take her back to Rory’s apartment in the city.

Mary tried her dowsing skills using a map of Scotland to see if she could work out where he was. Jean hadn’t come prepared with anything personal to Rory and the best she could offer was a recent photograph of Rory.

To Mary’s surprise the pendant stopped, very hesitantly above what appeared to be an empty section of the Atlantic Ocean about 80 miles off the Western Coast opposite Ullapool. Could he be on a submarine or boat? Mary marked the approximate location on the map just in case.

Meanwhile, Mace checked Magonia on her upgraded wrist computer and discovered that there had been some research carried out into that name several months before by Annie and the team when they had been investigating the Nanites known as the Silver Storm.

The name was mentioned in a couple of books mostly as the name of the cloud realm occupied by criminal aerial sailors who were said to travel the clouds in ships and worked with weather-magi.

There was also a more modern book Passport to Magonia, which explored the link between modern UFO visitations and reports from antiquity of contact with these “space beings”.

Annie had also previously uncovered a connection to a rumour of a secretive group connected to the name, a group known as PISCES; some sort of secretive investigation into paranormals that may have been set up by Churchill himself.  This was from conspiracy chatrooms and there was no evidence to substantiate any of the often-wild and contradictory rumours, which suggested the group overlapped somehow with MI5 and MI6 amongst several other Government agencies.

While this was going on, they all began to hear barking from Rascal who ran into the Lounge followed almost immediately by the playful corgi-like ‘dog’ they’d seen once before. The creature twitched its antennae and ran to young Mary for a cuddle and a belly rub. Rascal seemed to have somehow attracted it back. Rascal subsequently ran off to be with Jeeves in the kitchen.

Momentarily distracted, Akira bent down and tried to use his view the past spell on the creature; he touched it and suddenly felt a migraine-like backlash as his spell interacted with the creature’s abilities. There was a scream though he couldn’t be sure whether it came from him, the corgi or someone else.

To everyone nearby suddenly there was a blinding light and everything felt as though they were being torn apart and the direction of gravity had swung to their left. Less than a second later, the team and young Mary found themselves lying on a hilltop in the freezing cold, looking down on a bay and a dark, ocean that appeared to stretch forever. The grass at their feet was scrub-like and the sound of birds, puffins? filled their ears from the nearby cliffs. Sam lay unconscious on the ground; the unexpected trip had somehow affected him badly. The ‘Corgi’ immediately collapsed, exhausted or injured in a hollow by his side and immediately fell asleep.

Young Mary elected to stay by Sam’s side and keep an eye on him wherever they might be, whilst he was in some form of healing coma. Thankfully, his body was radiating a great deal of heat that would keep her warm.

Looking all around it becomes apparent that they are on a relatively small island in the middle of a grey, cold ocean. Far off, a couple of tall, Stoney pillar-like stacks were visible in the ocean as were metallic towers and globe-like buildings like some sort of scientific enclaves  to the North and South of the island and the remnants of what looked like a street of long-time derelict cottages just above the bay.

The weather was cold, wet and extremely windy as they stood on the top of some rocky cliffs.

Akira muttered, “I haven’t a clue how I did that.” He also felt slightly nauseous but not as debilitated as Sam. He shook it off; thankfully, neither Mary nor Mace seemed affected.

Looking around, the whole island looked unoccupied except for all the birds nesting of the cliffs.

Akira tried to use his view the past ability on the rocky outcrop itself. He put his hand on the ground and felt nothing beyond the islands’ great age.

He did spot a plaque on a cairn at the summit of the hill about 30 metres away; they approached and saw it had a badly corroded but still readable legend; “St. Kilda, 340 metres” and a set of map coordinates that placed them in the middle of the Atlantic, 80 miles off the Scottish Coast.

Mace noticed that her wrist computer was working but not surprisingly was unable to connect to the internet or any mobile network.

Mary in Banshee form, set off flying to explore the Southern globe and tower which Akira thought looked like a radar station whilst Mace and Akira headed down to explore the crofts keeping in touch using the earpieces as short-range radios.

As Banshee arrived, she was able to confirm that it did appear to be a radar station but the buildings doors and windows were all boarded over. The facility was apparently deserted and had been for some time possibly even a couple of decades, yet she could hear the radar dish inside the dome whirling around. Remotely controlled? Banshee looked around but there was no obvious control or power cables she could find.

Banshee in her insubstantial form phased inside the building and confirmed her initial impression that it had been deserted for a number of years. It was fully boarded up and nothing of any value had been left behind. The dismantled control boards were scrap and obviously no longer controlled anything. Having checked the disconnected cables one last time, Banshee elected to join up with Mace and Akira heading towards the village.

By now, Mace and Akira had reached the village itself, and it was immediately clear that the buildings had been deserted for a long-time. The majority appeared to be without roofs, all wooden structures appeared to have rotted away, and many of the walls had collapsed. It looked as though they hadn’t been lived in for at least a hundred years.

However there were two buildings that were maintained and in good condition. As they walked down to get a better look they noticed an older white haired man with a thick woollen shirt and walking stick looking in their direction. The look on his face was of utter astonishment.

His clothes were not really suitable for being outside in this environment; it looked as though he’d just stepped out from somewhere much warmer. A cigarette butt was still smouldering at his feet.

At that moment in the sky above them, suddenly appeared a large grav-powered gunship zooming in to land nearby to the North of the island. The sudden appearance of such a large vehicle seemed to indicate stealth capacity. Seconds later, it dropped towards the ground and vanished as quickly as it appeared.

Akira shouted out to the man “Morning friend, did you also see that thing in the sky just now?”

The man looked surprised as though he had just realised they were there. “Who are you? What are you doing here? “

Akira replied, “we’re just exploring a series of unexplained phenomena in the area…” He was interrupted with a urgent, almost panicky “how did you get here? The next transport from the mainland isn’t due for another six months at least.”

“We just teleported in.”

That caught him by surprise, “But how? The meta-sensors should have immediately have activated…” He looked behind him, obviously seeing something that scared him and spoke up urgently, “hide quickly, hide!”

Akira continued talking, “That thing in the sky, do you know what it is?” The man started to walk towards them as quickly as he could. Behind him were half a dozen armed men. Their uniforms were unfamiliar; their bearing however reminded Akira of Jeeves somehow; as though they were always prepared for anything to happen. Trained soldiers, in their late 20’s or early 30’s; killers came unbidden to his mind.

Akira reached over, touched Mace and turned both of them invisible as several shots immediately rang out as the soldiers fired at where they were standing when they vanished from sight.

The first couple of shots hit Mace’s force shield as Mace fired off a standard crossbow bolt at the Officer. The bolt materialised apparently out of nowhere hitting the officer in the shoulder and knocking him to the ground whilst the old man they’d been talking to seconds before the attack was hit by a stray bullet in the arm and collapsed to the ground.

Akira suddenly realised that something on this island was interfering with his capacity to activate any of his meta abilities but thankfully his mystical skills were unaffected. The random thought that Sam’s powers were apparently a combination of meta and mystical abilities gained from merging with the Dragon; could whatever was stopping him from using his meta-powers also be what had rendered him so sick?

A stray bullet whished past his head, narrowly missing him.  One of the soldiers shouted out “Not sure how they’ve managed this but they have to be around here somewhere, spread out!”

The other five soldiers started to advance up the road while the remaining soldier started to remove the bolt and field dress the officers’ wound. Another soldier rushed to the side of the old man who had been hit by one of the bullets; he said, “Mr Wilson, stay with us” and immediately began to patch up the flesh wound. Loud sirens began nearby drowning out whatever else was being said.

They noticed that the rear wall of one of the cottages that backed onto the hillside appeared to open up and inside was a large, metallic door not unlike a bank vault began to open, revealing a symbol etched on the tunnel wall behind it.

Akira immediately recognised it as the astrological symbol for Pisces. From the tunnel, several other soldiers in the same uniform but minus the jackets emerged.

On the cliffs above, Banshee could see what was happening and heard the shots then the sirens begin. Turning insubstantial, she headed towards her teammates unleashing a terrorising scream at the soldiers as she did so.

Drifting down, she noticed that the soldiers weren’t as badly affected by her attack as she’d expected; well trained to hold the line? They were however slowly withdrawing towards the blast door and the tunnel behind it whilst shouting for something they called the ‘leech’. The soldiers formed a perimeter as they proceeded to withdraw with the wounded officer and Mr Wilson. One soldier was on a radio demanding the nullifiers be extended on the surface. A number of small, concealed devices on the buildings began to light up as wave after wave of some power-inhibiting rays washed over everyone. It repressed meta and genetic abilities apparently but had no effect on natural abilities such as Maces or supernatural powers such as Banshee’s or Akira’s mystical training.

They couldn’t actively sense anything happening other than Akira weakening slightly.

As the officer was being evacuated into the tunnel, both Akira and Banshee ‘felt’ something about him they’d experienced before. Reaching out with their mystical senses they ‘saw’ a ugly small mystical wound that glowed with a sickly yellow aura on the back of his neck; a wound identical to one seen on Dalton not that long ago. The control parasites were here? The others appeared unaffected.

A humanoid creature, yellow-skinned and resembling nothing they’d ever seen before, came to the surface.  Akira and Mace still invisible, immediately dodged passed the ‘Lemonade Man’, which seemed to be sensitive to sound; its head turning over 90 degrees as through following them as they stealthily entered the tunnel. They couldn’t help notice the powered collar around its neck, so similar to the collars used by the Krampus on the kidnapped children. The series of lights on the front of the collar were all unlit at present.

Akira also ‘saw’ a small, ugly-looking aura like ‘wound’ on the rear of the creature’s neck. Punishment collar and control parasite? It seemed to sense something but wasn’t able to focus directly on where they were. They managed to get passed it by hiding in the psychic and audio ‘shadow’ of the soldiers.

They were in. The problem now would be getting out.

Meanwhile Banshee saw this leech creature appear out of the tunnel, trying to get a reading on her location, the collar immediately attracted her attention. She unleashed a shattering shriek at it and was rewarded when the lock and mechanism shattered and crumbled under her attack. It didn’t appear to make a major difference to the creature which, although surprised, continued its search and attempts to neutralise the intruders. It became obvious that this creature worked more on instinct than conscious intelligence, though Banshee was convinced that the parasite now had an even stronger influence over its actions.

Banshee unleashed a terrorising scream at the creature. The attack caused the creature to have fits but it refused to be moved from its present location though the base apparently no longer controlled it and it seemed confused and badly disorientated. Banshee took a chance and rushed passed it while it was muddled. Inside she followed the tunnel.

Meanwhile the still invisible Mace and Akira had come to a branch to the left in the tunnel and what appeared to be a glass-sealed security post beside it with what looked like meta neutralisers built into the walls. The soldiers continued down the main corridor with the wounded heading towards what looked like living quarters. They considered whether they could get inside the security post in order for Mace to deactivate the meta-neutralisers when they saw an insubstantial Banshee drifting towards them.  An invisible Mace looked through the glass of the security post to see if it had override controls for the neutralisers. Inside where two armed soldiers on alert, tensely waiting further instructions. Although she couldn’t be sure, she got the impression that this didn’t have the neutraliser override they were looking for, it was too compact and Mace had the impression that there were likely similar security posts throughout the base. Too risky, they moved back down the main corridor and whispering, made contact with Banshee.

A squad of armed soldiers could be heard running up the corridor towards them and the village entrance behind the three of them, though only Banshee was visible. Mace unleashed a smoke bolt at the soldiers filling the entire corridor with blinding smoke.

Hiding invisibly in the side corridor, Akira teleported both Mace and himself behind the squad of soldiers, though he had to drop the invisibility spell to do so.

The billowing smoke allowed Banshee to bypass the confused soldiers who were firing wild up the corridor through the smoke and meet up with her fellow teammates as they heard base shutdown initiated due to an apparent meta attack.

They found themselves looking at a map on the wall and realised just how large the underground complex was; it covered the whole of the island. Using extra effort, Akira reinstated his invisibility for himself and Mace. Just in front of them were the living quarters and accommodation blocks for about 50 people, some of the beds and rooms still obviously occupied. There was a side corridor just before them and they elected to hide inside and explore that.

A few minutes later, they were walking one at a time down a very narrow corridor towards what appeared to be a hangar bay where the craft they’d momentarily seen in the sky earlier had landed. Several soldiers were standing around and they appeared to be unloading several prisoners in collars from the vehicle and heading back down another corridor towards the security post they’d seen previously. Banshee noticed that none of them showed any signs of being infected with the parasites thankfully. Some of them did appear to be meta’s however going by the physical adaptations some of them displayed. Banshee changed back to Mary and with Akira forming a weird chain with himself in the middle, he managed to extend his invisibility to cover all of them so they could cross the hangar bay and follow the prisoners up the corridor as an invisible ‘conga line’.

Once safely across the hangar and hidden in the corridor, Akira dropped the invisibility momentarily whilst Mary tried using a tracking spell; Ahgrazul’s Compass to trace Rory’s presence inside the base if he was there.

She got a vague impression of a direction towards the South-West, which seemed to be in the same general direction as the prisoners in front of them were being forced to go. Returning the three of them invisible, they headed down the corridor behind the prisoners.

The soldiers explained to the prisoners as they passed that the entrances were now all sealed and in the event of an attempted escape, all of the corridors would be flooded, trapping them inside the chambers. They then headed down some natural caves and came out the other side, having passed another couple of security posts, into a large chamber with large metallic blast doors with what might be cells beyond that.

The prisoners and their guards carried on through but the team noticed the guardroom and the large metallic tank in the middle of the room filled with what appeared to be a silver mist; the Nanites of the Silver Storm suspended in a stasis field. Beyond that were a number of chambers with security doors. Into these, the prisoners were being corralled into individual cells. The initial chamber seemed empty of previous prisoners though one guard could be heard joking that if they lived long enough they’d eventually be moved to the long-term containment cells in the next chamber.

In the middle of the chamber were a number of tanks containing white worm-like creature swimming in some form of suspension liquid; the control parasites.  Moving passed the newly occupied cells they saw the entrance to the long-term cell areas were each identical in layout.

Would they be able to rescue everyone or did they need to focus on a single rescue?  They had to find out first what was in the long-term cells…

Choosing a set of cells, Mary stepped away from the team, turned into an insubstantial Banshee and drifted through the security door and into the prison chamber. There was thankfully only a single guard inside the prison block control room. He would have to be dealt with first. Banshee entered the control chamber catching the guard off guard and used her corrupting touch on the man. He collapsed immediately unconscious, driven momentarily insane.

In front of her were the control panels for the cells, hardwired internet connections and security sirens. Turning to Mary, she opened the chamber door to allow Mace and Akira entrance then left Mace to examine the rest of the controls.

There were eight occupied cells. Wandering across with Akira in tow, the first cell contained an amphibious humanoid that Akira recognised from his studies as a mythological Deep One. The second cell contained a cyborg human they’d seen before, apparently one of the ‘omegadrones’ that had attacked Fizzgig of the Untouchables. The third cell contained a nightmare figure that was obviously alien – or at least they hoped so. God forbid that that inhuman creature had originally been human once!

The last on that side of the room was a meta-enhanced human and a control parasite radiated on its neck. The two of them immediately crossed the room to look at the other cells.

The first cell opposite contained a woman in an armour that Mary remembered from when he first crossed over; the female that had occupied the pod next to her when she’d first arrived, the female that had created the time storm, what had she been called? Psipher? Her cell was obviously soundproofed and flooded with a meta-neutraliser and who knew what else, restricting her powers. Mary checked the cell number – Beta L5…

They quickly moved on, a shambling alien mass of shape-changing horror was next door. A set of notes identified it as part of an alien race known as the Unity whatever that was.

The next cell contained an unaltered human – Rory! Beta L7 he noted and called to Mace to see if she could figure out how to release him.

While they waited, they glanced into the last cell and saw to their surprise, Tangleweb – the artificially-enhanced stormer created by the Professor. A person who was supposed to be receiving help and assistance yet ended up imprisoned here.

What were they up to at this Magonia?

Mace quickly found the controls and first released Rory.

He was feeling stunned but insisted they needed to leave as soon as possible as opening the cell doors will have activated the base alarms. Rory explained that aliens had infested the leaders and some of the base personnel to create a fifth column of spies and invaders who had subjugated this base. Most of the prisoners were either aliens or Meta’s illegally detained. He pointed towards Psipher and explained, she was an exception, like him; why she was here he had no idea. They’d not been able to remove her armour, or fully work out what her exact powers were but at least she’d now recovered consciousness after several months in a coma.

At Mary’s insistence, the team agreed to release the armoured female, Psipher as well and Mace quickly found the door release despite the risk of all hell breaking out once she was no longer restrained. For the moment, they agreed to leave the rest in their cells.

Rory wandered down the various cells and confirmed Akira’s suspicion that the first cell’s occupant was a Deep One. And that another was a transformed Meta. Mary did suggest they turn them all loose to create merry hell and possible help act as a diversion but Akira reminded her that they had the ability to flood the base (possibly including the cells) and suggested that he created a teleportal to the surface.

The now liberated Psipher was muttering about how she wanted away as soon as possible and seemed confused, muttering about how this wasn’t the way it should have happened…

With a secondary siren going off and soldiers banging on the door, the decision was taken to only liberate Rory and Psipher for the moment and figure out how to deal with the others once they had safely got away.

Akira opened a portal to the surface, hopefully next to where Sam and the little alien dog had been left. Mace opened all the cell doors and then rushed through the portal with Akira, Rory and the released female in armour.

The outer door started to open only to be attacked by the metamorphing and growing in size ex-prisoner, the unity. Tangleweb was also creating havoc amongst the guards, webbing and slashing at the soldiers trying to get through the door.

On the surface, Akira discovered they’d actually arrived at the village and immediately considered heading to where Sam and young Mary had been, but they still had no plans for getting off the island. Rory suggested leaving their followers a little distraction while they waited for Mary and headed into the museum, explaining that if ‘they’ think the breach was too serious that they may set off the nuclear bomb built in to their base to cover their tracks. That caught them by surprise, who incorporates an A-bomb into a base design to cover their tracks?

Psipher meanwhile continued muttering to herself about paradoxes and wondering how this had happened as this was not temporally acceptable.

Akira quickly used the encrypted earpieces to update Mary about the situation and suggest she get to them up top as soon as possible. Mary turned into an insubstantial Banshee and started to leave. She realised she was too deep down to be able to phase up through that depth of rock and instead set of at speed, followed by some of the braver soldiers along the corridors and the surface. Banshee phased through the blast doors whilst her followers had to wait until they had been opened and she was sure they were preparing to flood the tunnels. Emerging on the surface she headed straight for where they’d left Sam and young Mary.

Meanwhile Rory was suggesting they leave immediately as the aliens who were controlling the officers here had also apparently infiltrated Whitehall; an invasion by the back door. He desperately needed to get the information to someone who could derail this as soon as possible.

Akira smiled, “I think I need the hair of a dog. We need to head and meet up with Sam and hopefully our access to the island will also turn out to be our egress as well.” As he spoke, they noticed Rory grabbing bags of sugar and flour from the museum kitchen, with several metal spoons stuffed them all in microwave, and set the timer. “A little surprise for those following us” he muttered as he ushered everyone out the back door. Mace realised he’d just built a makeshift time bomb. As they reached Sam and the dog, a muffled explosion went off behind them.

Sam seemed to have recovered somewhat but was still disorientated by the interference with his abilities and powers but the alien dog seemed to have recuperated. Psipher explained that her ability to transport them was being interfered with whilst here. She asked Akira “What’s your teleport range?” Akira admitted he was limited to a mile. “That’s not going to help very much with the coast almost 100 miles away. How did you get here?”  Akira smiled, “We came by Corgi.” He reached down and again began to stroke the corgi, muttering under his breath, “There’s nowhere like home, there’s nowhere like…”

There was a sudden flash of light (and a near-silent scream from Psipher as her powers were drained by the dog-like creature) and a feeling as though everyone was being wiped from existence.

The next thing they were aware of was that they were standing in the ruins of a large city. “looks like the Dalek home-world either that or the corgi’s taken us to its own planet,” then saw what looked like the remnants of Pyramid Towers and behind that, and far of in the distance, was a massive, new construction surrounded by alien-looking grav vehicles. This pylon reaching high into the sky, several miles at least and was looking as though it was being constructed out of the ruins of what they now recognised as a shattered city of Wessex.

What the hell had happened?

(To be continued)