Superhero Adventures, UK Style

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Recap: Once the temporal nausea had passed, they looked up at the sky and saw a now familiar-looking, large grav-vehicle appear over the island as though it had just decloaked.

They had reappeared near the village of St. Kilda on the cliffs above the village. Nearby, they could hear an earlier Akira’s voice shouting, “Morning friend, did you also see that thing in the sky just now?” Another male voice, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” That had to have been the old man, what had they called him? Mr Wilson? Akira replied, “we’re just exploring a series of unexplained phenomena in the area…” He was interrupted with an 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.” “But how?  The meta-sensors should have immediately have activated…” Then “hide quickly, hide!” Akira continued talking, “That thing in the sky, do you know what it is?” then the sound of lots of footsteps followed shortly afterwards by several rifle shots and a couple of high-pitched screams.

Now: They huddled down and looked at Danni, who seemed genuinely upset. “Damn, we’re apparently crossing our own time streams…” She looked around and as though for the first time noticed that, in their haste to leave future Wessex, they had carried through several scavenged items with them; Sam’s ice cannon, the various remaining grenades, scrambler and of course the grav-bike.

She pointed, “Those cannot be retained after you leave here. Temporal salvage must not go near their previous selves otherwise there will be serious consequences. They MUST be destroyed before we leave this island; the distance between the two versions should act as temporal insulation in the short-term. Just remember two copies of the same object cannot exist in the same space-time continuum for long.”

Akira said, “and also we can’t just leave them behinds.” Danni nodded, Even being on the same planet at the same time will eventually have consequences.”  Sam asked, “Are there any options to send them back to the future?” Danni admitted she was currently tapped out power-wise and wouldn’t be able to help for at least another 24 hours.

She paused as everyone tried to stay out of sight of the action below. Banshee realised that her earlier self would be coming across from the Radar station soon and must not see any of them up on top of the cliffs.

Danni continued, “When you time travel you should only really do so as an observer, not as a participant if at all possible, especially if you accidently cross your own time stream. If your ‘past you’ sees their ‘future you’ that will have catastrophic impact on the timeline itself. This is because of what is known as the Observer Effect. You can’t change your own present by changing your past; what can happen is that you end up creating a new, separate timeline, one that will hopefully, eventually reflow back into the primary time stream. It’s a bit like throwing a pebble into a river, time has a habit of resuming its original path. However every so often events caused by time travellers can create a type of dam changing the course of the time stream from that point on.

Make enough changes to time and the time stream either becomes a separate parallel universe or it may collapse back in on itself and become a ghost dimension. Thankfully, time hates to be changed and will work against you to prevent you. Only in the present, in your own time do you have any control. So, you must allow your past selves to play things out exactly as they happened last time but you can do anything you didn’t actually observe happening last time, Kalpesh? As long as you don’t change your own past in any way everything should be fine.

What you observed previously is now a fixed point in time and space, changing that in any way, such as having contact with your earlier selves will create a paradox and will create dangerous time eddy’s which will have serious consequences. Just remember nature abhors time twins, that is the same person in the same space-time location from two different times in their life, and will actively work to get rid of at least one of them.”

Sam muttered, “so, we might end up causing natural disasters..?” Danni merely repeated her earlier comment, “nature abhors time twins. You can do things here and now just as long as you don’t interfere in any way with your observed past.”

Hidden above the cliffs they quickly made some plans and agreed they had to rescue the prisoners but only after their earlier selves had departed. They dished out the equipment with Sam holding onto the ice cannon and Akira grabbing the remaining grenades. The scrambler seemed less useful in the here and now and was left with Rory and Danni (or ‘psycho’ as Akira jokingly kept on referring to Psipher). They both agreed to keep out of the way and hide in one of the derelict crofts until they witnessed the explosion and the escape of their earlier selves. They joked that Rory should ‘McGyver’ up a kettle and have tea ready for when they returned. Given that Mace had integrated comms on her bike, they also agreed to leave Rory and Danni with one of their encrypted earpieces so he could inform them when their earlier versions had left the area.

Sam was appointed scout and point man for the team since his earlier self was still on top of the tor, ill and had never entered the underground base.

As they made plans, Banshee watched her earlier, incorporeal self, drift down the path towards the base entrance and the gathered soldiers and unleash a terrorising shriek that caused Mace, Danni and Rory to have to cover their ears but thankfully, the scream was away from them.

Then a few minutes later the meta-neutralisers activated and both Sam and Akira felt their meta-abilities suddenly extinguish. The plan was to render the team invisible with Akira joining Sam and extending his invisibility spell to cover him as well, whilst Banshee rendered herself, Mace and the bike insubstantial and invisible though again it rendered her manoeuvre drive inoperable, it floated with both of them on it, powered only by Banshees’ flight.

The earlier Banshee shrieked twice more, both times at a yellow-skinned mutant biped that had exited the tunnel, ‘Mr lemonade’ or Leech as the soldiers had called it. The first cry caused the control collar to fall off the creatures’ neck; the second seemed to disorientate it whilst that version of Banshee escaped inside. On the hilltop as the four of them began moving towards the entrance to follow banshee’s younger self inside, the plan being to disable the atomic bomb and free the prisoners.

As they moved, they saw that the yellow mutant seemed momentarily confused as it turned its head towards the Banshee in the tunnel then back towards them. They noticed that it seemed less disorientated than they expected and more focused on them. Their earlier selves had assumed they’d either successfully sneaked passed it or had disorientated it so badly it had just wandered away, but the reality they now realised was that it had somehow sensed their older selves, despite being invisible, and had elected to attack them first! Somehow, it knew where they were and it immediately hurdled towards them, arms outstretched the tendrils on its limbs and face seeming twitching with anticipation. What the heck was this creatures’ powers?

Banshee realised it was following her scent, she let go of Mace allowing her to become visible and substantial again and dropped towards the ground unleashing the wail of the banshee at it, hoping her younger self was far enough down the tunnel by now not to hear. The shriek hit the creature, leaving it dazed. Despite the attack, it began to levitate towards Mace, its arms outstretched as though trying to grab her. She unleashed a standard bolt at its legs staggering it back down to the ground where Akira followed it up immediately with a mystical blast rendering it unconscious. Dragging it into one of the empty crofts, Sam checked its condition to make sure it was stable; noticing as he did that it had the sickly aura of a control parasite in the back of its neck. This creature had apparently once been human before its stormer transformation. Sam felt the edge of its power, so powerful that it was immune to the neutralisers. Taking no chances, he then turned the ice cannon on its arms and legs, freezing it in place. Better not to have this creature behind them when it woke up. Akira urged them to hurry up and head for the tunnel entrance before it sealed.

As they entered the cottage backed into the hillside and saw the large, metallic blast doors slowly closing with a Pisces symbol etched on the tunnel wall behind it. Shooting and smoke was coming from the tunnel itself then six cautious guards appeared guns in hand. Banshee having turned Mace and herself invisible pulled the bike and passenger quietly through the entrance and into the billowing smoke that filled the tunnel from their earlier selves.

Sam and Akira were about to follow them through the smoke when Akira had a sense of Déjà vu and felt a momentary physical weakness that he knew always accompanied the use of a spell. Should they fly through the smoke Sam’s wings could, no would, create a movement in the smoke identifying their presence to the soldiers…

He stopped Sam and thought for a second, there was a spell he’d learnt last time he’d visited the Library, called the ‘Auspicious Augury of Ahgrazul’ that gave a precognitive warning of danger. Had he used it and somehow reset time by a couple of seconds? Despite having no memory of casting a spell, his momentary weakness confirmed that he must have done just that. Regardless, he now had a warning to do something different. He whispered to Sam over their comms, “No, don’t fly in there yet, either wait for smoke to clear a bit otherwise your wings might disturb it or when you move in, just be especially careful.” Sam quietly and carefully sneaked inside on foot with Akira still being carried piggyback whispering, “giddy up” in his ear.

Inside, they waited for a couple of seconds then headed down through the smoke and the nearest corridor towards the cells. They sneaked passed a couple of security posts and down the natural caverns, hearing only a short distance behind them the sound of the prisoners from the transport being herded towards the cells. They knew their earlier selves were only a short distance behind them, though how close they couldn’t be sure. In front of them were the security doors to the cells and off from that, and set back from the corridor was where Akira and Banshee thought might be either more cells or the control area. It had been marked on the map on the wall their earlier selves had once viewed as a number of circular rooms radiating off a central station.

Inside they found themselves in a laboratory, several scientists watching a number of people in large cylindrical tanks being exposed to the Silver Storm. These had to be potential metas being forced to transform. They also noticed that each chamber had several images of creatures like Jaguars and other predators being projected onto the inside walls; was this some sort of attempt to control the transformation process? It immediately reminded Sam of the Professor and Labyrinth’s attempts in the deserted Battersea Station to control and target the stormer transformations. Akira couldn’t help but whisper over the teams comms, “evil, pure evil.”

This seemed to be ongoing as the scientists prepared other chambers ready for new test subjects. The prisoners brought in earlier? There were six prisoners here, either already transformed or about to be. The team tried to sneak passed the scientists and guards towards the two chambers at the far side only for Sam to stumble slightly and knock an empty cylinder to the ground with a loud bang! Everyone spun round but their invisibility continued to work to their advantage. The guards immediately focused on seeing what had caused the ‘accident’ with one of the scientists arguing that it was possible that one of their stormers had gained secondary telekinesis. They were within inches of the team when they decided it had to have been just an accident. The team continued stealthily crossing the room and then looked through the security glass in the door to the chambers. Beyond they could see computers analysing the various results, DNA and blood samples from their victims. What was obvious to Mace was that neither room held the controls to sirens, neutralisers or the atomic bomb that had been mentioned the last time they’d been at Magonia!

Heading back towards the main entrance to the corridor, they could hear the prisoners being marched passed the door towards the cells next door. Their earlier selves were only a few minutes behind if they remembered correctly. Waiting, Banshee and Akira noticed that at least one of the scientists had the aura they associated with control parasite infestation despite not being enhanced. It seemed whatever was going on here, P.I.S.C.E.S. wasn’t as in control as they might thought they were.

Akira muttered about Sam’s scales chaffing his skin. He held on whilst he stepped down. They had a short window of opportunity before the sirens went off and the earlier Banshee got the prisoners out of the furthest away cells. They had to try and figure out where the control room was as soon as possible.

They sneaked out and rushed down the corridors away from their time twins and down to the area at the opposite side of the base as fast as they could whilst maintaining their invisibility. They arrived at the large structure they’d thought might have been important. A sign on the wall read ‘Fallout shelter’ with an arrow beneath reading to the ‘Nuclear Plant’. Time was running out. Soon the sirens would start and potentially set off the tunnel flooding and possibly even their last resort – their atomic bomb! Did a security breach, even one that included someone with a draconic nature, warrant such a draconian response?

Was the plant also the bomb? Made sense to Mace. The shelter was empty and they walked through to what looked like an airlock like entrance to the plant. This was heavily secured and even opening the door would set off alarms inside the plant itself as one door closed and locked behind them sealing them inside the decontamination and changing area before accessing the plant itself.

Through a window in the door, they saw what was beyond; though Mace could not see anything inside that could trigger an atomic explosion. This was their doomsday weapon; however, the trigger mechanism was obviously located elsewhere. Several people in radiation suits wandered around the chamber monitoring the power plant itself. They saw another side corridor beside the plant and decided to quickly head down and check it out.

They had finally found the primary control room. It was under heavy security and had a two door airlock-like entrance. Inside, looking through the security glass panels into the room, they could see three officers.

At the far side of the room, they could see what appeared to be a tightly sealed transparent chamber with what looked to be a missile warhead rigged with dozens of cables. This was obviously the trigger designed to create the catalyst needed to create a nuclear explosion. It was set close to the rear of the power plant and was only accessible from within that room.

Leaving the bike to materialise, Akira decided to create a mystical portal into the middle of the room itself and ’port the team through. Banshee was the first through followed by Sam and Mace and then Akira. Banshee grabbed hold of the nearest officer and unleashed her corrupting touch on him. He shuddered and then collapsed with what resembled a full-blown epileptic fit.

Mace realised she either needed to get to the control panel which might have an anti-tampering device or try and enter the room containing the warhead and dismantle the control mechanism from that end. A third option was to leave both alone. The room housing the warhead, a detached R-29R SLBM remotely connected to the control panel was tiny and situated close enough to the power plant to set off a catastrophic chain reaction that would render the entire island nothing more than radioactive slag.

Sam did ask whether Akira could just teleport it out and away but Mace vetoed that as it was obvious that any attempt to move it would set it off and even without it being used as a trigger for a nuclear explosion it was definitely powerful enough to do serious damage to anyone within the range of the explosion. It had to be disarmed.

As she was trying to decide, one of the remaining officers hit the alarm. Sirens blared throughout the base and security doors began to seal. Perhaps, Banshee opening the cell doors at the other end of the base hadn’t activated the prison sirens and doors sealing; perhaps it had been them?

Mace rushed towards the control panel.

Akira tried to decide who to attack; the one standing by the control panel or the one running across the room? He tried to unleash his mystical blast but initially failed to be sufficiently focused then his blast flashed across the room as the officer reached towards one of the blinking red lights. He collapsed forward, unconscious. The remaining officer reached the panel, screaming, “Damn you I’m flooding the tunnels!”

Luck wasn’t on his side though. He hastily reached out for the button on the primary security panel and his finger slipped, insufficient pressure was applied to activate the flooding mechanism. Before he could do anything else, Sam flew towards him but his feet slipped and his claws slammed into the panel in front of him causing him to step slightly backwards. Akira unleashed a mystical blast; initially it seemed to miss, but the edge of it caught the officer in the shoulder and spun him round.

Mace had reached the control panel and the twin key activation station two metres apart. The panel circuit board likely had a trembler switch fitted but how likely was it that they’d fitted one to the key switches themselves? She wrecked both locks. No key would be able to turn the switches once she finished.

As Mace wrecked the switches, Banshee flew across to the remaining officer and unleashed a corrupting touch on the officer leaving him staggered and having to pull himself across the floor. Akira unleashed a mystical blast to finish him off, “Twatted” he shouted as the officer collapsed, unconscious.

Several of the control panels and boards in the room were in full-on red and flashing mode. They quickly read the labels, flooding, neutralisers etc. The blast doors throughout the base had been locked down and a clock on the wall was reading a countdown to something. The cables from this led to the a control panel, which showed a flow diagram of pipes and output channels throughout the base and linked to an activated switch that read Sea Gates. The countdown was obviously to when these sea gates opened. Sam pulled himself together and shredded the panel with his claws;  slash after slash with fury as he entered berserker mode. Seconds and several slashes later the panel was in shreds and the clock had apparently stopped. Only time would tell if he’d stopped the gates from opening into the tunnels. He waited until the clock should have reached zero and there was no obvious flooding to be seen on the security monitors. Sirens still rang out and tunnel flooding warning signs were still activated though thankfully, the input tubes remained sealed and the meta-neutralisers were still active.

They quickly compared notes to try and figure where their earlier selves would be now. By this point Akira, Mace, Psipher and Rory should have teleported out and Mary had opened the cells of some of the prisoners and was likely making her way through the sealed off tunnels towards the surface. As soon as Mary was clear, they needed to go and free the remaining prisoners. It would help if the meta-neutralisers were disabled but not too soon or their past might be changed. Banshee asked if the EMP grenades could be rigged up to some form of timer so they would take the remaining security off-line? Mace disabled the cables from the clock to the panel and jerry-rigged a trigger to Akira’s remaining two EMP grenades then restarted the clock. Akira argued that they needed the neutralisers destroyed or deactivated so they could travel back to the future again and away from the island. That’s when it struck. Psipher had said her ability to time travel was a meta-ability so how had she managed to take their earlier selves into the future last time if the neutralisers had been still working when she chronoported? They had to sort this so that they were disabled after everyone had left the base but before Akira had tried to Corgi-jaunt out…

They had to time it so when their earlier selves reached each other on the top of the tor to have the neutralisers disarm. They set the timer for four minutes, connected both grenades to disable the whole control room and ran for the cells. They also need to figure out an escape route off the island before the soldiers recaptured them or they would have to leave the prisoners behind to be recaptured.

Heading to the bike, Mace sent out an emergency call to Bethany and the Challenger-Wildeman’s in the hope that they would have the necessary contacts to provide the cavalry though it looked as though it might take them several hours to get there. Then they began to get as far away from the EMP blast as they could in case it also took out their comms.

As they travelled through the tunnels, they thought about how they and the prisoners might make a last stand and where, assuming they got their meta-abilities back. Then Akira remembered the stealth ship they’d seen when they first arrived on the island, the one now parked in the hangar.

A plan began to form as they headed to liberate the prisoners. A call from Rory confirmed that the museum had just exploded whilst his earlier self had just escaped with the others out the back.

Akira and Sam opened the security doors and headed for the laboratories to liberate those trapped inside whilst Mace and Banshee headed for the cells where they phased through the doors and headed for the guard in the control room of what they assumed was the short-term cells. There, Banshee unleashed her corrupting touch on the unprepared guard. When he dropped, she unlocked the cells and ushered out the prisoners; a mix of reporters and meta-humans. They were told to wait as the two of them headed for the prisoners the earlier Banshee had liberated but had had to leave behind.

To their surprise, the guards were all gone, presumably having chased after the earlier version of Banshee. Inside the cell area was the aquatic Deep One, the apparently docile Omegadrone and several inhuman forms including the Unity and the parasite-controlled stormer. They arranged to open the doors to free all of them and some at least of them joined with their earlier group of escapees.

Meanwhile, Sam and Akira teleported inside the lab’, to the surprise of everyone inside. There were two guards and four scientists. Sam went berserk on the guards, the first punch took out the first of the guards instantly  as he headed straight at the remaining guard;  The next thrust was a feign and the guard was caught out by the follow through ripping his Kevlar armour and knocking him unconscious as well.

He turned and shouted at the scientists, “surrender or…”  The rest was left unsaid.  Akira looked at the chief scientist with his control parasite and muttered, “Just sic’ ’em Sam, they deserve it.” “But they’re scientists” to which Akira reminded him that, “Mengele was a scientist, so once was Thatcher!”

Sam unleashed another stroke at the parasite-controlled scientist, knocking him unconscious. The others looked bewildered and cowering. Akira approached them and told them to release the prisoners. They began to release them but stated that stormer transformations can leave their subjects psychotic and confused. “Don’t worry we’ll guarantee your safety” Akira said as he moved to help the first of those released. As he did so, he remembered the last time he’d said that, in Israel to Teddy Kollek, the Mayor’s father. The old man hadn’t survived that encounter, despite his assurances.

Sam and Akira approached the first of the cells as Sam used his draconic persuasion on the occupant as the scientists released them one at a time. Each seemed to be in shock as Sam explained that they were there to free them along with all the other prisoners and to come with them calmly. This was repeated with each of them as they were released, admittedly in shock though at least one of them wanted revenge on the scientists; when the prisoner was stopped he started to shake with anger and the building emulated him – the whole base suffered severe tremors. Obviously the meta-neutralisers  were no longer active.

Sam invited the scientists to come with them if they wanted, just not too closely. Their past selves must have now left the present, Sam couldn’t help wonder if everything was still on schedule for them. All this “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff” did his head in. Thankfully, the EMP blast hadn’t taken out their comms. They just needed to work out how to collect Rory and Danni from the surface.

Tangleweb had almost broken the door of their section open and when Akira arrived he used his new power to transform the door lock into sand.  Tangleweb then pulled the door away and everyone joined the others forming a convoy as they rushed through to the hangar bay. In the rush no-one noticed a couple of the alien creatures slip away.

Sam considered leaving the unconscious parasite-controlled scientist but ended up picking him up and carrying him with them. One of the other scientists said “Don’t let out the aliens, we don’t know what they are here for” he looked out the door and on seeing only one Unity slither passed, asked Sam, “and where are the other two? You haven’t let them get loose; they were part of an invasion force we think.”  No time to make sense of this now and after all who were all the bad guys here anyway? They joined the prisoners and ran for the hangars with Akira using his transform power to alter locks and hinges of any security doors blocking their way.

As they neared the hangar, they noticed that several soldiers had formed a barricade and were waiting to ambush them. Tangleweb in particular, looked happy to be first in. Akira used a spell, the Curse of Yig to unleash several snakes amongst the soldiers. Where these poisonous reptiles had manifested from, no one knew but their presence successfully resulted in the barricade being abandoned as the guards scattered.

Heading towards the hangar another barricade had been formed by the entrance to the ship and they knew there could be several other soldiers onboard. Sam shouted, “We’re liberating these prisoners, please don’t try and stop us.”

Banshee and Akira turned themselves and the other two invisible (and in Banshee’s case, insubstantial) and sneaked passed the soldiers into the ship. There Mace placed the bike in the cargo bay and sneaked forward to the pilots seat passed the two guards and into the cockpit – it didn’t take her long to work out how to fly this thing.

Meanwhile, Banshee became substantial behind the guards and unleashed her corrupting touch on both of them at the same time. Seconds later, they lay on the ground twitching as the engines began to power up.

Sam watched the soldiers outside turn to look at the ship as Sam flew out towards them. “Hi boys, did you miss me?” and began to lay into them. His claws swiped back and forth taking down four of the guards whilst Akira unleashed his Theurgical-Kinesis picking up one of the remaining guards and slammed him into the other knocking them across the hangar bay. Banshee signalled to the released prisoners who ran for the ship. Sam picked up his still unconscious scientist and carried him over to the ship.

They headed to the surface, Sam piled all the equipment they’d brought from the future and using his fiery breath melted it into a lump. He wanted to take it back as a souvenir but the shouts of “No!” and “you’ll bust the space-time continuum” made him realise he couldn’t retain any of it so he proceeded to drop the melted mass into the ocean.

As they came down to pick up Danni and Rory, they noticed several large grav vehicles heading across the ocean towards them at speed. Reinforcements or..?  Unsure whether friend or foe, Mary went on the radio to the Challenger-Wildeman’s asking for a location update. “We’re still thirty minutes out but we’ll be there as soon as we can” then a second call came through; “This is the G.R.E.E.T. vehicle Archimedes, we’re following up on a report that one of our agents was being held prisoner on the island. Ah, a Mary MacCarty has reported that there is an alien presence on the island. Can the Balance confirm this assessment?” A second call came in, “This is a joint response by AEGIS and GREET. I’m told an armed response would be appropriate.” Rory grabbed the radio, “This is Agent MacCarty and I can confirm several illegal aliens including an alien infiltration – requiring quarantine procedures; Code Requiem, repeat Code Requiem. Active response required.” “Received. You ok?” He smiled and looked at the others, “No, but I will be… By the way, who is this Mary MacCarty?”

One ship accompanied them back to Ullapool to be debriefed first and to resolve how best to deal with the released prisoners, though they wanted to know if any of the three Unity prisoners were with them or were still on the island. Akira replied, “Ah no. there is a Unity prisoner loose on the island that we know of.” The reply came back “Not three? They are shape changers and can appear as anyone.” “Negative we only saw one…” The signal ended with what sounded like the radio operator cursing.

As they headed under escort for Ullapool, it looked as though they wouldn’t be able to retain the ship (though Mace did disconnect and sneak the stealth suite off with them when they landed.) Now they just had to figure out how to deal with the control parasites; just how widespread were they anyway?