Superhero Adventures, UK Style

Inspired by Chapter 3: Power Play from Emerald City Knights
Continued from Episode 80

As soon as the drone had stopped transmitting its message and the glass roof, at Akira’s direction had ‘repaired’ itself, a number of things happened simultaneously. Dispatch sent out an All-Points Bulletin about other incidents occurring across the city even as billionaire entrepreneur Sir Damien Dalton entered the Tower’s penthouse Banquet Room accompanied by his latest team of corporate Metas.

Designated the latest of his teams of Dalton Defenders – this team was formed of recently qualified HCP graduates; including Aero, Cryo and Pyro who, before they’d been recruited by Dalton, had briefly worked together as part of a larger team known as the Elementals. The remaining bodyguard, now fitted out with Electro’s powersuit had been recruited separately when two other members of the team had refused to remain in Dalton’s employment and had resigned.

Dalton immediately made a beeline for the Mayor, who was crawling out from under one of the tables as a red light on the now-trapped drone began to flash faster and faster. Akira responded by blasting it. It exploded above the cowering crowd. It wasn’t a big blast and no one was endangered by the explosion itself but the falling fiery shrapnel remained a risk and it was spectacular enough that it caught everyone’s attention including X-Ray’s wife Stacy who was standing directly below the largest fragment! For a second she turned into living diamond and proceeded to throw herself between the blazing fragment and a young terrified waitress frozen to the spot beside her.

X-Ray focused and caught all of the flaming fragments of the drone in a gravitic field that he somehow, managed to compress into an ever-shrinking ball, compacting it and starving it at the same time of oxygen to fuel the flames. His wife immediately changed back and ushered the waitress and guests towards an exit and safety.

Out of the corner of her eye, Mary saw a familiar figure materialise behind an unaware Dalton, Tempus, the time-travelling speedster. She reacted by changing into Banshee even as he touched Dalton’s shoulder and both of them ‘vanished’, either moving faster than Mary could see or transported through time – either option was possible.

She had started to direct an aura of fear at Tempus, but it was too late and she banished it before it could undo the calming spell she’d already cast on the guests earlier.

Having dealt with Tempus previously, Banshee knew that there was nothing they could do about Dalton’s disappearance, for now. Instead, she tried to prevent a panic as X-Ray completely crushed the remnants of the drone into a single, compacted, smoking fragment before dropping it onto the now empty floor at the other end of the room.

The four Defenders, still unaware that their boss had just been kidnapped by a temporal intruder, immediately reacted by trying to look for him even as they began to usher the other guests to safety. Akira smiled. They were too new, too fresh, to focus on their boss as their only priority. They were clearly spooked and looked as though they might start blasting away, out of fear anyway.

Banshee’s strengthened her aura which ‘touched’ three of them and made them cower, too scared to do more than join the other guests attempting to flee. The remaining Defender was equally scared but the flare of electricity sparking between her fingers indicated she was prepared to fight rather than flee; she just didn’t know who she should be defending herself against.

Akira immediately erected his force field in defence even as X-Ray evaluated the situation, It was clear that they weren’t bad guys. They were corporate rent-a-cop equivalents and young, inexperienced and as such a potential problem. He raised his hands and said to her, “It’s all right, calm down. There’s no one here you need to fight. We need to work out what’s just happened and blasting away at something is not the way to go about it.” He deliberately spoke quietly but authoritatively, in a commanding yet self-confident manner as though he was speaking to a junior colleague in the theatre. It worked. She immediately began to calm down even as she recognised him. She gathered her teammates around her and began to issue orders. He couldn’t help overhear one of the lads, Geo he thought, mutter that this had only been supposed to be a P.R. stunt for Sir Damien and they’d lost him again… Again? How often did their boss mysteriously disappear anyway? He left them to usher out the last remaining stragglers and contact the Police about the assault and disappearance even as Banshee informed the others about what she had seen.

Over their Commdots they heard Dispatch update them on the several Meta-related incidents occurring across the city and they briefly considered splitting up to deal with Dispatch’s three main concerns but after a brief discussion agreed that the hi-tech weaponry hijack should be their primary priority as well as being the closest. It was clearly linked to the Drone’s declaration prior to it exploding that the city was there’s. Fine, keeping weapons off the streets had to be their focus, the other events would have to be responded to in the first instance by the Police or AEGIS. As Akira pointed out, “Diamonds, so what? I can literally make them out of anything. Best to stay together.”

Dispatch informed them that another team was incoming and would be in Wessex in less than five minutes. The New Knights, a team of power-assisted mundanes led by the supposedly ‘reincarnated’ but otherwise human King Arthur.

“Another publicity opportunity for them I suppose,” muttered Akira, clearly unimpressed. He pointed out that given they were based in London and the fact that they had to use a grav-vehicle to get anywhere that they had to have either already been in the general vicinity or else they had set off for Wessex before the crimes had occurred. Were they in on this in some way or had they prior knowledge that something was about to happen? “Either that or it’s another time anomaly…” he concluded.

They asked the Defenders to act as crowd control and focus on keeping the Mayor and his entourage safe while they headed out. Not waiting for a response the three of them then headed to the observation deck below the banquet room and headed off towards the Theatre District as Akira joked that they should catch a show while there.

In the distance, clearly silhouetted against the full moon, they could see a group of flying drones struggling to keep a large armoured transport in the sky. It was clearly a lot heavier than the crooks who either flew alongside it or the strange figures trying to jump (or stretch, one of them was clearly elongating themselves) from one building to the next, had anticipated.

The drones were identical to Dreadnoughts’ fleet and the craft that had attacked The Tower. The transport dangling beneath it was smashing uncontrollably into rooftops, taking out satellite dishes, rooftop telecom towers and damaging railings and windows as they attempted to flee Wessex.

Thankfully, this meant its departure was slower that the crooks had initially intended and a convoy of Police vehicles were now following them at street level.

As the Balance got closer, they were able to recognise a couple of the fliers as Dreadnought and Cannon. There were three others with them, one of whom looked to be a young man with long, dirty blonde hair and hand-me-down clothes who was floating alongside Cannon atop a raincloud and another overweight man, late twenties who appeared to be stretching himself across from one rooftop to the next. The team nicknamed him Doughboy. Finally, there was a female they recognised seemingly jumping while blasting herself from rooftop to rooftop. It was the female they had confronted with her brother on the Detention Centre roof, the lightning wielding ‘Storm Warning Sally’.

“You take the other guy, stretch and I’ll take drip,” said Akira realising that they had caught them unaware while the transport crashed into rooftop after rooftop slowing them down.

“Leave the truck to X-Ray,” suggested Banshee as she unleashed a Wail. Its damaging effect spread out from her. “Women and children first,” muttered Akira when he saw that the sonic assault was unlikely to affect Dreadnought or Cannon.  Storm Warning Sally was clearly left dazed and had to stop jumping from rooftop to rooftop for the moment at least. The other two seemed unaffected though clearly were now warned of their approach.

Dreadnought turned in midair and unleashed a blast in response against their still substantial attacker. The blast knocked her crashing hard into the nearest rooftop, clearly badly injured. Cannon also responded with a massive blast this time aimed at Akira, which he dodged.

He replied with a series of blasts, at ‘Sally’ first but she was moving too fast and the blast melted an rooftop aerial instead. The next shot targeted ‘Goldilocks’, Dreadnought. The blast hit but didn’t seem to do any lasting damage, merely dazed him. Akira’s last shot was at Cannon. That hit and he crashed hard into first the dangling transport before falling out of control to the street below. He was clearly out of it.

Akira heard a sound above them and looked up; a familiar grav-vehicle with the sword and chalice symbol of the New Knights emblazoned on its undercarriage was flying overhead, clearly, it was transporting the Knights to somewhere else, ignoring what was happening beneath them. The theft of the weaponry inside the dangling transport was clearly less important than that one of the other crimes such as the theft of diamonds or stolen art. Going by its trajectory, it was heading in the direction of Little Russia and the diamonds.

As the dangling transport crashed into the top of a multi-storey parking building, scattering cars and knocking others off the rooftop as it was dragged through the bays, X-Ray erected his force field around himself and then increased the gravity around the truck, hoping to overpower the drones. The weight gradually increased by an additional six tonnes as a result, causing it to drop onto the down ramp and become tangled in the safety railings as it spun round under the increased weight. As soon as it snarled, he focused on trying to crash the drones that had been providing it with flight.

Unfortunately, it was too difficult to do more than confuse so many drones, but it did prevent them from freeing the transport. 

‘Sally’ slung herself across on to the parking structure and unleashed a lightning blast at him, causing him to refocus on her rather than continuing his assault on the drones. The blast hit but much of energy was dissipated by his force field and he was able to shake off the attack.

The ‘boy’ on the raincloud closed on Akira. Close up it was clear that he was actually a she, her presence was causing him to feel weak, and he struggled to maintain his flight. Was she somehow trying to neutralise his Meta abilities? Thankfully, he was able to shake the effect off at least temporarily and his mystical abilities seemed unaffected by her presence.

On the rooftop, an injured Banshee forced herself to get back to her feet, having had to rest for a few moments. The stretchy, overweight boy was coming towards her, morphing his body as he did so. She tried to turn insubstantial but it didn’t appear to be working. As ‘Doughboy’ got closer, he expanded his body out, clearly intending to try to smother her.

He felt the Ban Sidhe inside him try to revitalise her. A spark of sidhe energy ignited within her and she rose to her feet, still staggered by the earlier attack but at least she was able to turn insubstantial as he tried to engulf her only for her to float through him.

In the sky, Dreadnought fired on Akira. He turned into energy and unleashed it at Akira, which hit him square on. Luckily he was able to fly up at that second so the blast hit but didn’t injure him.

Akira responded by targeting Doughboy, ‘Dreadnought and Sally’ in turn.

Doughboy was hit, but it appeared to have no effect on him, it was as though his rubber-like body was able to absorb the damage. Akira hated when that happened.

He then aimed at Dreadnought next and staggered him before targeting Storm Warning Sally. The last blast knocked her out of the sky and she tumbled towards the ground. She was thankfully not so high up that the fall would kill her and her inherent Meta-healing should kick in, though Akira was sure she’d have a couple of broken bones to deal with as a result.

X-Ray watched Banshee walk through Doughboy’s physical form and knew she was now insubstantial so he felt safe to unleash his gravi-kinesis on her murderous shapeshifting opponent.

He ‘grabbed’ him in his field and as he began to become ball-shaped in response, X-Ray ‘tossed’ him into the wall of the ramp below the jammed transport and he powerballed from one side of the ramp to the other. He found himself unable to stop as he tumbled down the ramp, back and forth, from side to side, his uncontrolled momentum helped on by X-Ray’s meta-ability – all the way to street level where, completely disorientated and having survived X-Ray’s version of carpark pinball he continued bouncing off the buildings while unconscious as he headed away from the scene.

Technically, it could be classed as a prisoner escaping but the three of them had enough to deal with without having to figure out how to slow down a human, kinetically charged, powerball leaving the scene. One for the Police to follow up on.

In the sky above, the neutraliser was trying again to nullify Akira’s abilities and was confused that it didn’t appear to work.

Banshee could see that only the nullifier trying to attack Akira and a battered Dreadnought were still a threat. He unleashed a fear attack, which didn’t seem to affect them too badly as Dreadnought fired his blast at X-Ray, having witnessed how he had dispatched the shapeshifting boy seconds before.

The blast hit, but his force field deflected it.  

Akira responded by attacking both the neutraliser and Dreadnought, leaving Dreadnought staggered and dazing the girl even as X-Ray unleashed a radiation blast at Dreadnought at the same time and he fell from the sky on top of one of the Police cars parked in the street below.

The neutraliser was alone now and again she angrily tried to attack Akira and strip him of his Mata abilities. Again, he felt himself begin to fall only for the attack to fade, as he was no longer in her line of sight. Banshee took advantage of the opportunity and unleashed a shriek that caused her to fall unconscious to the carpark below. Thankfully in her case, a short fall of only a couple of metres.

The drones, their controller no longer controlling them, remained hovering until X-Ray crushed them, though that left an armoured transporter currently jammed on the top floor of a multi-storey carpark, blocking the ramp.

In the end, a sergeant asked them to assist by levitating the vehicle and guiding it back down to the street as given its length there was no way it could navigate the bends in the ramp before they left. Having promised to file reports later that night, they contacted Dispatch about Doughboy and asked if the Police could chase him down.

She also informed them that although Police were on the scene, they hadn’t yet entered the Museum of the Arts and the robbery in the Diamond District had now developed into a siege situation with a Meta there having created earth barricades blocking access to and from the centre.

 She confirmed that the presence of the New Knights had resulted in the siege and as the team didn’t trust them that had to be their next port of call.

X-Ray wanted to know why the other two were so untrusting of the other team. Banshee explained that they were clearly heavily prejudiced against Metas as their connection and involvement with Professor Worth’s anti-Meta crusade had established, half the team were likely working under false identities (as none of them were powered they didn’t have to be HCP certified) and their private sponsorship and team finances were as dodgy as anything. It all added up to not trusting them in the slightest.

They immediately headed towards the Diamond District. As they arrived, they could see that giant earthworks had been erected, seemingly pulled straight out of the ground, shattering roads and acting as barricades with a Meta at each of the roadblocks. Did that mean Quake was also present given her powers over the earth? She also had the ability to merge with the ground and use it as a means of escape.

X-Ray wondered if that meant she had once been a Chosen of Gaia like himself and if so, how had she become corrupted? He did wonder if the time was right to share his knowledge but decided now was definitely not the time. They also recognised the overweight kid in the skull mask and makeshift body armour from their previous encounter at the Detention Centre. The other two were not familiar to them but then they might have been amongst those fleeing the building while they were dealing with Dreadnought and his fellow-psychopaths.

The new kids on the block were facing off against the New Knights but something felt off; the Knights seemed to be ignoring Quake and focusing their attacks exclusively on the three Stormers.

One of them appeared to be another elemental style Meta as he pulled streams of water out of the moisture in the air to use (admittedly unsuccessfully) as a type of water cannon.

Banshee, still insubstantial, elected to concentrate her Wail at Quake. The sonic attack hit her and caused her to stumble and fall to the ground, bruising herself. As Akira moved in, the young boy with the mutant water cannon soaked him but the wetting failed to prevent him from also blasting Quake. The blast hit and left her dazed. X-Ray also targeted Quake as a team tactic, a focused team attack, to take her down before she could attack them back. That blast left her staggered.

Then he felt the local gravity go haywire as the youth beneath him gestured and a micro blackhole appeared close to him. Seems someone else could manipulate gravity and, what they lacked in precision and control, they made up for it with sheer power.

He nicknamed the kid Singularity even as he realised just how much damage the kid could do if left unchecked. He was forced to break away from its pull and was glad to see the microhole dissipate. He could create them but thankfully not maintain their existence for any length of time.

Meanwhile the guy in the videogame costume was trying to energise himself and was clearly targeting a very wet Akira. The blast was close enough to evaporate some of the water off him but a near miss was still a miss. Meanwhile Banshee was again targeting the stunned Quake before she could respond. She unleashed a Shriek of the Banshee at her. The supernatural scream washed over its target and she collapsed unconscious, her half-formed fist of stone that she had been creating collapsing with her.

Team tactics clearly worked as they tried to figure out whom to target next. Below Akira, the kid was gesturing towards him again but instead of another unexpected shower, Akira found himself feeling drained and dehydrated. The kid was seriously taking the piss as well as draining all of his other bodily fluids from him. Akira managed to escape and responded with a mystical blast, unwilling to risk a further attack. It was a blow that caused the youth to fall backwards, clearly staggered and it did cause the kid to lose his concentration and end his assault.

The New Knights targeted the water pistol kid and their combined blasts sent the kid flying. Akira wasn’t sure if he was dead or not, but he was clearly badly burned and unconscious as a result.

They needed to end this siege quickly before the Knights killed the kids. X-Ray was still busy dealing with Singularity and he unleashed a restrained radiation blast at him, hoping to render him unconscious and therefore no longer a risk. The blast hit but he was still conscious and was now the Knight’s next target. His mini black holes appeared to be deflecting or absorbing their blasts for now but it was clear that he was getting both weaker and more desperate. Banshee swept in and unleashed an aura of fear – not at the remaining stormers though, directing the assault at the Knights beyond the barrier.

Unexpected, the fearful assault swept over them and Tristan, Guinevere, Lancelot and Gawain were all affected, looking dazed and confused. The ‘Waterboy’ gestured and the area was suddenly covered in a thick wet mist hiding him and his companions from view.

Akira also elected to attack the Knights – it was starting to feel like a tradition. He unleashed a series of blasts at the team through the mist, mystical flares of energy targeting the injured Knights – The attack on Tristan hit and left him staggered. The next two blasts missed both wee ‘Gwennie’ and Lancelot but did hit Gawain causing him to fall back and drop his hammer.

X-Ray ignored the gravity-wielding kid below him and instead joined the others unleashing a searing energy blast at the man with the hammer. There was no good reason for these people to go around the streets of the UK armed as far as he was concerned. The blast knocked Gawain unconscious as his female teammate screamed over at X-Ray, “What the hell are you idiots doing, we’re all supposed to be on the same side here. We’re both here to capture these bloody mutant terrorists, aren’t we?”

He responded, “Is that why you think we’re here? To injure kids under the disguise of public safety?”

She glowered at him as she responded, “You’re obviously sympathisers for these mutant Stormers. Our job is to protect the public, the man and woman in the street who haven’t got powers.”

Akira shouted back, “It just seems suspicious that you got here just as the call for assistance was broadcast. Timings everything as they say.” Arthur responded before Guinevere could, “Just because we have better intelligence that you provincials doesn’t mean there is anything suspicious going on. We’re organised and ready for just such an eventuality. Now you amateurs need to stand aside and let us take these muties into custody,”

“Organised crime more like, picking on kids” muttered Akira over his commdot to his teammates. Out loud he replied, “You weren’t at all interested in helping to stop the weapons robbery – we saw you pass overhead but are happy to attack and seriously injure a bunch of kids who have just discovered they have powers?”

A black hole, a metre across appeared above the Knights and threatened to drag them all in to whatever oblivion had given it birth.  An unstable black hole bomb created by the kid Singularity.

X-Ray couldn’t let that happen and knew he had to take the kid out. He unleashed a restrained gravity burst at the youth even as Banshee unleashed a damaging shriek at singularity causing his concentration to lapse even as the Knights tried to target him with extreme prejudice through the black hole induced thinning mist. X-Ray pulled the two kids apart so the gravity kid was no longer hidden by the other youth’s mist.

X-Ray felt as though he was being shot multiple times, as the bigger black hole collapsed in on itself and Singularity peppered him with multiple micro-gravity pockets pulling at his body. Talk about being ungrateful!

Akira threw a force cage around the kid and trapped him inside the protective shell even as the man in the skull mask fired off his blast at Banshee. The shot pierced her insubstantial form, passing through her and splattering against the wall of a shop without doing any real damage to her or the shop. She replied with a wail that left her attacker staggered

The kid they’d nicknamed Washout was busy trying to create more mist to cover his location while dehydrating Guinevere, who collapsed unconscious as a result.

X-Ray blasted Washout with an energy blast and he was immediately knocked unconscious while Akira targeted the guy in the skull mask and also knocked him unconscious leaving only the kid in Akira’s force cage conscious. The Knights were about to respond when the Police came into the area, summoned by Dispatch having been informed that the Metas were now restrained. The press accompanied them and the New Knights immediately went into publicity mode claiming responsibility for restraining the attackers but (admittedly grudgingly) acknowledged the support provided by the Balance. Akira couldn’t help wishing they’d had enough time to deploy their video drone, Tinks to provide evidence of what really happened. The Police would know and it would come out in the trial but by that time, the Knight’s version would have already circulated. Good thing they weren’t it for the PR.

While the New Knights were busy re-writing what had happened, Akira managed to persuade the officer in charge to allow them to question the kid, Singularity, back at the Detention Centre, off the record of course.

When asked, he admitted he’d been approached by Quake and the others and recruited by them earlier that day. He was given the choice participate and be given his freedom or stay and be kept in captivity, probably even sectioned under the mental health act as too dangerous to be allowed out ever again. What real choice did he have? If he didn’t, he’d be targeted by something called Labyrinth. Quake and the others had mentioned somewhere they called the Chamber where they were all to meet up after this was over.

No, he didn’t know where that was, he was too far down the food chain to know apparently, not least because he was starting to think they’d been intended as sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered or abandoned afterwards. Only the commanders like Quake seemed to know. He mentioned that the other ‘commanders’ he knew about were the guy in the gold suit, the guy in the dark armour and some weird shadowy figure, all recipients of the DNAscendant process he was sure rather than proper genetic Metas.

Apparently, according to an overly talkative Quake, they’d each been given a task to get public attention – in their case they were told they were to steal these diamonds but it turned out they had no plans to get themselves out of the area and he was sure Quake intended to abandon them and escape on her own. When the ‘Knight bastards’ turned up so quickly and then ignored Quake to attack him and his fellow stormers he knew we’d been set up.

It was clear they couldn’t get anything more from the kid so they arranged for Banshee to interrogate Quake with a bit of assistance from their Police liaison, Inspector Marcus Tolliver.

Quake while initially uncooperative, did, seemingly accidentally, reveal that they had a hideout in a wholesalers warehouse in the Theatre District in case anything went wrong, then went quiet again.

“We’ve just come from there! Going back and forth, why hadn’t they revealed this when we were still there?” was Akira’s response in the viewing room next to the interrogation suite.

He did eventually confirm that the other commanders had been Dreadnought, Cannon, Tempus and Nightblade (the living shadow Banshee had encountered previously). He admitted the museum had been a personal attack. He refused to admit that it had been a diversion when asked, and smiled as though the very idea was funny. Clearly, there was more at play than they knew.

X-Ray was now convinced that they had been conspiring with the Knights, but why? Could it have been to ‘show’ just how dangerous the stormers were, or could be? Public opinion would definitely be hostile against them after this. Would the Knights and others try to claim again that Meta-humans were not on the side of humanity?

 As they were about to leave she turned to Banshee and said, “You know Tempus talks a lot about you and he often states you’ll not be strong enough to save humanity when the Terminus attacks.”

It was left for X-Ray to chat with Frankie later about who or what Terminus was and to explain that the alien invasion of 2009 on London and other city’s such as Wessex had been from another dimensional Earth, one now being rebuilt as a Dyson sphere around their sun. Then, the attack had been quickly repelled by the various teams working together. The invaders had appeared out of some sort of portals and had looked human but so little had been revealed then or since that it had quickly become just another conspiracy theory as to who or what they had been and what their purpose had been.

Was Labyrinth trying to protect humanity? During one of their trips into the future (that concept alone shocked X-Ray) it had been Labyrinth that had helped save humanity but at great cost. Frankie had to fill him in on what the team had uncovered about mind control bugs, stormer transformations and what they discovered about humanity’s possible futures (they’d encountered two different possibilities apparently). The others had a lot of explaining to do, he realised.

Akira meanwhile investigated food wholeseller warehouses in the Theatre district and discovered there were 12, which made no sense to him, not realising that around every theatre were dozens of cafes and restaurants catering to the theatre audiences. Someone had to supply them and it made sense for the suppliers to be located near their clients to keep transport costs down.

 Akira threatened to use his sense of smell to narrow down the options but in the end, it was Frankie who suggested they go first to the only one that was currently closed for business, called Cascade Wholesalers, the premises were what they had expected except that someone had left the rear loading door open. They entered the premises happy that they wouldn’t be guilty of breaking in.

They headed in, passed first the stacked shelves only to find those at the rear were just row after row of empty shelves then to a ramp that led down a level to a basement level, again empty except for a large domed room down there, formed of black bricks. A heavy armoured door was the only entrance or exit.

 X-Ray used his infravision to see if there were any heat patterns inside, there were two heat sources, body shaped, with one standing next to a figure either sitting or squatting inside. There were no other heat patterns he could detect. Then Akira realised that the pattern on the door was in a stylised L – Labyrinth!

Time for infiltration and no one did that better than Banshee. She turned insubstantial and invisible and flowed through the door. Inside she saw a dazed Dalton sitting on the only chair. Standing next to him was Tempus and to her surprise, there was a third masked figure also present, a masked person she’d met before and who referred to himself as the Professor. She popped outside again and told the others what she had discovered though she had a hard time convincing X-Ray that there were three and not just two people inside the Chamber.

What did they want with Dalton? They had thought he had to have connections to both Labyrinth and the Foundry and its weapons factories, as well as knowing that he’d been previously infected with a control worm in his brain which they’d had to remove. Why kidnap him though if he was working with rather than against Labyrinth? Was this some form of power play?

The only thing they could think of was that Dalton was in favour of using and recruiting Metas.

Tempus was the risk factor, given his ability to slow down time as well as time jump. The decision was taken to risk sending Banshee back in to grab Dalton and insubstantialise him before Tempus could slow down time. Once they were both insubstantial, there was nothing he could do to steal Dalton back. Banshee again entered the Chamber this time by walking through the walls. She got as close as she dared. As she did so, she heard the Professor state that he was acting on behalf of Lord Taurus and that the plan had succeeded as well as he’d anticipated. It would help reveal to the world what the stormers really were, potential brainwashed soldiers, living weapons for the Terminus. Racial traitors just waiting to be activated and betray humanity.

Banshee could see that Dalton was clearly drugged so she substantialised herself behind him, turning visible in the process, grabbed Dalton and turned ghostly again before Tempus could react. He might be able to change the nature of time but his reactions were still human. Meanwhile X-Ray targeted the heat source he identified as Tempus with a gravi-kinetic pulse from outside the room and threw him across the Chamber, into the wall. As for the Professor, Akira was convinced he wasn’t actually present physically.  “Fool me once using a holograph…” he muttered as he turned himself invisible in case the others needed back up.

An injured Tempus vanished a second before he hit the wall even as the man in the mask also faded away, thankfully without any subsequent explosions, to be replaced by a massive figure resembling a hybrid of a bull and a powerful half naked man, another hologram apparently though that didn’t mean it wasn’t real. He began to speak, his voice booming across the chamber.

“You’ve done humanity a great, nay fatal, injustice in keeping the stormers alive. They will doom you all.”

His image then faded away leaving Banshee and the drugged Dalton ghosted in a darkened room. They had to get him somewhere safe and have him scanned again in case he’d been reinfected with another control worm. They also had to have a chat with Daedalus and see what he could tell them about Labyrinths and minotaur’s but not tonight. It had already been a long day.