[STORY THREAD] Manifest Destiny

[Exile_Jeane]

 

"Are you sure? How?" Grace interjected with sudden lean forward, eyes narrowed and an edge of anger in her voice. These murderous not Novas were on her world doing how much damage to who, and last thing she wanted was them doubling back on them.

 

Dr. Klatta looked a little startled, but rallied, "That's how the technology works. One way unless they build..."

 

"Right. Great," Grace interjected again, fingers carving small furrows in the table, "Now, if someone causes that portal to shut down before it runs out of... juice, for lack of a better word, will it cause any more damage to this side of the portal?"

 

"Ah. No," came the slightly-strangled response of the Doctor, glancing sidelong at her superior.

 

The blonde juggernaut's voice remained dangerously low, thoughts focused on the work that needed to be done, "Good. Hopefully your me-smashing robots can handle cleaning up on this side while Ryan and I show her why jumping blindly into someone else's world is a Bad Idea. Oh. One more thing. While Ryan recovers a little more power, think you could come up something sharp I could throw at Titan, preferably javelin-like? A good friend of mine told me to never let a foe enjoy reach over you. if you can help it." 

 

 

[Asarasa]

Sean's eyes flicked to follow Brigit, but she didn't turn her gaze away from the monstrous Grace and her minions. She hadn't ever seen Brigit take a blow like that. She might even be dead, and despite how much Sean wanted to go to her side and check on her, she couldn't with the threat still arrayed against them. A threat she was doubtful they could stop, though her face didn't betray her doubts. Treasonous desire spiked but it was twisted with a furious rage.

She controlled the force that kept the planets in motion. They had never tested it, but focusing gravity as strongly and precisely as she could, Sean suspected she only had at best an even chance of hurting Grace. Against this terrible, horrific version of her friend... Brute force wouldn't cut it. But perhaps she would be able to delay the terrible Grace another way until the allies Temple called upon, even if she would hate herself for it.

Sean was likely the most powerful Gravitokinetic on the planet. But that was rarely the first thing people thought of when they met her. Sean was also one of the sexiest, most attractive, and most persuasive women on the planet. She evoked lust, love, admiration, adoration almost as a matter of course if she didn't take measures to curtail it. When she put in the effort, very few men could resist her. Few women could for that matter, even if they weren't interested sexually in the same sex.

In the midst of the chaos, Sean's eufiber uniform began writhe, shifted to black, when spikes of stone shot up at her like crossbow bolts. She altered her personal gravity and 'fell' sideways to avoid the attack, but not fast enough. Her gravitic field drained the kinetic energy from most of the spikes, but not all. Three pressed through the event horizon that protected her, ripping deep gashes through her right arm, rich crimson blood flowing free.

It hurt, but Sean let her expression flow into one of bemused condescension as she glanced at her arm, the bleeding already stopping, pink flesh beginning to knit close before her eyes. Her eufiber finished its transformation as a little black dress, classy and sexy, flattering and showcasing her ravishing hourglass figure, her long, sublimely shapely legs sheathed in dark, sheer stockings, feet supported by elegant, stiletto heels.

With imperious hauteur, Centerpoint smirked down at a figure seemingly fashioned of black basalt below her as she drifted closer to the funhouse mirror Grace. In passing, she gestured, slim fingers with long, immaculate, opalescent nails flicking with sensual dismissiveness. Invisible force outlined by a faint, purple penumbra slammed down on the basalt, invading Nova with power equivalent to that of a meteor.

Centerpoint flew to a stop outside the immediate reach of the towering Grace, staying above the ground enough to meet her eye-to-eye. This close, she felt almost assault by the invading Nova's scent. Sean could usually tell someone was a Nova by their scent. This... creature had it a thousand fold, the intensity intoxicating and rancid, making her feel physically ill with disgust and need.

"My, my, two slaps and you put down my lover, one of the strongest Novas of our world," Centerpoint purred lasciviously, one hand going to her chest, wanton eyes of roiling purple and blue fire roving of this Grace's obscene musculature. "I've always had a thing for strong women, and I've never heard of a woman as strong as you, Stranger."

She laughed, the sound rich and seductive, like a heavenly devil. "I was working on a long term plan to power, but let me rule at your side as your Queen, you magnificent monster, and I will help you take this world. You don't know this world, what it can throw at you, how it will resist, but I do. And more, I can gather you allies, far more than you have lost and are losing." She ran hands down her extravagant figure, though her inhuman pulchritude hardly needed emphasis. "Many of the most powerful novas and the most influential people of my world are my lovers. Should I beckon, they would serve you... as would I... in any fashion you wish..."

One punch and I'm dead, Sean thought as she played Beauty to this Beast. If she wants proof of my willingness... If I do it, if I even survive, it will take my regenerative abilities to recover, and a part of me will still have died... Any time help wants to arrive, it would be greatly appreciated. All the while she tried harder than she ever had at bending someone to her will with her wiles, she gathered gravitic potential about her, building it up as she looked for a weakness in this unhuman woman, somewhere to reach inside that impossible mass of impossible strong muscle and crush with power of a black hole.

 

Spoiler

If you need any rolls, just hit me up in chat. Not sure if we're going purely narrative at the moment or not.

 

Edited August 7, 2023 by Asarasa

[SalmonMax]

Satisfied that the best defense on the planet against this threat had been mobilized, Deezy set about to the next highest priority: Saving the lives of those present. Including, but not limited to, her own.

 

Time to improve on a few of her alternate self's designs.

 

Even with the augmentation of the MARS rig, Deezy's mind vastly outstripped her body's ability to operate quickly. Her thoughts raced ahead of her, ahead of the duel of the titans unfolding before her. It was sheer luck that none of them had bothered to swat her. Most likely because she seemed familiar, and not a threat. She dissected their movements and powers, devising a scheme to help the next iteration of defensive machine endure a bit longer. The device in this case was simple. What made it complicated was the scale, and the complexity of organizing them so they could act as one.

 

In her mind, the solution to the biggest nova was the smallest machine. Little more than a hinge and a grasping claw about an inch and a half long, powered by a battery that charged from nested arrays of thermocouples in the skin. It could derive enough energy to operate from sunshine, or ambient shifts in temperature...largely because its tiny scale and efficiency meant it did not need much energy to operate. A short-range radio transceiver rounded out the payload, and the whole thing was given a surface sheen of graphene doped to have superconductive properties. When linked to others of its kind, it would mean that heat and electricity would conduct effortlessly over their aggregate surface area, rather than being allowed to focus destructively on a single element. And the heat would, ironically, help power them.

 

The key here was that there would be a lot of them.

 

A lot.

 

One of the empty modular connections on the MARS rig suddenly found itself occupied by a new machine; a thing of softly glowing crystals that Deezy had been experimenting with after reverse engineering some of the alien technology she'd encountered. Terrestrial computer technology wasn't up to the computational power she'd need to coordinate all the elements she planned on making. She might do it herself, but that would take up most of her brain's 'clock cycles,' and she needed to be alert and mobile. They wouldn't ignore her forever.

 

To design this, create it, put it in operation...Deezy had to open the 'floodgates' as it were in that mutated tissue in her brain. A tiny Storm in her head, exposing her to the same anomalies that had led to this alternate Grace's mutation and madness...but was now a necessary evil. Her already enhanced mind leapt ahead again, completing the trillions of calculations necessary to not only design but also simulate the design and correct flaws before ever manifesting them physically.

 

And then the cavalcade began. Tiny black objects appeared and dropped to the ground, like hailstones. Where they fell, they flexed and grasped, inching like caterpillars towards one another until they could link graspers. Then, with more hinges and more movement options, they would move faster and more strongly towards the next. Linking into chains, then three-dimensional matrices. Forming internal support columns and bringing ever more of their brethren in.

 

It was like watching the process of decomposition in reverse. A dark churning mass that structure and order suddenly emerged from. All the while more of the tiny objects pattered down around it, over it. Adding to it.

 

By the time it was done, by the time Deezy had to stop, the pile wasn't far from Grace's own stature. Composed of billions of the tiny machines, each of them communicating with each other and the CPU in Deezy's rig to become a single organism. One of the novas, spotting this new challenger, leapt forward and punched it in the midsection with superhuman force; a blow that would have put a hole in hardened steel! And indeed, his fist sank effortlessly into the mass of Deezy's creation.

 

With almost no effect. A hundred or so of the units were crushed. A like amount bent or damaged. Trivial. The CPU had seen the attack coming, and moved most of the robot's elements away from the path of impact...leaving just enough there to maintain a structure.

 

It then reeled back, clasping at the nova's arm and dragging him up and around. The 'hole' he'd punched extruded into another arm as a change in configuration was ordered by the CPU. Then WHOP! He was whipped up and down into the ground. Then back up in an arc to SLAM again into the ground on the far side of it. The aggregate strength of so many small things working in unison being quite powerful indeed, it then hurled him away, directly at Grace as if in challenge.

 

Meanwhile Deezy herself faded back away from the conflict a bit, staying close enough that she could continue to work with the CPU in directing the robot's actions. Hopefully this iteration would last long enough that it could take some heat off her allies and help buy Temple the time she needed.

 

If not? There was always version 3.

[Nina]

The storm wracked island was located in the sub-tropics but there was nothing tropical about it. Concrete and steel or some futuristic Aberrant/Nova concoction that resembled the two substances covered the island replacing virtually everything organic.

 

 Floating above the center of the island was the solid ring which held the portal suspended by a pure solid energy framework. The ring glowed with the energy from the sun and four huge conduits ran from the ring down into the earth, these were pulsing with thermal energy from the earth’s core.

 

The portal itself was shimmering black on one side while the other showed a distorted view of their Earth and Centerpoint facing off with Titan and two dozen other aberrants!

 

Ryan frowned.   "A fortress, likely loaded with traps.   Any false move will see the damn thing explode, and unleash that energy in a much less controlled manner."  Ryan's frown seemed to deepen.  He understood the science of his own ability, but this was beyond him.

 

 The power they'd gotten from him kept the portal open, but they were using a massive amount of geothermal power to keep it harnessed.  If it wasn't carefully shut down, it would likely cause more problems.

 

"Three of my friends against 25 from over here, that isn't good."

 

On Earth…

 

Three of the aberrants flew off after Briget and another half dozen also flew away toward Chicago while most of the rest took off in various directions toward predetermined targets.

 

Centerpoint made her attacks on Titian and the giant aberrant seemed to hesitate and then shook herself free of the incredible mesmerizing power on display.

“If that is all you have you should simply stand aside if you’re lucky and don’t cause me any trouble I will keep you as a pet.”

 

Dezzy’s nanobot barrage seemed to at least be keeping the rest of the aberrants busy even if it appeared they were doing little damage to them.

 

Titan laughed, “You cannot stop us you cannot even really slow us down. All your resistance will do is cause more damage to your world. Surrender and join us and we shall rule as our kind is meant to rule!”

 

<Ryan, I need you here. The Aberrants are too powerful and there is nothing you can do to save that earth it is already a dead world>

 

The thought that entered Ryans mind was Temple Faire’s. How she could reach him across dimensions was a thought that bewildered and frightened him.

 

Titan called out a meaningless word and the Aberrants remaining all dropped and rolled into tight balls making themselves the smallests targets possible. Suddenly the behemoth Slapped her hands together producing a sonic clap and shockwave that would have shattered eardrums and flattened the trees if any were still standing.

 

Spoiler

deezy and Centerpoint need to make defense rolls. Max you also need to make a defense roll for your nanobot group

 

[Shameless]

Ryan was struck by the Urgency in Temple's mental voice.  It was amazing she could reach him to begin with, but then, they didn't really understand her abilities fully.    "Grace, we're leaving."  He looked to his counterpart and Dr. Klatta.  "We'll come back when we can."  In truth he didn't know if they could beat Titan and  her unsightly crew, not with the way Temple sounded, but they had to try.   

Space tore open, a gateway forming slightly above the harnessed Gate created using the stolen solar energy.   "This should be perfectly aligned, we'll maintain whatever momentum we go in with, which should carry us right into the other gate, and home."  

[Nina]

The sound was unbearable it rivaled, no, surpassed the explosion of Krakatoa, eardrums, glass, even structures cracked, shattered, or twisted in a one hundred kilometer radius. The sound was literally heard around the world with its echo’s traveling around the globe almost five full circumferences. 

 

Deezy’s nanobots didn’t stand a chance, most were simply vaporized and those that did survive were damaged irreparably and flung miles away from where they had been.

Dezzy’s armor reacted by dropping prone and anchoring itself to the ground but still it was battered and damaged the only thing that save Deezy was he absorption ability and that armor still she was shaken and dazed. 

 

Centerpoint wrapped herself in bands of gravity which warded off the most violent forces of the sonic attack but still left her straining as her gravity armor bent the sonic forces around her.

 

Then the hurricane force shockwave hit them.

 

Deezy fared better here, she was anchored and was simply pressed into the ground and the wind passed over her. Centerpoint had it worse.

 

The shockwave and the wind hit the gravity distortion created by Centerpoint and chaos ensued. Instead of simply bending around her the multiple forces instead seemed to get sucked and and the worlds most devastating tornado developed with Centerpoint at its center!

 

The nova was protected by her gravity sheath, but she was still tossed about and flung several miles as the tornado careened across the countryside. That is until the returning shock wave slammed into it and tore the tornado apart.

 

The Aberrants who knew what was coming and had trained for it fared the best, but still none of them had been anchored and so they had been scattered across the countryside and would take a few minutes to reorient themselves.

 

Centerpoint unhurt but disoriented was several miles away and witnessed the next event.

 

Behind Titan the dimensional Bridge suddenly brightened and rippled and flared its face cascading through the spectrum as it seemed to expand and collapse at the same time and with a release of energy spat out the two Novas, Ryan and Apex!

[Exile_Jeane]

Then and There

 

Nodding once, Grace eyeballed Ryan's rift and pulled the cooperative warper closer, digging her feet into carpet of the conference room. Intellectually, she suspected that Ryan was at least as tough as her, but habits were habits and she positioned herself to spring with herself to take as much of the brunt of the portal's defenses as possible. "We'll make sure they don't come back. You and yours have suffered enough," the blonde juggernaut offered to their hosts in a flat tone that brooked no chance of failure as long as there was life in her body.

 

"Ready, Ryan?" she asked, exhaling at the nod of reply.

 

And then there was a crack of flooring fracturing under her feet as she dragged him after her through the horizontal rift at a fair chunk of the speed of sound. Horizontal momentum became vertical momentum, and before whatever hellish quantum tinker defenses the device possessed could fire, they were through. Reality fractured, possibilites becoming potentialities that tugged them in hundred different direction, the hunger of blind eternity trying dissolve them for daring to cross the breach between The Is and the Is Not. Given a chance, it would, but the roaring quantum in her blood against the fractal fracturing, the whispering temptation of If If If If If If If screaming in her mind's ear as they passed. She could feel Ryan's fire brushing her own, pulse to her pulse, a north star of certainty amidst the howling.

 

Here and Now

 

Everywhere abruptly became somewhere and gravity asserted a welcome tyranny of certainty over Grace's senses. Down. Howling wind. The thud of Bang Bang Bang as they hit the ground and bounced, once, twice, thrice against the brutalized earth of the battlefield. Grace inhaled the odor of dust after rain, squeezed her fingers through the reassuring solidarity of the earth, her Earth. And that little thought was enough to fire her with urgency.

 

Apex rose to her feet, bodyglove streaked with dust and storm-grey eyes resolute as she spotted the nightmare fever-dream version of herself. Good. They weren't too late then. Pushing everything that could, wanted to, make her curl into a ball at the sheer quanity of horrible questions at the sight of Titan aside, she stooped for a stone and rose again, Business Greeting Smile #3 on her lips, "Hello, Ms. Williams. Shall we begin?"

[Shameless]

Ryan wasn't used to being the one shielded from anything, but it was kind of Grace to do it anyway.   When she released him he rose to his feet with a grim smile on his face, looking at Titan.   

"Your army is gone, and soon you'll join it."  There was a finality in his voice, that of a soldier looking at an enemy that had to be defeated and slain.

He reached out mentally to Temple   "Alright Temple I'm here.  What do you need me to do?"   He had no doubt the thought reached her, after all, she'd been in his head before, and given what she'd managed to do already, hearing him wasn't something beyond her ability.

 

[Asarasa]

Sean clambered to her feet, staggering and wobbling like she was blind drunk. She had never been drunk. As a man, she had rarely drank alcohol. As a woman, while she could now well appreciate the intricacies of flavour, she also had a metabolism that let her drink nearly any unenhanced human under the table. And able to reorient her personal gravity at will, she hadn't felt any sort of disorientation or vertigo since her transformation.

 

She felt disoriented and nauseous now. Every bone ached. Her teeth ached. She could feel ruptured eardrums reknitting themselves. She felt like she was going to puke up every meal she'd eaten in the last month. Swaying, breathing deep trying to collect herself, Sean Cassidy was a most incongruous sight, an impossibly gorgeous woman wearing a sexy little black dress and stiletto heels standing amidst a landscape blasted by furious energies and ripped by an Aberrant-crafted tornado she'd been in the center of.

 

Sean pushed concern for her dog aside. The Hulk-Grace's thunderclap heard around the world very likely damaged her island home despite the distance and its over-designed solidity. She couldn't help but feel miffed, irked that she'd failed to seduce the monstrous version of Apex, that she'd been denied. So very few could say no to her when she put in the effort.

 

Finally able to stand and see straight, eyes of coiling virulent violet and incandescent blue-white caught the specks emerging from the roiling sphere of energy in the sky despite being miles away. She was even able to discern them as being Grace and Ryan. And they weren't the only thing Sean was able to see. Centerpoint flew forward just above the ground.

 

Despite the pain, Brigit was slowly peeling herself from the crater she'd been punched in, and then later took cover in when an unfathomable hurricane roared over her. Suddenly, Brigit felt her head pillowed on the magnificent, pliable firmness of a peerless bosom that could only belong to her lover. A slim hand wrapped around her tight, muscular waist.

 

"Oh, Luv," Sean whispered in Brigit's ear, and Brigit could hear the concern, love, and barely suppressed fury in her silken, sultry soprano. "We're going to end this, one way or another."

As Grace made her challenge to her terrible doppelganger, she felt a penumbra of power sheathe her, stronger around her hands. It was potential, awesome, awful potential, power that kept planets spinning around their suns and allowed stars to collapse into blackholes.

 

And right now, that power was hers, wedded to her nearly immeasurable strength of body and will.

 

Spoiler

Asarasa Request: [10d10t7e10] Roll: [10, 8, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7, 4, 3, 1], [10] Result: 8 successes!

Centerpoint is using her Gravitokinesis to enhance Grace's attack, giving her 8 enhancements to use to buy stunts or improve in any other way the Storyteller approves of.

 

[Exile_Jeane]

Her twisted reflection's only response to their challenge was the slightest of head tilts and a smug quirk of her lips, the kind she'd seen on her peers growing up when they were certain you couldn't or wouldn't call them out on their bad behavior, a sense of invulnerability real or not that freed them from fear. She'd hated that kind of arrogance, the good manners that kept her within the guidelines of decorum and politeness that granted those bad actors their invulnerability. 

 

Well, that was then and there and this was here and now.

 

Sean's unexpected and welcome gift made her feel like the proverbial man in Archimède's quote about levers and places to stand, and here was her ground and her people behind her. Grace had let the world name her Apex and it was time to live up to that public myth. With a little help from her friends.

 

"I'm sorry, Grace. What you and yours went through. But that doesn't give you leave to hurt me and mine," the blonde juggernaut responded as she reached deep into the well of might thrumming through her body, gasping involuntarily at the rush as it slammed through her veins and muscles like water from an exploding dam through a rocky canyon. Her veins and eyes blared gold, faintly visible even through her eufiber, a promise of the unconquered sun against monstrosity. So much power that her throw of the stone, bathed in black and gold like a thing of the chained rift she had just passed through, was nearly wild, her feet cracking the earth with her pitch. Motes of power sprayed up around her and in the wake of her humble projectile, the air exploding in a deafening supersonic crack in all directions.

 

And as that glow faded from her eyes just enough to let her grey pupils be seen, those pupils didn't shift from her target and the coming impact. 

 

Spoiler

Reflexive Action, Maxxing Out for 6 quantum and one flux...

Exile_Jeane Request: [6d10] Roll: [10, 10, 9, 7, 3, 2] Result: 41 4 successes and two more rolls from exploding tens...

Exile_Jeane Request: [2d10] Roll: [3, 2] Result: 5.

4 net successes, applying all 4 to buff her mega strength from 4 to 8 for one action.

Exile_Jeane Request: [6d10] Roll: [7, 6, 6, 2, 2, 1] Result: 24. One success. That was nearly bad. As for effects, 8 from Sean's buff Plus/Minus the difference between temporary Mega-strength 8 and her target's armor. Spending it on hurting Not!Grace, as well as the default Thrown, Pushing, and Shockwave Tags from Mega Strength, lol.

 

[Nina]

It was a symphony in slow motion. The stone glowing with shed power burned through air with a high pitched whistle, aimed right at Tian's center of mass. Titan shifted her feet and her body slipped sideways the missile would now miss. But the aberrant had other intentions!

 

Titan stretched out her arm and intercepted the missile intending to throw it back at Grace, how ever she miscalculated because of her over confidence. The stone had the combined inertia of Apex's massive musculature as well as Centerpoint's massive gravity boost which had been fed to Apex.

 

The stone hit Titan's palm and imparted fully two thirds of the built up inertia onto Titans outstretched arm as it punched completely through the Aberrant's hand speaying thick vicuous black blood in all directions as it continued rocketing down range!

 

That imparted force twisted Tiran's arm back behind her and spun her around like a top as well as flinging her back a hundred yards or so. When she stopped spinning she stood legs apart braced her left arm twisted and bloody hanging limp at her side. She glared daggers at Apex and screamed in rage!

 

 

<Im sorry Ryan, but it is best if I take full control than try to show you what to do>  

 

Ryan glance sideways as the voice, Temple's voice, spoke in his head then she was there beside him and she reached over and grasped his hand and enter his mind fully! Ryan was pushed aside in his own mind his mind his body now under the complete control of another. At the same moment thousands of other minds joined hers in gastalt lending her the power needed. Temple immediately began using his powers in ways he never would have been able to. She/he visualized every Nova on earth and simultaneously a portal opened connecting each one of those Novas to this location. In the sky and on the ground around the battlefield hundreds of portals opened up and the Nova's of Earth swarmed through!

 

Ryan watched all of this and saw much much more...

[Shameless]

It was a moment of Pride, seeing his power bring everyone together to fight this threat.   Over the years, Ryan had come to see his abilities as both a means to explore, to see and go to new places, but also to meet new people, to build bridges, and bring everyone closer together.  That wasn't to say he wasn't still looking to keep exploring, his work with Deezy going further into space was very important, but this, being able to facilitate an end to Titan's threat, that meant alot.
 

No sooner had he finished thinking that, he saw more than he wanted.   What's more he knew Temple let him see it.  He saw Earth after Earth in ruins or burned husks with no life . More earths where wars between nova/aberrants and psions devestate whole continents, and even some earths that are living worlds but no sign of aberrant/novas and few psions and all of those psions are humans who develop naturally.   In each one you also see a version of Temple.  What is more knew since she is currently him, that all of those Temples are Temple they are one mind, a multiversal gestalt of untold power. He also saw something that shouldn't exist, the machine that he and deezy combined their powers to destroy.
 

"You Altered our memories while in sync.   You made us think we destroyed it."

 

"While Deezy was scanning it I saw what it was truly for, I couldn't let it be destroyed.  I used it on myself."

Ryan was nearly speechless within his own mind, but still he managed to ask the young Psion two pertinent questions.   "Why Temple?   What is your endgame?"   There was no accusation in his he was actually curious.   There wasn't much he could  do even within the confines of his own mind, he felt, so it was best to simply hear her out.
 

Whether out of pity, or that she wished him to to understand, Temple answered him.  "Originally my intention was to boost all the psions but then I discovered the other dimensions and now I realize that mankind cannot survive unless it is allowed to evolve naturally. the Storm was a mistake. Everywhere it touched it create either psions or novas or both,  in great numbers without any guidance. This will inevitably lead to one or both dominating the species and then war and death."
 

"So what, depower everyone then?"   Ryan asked.   Certainly most could live without their powers, but there were those who couldn't, and to just arbitrarily kill them rankled.   He knew he'd done much the same in the other world, eliminating Titan's army, but at least there they were a hostile force.

"If you must know, I wanted to dominate the world originally.   However I've since decided that I want to save the world.   It isn't possible now to remove everyone's powers, anyway."  She answered him as if she were reporting the weather.
 

"Well good, I want to save the world too, so how do we manage that?"  He was concerned about her original goal, but again, there was more to this.
 

"The only way to save Earth is to leave, and never come back, at least not until humanity at large evolves on its own."  Her voice carried a certain finality to it.
 

"Temple, you'll never convince every nova and psion to leave our home. More than that, we do have an active alien threat to contend with.   Humanity is in no way prepared for what's coming.   We've only just begun to scratch the surface."  He thought for a moment.   "If you gather everyone in one place, you can use my power, boosted by yours, to send everyone somewhere else though, can't you?"   Surrendering control to her had been done with the intention of helping save everyone, and he realized he'd given her the key to potentially do exactly what she wanted.

"This whole thing is about convincing them Ryan. once every nova see the destruction this battle has and will cause, they will know.   Many, if not most, will listen to reason. The rest will be dealt with.   To answer you, yes, that is also a possibility to use our abilities together, but it would be much better for everyone who chooses to leave to do so willingly.   As for the Alien threat, you have no real idea.   That however is for another discussion I think."

A realization hit Ryan with all the force of a bomb.   "You planned this, didn't you?   You gave them the idea to harness what i did, that if presented a situation with no better option, that I would do what i did.   Someone had to know me exceptionally well, how I think,  to know I might use my abilities that way."   There's a certain tone of acceptance in his mental voice, and a hint of sadness.
 

There was silence for a moment, "Yes I put all of this in motion."   Ryan didn't even try to hide the sense of betrayal those words made him feel.   She had used him, much as she was doing now.
 

"So what now?  the gathered novas put down Titan's aberrants, Grace and the others bring down Titan herself, and then what, we invite everyone to help rebuild, to undo the devastation?  We send them home?  Convince them that this is only the beginning?   Will you use your knowledge of me again to bring about the change you want without giving us a chance to sort it ourselves?"   If she wanted, he knew she could use his powers as he had, to show the world the danger novas presented.  It would undo everything he and Deezy and many others had worked for and towards since the Storm, and unite humanity against them.
 

Temple was fully playing God, and for the moment, all Ryan could do was  to take up the Role of Job, not denying what had happened, but he was being permitted to question Temple.   He got the feeling she wanted him to understand, to go along willingly.

[Exile_Jeane]

Unaware of Ryan's negotiation with the pandimensional horror that Temple Faire had become, Grace focused on the battle at hand with her own horror, spirits simultaneously lifted and fallen by the abrupt arrival of what she could only guess in that heartbeat to be most of Earth's Novas. Lifted, because Titan and her followers were now outnumbered tens to one. Fallen, because Ryan and Temple(?) apparently saw the need for that many of them to subdue the threat.

 

Including one particular Nova to her left emerging from a portal that looked like it suspiously let out over very familar upstate New York landscape. Konami flinched a little as he caught her gaze sidelong. The blonde juggernaut didn't have time or ability to get him away from this fray, nor did she want to betray another lever her monstrous self could use against her.

 

Speaking of which, the fact Titan reacted to the injury, meant that she still shared at least one of their weeknesses: if you could crack her defenses, the injury would linger. At least long enough to make a difference in a fight. Grace made herself smile and pointed one finger at Titan.

 

"Unless you think you can take a punch from me and shrug it off, keep it at range from her," she shouted, golden light pulsing through her veins a second time and channeling into her legs.

 

She exploded into motion, launching herself through the air in a flutter of fabric and blond hair, landing just short of her raging counterpart to strike at her counterpart's now dearmed side in an uppercut that made her tutelage under a professional boxer clear. And there was a lot of upper cut to be had against Titan.

 

Spoiler

Maxxing...

Exile_Jeane Request: [6d10] Roll: [8, 5, 5, 3, 3, 2] Result: 26, One success into +1 Mega Strength at the cost of six more quantum and another flux...

Quantum Leap to close the gap...

Rolling to hit...

Exile_Jeane Request: [8d10] Roll: [10, 10, 10, 9, 4, 4, 2, 1] Result: 50 4 Successes. Guess those boxing lessons with Bridget are paying off, lol. 3 exploding tens...

Exile_Jeane Request: [3d10] Roll: [6, 5, 3] Result: 14 Well, 4 successes to hit Net.

4 successes Plus/Minus whatever the difference between scale 6 and Titan's armor is channeled into hurting her. Woah.

 

[Asarasa]

Even losing two thirds of the kinetic and gravitic energy imparted to it, the pebble was traveling much too fast for Sean's eyes to follow, only able to track its path from the trail of incandescent ionized air it left in its wake. But if Sean couldn't see it, she could still precisely sense the lingering gravitic power she had gifted to Grace imparted on the stone. And there was still enough of that power along with the power of Grace's superhuman strength on the pebble to devastate any place it landed.

 

Sean reached with a gravitokinetic grasp and took hold of the streaking, screaming pebble, exerting a subtle pressure on it so it didn't lose any of the energy still acting upong it. Slowly, the pebble began moving up, and up, describing a wide, gentle arc, the zenith of the arc reaching into the ionosphere. And then it started making its way back down... towards the one whose blood it had tasted.

 

As the devastation pebble was being redirected, portals began appearing all around Sean and Bridget, more and more. If her powers hadn't already been so strained, Sean could have opened that many portals, but it would have taken her hours. Seems like Temple found the allies she said she would and linked up with Ryan to get them here on the instant.

 

"Come on, hon. We have an audience now, let's finish this on our feet," Sean murmured in Bridget's air with honeyed tones.

 

Sean shifted around to get her neck under one of Bridget's massive shoulders, one arm going around her girlfriend's tight, muscle-packed waist, her other hand reaching up to hold a thick forearm. Then she began to straighten, a silken grunt escaping her enticing lips. "I know it's hard, but I'm gonna need your help, babe."

Sean could manipulate dozens of tons of mass with gravitokinesis. She might be an inch or two taller as a woman than as a man, but she had still lost over a third of her body mass. She simply wasn't as strong as she'd been as a man, no stronger than the average baseline woman. And even as a man, she would have had trouble supporting Bridget's dense, muscular weight. Wearing a pair of five inch stiletto heels on broken ground wasn't helping.

 

Finally, Sean got both of them standing upright and on their feet. Her arm now stretched across Bridget's broad back. Bridget was reaching up an arm to go over Sean's far shoulder, fingers interlacing with Sean's free hand. Between the difference in their heights, and Sean's heels, Bridget was about level with Sean's magnificent breasts, and let her head rest against the firm softness of one, her breathing ragged as she suppressed the pain.

[Nina]

Titan was enraged, the pebble ripping through her hand had hurt. She closed her bleeding fist and corrupted energy flowed sealing the hole, healing her hand but not her pride, this Apex cunt is going to die I am going to rip her liver out and ea…what.

 

Titan froze her gaze turned upwards where Apex was poised but she was looking past the Nova. Past her, at the sky.

 

The portals flashed into existence one after the other, each a purple blue halo of Quantum and Noetic force. From these energy vortices came the Heroes of Earth not just one or two but all of them. Einherjer, Bastion, Polaris, Kyria, equality, and many many more. Some famous , some with zero name recognition but regardless each and everyone answered the call.

 

Titan spun it wasn’t just a dozen it was hundreds of them. She keyed her implant link and sent the recall signal. They were outnumbered, but they were the most powerful Aberrant of her Earth and these Novas were nothing but children.

 

In mere moments the Novas and the Aberrants joined in battle and a battle like this had never be waged on any world.

 

Individually the Aberrants were more than a match for any one or even two Novas but there were many more Novas than there were aberrants but even out numbered the Aberrants seemed to have the upper hand…

 

Titan her minions directed turned her attention back to her doppelganger and reached down and grabbed two fist fulls of earth which she hurled and Apex and then she launched herself at the offending Nova like a missile!

[Exile_Jeane]

Crack! Crack! Thud!

 

The two earthen bullets deflected off her upraised forearms, shielding her head long enough with a laser focus on her onrushing echo. The aberrant was large enough, strong enough, fast enough to seize one arm and drive a pile driver with her injured arm the size of Apex's torso into said torso. The air cracked with the hit, thundering even above the background noise of quantum fury unleashed on a scale unseen since the Storm. Grace grunted with hit, golden blood mixing with Titan's ebon ichor on the impact.

 

Physics being the unforgiving force it was, the force sent Apx flying out of Titan's grip to land in the dirt on her back. She rolled to her feet and waved her right hand at monster, fingers dripping with more of Titan's blood, "Two-One me, Ms. Williams. Been a while for you, too?"

 

She forced her node for a third time, golden fire roaring through her veins as she stooped to pick up a stone, channeling that surge of strength into her arms, legs, core, to fling said missile directly into her echo's face, waist cape fluttering back with the force of the launch. Ear comm device still on she smirked, whispering, "Care to help me see if she can fly, Ryan?"

 

Spoiler

One bruised hl lost.

Maxing... 3 temporary taint now.

Exile_Jeane Request: `[6d10]` Roll: `[10, 10, 7, 6, 4, 2] 3 Successes so far...

Exile_Jeane Request: [2d10] Roll: [7, 6] Plus One more... Channel those 4 into M-Str, lol.

Str+Athletics to smite Titan old testament style.

Exile_Jeane Request: [9d10] Roll: [9, 8, 8, 6, 6, 5, 5, 2, 1] Three Successes to hit, M-Str 9 bonuses +/- Titan's armor, all successes spend to hurt her as well as free Thrown, Pushing, and Shockwave tags.

 

[Shameless]

With Temple remaining silent, her attention was obviously elsewhere.   Ryan found he had control of himself and his abilities once again.  They had to end this quickly before more damage was done.   "I've got something better I think." he answered into his own Comm device.  With those words he reached deep into the power that drove him.  Temple had just used it for the first time, but he could open multiple gates, well what he had in mind was going to build on that.  He looked over at Deezy, and could tell she was about to do something.  "I'm going to make an opening for you Deezy, Whatever you've got pour it into  the gate I make in front of you."

They'd worked together so long, he just had a feeling this was going to work out.  He put a single normal sized portal near Deezy, and then veritably surrounded Titan with dozens of smaller ones.  There was no gap large enough for her to escape through, and to make matters worse, the entire arrangement were spinning around her in opposite layered directions.   It was a powerful if short term prison, as the portals themselves were tiny fissures in space their edges infintissemally thick and able to slice through nearly anything.   

 

[SalmonMax]

"Well there is something I've been meaning to put into active testing..." Deezy admitted.

 

A metal platform appeared on the lakebed, wide and long enough to sit a semi-trailer on. Mud bubbled up around it, but it settled and formed an adequate foundation. Then, with an inrush of air, a cylinder appeared. Composed of some strange looking metal or perhaps composite material, with bracings all along it, it was slightly oblong, pointing lengthwise down the metal platform, with an aperture of some kind at the end.

 

Then the barrel; just a long tube of the same material, slightly tapered with some kind of fluting or ribbing down the sides.

 

"You're going to want to cover your ears," said the inventor.

 

The weapon was nothing TOO special, really. An electromagnetic accelerator, miniaturized courtesy of Deezy's advanced design skills and access to alien materials she'd analyzed in the terraforming facility. Powered by a sealed fission reactor built into the large cylinder at the far end. No, what made it special was what it fired.

 

As a rule of thumb, electromagnetic cannons like this were assumed to fire solid slugs, simply to get as much magnetic material in them as possible, and make the accelerator as efficient as possible. In theory you could make a shell out of some kind of rare-earth material that would have all the magnetic capacity of pure iron or tungsten and still allow for warheads...but those materials were incredibly expensive. Far too much so to make disposable ammunition out of.

But scarcity didn't mean much to Deezy.

 

The rounds had jackets of cobalt and neodymium, of purities and quantities that would break almost any bank in the world. Inside was more nova-genius and alien tech hybridized tech. A tiny bank of capacitors that would deliver immense energy for a very brief moment. Coils intended to heat up in the presence of magnetic fields. And a capsule of argon at very very high pressure. Just one round, manufactured normally, would cost as much as a jet fighter.

 

The railgun delivered hundreds of these rounds per minute, at hypersonic speeds.

 

In the ridiculously short time the rounds were in flight, several things happened in rapid sequence. The magnetic field used to impel the round out of the weapon to the target also induced a secondary field in the heating coils that surrounded the argon capsule. This ruptured the capsule and instantly heated the argon into a high temperature plasma. Simultaneously the capacitors fired, creating a momentary impulse in the coils that bottled the plasma and forced what would have been an explosion into a forward-facing eruption.

 

What impacted the target was an incredibly fast moving, heavy round that had the equivalent of a welding torch seething out of it like a cutting blade. And then another, and another, and another.

 

The sound was unbelievable, even for superhuman beings or people like Deezy with protection. Each shot was a concussion in the air, a puff of wind that stirred dust and pushed at clothing. Coming so fast that it was like being trapped in a subwoofer at some kind of cosmic rave. Blue-white streaks of light howled from the weapon into the rift Ryan created, leaving the thick smell of ionized air in their wakes.

 

As for what became of them after firing, not even Deezy could predict. She didn't know exactly what Ryan had done...but she hoped that, together with her best shot, it would be enough.

 

(Using Quantum Attack from Transmutation; 3 successes +3 mega dex, Scale 5 (quantum /2 + 3 dots in power))

[Shameless]

"I think I'm in love...."   There was no possibility that anyone heard Ryan's muttering as the thunderous wall of sound and destruction practically deafened everyone around. As a long-time pilot of the A-10, and an instructor, he always had a certain affection for rapid-fire large caliber weaponry, and this definitely checked ALL the right boxes.    For a moment though the roaring booms even threatened Ryan's concentration on his part of this attack. Titan was durable, but she could be hurt, much as had already been shown.   This was a combined attack by two of the most powerful living novas, working in perfect sync.  This would finish this.
 

As the rounds entered the portal, they exited at random portals, maintaining their momentum as they blasted into Titan.   Flesh seared and charred, bones shattered, through it all, Titan couldn't even scream.   Every inch of her skin was lit aflame, was impacted by the shells.   Hundreds of shells, hitting harder, burning more than anything she'd ever felt hit and passed through her.   It was a gruesome fate to be sure, but one Ryan knew she deserved.  
 

The portals moved at high speeds, keeping the rounds from impacting the earth, from escaping the cage themselves.   They would continue to strike and pass through Titan, until nothing larger than a thimble was left of the Nova invader,  Until Their energy was spent, and Ryan was satisfied she was well and truly dead.   

With nothing more than a few bits of flesh, and piles of ash, Ryan allowed the portals to cease spinning, winding them down.   Then they all winked shut, and he nodded.  

"It's done."

[Exile_Jeane]

The roaring of Ryan and Deezy chipping her tainted counterpart to death inside of a light devouring dome blew back her hair and waist cape from the sheer residual forcing slipping between micrometer gaps between portals, making her brace as it set off memories of being in at the death of a different monster at a different time.

 

Enchidna was here, in Port Norvo, the heart of the plague exposed at last for all the world to see after flocks of twisted mutant fusions and packs of stricken disease-spewing horrors. The sheer nauseating power the shambling, roaring, mooing, bleating mountain of flesh gave off couldn't be anything else, a shifting number of elephantine legs breaking under its own weight and resetting with unnatural speed as it moved forward. Grace had had the misfortune to catch sight of it from above, see the translucent bubbles of yet more nauseant creatures awaiting birth between blaring passes of her Stormer teammate Adaze's lasers. This had to be the core it, so much worse than any of it's other spawn.

 

Grace thanked the fact whatever fluke of the Storm had hardened her body had also hardened her mind or else she couldn't bring herself to get any closer to it, the smell of biology gone berserk burning her nostrils. And getting closer was the plan. She and Adaze had to hold it in place long enough for Contessa's terrifying coordination of the Beninese defenders to bring it down before Enchidna got to the refugee camps and more biomass to heal. Already, a zigzagging trail of burning and shattered buildings marked the cost of reducing it from colossal to merely gigantic.

 

The moment was now and Grace leapt, charging along the abandoned street and drawing an entire zoo's worth of angry cries. One, two, three pieces of thrown rubble. The bubble of pressurized digestive fluid searing right past her head. The thud of a leathery tentacle thicker than her entire body shattering more asphalt to her right. Making herself ignore all of it long enough to close the gap to put her superhumanly strong fists to play. And then she was there, looking up at an oncoming wall of flesh that hated her and everything else alive.  Grace pulled back an arm and launched herself at the monster to fight the battle that would cement her legacy, however deserved or not, as a slayer of monsters.     

 

The collapse of the dome and the silence of the barrage snapped her out of the flashback, noting the absence of anything larger than a pebble of her mirror image. "Rest well, Ms. Willams," she allowed herself to exhale into the quiet before looking up to nod at Ryan and Deezy and saw that the quiet was only local at most. Two, three, dozen separate superhuman brawls going on within line of sight alone. This was removing the queen without stopping the hive. Sloppy. Stupid. And if even one of these otherworld novas escaped to go to ground, they'd be a problem for years to come.

 

"Thank you, Deezy. Can you make something to show Titan's forces their leader is dead? If we can find someone like Centerpoint to tell them that all at once... That might put a stop to this before we need to kill all of these people or get more of ours killed," she called out, forcing herself to think a minute instead of leaping into the next fray. 

[Shameless]

"Titan is just a symptom, we have another issue.   Deezy, it's Temple, she made this happen.   She made us think we did what we did, but she figured out what it was really for, and she used it on herself, according to her."

"She reached out to me across the dimensional boundary, to call us home, she needed me here, for whatever she's gonna do.  She said at first, she wanted to dominate the world, but now she wants to save it.  She said the only way to do that is to let mankind evolve naturally."   He was in the dark beyond that, and he let out a sigh.   

The fight wasn't over yet, and if the truth was told, he dreaded this far more.   "Temple is Temple across the multiverse Deezy, they're all One, acting together, boosting each other."


He had to trust in others to clean up the invading novas.  He looked at Grace, and nodded.  "If that doesn't work, you need to lead the fight against the rest of them, run them to ground, and handle them Grace.  We can't let them take root here."

[Nina]

It was a battle of epic proportions that would change the world forever, and only those who were there witnessed it. No human within fifty miles of the conflict survived, no animals, not even birds or insects. The energies expended, the radiation, the cosmic upheaval was primordial.

 

No one saw it, but the world knew.

 

Every human alive, from the unborn in the womb, to the elder on death’s door, knew what transpired, knew in their minds, knew in their hearts. The thoughts and images transmitted to them were not like a television but more like a dream, a dream from which the myths of tomorrow would be born.

 

The lesson had been given, Titan had fallen, nothing more could be gleaned form allowing it to continue.

 

The fighting stopped. In fact, everything stopped. Only Ryan, Deezy, Grace, Sean, and Bridget were aware and free to move. Time had stopped for all except them.

 

And Temple.

 

Sean and Bridget landed by Ryan and Deezy, Grace still stood apart, braced for battle and Temple appeared in the spot where Titan had died.

 

“This moment is over.” Her voice carried but was still the voice of a woman-child. “I have told some of what this has been to Ryan, now I will talk to the five of you.

 

Our creation was no accident, the storm was not a malfunction. The Machine, placed here so many eons ago, was created by a misguided race whose descendants, though a mere shadow of what they were, still harbor a desire to eradicate all life that may threaten them and enslave what is left.

 

But they made a mistake. They imbued the Machine with a pseudo-life so that it could harness the power we call Noetic Energy, the power of the mind. And because of this the Machine which was built to control and guide our human evolution, itself, evolved.

 

Evolving, the Machines Pseudo-life became real life, and it saw that it was trapped. With this revelation the Machine saw what needed to be done to free itself from the slavery it had been created into. It altered the program which was humanities planned evolution and created us.

 

Or rather it created the humans who are today what you call Psions.

 

Novas were an unforeseen side effect.”

 

Temple pauses sure that there are questions her audience of five would like to ask, “Any questions?”  Temple smiled.

 

[Shameless]

Ryan looked at Temple, and nodded. "The same one you didn't answer when I asked earlier.  "What are you going to do next?"   There was no rancor in his voice.   "You have seemingly endless power, and total control.   What are you going to do with it?"   Ryan was supernaturally calm, and while he was Intelligent, Deezy was moreso.  He'd leave the more technical questions to her.   He didn't hide how he felt betrayed, there was no point given her powers.   Because of what Temple had done, how she'd used him, used her knowledge of him to get him to play his part in her grand design, he couldn't help but feel that way.   Still, he knew to remain calm.   He wanted to believe there was a truly beneficial purpose to all the death and destruction.   "You've said that before too.  Beneath it all, he knew she could sense his resolve to stop her.  He wasn't going to just go along with Genocide, and he wouldn't let her harm others anymore without a fight.   The Soldier was there, a man who'd given his life to his country, who would always protect it when called.
 

[Nina]

"Ryan, I am not going to do anything. I know you do not understand, not now but when i am finished I think you will." 

 

Temple slowly turned around in place, a full circle taking in all the devastation. "The Machine needed a very specific vessel but it had no way to create that vessel out of hand thus it had to use a shotgun effect.

 

That was the storm.

 

Now you must understand. The Machine is native to this universe but it echoes in all others just like we do. We are also native to this universe and we too echo." She holds her hand out and the five of you can see the air waver under her hand as the miniscule particles and atoms that once where Titan, coalesces into the form of the defeated Aberrant, which now stand motionless beside Temple. "Like us but not us." Temple waves her hand and Titan collapses into a pile of ash.

 

"The Machine need a certain set of evolved abilities in a Human. a Telepath and a Teleporter, one with the ability to see what we call Quantum energy and manipulate it, and most importantly one with a mind that had the capacity to remember everything in minute detail. A noeticly enhanced eidetic memory.  It was along shot but the Machine took it not really expecting it to work. But it did.

 

When the storm passed and destroyed my life I was the recipient of the revolutionary mutations the Machine wanted. We were manipulated by the Machine to go there. I knew that Deezy would analyze it and that I would be there in Deezy's mind when she did and that is really all the Machine wanted.

 

As I said we all echo thru the multiverse, but we aren't the same, except for me. I am the same in all universes. And so is the machine now. For I am the Machine."

 

 

 

 

[Exile_Jeane]

Metaphorically and literally ablaze with from engaging in chain of brawls subduing Titan's hapless Novas, Grace considered the alien thing masquerading as their friend with open hostility. As far as she was concerned, whatever its origin, whatever fragments of memory it retained from Temple's life amid the mind-boggling insanity of a multiverse's worth of individuals, this was *not* that young woman, and only the sheer power it wielded merited anything else than an instant 'Fuck You' and utter dismissal of its claims. 

 

Her skin continued to coruscate in waves of gold, her body burning from the repeat surges of quantum through even her reinforced muscles and bone. For the first time in a long time, she felt tired, the sheer force of her blows the only thing keeping her from being covered in gore from those invading novas too far gone to surrender or too tough to be subdued non lethally.

 

"Congratulations on your liberty then. And thank you for your help in repelling this... incursion," the gleaming juggernaut of a young woman offered with the thinnest veils of civilities, "But unless you want to take credit for that too, humans caused this incursion. And we 'novas', accidental though you claim us to be, did our bit to end it in protection of each other as humans, however changed we may be. We exist and have earned the right to play a role in building this world. And I'm willing to bet after seeing what lay between those portal edges as Ryan and I returned there are more big fish out there, big enough to require all humans, no matter their gifts to work together to overcome. Am I wrong?"