Mutants & Masterminds: The Unlikely Prophets - Issue #4: "My Own Private Kryptonite"

[Necronaut]

Norman took a half-step into the nether-world, just far enough to go out of phase with solid matter, and let himself fall into the abyss. He intended to arrest his fall before reaching the floor, but the precaution seemed wise nonetheless. He passed through Sharatur during one of her stops, probably leaving her with a bit of a chill, and stopped a few meters below her.

"Did you find something interesting?" He called up, his voice distorted by his immaterial state.

[Charlotte]

Whatever had created the shaft, it wasn't conventional tools. There were no tool marks, no bits of metal, no signs of a drill. Obviously it wasn't impossible, but to leave the walls of the shaft that smooth? It wasn't normal.

As she reached the bottom, she was struck with an odd sense of deja vu. Necronaut felt it too, but couldn't quite place it - but Sharatur absolutely could.

It felt like it'd felt when Hex and Necronaut were experimenting with the mineral that gave Sharatur the memories of an entire martial arts school...

[Bodhie Armstrong]

Originally Posted By: Mike OOC

He turned in the direction of Bodhie. "Hell, Bodhie, I'm sorry to hear about your son. You ever want to check up on them, you let us know. You let us know and we'll come running."

Bodhie smiled at Jack and even though he couldn’t see her she was sure he could feel it, “It’s ok, Jack. I’m not sure if I’m ready to see him. All I want to know is if he is safe and sound. He wouldn’t approve of what I’m doing and the way I look now would alienate him even more than I did prior to my awakening. Maybe if he hears about us as heroes he’ll learn to accept me.”

In truth she was scared. Scared that her own son would never want to see her again. Her sudden disappearance would be surely interpreted as abandonment and her husband would take advantage of this situation to cement his prejudice against her and win Sean for him once and for all.

The large woman sighed trying to keep her smile but Radiance could see tears in her eyes. “I just need time, that’s all. I’m sorry I interrupted you guys...”

[Thomas Froit]

Glitch smiled and nodded, and Hex could notice a photo nestled in his hand. "I need to ask a favor of you. As I told you back when we met, I got myself on the Order's 'arrest list.' Now that I've progressed to super-smart revolutionary... look, I lived with my parents- don't laugh... and I feel that they could become bargaining chips if the Order figured out who is behind the visor. My hope was that you'd accompany me on a little trip back to California to collect them from home."

[Radiance]

Hiari's other hand reached up and out to Bodhie's sculpted shoulder in a similar guesture of reassurance. "Things will work out, I promise you. What we are doing is right."

She looked to Jack. "Listening to Eiko is at that. They invoke a sense of wonder in him that I wish I could impart into my art, and in time hope to make reality. A sense of Wonder that this world is sorely lacking."

"I admit I miss Seattle... But I can always see home when i wish to."

[SalmonMax]

Hex considered that. Normally she'd have jumped to agree, but...

"You know it's risky, right?" she asked. "I mean, of course we'll go but I think we should take some precautions until we know what the situation over there is. I can create some disguises for us, for example."

"Do you have any pictures of places nearby their house?"

[Charlotte]

Glitch did, in fact, have pictures of the house handy, and the two of them could leave whenever they wished.

* * *

As fate would have it, Eiko walked into the gallery as soon as his name was mentioned. He immediately beelined towards where Bodhie, Jack and Hikari were congregating.

He smiled at the nearby picture. "Is outstanding! Fantastic and amazing! Done well. Like it in here." He paused, his bull-like face falling a bit. "When it is quiet, at least."

[SalmonMax]

Hex invoked a spell, concealing both Glitch and herself under the illusionary guise of an ordinary man and woman in normal street clothes. They emerged from the side door of a garage just a few houses down from Glitch's parents in the early evening, local time.

She looked around as they emerged and rubbed her hands nervously together.

"It's weird how...vulnerable it feels to be here," the witch said quietly. "Like I expect them to just pounce on us any second. Anyway. Your place should be that way. Lets do this."

[IndyPendant]

Sharatur frowned, a thought occuring to here. "Norman, I wonder if this is where my artifact--" her frown of distaste at the thing still twisted her face when she mentioned it, but less so than before-- "was discovered?" She lay a hand lightly on the wall of the shaft. "Let's go get it. I want to compare it to the composition here, determine if there are any obvious similarities."

[Thomas Froit]

"Yes." The technological inventor admitted. "It'll be good to see them again." He led Hex with him, but chose to cut across the backyard once they got into the vicinity of Glitch's domicile. "Thank god for spare keys." He commented, as he led her to a back door and pulled a fake rock from under the porch deck. The spare key inside unlocked the door, and the two ducked inside.

[Necronaut]

Norman ran his gloved hand along, and through, the impossibly smooth stone. "There's something weird about this place... I feel like I've been here before."

He looked upward, and the tiny circle of light which was the sole remaining channel to the outside world. Looking into the darkness hadn't been so bad, but for some reason this unnerved him.

"Yes, let's go get the stone. It shouldn't take more than a minute or two..."

[Charlotte]

It didn't take more than a minute or two to retrieve the stone, and return to Ayers Rock.

Once they returned, and were standing over the hole, Sharatur could see right away that the chunk of rock in her hands was not from Ayers Rock. The granite that the crystalline structure was growing out of was completely different from the sandstone of Ayers Rock. All the same, as they've moved closer to the hole there had been a sense of... attraction, perhaps?

As if what Sharatur held in her hands resonated with whatever was down the hole.

* * *

Meanwhile, half a world away, Glitch and Hex walked into his parent's house to find it empty.

It was clearly still lived in - all the amenities of home were there - but Tom's parents were not in. A quick glance out the front window revealed the car was gone, so they'd probably gone out.

The glance out the front window also revealed the large graffiti that was in the process of being painted over, on the building just opposite the house. No one was working on it this late in the day, but the scaffolding was still in place. It was an Order symbol, cracked in half - and standing over the Order symbol were exaggerated representations of the seven of them. Underneath the paint, Glitch and Hex could make out the faded impressions of themselves.

On the table was a newspaper, with a headline proclaiming "CLOSING IN." The article's lead was about how the Order was close to apprehending the rogue superhumans, and that there was substantial work credit rewards waiting for anyone with information on them. It had a picture of the seven of them during the raid on Iron Gates - and a caption warning the reader that this was the only part of the pirated video they were allowed to see, and if they knew anyone in possession of the full video they were to call the Knights Watchmen immediately.

[SalmonMax]

"Look at that," Hex breathed as she gazed at the graffiti. "We didn't even think of that. Someone did that on their own. It's brilliant."

She looked over at Glitch. "We could borrow that idea...use it as a symbol for ourselves. Maybe leave it as a calling card. People are starting to notice us...it would be a way to show them they're right, and to give them hope."

[IndyPendant]

Sharatur stared down at the artifact with sudden deep suspicion, her lip curling in unconscious revulsion as she remembered everything it had done to her. "This thing wrecked my life" she growled at Necronaut. "It seems to want to go back in. I don't trust it. Maybe we shouldn't do this. I know I'd almost rather take a sledgehammer to it--and if you knew how much I usually love things like this..."

She stared down at the rock in her hands, her knuckles whitening from the tension of her grip.

[Necronaut]

Though his face was obscured by his ghostly mask Norman's raised eyebrow was still clearly visible. "A different life isn't necessarily a wrecked one." His words were hopeful rather than reproving. "Yes, our old lives ended when we heard the music. But I didn't realize you were so unhappy with your new life. I guess you must have been pretty happy..."

He opened his mouth to speak further, then stopped for a moment and opened it again. "I'm sorry, but I'm about to say something really sappy. You may not like where you've ended up, but the living and the dead need us here. If that stone put you here, I think we ought to see where else it wants you to go."

[IndyPendant]

"I was happy" she said flatly. Coldly. After a few moments, her face softened. "But...I guess I'm not exactly miserable. Not anymore, that's true. It was just...I don't know. If you hadn't called me when you did, I don't know what would have happened to me." She thought some more, whispering softly "Thanks, Daddy."

Then she shrugged. "Well, we've come this far, may as well see it through, right?" With that, she vanished into the hole.

Click to reveal..

If nothing happens right away, Sharatur will try various experiments to see if she can get a reaction out of the artifact. Touching it to the wall, setting it down on the floor and leaving it there, comparing it to the walls for similarites, rotating it to see if there's any part of its surface that matches a surface on the shaft, that sort of thing.

[Thomas Froit]

Originally Posted By: SalmonMax

"Look at that," Hex breathed as she gazed at the graffiti. "We didn't even think of that. Someone did that on their own. It's brilliant."

She looked over at Glitch. "We could borrow that idea...use it as a symbol for ourselves. Maybe leave it as a calling card. People are starting to notice us...it would be a way to show them they're right, and to give them hope."

"Maybe," Glitch murmurred, looking over the newspaper and reading the full article in greater detail to see what he could glean. "They notice us enough to have a pirated video of our actions on the island somehow. The question I want to ask at the moment is, are you willing to wait for Mom and Dad?"

[SalmonMax]

Hex thought about it. The truth was that she wasn't eager to sit around in a stranger's house, even if their son had let her in. Not to mention she had things going on back in Australia that she wanted to get back to. But then again, she'd agreed to do this on moral grounds...not because she'd thought it would be convenient (though she had). And how would she feel if her family might be at risk, and she couldn't help because one of her teammates didn't want to invest a little time?

"Of course I can wait," she assured him. "Still, can you call them safely? Speeding this up isn't just good for us, but for them too. The less time they're vulnerable the better."

[Necronaut]

The Necronaut stared into the abyss after Sharatur vanished. It hadn't really occurred to him that anyone would miss their old lives. It made sense now that he thought about it, for those who had former lives to speak of.

As he dived into the rock he resolved to either talk about the issue with Sharatur some more, or never speak of it again. One of those options was surely the way to go.

[Charlotte]

The rock and the shaft didn't have any apparent similarities in terms of composition. But as she reached the bottom of the shaft, Sharatur had an overwhelming sense of deja' vu.

Norman encountered much more than that. There was a sudden sense of crushing depth, as if the shaft had collapsed. Light was gone, air was gone... but before panic fully set in, Norman realized that the shaft was still there. He was just staring at, for lack of a better term, the ghost of the way it was before.

The ghost fit seamlessly into the shaft, filling it entirely. Then the ghost - or memory, or whatever - was encased in a faintly glowing field of yellow energy, slicing through the rock smoothly. Sections of it were lifted out, bit by bit, until the beam reached the bottom. It hauled up the final section...

And just for a moment, Norman saw the ghost of a crystal formation much like the one Sharatur held in her hands. Not the same - but Norman knew, he knew, instinctively, that whatever this was, it worked like what Sharatur had.

Then it was gone. The Order took it away. The ghost faded and Sharatur was there again.

* * *

Thomas read the paper.

Before, the paper had seemed occasionally enlightening - now it seemed like pure propaganda. It painted them as the worst kind of terrorists, disrupting Order operations and disturbing the rightful peace. It was well-constructed, but all the same: Thomas picked up a hint of desperation. A bit of awkwardness explaining why, when these superhumans had been hailed as new recruits into the Order only a month ago, they had suddenly turned tail. A few cracks in the armor.

All this took seconds, and then he conversed with Larissa. Then, after a few more minutes of waiting, he saw them: his parents, walking up the steps, talking about something.

[Radiance]

Hikari looked at Eiko. "What do you mean by that? It should always be fairly quiet here."

[Necronaut]

The Necronaut fell slowly toward Sharatur and stopped a few feet overhead. A stricken grimace was slowly melting off of his face. "Did you see that?" He asked, trying to sound calm.

He noticed that she didn't seem especially perturbed and clarified, guessing that despite her nerves of steel she would have had some kind of resposne, "The stone was cut out and removed in chunks... there was another crystal like yours. I think the Order took it away."

[z-Gloom]

Gloom focused on getting the houses ready. There wasn’t much else for her to do; she didn’t have Hex’s skills or Glitch’s mechanical expertise. So she worked with the people to start getting them comfortable and set up.

[IndyPendant]

Sharatur stopped trying to prode and twist the artifact into giving some sort of reaction. "There's more of these things?" she asked with a sort of mild horror. "How did you--never mind. Okay, so the order has something like the thing that's directly responsible for my own powers. Somehow I don't think that's a good thing. We should probably get back and tell the others."

On the way back, in the plane, she asked a bit hesitantly, "What did you do? ...Before?"

[Thomas Froit]

Thomas turned to Hex. "They're here. Go back into the kitchen, I just want to start by talking to them myself. Then we'll see about gathering a few things then you can do the magical door warp back to Australia."

[Charlotte]

"This is not so! Hikari has many visitors to her gallery. They are here often, to take their mind off their troubles, since Black Jack here does not want them to watch the 'Tele-Vision.'"

"Nothing but the Order's horseshit on it. You know what I miss? 'Seinfeld.'" Blackjack coughed, awkwardly. "Ah, you won't know who that is."

"But when I am here, well. They spend more time looking at me than they do at the art." Eiko looked a bit downcast. "In fairness, the last thing they remember before the medusas took them was my sisters strongarming them... but there is not much I can do about that."

* * *

Most of the people that Eiko was referring to, were only too happy to help Gloom - though she noticed them getting a little weirded out when she went all out with her abilities.

Matthew Cale wound up her assistant - Jasmine helped out as well, when she wasn't busy helping Glitch delve into the Vault, but Matthew was more dedicated to the job. He'd turned out to be an organizer before he'd been arrested - getting people to passively resist the Order, calling them out on hunger strikes and distributing leaflets and the like. He'd never gotten in BIG trouble with the Knights - unlike the rumors he'd heard of some organizers who'd managed to liberate whole towns, under the radar - but he'd wound up having the misfortune of sticking a leaflet on the car of the Magistrate of Toronto, and that was it for him.

So Matthew didn't like cops. If this hadn't been obvious all on its own, one day - when there was a lull in their workload - Matthew asked her. "So why'd you stop being a Knight?"

* * *

The doorknob turned, and the door open. In walked Thomas' parents.

"I'm just saying, Marriane, that I liked the old actor better, that's all. I liked the old - "

The two of them, Stephen and Marriane Froit, stopped, and stared at their son.

Without a further word, Thomas' mother grabbed him in a hug, whisper "Thank Archon, thank you, oh thank you."

Tom's father didn't rush in - but the shock never left his face. "Tom! Where the - how - they said there was a shooting at your job! That was weeks ago! Where have you been!?

[Necronaut]

Norman paused in the process of summoning the ghost-plane. "I was a mortician. An embalmer." He finished drawing the unearthly flying machine into reality and waited a moment for the initial roar of its arrival to die away before he continued. "I liked the work well enough I suppose. But really, for me, this is better."

[IndyPendant]

As they started flying back, Sharatur mused "A mortician, huh. How appropriate. And me, I mean I was a tour guide, which has nothing to do with martial arts or teleportation. But I did practice some in my spare time. It was fun, and good exercise. I even got good at it, but nowhere near the way I am now--" she shook her head, cutting herself off.

"Point is, that's a connection. And Bodhie loved weightlifting, before. Hell, that Thomas guy reeks of geek. I wonder if that's important somehow..."

"Anyways. This rock is bloody dangerous enough, all by itself. If the Order has something like it, who knows what harm they could get up to? We need to tell the others."

She pauses, struck by a thought. "You don't suppose--could that have been how Spartan got his powers?"

[Thomas Froit]

Thomas held his mother tight, very tight before he released her, smiling but something there beyond it. So they hadn't been told much. Typical. He closed the door behind his parents before sighing. "I'm gonna have to sum it up in the kitchen." Walking there, Stephen and Marriane confusedly followed him, to where Larissa sat.

"Larissa, meet my parents. Mom, Dad, meet Larissa. And in answer to your question... I'm now part of a group of superhuman that is going to free the world from the Order. And I came back here with Larissa, so that you can be taken to a safe spot, where the Order can't hold you hostage once they put two and two together. It's a lot to digest, but you should tell us what we should pack for you."

[SalmonMax]

Larissa winced inwardly at the use of her real name, but done was done, and she waved at them both...relaxing the weave of illusion to let their true appearances show through.

"It's a pleasure to meet you both," she greeted. "I wish it could be under better circumstances. The good news is that there's a safe place, with plenty of other people around, and...it's really beautiful out there. I hope you'll like it as much as the rest of us have."

[Charlotte]

"You're fighting against the Order?"

At this, Tom's mother turned pale, and his father took a more guarded stance. "Son, they told us to contact - "

And then the illusion faded. His mother took a step back, and his father fumbled for something in his pocket.

"Out where?" he asked. "Where are you taking us? The ORDER? You want to fight the Order? They arrested half a dozen kids - KIDS - for painting that thing across the road!" He waved towards the front window. "Son - they promised they wouldn't hurt you. They wanted us to contact them if we heard from you..."

He took a closer look at the painting, then looked back to Hex and Glitch.

"You're them?"

Click to reveal..

Sharatur/Norman, Hikari/Bodhie, and Andi don't appear to need updating.

[Radiance]

Hikari smiled. "The art is made to inspie people, and with any luck it will help them come to terms with how the world is currently."

She shook her head. "No there isn't all you can do is be tolerant of them. I'm glad you understand their apprehension, it speaks quite well of you."

She looked to Blackjack. "I didn't watch much tv growning up. My parents were kinda strict on that."

[z-Gloom]

Originally Posted By: Mike OOC

Matthew didn't like cops. If this hadn't been obvious all on its own, one day - when there was a lull in their workload - Matthew asked her. "So why'd you stop being a Knight?"

"Because I understood that I wasn't doing the right thing by being one," Gloom said, her raspy voice soft. "I saw the light." She chuckled. "I saw the dark, actually."

"Pardon?" Matthew asked, looking confused.

"I had my perspective on the world shaken up by someone else," Gloom admitted. "They showed me I was little better than a thug for the Order, a leashed attack dog that bit on command. Now, I choose what's right and what gets my support. I choose what I do to make things right and bring order to chaos. I choose and that is a large part of what the Order took away from us to start with."

[IndyPendant]

They were almost back when Sharatur stated "I need to check up with my friends, at the museum. But my abilities seem to all have a short range, and the place isn't exactly in the center of a city. The way I left, the Order might be waiting for me there. If I need to get out of there in a hurry..."

She looked over at Necronaut, asking in a casual tone "Feel like taking a vacation in the Grand Canyon, Norman?"

[Necronaut]

"Spartan?" The Necronaut called over his shoulder. "I doubt it. Your stone just lets you know how to do things you didn't know before, right? Like, walk on air? I think he is something else... Something innately not like us."

"We can be to the canyon in a couple hours. Do you need to stop back at the base? If not I can chart a course right now."

[SalmonMax]

Hex nodded, carefully not looking at whatever Glitch's father had taken from his pocket.

"If they catch your son, they'll kill him," she said gently. "But not before they've tortured everything they can about the rest of us out of him. And even though appearing here puts him at risk, he was concerned about what they might do to you...so he came to bring you somewhere safe. Somewhere the Order can't touch you."

Now she glanced at his hand, briefly. "What are you going to do?"

[Charlotte]

"I'm glad you didn't bother with TV. Nothing but crap nowadays, pumped out by the Propaganda Farm. Ha, I wonder what they're saying about us now." Blackjack paused. "I might just suspend my no-TV policy, just for that."

"What is Sign Felled? Why would anyone want to kill a sign?"

"That's not - it's not about - never mind, let an old man be old." Blackjack grunted

"Oh. Okay!" Eiko nodded furiously. "And yes, I know what it is like to be different. There was not much call for a scholar Down Below."

* * *

At Gloom's words, Matthew nodded. "Yeah. That's what I always tried to impress on people. We shouldn't let them take away our voice." He sighed. "Didn't usually work. Jack was mentioning something about mind control? I... that's disturbing, but I always suspected it. I figured it was microwaves or something, but Jack mentioned the Mathemagician?"

* * *

"It... it's a beeper."

Tom's father, Stephen, withdrew his hand slowly from his pocket. "They gave it to us. They told us if we heard from Thomas we should use it. I even let them tap our phones - well, maybe not 'let' - anyways, it's a beeper."

Marriane regarded her husband. "Stephen. Did you use it?"

Stephen nodded. He looked to Tom. "I'm sorry, son. I - when I saw you both change, I - I panicked. How did you DO that? Make things look different - "

Marriane cut him off. "Tom - and, er, Larissa. We need to get out of here, if what you're saying is true. How did you get here?"

[Thomas Froit]

Glitch smiled lightly. "Don't worry Dad. I know your hearts were in the right place all along." Then it faded and he nodded to Larissa. "Larissa's a witch. Literally. But right now, I'd say we'd have to get the door spell going now- not time to pack like I thought."

Something else occurred to him. "Leave the beeper here, it probably has a tracking device."

[IndyPendant]

Sharatur looked down at herself in some amusement--covered in dust, grime, and sweat. "I think we should get cleaned up first, at least. And...I don't think we should go in uniform, just in case the Order hasn't figured out who I am yet. Having Jade and Necronaut walking into a geological museum would be a bit of a giveaway, if not. Maybe we can get Hex to create a portal there, so we won't have to fly."

[z-Gloom]

“You’d be better off asking Hex or someone who understands what the hell has happened to us,” Gloom told Matthew honestly. “I heard a song, and things made a lot more sense to me. O’ course, I had some help. Something else shook me loose first.”

“What’s that?” Matthew asked.

Gloom wasn’t sure if she should answer. “Darkness… I didn’t always look like this,” Gloom admitted. “I interrupted some… ritual thing, and was inhabited by a creature from another dimension. Darkness told me how it was for its people. It lives a better way and I… think we can have that kind of better way here, too.” She give him a small wry smile. “It’s just going to take some hard work – and kicking in the Order’s teeth.”