Crisis Across the Multiverse, Part I: Über alles Macht

The day the multiverse died started out pleasantly enough for the Vanguard. 

It was a mild, sunny mid-June morning in Astoria, and most of the team were excited for the upcoming trip to New Atlantis. With both the Liberty Alliance and the Sampson Family off-planet the City of Heroes was left dangerously low on meta-human protectors, a situation likely to prove too tempting for the villains of the world to ignore. So, at the request of the Alliance, the Vanguard was temporarily relocating to the city for a sort of bus-man’s holiday.

“A week, ten days at the most,” Raven had said when making her pitch to Scion and Artemis several days earlier. “Vitruvian has already joined the Sampsons on Jupiter’s moon Europa, to help with the reactivation and renovation of the ancient Seeker habitat that Dr. Sampson discovered there 10 years ago. If it can be made functional it will provide a safe haven for a great many of the refugees fleeing the collapse of the Union – and hopefully take the political pressure off President Clinton and Mayor Grant regarding the alien refugees on Star Island.

“The other side of that problem, though, is the increasing rate of space piracy around the fringes of the Sol System. It’s been an increasing problem in the last six months, but now many of the raiders, buccaneers and general galactic scum seem to have united under the banner of a single captain, a nasty piece of work named Kraken. 

“At this point almost no refugee ships can make it into our system without being seized and stripped of their valuables. It’s time, and past time, that we put a stop to it – the entire Liberty Alliance is heading out past the Oort cloud in two days, with the exception of Urbana, who will split her time between the Overwatch and the New Atlantis embassy.

“The other Alliance embassies around the globe will remain covered by their usual Reservists or Associate members, but New Atlantis is the center of the meta-human world, and it’s just not safe to leave it under-protected for any length of time. We’ve discussed it, and the Alliance agrees that the Vanguard is the obvious choice to stand in for us our absence. What do you say?”

“I’ve no objection in principal,” JJ had said, frowning into the holo-display. “But I’m reluctant to leave Astoria unprotected for so long either. We may not be quite the hub of meta-human activity as New Atlantis, but we’ve already moved past LA and Chicago and New York to hold second place.”

“It’s true, we can’t completely abandon our own responsibilities,” Artemis agreed. “But do we need the entire team? Perhaps if we left one or two on duty here, with some reserves of our own as backup, it could be done?”

“Actually, I’ve taken the liberty of mentioning this to Stormlord,” Raven interjected. “He’s agreeable to splitting his time between Portland and Astoria for the duration, if that helps your decision. It’s not like he didn’t so just that for years before the Incident, after all.”

“Indeed,” said Artemis. “yes that would be very reassuring. I think if we could talk Paragon into helping—”

“That’s not likely to be an issue,” JJ laughed. The young Changling had an obvious crush on Artemis and was likely to jump at anything she might ask of him. “And the Phantom Ace called me this morning – he’s looking to drop by the Tower for a week or two of R&R. Apparently his personal business has hit a dead-end for the moment and he needs to recharge… and use our intel resources, I suspect. He might be willing to backstop whomever we leave on duty…”

“Perfect!” Raven said, seizing on this tenuous agreement. “It’s all set then. I’ll send the access codes to the embassy by encrypted laser-comm shortly. We take off in the morning, but we’re not publicizing the fact, so I expect the city will be safe enough for a day or so, until you can get here.”

Prometheus had readily volunteered to stay behind on monitor duty, which would allow him to catch up on his correspondence with Victor Frankenstein’s current-day successors in various universities in Switzerland and Germany. Paragon, as predicted, had jumped at the chance to step up from his associate status to an active role, and he and Phantom Ace would be taking up daily patrol duties. 

• • • • •

Stormlord had planned to see the Vanguard off, but a last minute hostage situation in Eugene had diverted him temporarily. So it was only Paragon and Phantom Ace who waved off the team as the Interceptor lifted off from its hanger atop the AzTech Pyramid and turned east into the morning sun.

Scion was at the controls, as usual, with Artemis in the co-pilot’s seat, continuing her flight training as his back-up pilot. In her 152 years she had never really had occasion to learn to fly, and she was enjoying the challenge of learning something new. Unlike her innate facility with weapons, this knowledge didn’t come automatically, and she actually had to work for it. It was a pleasant change of pace.

She was more ambivalent about their destination. She’d only been back to New Atlantis a few times since her stint there as the “Angel of the Night” in the post-War years… most notably in 1977 when she’d helped put an end to another killing streak by the Spirit of Murder, in the form of Mack the Knife, and then again in 2002 for the Z’ardani Invasion. Neither were fond memories.

JJ’s own handful of visits to the City of Heroes were less fraught, although his impression of the place was certainly colored by his very first visit, in 2004. Stormlord, in his civilian identity of Kevin Kasperbauer, had taken him there to further his on-going education about the modern world, and the role of the meta-human in it. 

They got more than they bargained for – three days into their visit the invasion plot of the shape-shifting aliens of the Dramorg Consensus was revealed and the ensuing battle sucked in every meta-human on the Eastern seaboard. He’d made his first public debut in his armor that day, although in the general chaos (and lacking a code name at that point), he’d been mostly overlooked by the press. It had certainly informed his decision not to go into the “superhero” business, however, Kevin’s unsubtle encouragement notwithstanding.

In the passenger cabin Jonny was straight-up excited. He’d never been to the Big Apricot before, and his head was about ready to explode at the idea of standing in for the frickin’ Liberty Alliance! He and Chuck had binge watched the History Channel’s documentary INVASION! the night before, which covered every major invasion New Atlantis has faced since the first HUSH attack in 1963, including both incursions from the Weld, and ending with the Darmorg’s failed infiltration and attempted conquest in 2004. 

Chuck himself was only just now able to really appreciate the nature of what they were involved in, having finally gotten his mother off the phone. She’d spent the morning alternating between urging him to be cautious, listing villains he needed to watch out for and offering advice on how to beat them, and insisting he get her autographs of all the Liberty Alliance… she didn’t quite seem to understand that the whole point was that they weren’t going to be around. Well, maybe when the Alliance returned there’d be some overlap…

Having visited New Atlantis many times over the years, Quanta was mainly excited to be gaining an opportunity to spend some serious alone time with the Liberty Alliance’s incredibly advanced technology… not to mention the truly alien devices they’d come to posses over the decades. The possibility of picking Urbana’s brain was also not to be missed. He just hoped the criminal element would take the hint and stay quiet for the next ten days or so.

Totem and Meg Halcyon were more wrapped up in their own issues. Both had been to New Atlantis previously, and today they were preoccupied with their on-going debate about whether or not to go public with their personal relationship. She was already well-established in the public mind as “the Vanguard’s reporter,” and professionally set up in the “superhero” beat… but admitting to a romantic relationship with a hero posed dangers above and beyond those to her professional career. 

In any case, her bosses at the Oregonian were as of yet unaware of her personal ties, and had jumped at sending her into the field when the Vanguard had agreed to let her come along and write about their time as replacements for the Liberty Alliance. Àlvaro de la Vega, of course, had declared it was a chance for priceless publicity… or maybe it had been Nimrod. Even Artemis was not always sure which one was making suggestions at a given moment.

They were less than 20 minutes out of Astoria, just passing over Portland and not even half-way to their suborbital cruising ceiling, when an emergency hail broke in on everyone’s thoughts.

“Interceptor One, this is PDX International air traffic control. We have an urgent call for you from the Hood County Sheriff’s Department. Routing it through to you now…”

It turned out that a casino only recently opened in the Gorge just outside of Hood River and run by the Wasco tribe of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs had been seized by a gang of meta-human criminals. Or maybe terrorists, no one was quite sure at this point.

There were at least a hundred hostages, possibly more, being held inside, and Hood County had little in the way of resources for handling, or experience in dealing with, metas. Stormlord was still engaged with the situation in Eugene, and in any case the Vanguard was by far the closest force remotely up to handling super-villains.

“Understood,” Scion replied after they had the salient details. “We’ll be touching down in about ten minutes. Please be sure to have all relevant intelligence ready for us then. And if there are electronic copies of the blueprints on that casino, send them now.”

The Paradise being only a few months old, the plans were indeed available, although the Interceptor was preparing to land in the parking lot to the south of the building before the digital files came through.

The Paradise Casino and Resort Hotel was an interesting vision of concrete, stucco, glass, steel and wood. The sprawling, two+ story casino covered several acres of land, on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River, with a ten-story hotel block rising up on the north side. Expansive parking lots surrounded the building on the other three sides.

The Hood County Sheriff’s Department had cordoned off the casino, evacuated the attached hotel, and cleared all the bystanders back to the streets beyond the parking lots. An inner cordon separated the authorities from the casino proper.

“Meg, please stay aboard,” Artemis said as they prepared to disembark. “You can monitor our body cams and telemetry from here.”

“You’ll actually have a better view of things than if you were with the rest of the press behind the cordon,” Totem added with a grin.

“Yes, I know sweetie,” Meg laughed. “Did you really think I’d insist on following you into the middle of a fight just to ‘get the scoop’?”

Totem shrugged, admitting to nothing. Artemis just smiled as she strode down the ramp, pretending not to see the surreptitious kiss the two shared. The others were already outside, introducing themselves to the cluster of police and emergency personnel gathered behind the inner cordon. The flashing lights of a dozen sheriff’s vehicles were pale in the morning sun.

Sheriff Matt English introduced himself and his lead deputy on the case, Deputy Randy Wiwinu. “Randy is a member of the Wasco tribe… it’s his people built and run this casino, so he was the obvious choice to be point-man out here. For what that’s worth – none of us have much experience with super-powered types and we’re all out of our depth.”

“Hell, we can’t even get into the building,” Deputy Wiwinu grumbled. “There are only three main ways in, and very few windows, but they’re all blocked by walls of thick ice! We’ve tried–”

“Oh my god!” Interrupted Blue Flame suddenly. “Are the Moody Blues being held hostage in there?!”

“What?” Both the deputy and the Sheriff looked confused. “I don’t know what–”

Blue Flame pointed at the large free-standing marquee near the main entrance, which advertised the fact that the Moody Blues would be playing at the Paradise all week.

“Oh, um, no… they weren’t scheduled to play until this evening, I think,” the deputy replied, still confused by the question. “They were in the hotel, but we got them evacuated along with the rest of the guests.”

“Anyway,” he went on as Blue Flame gave Chilz and Scion a relieved thumbs-up, “we know there are at least four metas in there, and maybe as many as eight. All the cameras seem to have gone dead as soon as they entered…”

“Yes,” Scion agreed, sounding slightly distracted. “I’ve just tapped into their feed. From the look of it… no static… I’d say the cameras are covered in ice, like the doors and windows.”

“We’ve tried to batter through the ice,” Sheriff English offered. “It’s like steel, we barely chipped it.”

“And we’ve had no actual contact with the perps,” added Deputy Wiwinu. “ No ransom demands, no manifestos, nothing. What little we do know is thanks to the handful of people who escaped in the first few seconds of the attack, before the ice went up.”

“Chilz, you’re the obvious one for reconnaissance in this situation,” Artemis said, gesturing him forward. “No attacks, please, just tell us what we’re looking at inside.”

With a grin the towering iceman sauntered forward, moving cautiously through the center revolving door of the three at the main entrance. The sliding doors beyond were frozen shut, but he was easily able to manhandle one open. The wall of ice on the other side was blue-tinted and hard as steel, as advertised.

Which was hardly an obstacle for a man made of living ice, who could travel through any volume of frozen water like it was a heavy fog – in other words, effortlessly. Pressing his forehead against the ice sheet he slowly sublimated himself into it… the barrier proved to be about three feet thick, leaving only his hips and legs outside.

He allowed just his face to exit the far side, and his eyes widened in surprise at what he saw. The cavernous open floor of the casino was a roaring maelstrom of wind, heavy rain, and thunder and lightning – it was as if a miniature hurricane had been trapped inside the building. Gaming tables were overturned, slot machines thrown about like so many beer cans, and half the ceiling tiles were flying around like confetti. The noise level was an 11.

Quickly relaying the basics to his teammates, and not too worried about being overheard, he went on to describe the specifics. “OK, on my left, near what looks like offices, we’ve got a Native woman hanging in the air, maybe 15 or 20 feet off the floor. She’s got some sort of high-tech rod, lousy with knobs, gears and dials, in her hand and she seems to be on guard duty…

“Just to my right there’s some dude in a flame-themed costume and what looks like dual flame-throwers… he’s rooting through the overturned slot machines, scooping up – oh shit, yeah, they’re flame-throwers alright! He just slagged the one-armed bandit he was looting… looks like he’s done a bunch of others, too… thank god for all this rain, it seems to be keeping his fires from getting outta control! 

“The only other villainous sort I can see – at least I think he’s one of the bad guys – is some dude dressed up like an old-timey traveling salesman… he’s got a bunch of terrified-looking people, maybe 60 or 80 total, trapped in a theatre area… I think that’s maybe were the Moody Blues would be playing… is he putting on a magic show? Can’t hear a damn thing… Anyway, that’s on my far right, and I can only see them ‘cause this freakin’ hurricane has shattered the glass wall between the casino and the… OH SHIT!”

Chilz yanked himself to the right just in time to avoid the sizzling lightning bolt that blew a hole in the ice wall where his head had just been. He hastily pulled himself out of the ice and returned to his teammates and the cops.

“I think the floating chick noticed me,” he admitted a bit sheepishly. “And I think she’s the one controlling the weather inside there!”

Artemis shrugged. “The odds of our retaining total surprise were small, in any case – they had to be expecting either us or Stormlord to show up eventually. But I think we might still present them with the unexpected.”

“Yes,” Quanta agreed, smiling at the casino blueprints Scion was projecting into the air before them. “I think if I open a portal here, and Totem and Blue Flame create a distraction there…”

He quickly sketched out his idea, and the others agreed that it was sound. While he opened a quantum tunnel to the large open space in the northeast corner of the casino, Blue Flame turned up his plasma blasts and began melting a hole through the ice at the main entrance. At the same time Totem summoned the avatar of Raven… 

• • • • •

Inside the Paradise, Courtney Cline, the Weather Walker, hung in the air, her attention focused on the main entrance where she’d seen the face in the ice a few minutes earlier. Probably that ice hero, Chilz… it’d be a pity to melt him, she’d thought his human form rather cute, for a white dude, when she’d seen him on TV. And she’d really liked the way he’d put the smack-down on that air-headed, jumped-up weather girl Kiwi Sherman. But if he wanted to get in their way, well – que sera, sera.

“Firebug! They’re coming through the front doors! Give ‘em a warm welcome, why don’t you?”

A blue light was glowing beyond the ice wall, and it took only seconds for a huge hunk of it to vaporize into steam. Hovering in the fog-shrouded opening was a man wreathed in blue-white flames, and beyond him were dim shapes Courtney guessed must be the Vanguard. 

Before the fools could even move Firebug let them have it with both barrels – the Ice Man Melteth, she thought wryly. The blue Flame Guy wasn’t too bothered, no surprise there, but the rest of the big-shot Vanguard were going up like torches! Actually, she was a little taken aback by the horrific screams and shrieks of agony…

“Huckster,” she called out to her partner over in the theatre area, “Backup Firebug with that last hero, he may be a problem…” 

But even if he was, he was still just one guy against their six. Speaking of which…

“Bolo, how’s it going with that vault? I think we’ve got the Vanguard handled up here, but you might want to send some back-up, just in case.”

• • • • •

While most of the Vanguard lay writhing in their flaming death throes at the main entrance, a shimmering gray portal opened in the Keno bar… and the Vanguard stepped through into the outer fringe of the hurricane. They quickly spread out.

Raven needed only the smallest part of his attention to maintain his illusion of the team dying at the main entrance, and was already plotting his next move.

Artemis’ first glance took in the entire situation and she began prioritizing targets… but not before muttering under her breath “My lord, did Sammy Hagar team up with Guy Fieri on this decor?”

“Actually that’s not too far from the truth,” Raven said sotto voce, with his trademark smirk and that indefinable trace of an accent. “The Wasco tribe wanted a native architect and designer, give the place a classy Pacific Northwest, Chinook-style look. But other factions prevailed, and they hired a firm of casino “experts” from New Atlantis – and thus this abomination of an Hawaiian-Cabo-Jamaican mash-up.

“A tacky tropical Paradise,” he added as he suddenly seemed to split in two. His illusionary self strode out into the storm, while the real him faded back into the shadows near the horrifying “Lava Lounge.”

• • • • •

It took the Vanguard very little time to roll up the would-be casino robbers, although there were a few interesting developments along the way…

As soon as his teammates began fanning out to their various tasks, Quanta began generating a series of quantum-matter walls, each engraved with the team logo (which still hadn’t made it out of the design committee, but what the hell, he liked it) and arrows to funnel the wet, frightened hostages out of the theater and into the tour lobby. The ice walls there still blocked any exit, so he began channeling them back down into the Keno area and out his still-open portal…

The Huckster had departed the theater as soon as Weather Walker informed him of the Vanguard’s frontal assault, leaving the hostages with a stern warning that he’d be right back – and that there was nowhere for them to go anyway.

He was as surprised as anyone when his attack on Blue Flame, with his infamous Jalapeño Cream Pie^® (pat. pending), somehow managed to actually discomfort the hero, even as it vaporized in his aura. Apparently even a man of flame could find that aerosolized pepper burned a bit!

But the bloom was quickly off that novelty rose, as he narrowly dodged a series of searing plasma blasts hurled at him by the annoyed hero. He decided discretion was definitely the better part of saving his own ass… and disengaged with a smokescreen, courtesy of a Johnny Buzzkill Ashtray^® and made a covert dash back to the theater…

Only to find that his would-be human shields were decamping posthaste through a totally unfair magic portal, probably conjured by that insufferable know-it-all Quanta. But his consternation quickly turned into relief as an idea struck him… he ditched the bowler and his jacket and joined the fleeing crowd. Yes indeedy, he’d let the hero send him to safety along with everyone else!

The Blue Flame had not lost the carnival barker dude when he’d used his sad little smoke screen, but he had become suddenly engaged with the flame thrower guy, who seemed incredibly hard to hit, but yet had managed to hit him – with a flame that actually stung a bit, somehow! 

Chilz, having seen the hostages started on their escape, had been trying to blast the hot-headed villain himself, to little effect. The dude jumped around like a Mexican jumping bean, and his streams of ice and cold kept missing. Thank the gods the casino was already trashed, because his missed attacks were causing real damage…

At that moment Weather Walker, finally twigging to the fake-out at the main entrance, let loose with a barrage of thunder and lightning that shook the building, threatening to deafen and blind everyone.

Scion was hit by a bolt of lightning, which momentarily made his internal systems go down, and Quanta was aurally stunned by the thunder, if only briefly. He managed to keep control of the crowd of frightened, now dazed, people still moving through his quantum tunnel…

Courtney’s distraction was enough for Firebug to at last get a good shot in on the big ice guy. As much as he loved, loved, loved watching things burn (and he had a flicker of annoyance as he was reminded about how the bitch kept putting out his fires with her rain), he was excited to see someone melt, instead…

The results were less than he’d hoped for, frankly… the big green fella did seem to melt some in the double blasts of his flame throwers, but almost as quickly he seemed to reform. Damn it, it was Courtney again and all this frickin’ water, it must be helping him heal. Why, he outta –

The thought was interrupted as Blue Flame used Firebug’s distraction to actually hit him with a plasma bolt – Christ, if my costume wasn’t fireproof I’d be toast! He barely had time for that thought before he was enveloped in a second blast, this time of bitter cold. It wasn’t fair, he thought as he staggered back… he hated the cold… 

Weather Walker lashed out with a tornado as she saw Firebug fall while that fink Huckster fled for safety. The vortex lifted the Native dude – she didn’t recognize him, but he must the one called Totem – up toward the ceiling and then slammed him down into a bank of dollar slot machines. She hated to do that to another indigenous, but he’d picked his side… besides, it was a stupid fuckin’ name.

She turned to blast that flying armored asshole again with the lightning when she suddenly screamed. It felt like her mind was being swarmed by stinging ants while at the same time someone was trying to force their way into the deepest parts of her soul!

With a tremendous burst of willpower, she shoved the sensations away and regained her balance, only to find that bitch in black trying to pull her down with a damn bull whip! Fortunately, the very winds that held her aloft kept the whip at bay. 

Where the hell was Bolo and the others? she thought, growing worried. Hell with Bolo, where the hell was the backup we were promised? Everything is going to shit! 

Actually, help was crawling out into the fight on its hands and knees at that very moment, just behind and below her…

When Quanta had been creating the shield walls and guides for the hostages, he’d had a little quantum matter left over. Peering through the hurricane he’d noted the door near where the weather witch was hovering, and recalled from the blueprints that it led to the administrative offices… and the casino’s underground vaults. So he’d added a little something extra, just in case…

Bolo had decided he’d better go check on what was going on upstairs. Courtney was a beautiful woman, and quite powerful with that Weather Vane device she’d invented, but these situations often needed a man’s hand on the tiller. 

Leaving the Mad Maple and Looking Glass to ride herd on the casino manager, he headed up to the office – only to find the door onto the casino floor now opened into what looked like… half an igloo? The shimmery gray material resisted his attempts to break it, and in the end he was forced to crawl, ignobly, out the narrow tunnel.

He straightened up into Courteny’s on-going hurricane, although the winds seemed to die down for a moment before renewing themselves. He saw a woman in an inky black cloak cracking a whip at the Weather Walker, and he quickly pulled out a steel-and-mesh net bolo.

“Apologies, beautiful mamacita,” he whispered as he threw his signature weapon at her. “As much as I love me some hot chick-on-chick action, now is not the time. Maybe after, we can–”

His smarmy grin slid off his face as Artemis whirled around and caught his bolo on one of her black throwing sticks. Before he could pick his jaw up, his head was filled with a thousand gnawing insects attacking his brain. His eyes rolled up in his head and he dropped, unconscious.

Chilz, having seen the Latino Lothario emerge from Quanta’s little igloo, decided to improve on the design. A wave of his hand and a plug of ice capped the exit, just to make life interesting for anyone yet to join the fray. Quanta, who was dragging a restrained and very dazed Huckster by the collar, just shook his head and smiled.

Weather Walker, barely recovered from the last mental attack, had her mind again blasted by both Raven and Scion. Black spots filled her vision, the winds died, and she hit the floor, but she refused to lose consciousness. She raised the Weather Vane, determined to summon the lightning – only to find her arms securely pinned to her side by one of Bolo’s damn trick bolos. Her rod dropped from her hands as she writhed helplessly on the floor. 

Just then the ice plug on the igloo shattered outward. A gorgeous woman in a stylish pantsuit, and  a strange-looking guy in a white costume with maple leaves on it, crawled out.

Blue Flame dazzled the dude with a plasma burst and Scion took out the woman with an electro-stun blast before either could do more than glance around.

Firebug had managed to sneak away when the tornado had, briefly, tossed the Blue Flame around and had distracted the scary ice-guy after they’d double-teamed him. Now, hiding behind an overturned blackjack table, he made a run for it…

Chilz formed an ice slick beneath the fleeing felon’s feet, and as he was windmilling around trying to keep his balance, the hero picked up and threw a slot machine at him. It took Firebug hard in the back, and it was lights out… which meant he entirely failed to appreciate it when the spinning cylinders came up a jackpot and coins began to pour out over his unconscious form.

“Hey Chilz, check it out,” Jonny called as he hovered over the villain, making sure he was really out this time. “It’s a Chillin’ to Win slot – one of the ones you licensed last year!

Once everyone had had a good laugh and the restraints were on all of the perps, Scion took a moment to run facial recognition scans on the prisoners.

“Hmm… we’ve apparently got the Thieves Guild here, a group who’ve been operating out of the Midwest, mostly, for the last several years. Why they’ve branched out to the Northwest I have no idea.”

“Perhaps I can help with that,” Raven said, kneeling down next to Weather Walker and laying a hand on her head. He could’ve scanned the mind of any of the others, of course, but Courtney here was by far the most attractive to him, so… a no-brainer, as the human saying went.

“Interesting,” he murmured as he sank into her thoughts. “It seems they were hired by a mystery man, over the telephone… he flew them out to New Atlantis to explain the job in person, a very nondescript fellow…he was quite insistent on the target of their heist, as well as the precise date and time… down to the minute, almost… he also implied that he would provide some special assistance once we showed up… so, they expected us, indeed wanted us here… this “Mr. Johnson” drove them to the airport and saw them onto a private jet out here to Portland… she has no clue who their “benefactor” really was… the last thing she heard was Johnson telling his driver to take him to Alliance Park… hmmm, she was genuinely shocked when this promised “backup” never arrived…”

“It almost seems as if someone wanted to get us here,” Chilz said, frowning. “But why? To keep us away from New Atlantis?”

“That seems… unlikely,” Artemis replied, frowning in turn. “Out departure wasn’t exactly a secret, but very few people outside our own organization, and the Liberty Alliance, knew the details; even Meg’s employers only knew the outline of our mission, not the specifics.”

“And I’ve just checked with Urbana,” Scion added. “There are no current major incidents being reported in New Atlantis… all seems quiet.”

“Which means if this was a diversion, there’s a leak somewhere,” Quanta concluded. “But to get these clowns out here from the Midwest… they’d have to have known about it before we did. Some sort of pre-cog, maybe?”

On that unsettling question the Vanguard hauled their prisoners, conscious, semi-conscious and unconscious, out to the waiting authorities. If this was a delaying tactic, it didn’t seem a very successful one – it had taken less than a hour, start to finish, to take out the Thieves Guild. Indeed, the paperwork and after-action reports promised to take considerably longer than the fight.

With promises to file more detailed reports in the next day or two, the heroes managed to wrap up their part in the incident just a few minutes before noon. 

“With luck we’ll be in New Atlantis in about an hour,” Scion said. “Only three hours late.”

As they turned towards the Interceptor, however, a brilliant white light filled the eastern sky – before their senses could do more than begin to register the sight, the world vanished in a blinding, searing wave of white pain, followed an instant and an eon later by oblivion.

• • • • •

With no transition the Vanguard went from non-existence to standing in a semi-circle in a featureless white void. Actually, standing was something of a misnomer – while they all appeared to be on the same horizontal plane, there was nothing beneath their feet, not even the sensation of some invisible ground or floor. Yet there was no sense of weightlessness, either…

But more disturbingly, to Artemis at least, was the fact that ranged in a mirroring arc across from them, maybe five meters away, were six other strangely garbed individuals. She suspected the blank, shocked expressions on their faces matched her and the Vanguard’s own.

There was something terribly familiar about them – it came to her in the next breath. These were six of the people from that distant, fantastical, far future world they’d swapped bodies with last year. No mystical fan and magical ritual this time – whatever had happened, it seemed they’d all been brought together in person this time.

“Hey! That’s that guy who stole my body last year,” Jonny cried hotly, pointing accusingly at the blond young man in the multi-hued blue robes. Artemis noted with some detachment that Jonny was in his human form, as was Chilz.

The blond man looked puzzled for a moment, then an expression of enlightenment crossed his face and grinned, waving an enthusiastic greeting to his counterpart. Jonny frowned and folded his arms.

“He, mo onaz win!” the man (Korwin, Artemis recalled) said. “Fo ast t’hu vaya kabrizo, ki’un mo tomer’us lokin pazton’taru! Kel fo faytar? Tsu fo zka, ke na ast?”

“What the hell is he saying?” Jonny demanded. “I thought these jokers spoke English.”

“Hardly,” Scion said, as his helmet flowed back over his head. “Hmmm… I can’t seem to raise any external channels, damnit… but my on-board linguistic computer is trying to parse the language now. 

“Jonny, when we swapped places with these folks, whatever… force… caused it clearly allowed us to understand the language of the bodies we each possessed. Much like we seemed to have an innate understanding of how to use one another’s powers. It just seemed to us as if we were hearing, and speaking, English.”

The striking young woman in green, with the fiery red hair, stepped forward a few paces and addressed Scion.

“Mo na kompranar win, zet mo zenius, ka mo tevaz. Moa noro ast Mariala … wi ast Johano, ah’s?” 

“It’s no recognizable language in my database,” Scion sighed. “The closest I can come is that it’s some highly mutated version of Esperanto. The algorithms may be able to come up with a translation table, eventually, but it’s going to take some time.” 

“I think she’s telling us her name and asking about yours,” Quanta said. “I think I recognized her name, Mariala, in all that… and that last bit sounded something like John, didn’t it?”

For the next several minutes the two groups, with the exception of Jonny, tried to communicate, with only the most basic success beyond names. Scion’s linguistic computer continued to accumulate data, but it was, indeed, slow going.

Jonny, who hadn’t enjoyed his sojourn in Korwin’s cold, dank body, nor his cold, wet powers, decided to take a look around. Summoning his plasma form, which he was relieved to find he could still do, he… well, he didn’t seem to rise, exactly – there was absolutely no sensation of movement – so much as he seemed to just be a certain distance away from the others, in a direction that his mind said must be “up,” since they were now  “below” him.

It was a disconcerting feeling, but before he could experiment more his attention was arrested. 

“Hey, guys, was that always there?!” 

He pointed at a dark void, surrounded by a halo of crimson light that seemed to swirl slowly into the darkness. With no point of reference beyond themselves, it was impossible to tell the size of the thing, or its distance… one moment Jonny thought it was immense and very far away, and the next he was convinced he could almost reach out and touch it.

His teammates turned first to stare at the… thing… and the Ren Faire rejects quickly followed their gazes to gape at the… thing. The two groups began murmuring to one another in their own languages, and Jonny dropped “down” again to be on the same plane as the others.

Suddenly, everyone’s perceptions shifted again. The black hole, or whatever it was, that had seemed to be above and to the side now seemed to be “below” them. And “above” them, yet at the same time somehow “before” them, a tremendous countenance now gazed at them. It was a face of indescribable beauty, neither precisely male nor female yet beautiful beyond words. It radiated a palpable cosmic power that touched all of them, no mater how tough, cynical, or jaded, with a sense of awe, and age, and wisdom. 

Even Kasira paled into ordinariness in comparison, Vulk thought, and in that moment felt no guilt for it. Quanta’s atheism was shaken, if only momentarily… as the moment wore on he reassured himself that she–  he– she– whatever it was– was not God.

“I am the Norn,” the vision said, and its voice was the most beautiful sound any of them had ever heard. “I have preserved your existence in order to bestow upon you the opportunity to undo a great wrong– the ultimate wrong– that has been done: the destruction of this local multiverse.”

They all gaped at the face, not quite able to grasp what she’d said… what his words implied…

“You are saying that the multiverse… that EVERYTHING… has been destroyed?” Raven demanded at last, more shaken than he’d ever been in his millennia-long existence. “But then, where are we now?”

“In the Weld,” Artemis and Scion said almost simultaneously. They’d both been present during the last attempt by Chronos to seize their universe, and they knew the description of his deadly, distant home all too well.

“Yes,” the Norn said, serenity and urgency somehow co-equal in that mellifluous voice. “We are in a remote corner of that place you call the Weld, insofar as that can have any meaning here… and it is all that is left of your multiverse… a charnel house containing only the shattered fragments of an infinity of worlds and dimensions.”

“How did we come to be here?” Devrik asked, and the heroes of Earth realized they could suddenly understand him, though he still spoke in Yashparic.

“I plucked you from your time lines in the nanosecond before your erasures and brought you forward to this moment. Time is not to me as it is to you, but nonetheless I had a very limited window in which to act. I chose the beings best suited in all the worlds of your web of realities to succeed in undoing what has been done. 

“A part of that calculation was the connection that the dozen of you share, your minds and souls linked across time and space. I had not the time, nor the power to spare, to pull you all from your separate realities, but I knew that if I pulled the Vanguard from their world, the Hand of Fortune would be drawn here as well, for they were already in a dimension outside time and space in that final instant. The synchronisity of your souls would give me a two-for-one advantage, as it were, over all other beings in your multiverse at that moment.”

“But what can we do, even twelve of us, against literal universal destruction” Quanta asked. “What caused this –” disaster seemed far too inadequate a word “– what caused this to happen?”

“It was the cosmic entity you know as Chronos. Growing impatient after billions of years of slowly absorbing reality after reality, a thousand years ago he decided to seek a final solution. The greatest minds at his disposal, from a million destroyed realities, worked on the problem. And they eventually found the answer he sought.

“Earth has long been one of the lynch pin worlds of this local multiverse, a key nexus in the Cosmic Coil. That fact, combined with the Chronos’ fury at his repeated defeats at the hands of Earth’s champions, led him to his choice of targets for his final assault on all reality.

“He discovered that a mere handful of time lines, across the entire multiverse, were the key to cosmic collapse – if they could be destroyed, simultaneously, then all of reality would follow in a chain reaction of imploding universes. A few shattered remnants of each reality would be absorbed into the Weld, expanding his realm and making him absolute lord of all that remained of existence.”

“How is it you survived this universal destruction?” Artemis asked, trying but failing to be suspicious of this entity.

“I have existed almost since the Beginning, brought into existence as the guardian of Life and the Light Eternal. I remember when Chronos was Phoros the Bright, a champion of all that I stood for. And I saw him fall to the corruption of the Dark and the lure of Unity- the order that comes when all reality is reduced to only one.

“Since his fall I have been restrained from most direct action, though my presence is ever felt by those who would champion my causes. Now, in this final moment, I am free to act – but with most of the Life that sustains me gone, I have only limited power left. I will expend it all to undo this evil act, but if we fail I will fade away, and all that will be left will be Chronos.

“Or so it might have been, had Chronos not miscalculated. Across a trillion realities there exists a universal threat almost as great as himself, and one more purely bent on bringing about the pure order of final stillness – Entropy the Devourer. And in a billion of those realities Entropy has survived the fall into the Weld. 

“As terrible as Entropy is, in those realities where it exists, it is no true threat to this local multiverse, only destroying worlds one-by-one. Terrible for those lives so touched, but no more. But here, now, all its variants have combined into a single massive entity, and it has begun to consume what is left of reality, the Weld itself.”

The Norn gestured at the ominous black hole, with its deadly crimson halo.

“The truth is, for all his talk of the beauty of multiuniversal Unity, the being called Chronos has always meant it for other universes and dimensions, other beings – not for himself – else he would have let nature take its course, and his life, billions of years ago. Entropy has no such delusions, for it has no sentience; it exits solely to bring about total stillness, after which its own demi-consciousness, such as it is, will be the last thing to settle into the cold grip of non-existence. 

“Now Chronos fights a tremendous battle to stop Entropy from devouring the Weld and all that remains of our multiversal reality. It is the only reason I can shield us from his notice, here in this distant corner of his realm. And it is why we may yet undo what has been done, causing all this to have never-been.

“Chronos chose the Earths of the four key realities to be ground zero for his multiverse-collapsing weapons, out of spite as much as anything. And he took every precaution that the heroes of what you call Earth-Prime would be suitably distracted – including having his agent see to it that the Vanguard did not arrive in New Atlantis in time to have any chance of discovering his weapon.”

“So what would you have us do?” Vulk asked. “If all his has already happened…”

“I have pulled you from time to be my champions. If you agree, I can send you back in time, to a place near to each of the cosmic energy bombs, perhaps a day or so prior to the detonations. I dare not send you directly to them, nor too far back from the time of each detonation, lest Chronos or his agents notice and take steps to stymie you.

“Once in place, you must find and defuse the cosmic energy bombs. If you succeed, everything will be restored, just as it was… total annihilation will be averted, and our multiverse will be safe once more.”

“Will you break us up into teams to tackle each bomb at once?” asked Scion. “I’m not wild about that idea, if Chronos has forces guarding his weapons…”

“No” the Norn agreed. “You will need every advantage possible, and numbers is the best one I can give you. You must find and disable each bomb in sequence.”

“Won’t disabling just one of the bombs prevent the total collapse of the multiverse?” mused Raven. “You said it was the simultaneous detonation in these particular universes that would trigger the larger collapse…”

“It is likely that merely stopping one bomb will cripple Chronos’ plan, yes… but the deaths of even three key realities may still result in multiversal chaos and destruction on a scale never before seen. Even two would be damaging… and in any case, the death of a single universe involves the extinction of a trillion trillion sentient lives. Should we not save them if we can?”

There seemed little to say to that, and the discussion between the twelve heroes was short. Artemis and Vulk turned to face the Norn and announced the groups’ agreement to be his champions.

Her smile was the most radiant thing any of the humans had seen, and also the saddest.

“Understand, it will take all I have to move you all through time and space to the four key worlds – there will be no do-overs. Succeed or fail, I will move you on to the next world, and I will strive to keep Chronos’ attention away from you and your task.”

With that the Norn and the Weld itself began to fade away, and blackness again descended on the combined heroes of the Vanguard and the Hand of Fortune…

• • • • •

… only to quickly fade in turn, revealing a new world. The darkness of night surrounded them, illuminated by the flickering light of several fires, burning amidst the ruins of what appeared to be a devastated urban neighborhood. They had materialized in the middle of a debris-filled street, not far from a major roundabout sporting a cracked and dried up fountain set in a circle of dead grass. 

In the distance, behind the broken residential buildings surrounding them, the moon silhouetted an inner-city skyline that seemed somehow familiar… the coin dropped when they caught sight of the iconic twin-towers of New Atlantis’ Tesla Plaza…  

But it was what they saw at the peak of the towers’ ninety stories that made the Vanguard’s blood run cold. Shining in the glare of enormous spotlights on each tower, rippling languidly in the night wind, were gigantic blood-red flags, each emblazoned with the black swastika of the Nazis.

“Why does the sight of those banners so upset you,” Korwin asked an obviously horrified Jonny, who just gave him a disgusted look and stalked off.  

“What crawled up his ass and died?” grumbled Chilz, shaking himself out of his own shock. He turned to Korwin with an apologetic shrug, and answered his question.

“Those flags represent of one the greatest evils of our world, of our time. We fought a planet-wide war to defeat that evil 75 years ago, and to see that vile symbol flying from buildings in one of our own greatest cities…”

“Chronos must have planted this first bomb in an alternate reality where the Nazis won the war,” Scion said. “I wonder…”

“I was thinking the same thing,” nodded Artemis. “Could this be the alternate time line that Dr. Hope came from, when he thought he was traveling back in time to the beginning of the war?”

“Can I interrupt,” asked Vulk, hesitantly. “I don’t really understand what you’re talking about, and I’ve been wondering ever since they were mentioned… what exactly is a ‘bomb’? I gather from the context that they’re a powerful weapon, but…”

Quanta was just finishing up a detailed explanation of chemistry and physics that had most of the Hand looking glazed, when a sudden low rumbling and a growing vibration in the cracked pavement beneath their feet drew everyone’s attention eastward.

Nothing was immediately visible, beyond the shattered fountain, but the sound of grinding, crushing stone was suddenly drowned out by the high-pitched shriek of jet engines. A trio of sleek black shapes appeared over the tops of burned out row houses, and streaked toward them, buzzing the heroes and seeming to overshoot them.

“Those looked like vectored-thrust jets,” Scion called out, rising into the air and looking after them. “Very advanced. And it would make them very agile… I think they’ll –”

Before he could finish the thought, the aircraft had turned on the proverbial dime and were heading back toward the group, who still stood in the middle of the street. The jets began strafing the heroes with powerful auto-cannons, their rounds tearing up the asphalt like it was bare dirt. 

Everyone dove for cover, and Quanta threw up a shield of silvery carbon fiber, anchored to the building on the north side of the street. Artemis and Vulk narrowly missed being cut in half, and the cantor seemed shocked at the power of the weapons they faced.

Mariala and Toran decided that, against such engines of destruction, they might better be employed looking for this “bomb” of the Norn’s… perhaps it was inside that nearest building, yes?

On their next pass, coming from the east this time, each jet simultaneously released a missile. Quanta’s shield protected those under it, but the powerful blast cracked the carbon fiber and the feedback sent the hero himself slamming into the street, unconscious.

Chilz, Devrik and Vulk were outside the protection of the shield, and as the other two missiles cratered the street they were thrown into the air like rag dolls. Chilz was only momentarily stunned, but the humans found themselves on their hands and knees, bleeding from a score of cuts and abrasions and deafened by a ringing in the ears.

Blue Flame, rising into the night like a beacon, hurled bolts of searing plasma after the jets, burning the Iron Crosses and Swastikas off their black shells, but doing no real damage.

Scion also rose into the air, seeking to gain a height advantage over the aircraft as they again wheeled and came around for another run. As they passed beneath him he strafed them with electro-bolts, which seemed to stagger one… at the least, it failed to fire a missile.

The other two, however, did fire off missiles at the aerial threat they sensed. Scion easily dodged a direct hit, and his armor easily absorbed the proximity blast, but Blue Flame was sent tumbling, to crash into an already ruined building nearby, dazed but not actually hurt.

By the time the jets had turned and were making their next pass, Chilz was back on his feet, creating an ice shield to protect the the others. This gave Devrik and Vulk time to recover and then leap furiously to the attack.

Watching from the shadows of a shattered wall, Artemis was horrified as the two men from a low-tech world rushed out to confront killing machines that they knew nothing about. She prepared to Shadow-walk, to try and save at least one of them, then froze in surprise…

The stocky red-head with the grating voice spoke several guttural words and gestured toward the planes – a streak of flame shot out from his hands, expanding as it flew until it burst in a tremendous fireball against the jet that Scion had damaged.

Artemis saw her armored teammate fly up behind the flaming aircraft and grab it’s tail, lifting with all his strength. With a grinding shriek of metal the aircraft shuddered, twisted in midair, and came crashing down into the ruins of a large building to the south, which began to burn.

At the same moment that the pretty-boy, Vulk, was sprinting toward the ruined fountain, an arrow streaked out from the shadows – fired, Artemis saw, by the tall pointy-eared man, Erol. The shaft struck a seam in the black metal carapace of a jet… sparks flew and it shuddered briefly.

From his perch on the ruined fountain Vulk raised his staff, and glowing strands of energy leaped out from its head. They attached themselves to the wounded jet, while their other ends writhed out to secure themselves to the walls of a building on the SE corner of the intersection. 

Then physics took over.

The jet’s forward momentum was transfered into torque and it pivoted in mid-air on a center of gravity noticeably far outside its body. It collided with its remaining companion in a tremendous crash, and they both went down in a twisted mass of steel, taking out a building that had, until now, avoided damage.

Artemis was impressed. Maybe their fantasy-world counterparts wouldn’t need the babysitting she’d feared they might.

The group’s relief at having dispatched the aerial threat was short-lived, however. The rumbling that had at first been drowned out by the scream of the jets now grew overwhelming, the subsonic harmonics almost as disturbing as Devrik’s voice. 

Coming slowly down the street from the east, their steady, measured progress an arrogant threat in itself, were two immense tanks. Each one literally the size of a house, together they filled the wide street, almost brushing the walls of the buildings on either side, with only a few feet between each tank. Burned out shells of cars, lampposts, newspaper boxes, all were crushed beneath the massive treads, taller than a tall man, nothing slowing the juggernauts down.

“Well, by Gheas’ Balls, those are truly terrifying,” Toran said as he caught sight of the tanks. He and Mariala, having scoped out their building, had reemerged when the battle had ended. “Maybe we should take another look around… perhaps check out the stairs going down this time?”

“Nonsense,” Mariala said, moving from the shelter of the building to hunker down behind the stone fountain. “There must be men driving those wagons, however impressive they are. And if they are men, they have nerves.” She stood up and focused all the power of her Fire Nerves spell on the tank to her left, still 50 meters away.

The invisible wave of magic washed over the behemoth, and for a moment it seemed to have no effect. Then the monster tank staggered to its right, crashing into a row of brownstones and bringing their front walls down on top of it. But it was slowed only momentarily, and soon lurched back onto its path, debris and brick dust raining from it into the street, only half a length behind its companion. The large, long hollow tube at its front swiveled to pint directly at Mariala, and she had a sudden, uneasy feeling…

There was a flash of fire, and something flashed past the fountain, too fast for her to make out. The explosion behind her, however, as the thing hit the wall of ice that the frost giant had thrown up, blew her forward into the crumbling fountain and left her stunned, her head bleeding.

Korwin couldn’t see his friend fall, as he was behind the ice wall, pulling effluvium from the ether and adding the magical water to Chilz’ power, repairing the damage the “shell” had done to his creation. Chilz, in turn, was increasingly impressed with this Korwin dude  – their powers seemed to amplify one another, and it had never been so easy to make his ice creations. If they ever got a moment to stop, he thought, they’d have to work out some tactics…

Fortunately, Artemis had seen Mariala go down, and she quickly Shadow-walked to her. The teleportation powers of her Cloak seemed enhanced on this world, if that was possible, she thought as she gathered the injured woman in her arms and stepped back through shadow to safety behind Chilz’ wall.

When Vulk rushed up to tend to his friend’s injuries, Artemis vanished back into the shadows, to reappear atop a building just south of the slowly approaching tanks. She saw Blue Flame pulling up after sending a wash of superheated plasma over both vehicles, and frowned when it seemed to have little effect beyond burning off the paint of their swastikas.

A shell burst forth from the second tank, passing effortlessly through the illusory wall that Raven had thrown up in front of the fountain, to explode against Korwin and Chilz’ ice wall beyond. The ice wall fractured, but healed almost instantly under the power of the two men.

Artemis moved from the shadows of the roof to the shadow under the main gun of the nearest tank. She leaped up to the main hatch, and grabbed it on either side. She strained, the muscles on her arms bulging under the black cloth of her body suit – with a shriek of tortured metal the hatch tore away and she hurled it aside.

Dropping into the interior of the tank, prepared to disable its crew, Artemis was momentarily nonplussed. The compartment was small, barely big enough for two people, assuming they were very close… and it was dark, with no interior lights at all. This posed no problem for her, of course, with her dark vision, but… where was the crew? She began to examine the details of the tiny space…

Outside, Scion, Quanta and the Blue Flame launched a coordinated attack against the other tank. Scion emitted a Blackout burst to disable its electronics, as Quanta dropped a mass of quantum matter onto it. The tank staggered to a stop, and Blue Flame wrapped his arms around the main gun, his energy aura flaring white hot… the metal of the gun began to warp and bend, sagging out of true.

Chilz, meanwhile had moved from behind his wall, leaving Korwin to maintain it, as he sprayed a sheet of ice over the pavement in front of the tank Artemis had disappeared into. It was still grinding forward, and as its treads hit the ice it slid halfway around to its left. With so little clearance between the behemoths, it slid into its companion, grinding to a halt as treads ground against treads.

With both tanks hors d’combat, Artemis suddnely spoke up over the Vanguard’s comm-link. “Scion, I need you to project the video I’m sending you – everyone needs to see this.”

Everyone, with the exception of the dwarf Toran, gathered between the two tanks and Scion projected a holographic image of Artemis’ video feed for them. The image showed the interior compartment of the tank, where she had pried open a smallish hatch set in the forward bulkhead. Inside the tiny compartment thus revealed was a hideous sight.

In the center of the small space a very clearly human brain hung suspended within a network of fiber-optic cables . Most of the translucent cables were dark, but a few still pulsed with flashes of pinkish energy. But even as they watched, the pulses slowed and then stopped, the last of cables going dark.

“These machines are operated by some sort of cybernetic symbiosis,” Artemis said, her voice taut with rage. “I don’t know if they harvested these brains from living humans, or if they grew them specifically for this purpose… and I’m not sure which would be worse…“

“Does it matter? growled Vulk. “What kind of monsters could do either of those things?”

“I can tell you exactly what kind of monsters they are,” called a sardonic female voice behind them. Everyone whirled to see a dark figure standing on the ruined fountain, silhouetted against the night sky, Toran standing below her, his battleaxe over his shoulder. “But you need to come with me. Now!”

• • • • •

A few minutes earlier, Toran was just climbing back up the stairs from having explored the dank, unpleasant basement beneath the building he and Mariala had been searching. The light had been almost nonexistent, but of course that was no impediment to his infravison. If only there had been something to see, beyond rotting boxes, mouldering furniture and skulking rats… those seemed endemic to every world, he thought in disgust.

It was his infravision that let him see the figure that seemed to think it was hiding in the shadows. Moving with all the silence of his training, Toran approached the figure from behind, pulling his battleaxe from his back. Whoever it was, they seemed to be watching his comrades through the shattered wall that was half-spilled into the street.

“Whoever you are, stand and declare yourself!” he cried when he was within a long arms reach. He stepped out of the shadows into the moonlight. The figured jumped and whirled to face him, then seemed to relax.

“Ah, you are one of them… the very short one,” a woman’s pleasant contralto said, and she stepped forward into the light herself. “You move like a ninja, my friend – it is usually very difficult for anyone to sneak up on me like that!”

She had dark hair and eyes, and a floppy black sack on her head… a hat of some sort? She wore a long black leather coat over dark clothes… the only color about her was her pale skin and the thin white stripes on her tunic.

“Who are you, and why are you spying on my friends?” Toran demanded. He didn’t raise his battleaxe, but it was there and a palpable threat.

“I’m called Lilith,” the woman replied promptly. “Not that it’s likely to mean anything to you, of course. And I’m watching your friends because they are impressive! Beyond impressive, really – quite unbelievably extraordinary, in fact. I don’t know where you lot are from, or how you’ve avoided the attention of the Reich before this, but you’ve got their attention now.

“In less than five minutes your friends took out three Messerschmidt Me 619 “Walküre” hunter-killers and two Panzerkampfwagen XXVI Ausf. F “Löwe” field tanks! It’s unheard of!

“But I assure you, those were less than the smallest finger of one hand of what the High Command will be sending this way right now. They know something has taken out five of their precious cybernetic death-machines, and they will be taking no chances — what’s coming next will be overwhelming, and it is less than ten minutes away. If you and your friends want to live, you need to come with me.”

“Well, you sound very convincing,” Toran said, scowling. “But let’s hear what the others think, eh?”

• • • • •

Both Mariala and Vulk assured the group that the woman was speaking the truth, and Artemis seemed inclined to accept their assessment. Lilith led the way back into the ruined building and down the stairs. They had barely reached the first subbasement when the faint whine of jet turbines could be heard approaching above them.

“That sounds like at least a dozen of those vector-thrust jets,” Scion said uneasily.

“Yes,” Lilith agreed, her hand torch bobbing as she led the way through a hiden door and down stone steps into a rank, dripping, brick-lined sewer tunnel. “And at least as many tanks. We cut that too close for my liking, so please, let’s move quickly. The further we get away from their search area, the better!”

“Ugh, why is it always the damn sewers?” Vulk muttered to no one in particular as they moved on. No one had an answer.

Lilith led them for over an hour through a series of utility tunnels, abandoned basements, sewers, and subways. After seemingly endless dark miles, she called an abrupt halt in a nondescript cavern, one apparently dug out by hand tools, although big enough to hold twice their numbers. 

Lighting several torches on the wall, Lilith got everyone seated as comfortably as possible on an assortment of ramshackle chairs, sofas and camp beds that were littered about the space. She then turned and addressed them.

“Welcome to Arbeitstadt, the Third Reich’s North American capital. I’m going to go out on a limb, and guess that you’re not from around here?”

“Yes, you could certainly say that,” Scion agreed with a sigh. After a brief sotto voce discussion he’d been selected as the combined teams’ spokesperson. His own first choice for the job hung back in the shadows, as was her habit… why couldn’t he hang out in the shadows for once, damn it! 

“This may be hard to believe,” he went on, “but we’re actually from an alternate reality – another version of Earth with a very different history than yours.”

“Given what I saw tonight, that’s not hard to believe at all,” Lilith laughed. “There’ve been no super-humans in this world for a very long time, at least none not loyal to, or controlled by, the Reich. 

“And I haven’t seen the word “Earth” since I read it in an old text book that somehow survived the burnings. This word is called Erde, since the Fuhrer rules almost all of it.”

“The Fuhrer?” Jonny burst out in amazement, “You mean Hitler is still alive? Or is he, like, one of those floaty brains in a tank somewhere?”

“Hitler?” Lilith seemed confused. “I don’t know who – oh! You mean that crazy paper-hanger who founded the Nazi Party back before the Conquest? What’s he got to do with anything? The current Fuhrer had him executed in, I don’t know, 1940, ‘41?”

“Oh.” Jonny seemed disappointed that they wouldn’t have the chance to kill Hitler. “Well who is the Fuhrer now?”

“A dark and terrible monster named Gearhart von Richtor, though his name is seldom actually used, not in the last forty years. Thankfully, he seldom visits the Americas.”

In the shadows at the back of the room Artemis stiffened, although only Scion noticed. He was well aware of the fraught history she had with that dark madman, or at least with the version of him in their world. A good thing von Richtor had died back in the Fifties, in their reality.

“Perhaps you could tell us why you so easily accept that we come from an alternate reality,” Scion suggested. “Is the existence of parallel histories widely known in this world?”

“Not widely known, no,” she replied, frowning. “But we in the American Resistance, at least, are well aware of the possibility. But to explain that, maybe I should first touch on our own history…

“In this world, after the death of our superhuman hero Ultra, the U.S. delayed entering the war until after the U.K., the U.S.S.R. and the rest of Europe had fallen before the German onslaught. Even then, we might have stemmed the tide of worldwide fascism, if not for the Japanese surprise attack on American forces throughout the Pacific. It was devastating, and forced the U.S. into a two-front war we simply couldn’t win.

“I’ve heard there was something called the American Dream, once… well, it died on August 29th, 1949, with a mushroom cloud and a radioactive crater where Washington, D.C. once stood. Our subsequent collapse secured the Axis conquest of Erde. What was left of the U.S. was partitioned: from the Mississippi River east Nazi Germany rules directly; from the Rockies to the Pacific, Imperial Japan is supreme; and between the river and the mountains what’s left of the United States is allowed to exist in a mockery of ”self-government.”

“New Atlantis offered fierce resistance to the invading Nazis… the Reich had to pretty much flatten the entire metropolitan area to finally conquer it. In the decades following, the Nazis rebuilt the city to glorify National Socialism, renaming it Arbeitstadt… “City of Work” in English. 

“But their choice to reconstruct Arbeitstadt as a symbol of the occupation made it a prime target for the American Resistance. At this point, hardly a week goes by without some swastika-covered structure going up in flames. Of course, in retaliation, the Nazis raze the city’s outlying areas in gaudy shows of force, even though they’re pretty much just blasting rubble into smaller bits of rubble now.

“But despite our courage and sacrifices (yes, I’m a leader in the Resistance), there is no force left on Erde capable of defeating the Reich’s conventional military might. Even if there were, their legions of cybernetic war machines and other super-weapons would tip the scales in their favor. 

“For a time we still had hope, in the person of Heinrich Sauer. He was born a Nazi-bred eugenic superman, but he turned against the Reich and became the Resistance’s greatest leader. We named him Doktor Hoffnung… Dr. Hope, in English.

“But after years of endless struggles, even Sauer began to doubt… so he seized the chance when it came his way, and used what we believed to be an experimental Nazi time machine to change the outcome of the Conquest. 

“I was new in the Resistance when he returned to the present… and was there to see his face when he learned nothing had changed. The world was still in the iron grip of tyranny. He realized then that he must have traveled, not just back in time, but sideways, to the past of an alternate reality. But though he was saddened to find he’d changed nothing for our world, he took hope from the many heroes of that other world, and came back to our fight with renewed hope.

“Unfortunately, no one’s sure what happened to Sauer… officially, he was killed by a squad of superhuman Nazis two years ago, and some propaganda tools say he took his own life once he realized his efforts had so utterly failed. Myself, I don’t believe that, and I’m holding out hope that he’s still alive, somewhere, and will return to us.”

“So, you already knew of the existence of our Earth,” Quanata said. “That does make things easier, because we have very little time and we need your help…” 

As succinctly as possible the heroes related their mission, leaving out the multiverse-ending parts and the time-travel complications.

“In short,” concluded Scion, “we know there is a cosmic energy bomb somewhere nearby that will destroy your universe in less than 24 hours… we need to find it and disarm it, and we’re running out of time.”

“Actually, it may be a stroke of good luck that you arrived where you did,” Lilith said, growing animated. “We’ve had intelligence of a strange, high-tech device that fell from the sky a little over ten days ago. It was recovered by the High Command, naturally, and taken to the Von Braun Island Space Control Center for study.

“Reports say that it’s energy potential may dwarf even the Reich’s nuclear arsenal. We cannot let that power remain under the Nazi’s control. We have been planning a raid – honestly, a suicide mission – to infiltrate the island and destroy the device.”

“Could you get us into this Space Control Center instead?” Scion asked. “We have a far better chance of stopping this threat than your people, and certainly without committing suicide.”

“That’s just what I was thinking,” Lilith replied with a growing smile. “But I’m coming with you – you’ll certainly need a native guide, and I doubt the other leaders would agree to sending you in alone in any case.”

• • • • •    

Lilith led the heroes from another reality deeper into the catacombs underneath Arbeitstadt, to a small Resistance encampment. Once she had vouched for them, and relayed their urgent warning about the mysterious device, the Resistance fighters proved eager to help them.

By dawn the Vanguard, Hand and Lilith were packed into large shipping crates and loaded onto the regular supply ship headed to Von Braun Island. The fit inside the crates was tight, the time in the dark seemingly endless, and the portage carried out by men who apparently thought “Fragile” must be Italian for “knock it around, fellas.”

But eventually the uncomfortable trip ended, as promised, inside the walls of the Space Command Center. From the storage hall where they were delivered it proved to be a relatively short distance, once they’d unpacked themselves, to the where the mysterious cosmic engine was being studied — the facility’s main High Energy Physics Lab.

Using a combination of Mariala’s Wallflower spell, Scion’s armor’s stealth mode, and Korwin’s Shadow Body spell, the unwieldy group managed to move unseen through the corridors of the base. 

Toran was the only one actually visible, having used his Amulet of Deception to disguise himself as a Nazi scientist… specifically, one Neils Goremann. Scion’s hack of the biometric security system had found the picture of the man, and noted that he was not currently on the base.

When the group reached the doors to the lab Scion again used his biometric decoder to spoof the access pad into thinking that he’d used his key card and thumb print to open the doors.

It was here that the immense, grandiose nature of the Nazi architectural style worked to their benefit. Not only were the corridors wide and high, the double doors  into the lab were themwelves three meters wide and four meters high. Toran fumbled with his illusory clipboard, pausing in the doorway long enough for his invisible teammates to stream by him and into the room, the guards flanking the doors inside oblivious to the infiltation.

The High Energy Physics Lab was an immense circular chamber, forty meters in diameter, with a domed ceiling 25 meters over head. Banks of computers and other, less identifiable equipment lined the walls, and a wide catwalk circled the room five meters up the wall, and it too was lined with esoteric physics equipment.

On a section of wall directly opposite the door by which they’d entered were a set of huge blast doors, easily 16 meters across and 10 meters high, currently closed. In the center of the room was an octagonal platform six meters above the floor, reached by stairs on the north and south sides. And nestled in a cradle in the center of that platform, cables attached to it and streaming out to a score of machines along the walls, was the prize they had come for –Chronos’ cosmic energy bomb.

Unfortunately, four scientists were also on the platform, deeply engaged in studying the artifact, with two guards at the foot of each of the stairs. Scattered around the chamber were another half dozen scientists, by their lab coats, and as many guards, by their uniforms.

Scion had distributed comm-link ear buds and throat mics to the Hand and Lilith in the pre-dawn hours before they’d climbed into the crates, and now he gave the word. The assault began…

As their teammates dropped their various methods of concealment, Scion and Quanta dropped down onto the platform, almost absently blasting the two nearest scientists into unconsciousness as they began to study the bomb. 

It was just a little over three meters in diameter, and was covered in hexagonal plates of a glossy white ceramic, with ridges of slowly pulsing yellow light between the plates. There appeared to be no obvious access port or interface, however…

While his teammates began their study of the deadly focus of their mission, Raven seized the mind of one of the other scientists on the platform. The man’s colleague looked briefly surprised when the other pushed him over the railing… before jumping himself. 

Around the room ice needles, arrows and shock sticks flew, spells were cast, Lilith seized a machine gun, webs were woven, and fireballs exploded. Nazi scientists and soldiers went down fast… but not all without a fight. And not without an alarm being raised.

A female scientist managed to hide from Lilith’s machine gun just long enough to reach some sort of emergency alarm. Distracted by the wails, Vulk was clipped by an energy blast which one soldier manged to get off, momentarily taking him down. Mariala took the Nazi out with her Khundari dagger, and quickly knelt to revive her friend. 

As Scion and Quanta continued to study the bomb, going over the data the Nazi scientists had already gathered to analyze it in light of what they knew the device to be, the others prepared for whatever the next wave might be. They didn’t have long to wait…

The blast doors on the far side of the chamber began to roll slowly open, revealing six figures silhouetted against the morning light. Each wore a uniform or costume indicating their likely status as super-humans… 

The flier was dressed in an owl-themed costume replete with steel talons on hands and feet and a feathered cloak; a beautiful, athletic young woman wore a skintight white body-suit, covering her from head to toe;  a tall man wore a field-gray costume resembling a hazmat suit, with only sad-looking eyes visible; a smaller, lithe-looking man was dressed ninja-style in loose black clothing, and his mask did little to hide the scary-mad intensity of his stare; another man was dressed in a white hood and robes over a black shirt, khaki cargo pants, and black combat boots. All of them bore the swastika and/or Iron Cross somewhere on their costume.

The sixth figure, standing slightly forward, was obviously the leader of the group. Dressed in a stylized version of and SS officer’s uniform, he stood 6’ 2’’ with a perfectly proportioned and sculpted body, close-cropped blond hair and striking blue eyes. When he spoke his voice was a perfectly modulated baritone.

“So, you Resistance fools prove yourselves slightly more clever than we gave you credit for. We knew, of course, of your planned assault today, but I’m unclear how you made it this far into the facility undiscovered. 

“It makes little difference, of course, and I will enjoy overseeing your interrogations as we pull that information from you, all in due course. Believe me, you will pay for the injuries you’ve caused der Fuhrer’s scientists today… but you may yet mitigate your suffering somewhat if you surrend-URK!”

He was cut off mid-rant by Artemis’ shadow sticks, which struck him in the throat and solar plexus, releasing their electrical charges into him. He staggered back, slightly bent over and clutching his neck, his face purpling in rage.

“Take them!” he managed to growl, his voice considerably less melodious than before. He himself moved with lightning speed, aiming a roundhouse blow at Artemis’ head.

She easily dodged the blow, using his rock-like forearm to somersault away, landing halfway up the stairs to the platform. 

Chilz sent a penetrating blast of razor-sharp ice spears at owl-guy, but he proved a nimble flier, twisting in midair, and only his cloak took some minor damage.

At the same time the large man in the gray hazmat suit, with the sad eyes, closed with Chilz. The hero was momentarily confused, as the man didn’t seem to have an actual attack in mind – he simply lumbered forward. When he was almost within Chilz‘ long reach the nature of his power became clear.

He simply exploded.

Chilz was hurled back twenty feet by the blast, crashing to the metal flooring in a stunned heap. His body had fractures almost everywhere, and his mind reeled, trying to focus. Even as he lay there the gray man began to reform, his body slowly coalescing  from the flame and smoke of the explosion…

Raven called out to Artemis that the woman in white, who had simply vanished when the order to attack was given, was invisible and coming at her… no illusion or invisibility could cloud his sight.

“On your left, just on the platform,” he added, and Artemis turned without thought, her leg kicking out – it connected, sending the would-be assailant flying over the platform’s edge.

She continued the spinning kick in a smooth, flowing motion, catching the maniacally grinning faux-ninja in the gut as he leapt at her, dual knives prepared to eviscerate her. The blow sent him flying in the opposite direction, stunned and gasping for breath.

Korwin, seeing Chilz go down, also saw the man in the pointed white hood moving toward his fallen comrade, flames flickering around his hands in a growing swirl of power… 

The water mage focused deep within for his own power…and the Breath of Arandu roared forth from his hands. The blast of arctic air enveloped the Nazi fully, and despite the shield of flames he tried to raise, the man staggered back, his exposed hands turning blue and his movements becoming sluggish.

The expanding cone of the icy blast also struck the reforming man in gray, just as he finished pulling himself together. Like his teammate, he collapsed to his knees, shivering and frost-covered.

At the same time the owl-man stooped on Toran, tearing at him with his steel talons. But the blades merely shrieked along dwarf’s armor, which easily deflected the attack. Toran, however, had a palpable hit with his counterstrike, his battleaxe scoring a cut across the man’s chest, severing his leather harness and sending him into a hurried retreat, spiraling upwards.

Chilz was just staggering up again when he saw the Ku Klux Klan wannabe climbing to his own feet. Despite his obvious cold-induced shaking and weakness, the Nazi managed to send a blast of his fire at the ice hero. As the flames washed over him, Chilz screamed – he had suffered worse heat damage before, but nothing had burned him like this. It felt like his soul was on fire, and he collapsed again, in agony.

Vulk had sent a flight of magical Stavin’s Arrows at the Nazi leader, who had all too quickly recovered from Artemis’ attack and was headed for the platform where Scion and Quanta were deeply engaged with the bomb. The invisible force arrows barely slowed the man’s advance.

What did stop him in his tracks, and all the Nazi Übermenschen, was the sudden appearance of a massive, utterly terrifying, silver-white Ice Dragon in the space above the platform. Its leathery wings flapped slowly as it hovered, and its jaws, lined with uncounted razor-sharp teeth, opened to let loose a roaring shriek that turned their blood cold.

Even realizing it was Erol, finally getting to use his Wand of Draconic Illusion, didn’t stop Vulk’s visceral gut reaction of fear at the apparition. Chagrined, he was at least happy to see that to see that it also put the Nazi’s off their game, at least for a moment. 

A moment was all the heroes needed. 

Watching the flow of energy across the surface of the bomb, Quanta and Scion had at last figured out its opening mechanism. Quanta pointed, Scion sent a pulse of energy into the indicated hexagonal panel, and it popped open with a click. Swinging it up, they found it covered a housing for some sort of  the cosmic control rod. With a look at his friend and a shrug, Scion pulled the rod from its sheath…

The energy pulsing across the sphere’s surface faded to darkness as the bomb went inert.

“No!” screamed der Übermensch, his attention drawn from the dragon to the sight of the armored intruder holding up the glowing rod which he and the silvery one had removed from the mysterious orb. The Resistance could not be allowed to escape with such power!

“Kill them all! Take no prisoners, but recover that device!”

Even as his minions jumped to obey him, however, the interlopers, including the damn dragon, began to fade away and in an instant they were gone, like soap bubbles… NO! They had to be here! Like the dragon, it was an illusion, or invisibilty of some sort… yes, that was no doubt how they had penetrated the lab to begin with…

“It’s a trick, they must be here – find them!”

• • • • •

As the lab in the world of Erde faded around them the heroes found themselves back in the white nothingness of the Weld, facing the still-stunning visage of the Norn.

“Well done, my champions,” he said, her smile even more radiant than before. “You have saved a universe, and begun the saving of the our multiverse. Well done!”

“But we left Lilith back there in the middle of those Nazi super-creeps!” cried Blue Flame. He’d developed a bit of a crush on the beautiful resistance fighter, truth be told, despite the ten year age difference and the whole from-different-universes complication.

“Do not worry, Jonny Osaka,” the Norn said gently. “She escaped the island with the man she had come to search for – Heinrich Sauer, who you know as Dr. Hope. Thanks to your blasting a particular control panel earlier, in her flight she found him in a cell not far from the lab, battered but unbroken, and the two made good their escape while der Übermenschen frantically sought after the rest of you.

“And more than that I will tell you – if the multiverse yet survives, then there is hope again on Erde, for Heinrich Sauer has learned much in his captivity, more than his captors learned from him… their evil may yet fall before his genius.”

“But now it is time to turn to your next task,” the Norn continued, “Three more worlds are yet in peril and this multiverse may still be damaged beyond hope. Little enough can I do to help you, but what I can I will.”

With his words a silvery light washed out from her and enveloped the twelve heroes, healing every cut, abrasion, contusion, bruised muscle or strained  ligament they had suffered in their battles, and they were filled with renewed energy, both physical and mental, as if they’d spent a week getting proper sleep and nutrition.

When everyone agreed they were ready, the Norn once again smiled upon them, and the white void of the Weld faded into black…