[hider=Panel Six]

The crowd burst into cheers, shouts, applause; raucous, frenetic energy. Who would have thought they’d be eating this shit up the way they were? With the release of the psyPhone Epsilon, basically a rerelease of the Delta in a slightly larger frame, and just in time for Christmas, the company would be moving millions of units in every major market on the globe. No one would have minded if it had been something indistinguishable from the Delta, they just wanted something new, something special; something to spend their money on so they could show off their new acquisition to their friends, colleagues, loved ones, something to make them feel admired by their fellows for that one, fleeting moment, that one meaningless drop in the endless, flowing river of time. It wouldn’t be hard to argue that she was no different than them, the crowds who surged at her every word threatening to well up and flood over the stage for the chance to get their hands on the newest product. Sure, she’d made a few fortunes in her time, spent a few, too, and if you’d have told her that the girl playing with circuits in her friend’s dad’s garage in Lowtown would be here, on the global stage, speaking to a larger audience then any world leader commanded because of just how admired her technology was among the peoples of the world, well, she’d have probably called you out and kicked your ass out a window, but she wouldn’t have believed you. She was smart, talented, sure, but she’d be lucky not to take a blade to the gut by the time she was twenty three. 

That girl had taken a blade to the gut, when she was nineteen, still had the scar to prove it, too. She could have had it removed, she had doctors and not doctors, and even a few not human not doctors, the likes of which no one could buy, the kinds of eldritch contacts that can only be established in flesh and duty over a lifetime of dealings in the darkest reaches of the shadow, supernatural world under the one lit by the glowing banners and towering buildings instructing those who could see to go out and get the new psyPhone, but she kept it, as a reminder. She might be the most powerful woman alive, with aspirations on becoming and staying the most powerful person alive, but it could all be over the first time someone decided to bury a blade in her. That’s probably the hardest thing for the wealthy, the powerful, the intelligent to ever come to understand, just how fleeting it all is, how easily it can all come tumbling down around you. She had never been the type to advocate toughening up the young and meek through pain and loss, she’d been through the same kind of treatment and had never felt thankful for it, but maybe the meanness, the harshness of her earlier years had given her something uniquely valuable among those who tower over their fellows, something that had little to naught to do with how she had gotten here, but everything to do with how she remained here, how she continued to appreciate just what it was she had and stayed willing to fight to hold on to it. 

She loved her kids, Ken and Aster, and she’d leave them a legacy both in blood and empire, but she had greater aspirations. She would never be content to get a first look at the newest psyPhone, to create the newest mass consumer product, no, not even to own the company that created the hottest new electronics on the market. She would change the world, fundamentally alter it, like the first antibiotics and the first humans who could fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes had changed the world. The ex, oh, seven project would fundamentally alter reality, our reality, and it would be the legacy she left for her people, her children, her species. “Ma’am, there’s been a situation at the Longstreet site,” [i]how can there have [b]been[/b] a situation? What, is it over already? These idiot security[/i], “The site went into lockdown, and then came out of, --,” before she could think, react, her security team rushed the stage, and then they were moving, down the flight of stairs to the exit, not the one reserved for regular celebrity entrances and exits, the public fire exit. Then there was a blinding brightness, a shuffling of boots on the pavement, and she was in one of the company SUVs, the fancy ones that can drive with blown out tires and take rockets head on without being disabled.  “How serious is it? Put me through to Ashley,” hardly even had to ask, the looks on their faces said it all. “Jan, then, where’s, --,” [i]oh shit[/i]. “He didn’t?” He had flown in to surprise her, some stupid romantic gesture no doubt, that f#$%ing fool. 

“We sent a team to retrieve him, --,” [i]that asshole[/i], “don’t bother, he’ll get lost in the City. Send the team to commandeer a jet,” they looked at her dumbfounded, “commandeer a jet, ma’am?” she pulled out her phone, hit the protocol zero function, though she knew it would have already been sent out. Savannah’s in the Midwest, Faust is somewhere off the map, Jan, that asshole, is here, Nucleus isn’t going to get there in time to do anything useful… “yes, mine isn’t going to work out. I don’t care if you have to buy one from the government, get it done,” the guard nodded before pulling out his own phone. Nothing like having every available Guardian somewhere hours out of range on the same day that someone somehow knows to go for ex, oh, seven… She’d have to look into where the leak had come from, couldn’t have been supernatural, the wards she had on that facility. No, couldn’t think about that now. This situation had to be dealt with, and if the grownups were too f#$%ing foolish to have their shit together and leave at least one super in Halcyon, dammit Jan, then the kids, “oh shit, the kids,” she almost jumped out of her skin, they hadn’t checked in? Why hadn’t the protocol zero teams picked them up? “We just picked up Aster, Ken’s on the move, fast. Must be in a car,” had he… Oh, great. He got the call, and didn’t check in. That phone’s probably in the backseat of a cab. She got a message, psyPhone, obviously Ken. “Dad went to see you, on my way to Longstr. Ok?” [/hider] 

[hider=Panel Seven]"Are you seriously asking your mom for permission to go out and do badass super hero stuff?" the girl he held in his left arm asked as he frantically texted with his right. "Yes, Tal, I am asking my mom for permission to go out and do super hero stuff," he narrowly dodged a skyscraper after casting a quick glance up from the screen. "Because," he interrupted her, didn't have to look up to know that she was about to say something, "if I don't ask per, --," another close miss, but he was reasonably sure they were moving in the right direction now, "mission, then when her people find my phone in that cab, they're gonna assume someone grabbed me, and she's gonna have everyone in a mask, who should be responding to this threat," a roll, and the site was in front of them, "tearing up the city looking for me," she would, too. Mom might love her work, but she cared more about her kids. Aster was fine, her blinker had already come back in with the code her detail, and to the best of his knowledge only her detail, would have access to, leaving him as the only loose end in need of rescue. His dad had flown over to Europe to meet up with mom, some kinda romantic thing Ken supposed, and he knew Savannah Newman-Hathaway, Lodestar, was speaking at some political thing in the Midwest, and the rest of the team were all off radar or, in the case of Nucleus, at least far enough off the beaten path that she wouldn’t show up for about an hour at least. 

If anyone was gonna show up and help her, mom’s, people, it was gonna be them. “You know, this would be a lot cooler if you didn’t need the scooter,” it was true, this little one person flier was super lame for super heroes who should be flying on their own. Of course, he couldn’t fly, not yet anyway, and she wasn’t likely to ever be able to get into the air on her own. Tal was great at what she did, but flying wasn’t exactly in her repertoire. Either way, he was strong enough to carry her and pilot the thing, which either required a lot of practice and precise controls or overwhelming strength to operate effectively, and they had been in a hurry, would’ve taken them twenty minutes by train. He had only had the one, he’d gone out flying with Alex Hathaway earlier and though she made fun of him for needing it, too, he’d held on to it for his regular Cuban coffee, medianoche, and dancing with Tal, it folded up into his backpack and even though she could use the thing better than he could she couldn’t exactly lug him around with her. The phone buzzed, and the shock of it almost sent him flying into the side of a building, but Ken recovered and checked the message. “Aster’s safe. Go get ‘em,” pfft, mom. He snapped the phone in half with his thumb and index finger, before tossing it down to the street. “Hey! That’s my phone!” he shrugged, sending the scooter careening down, fast. “I’ll buy you a new one,” he corrected, barely. “I didn’t have my pics backed up!” 

He knew she did. She took pictures religiously, usually embarrassing ones of him, or at least when they were hanging out that's what she seemed to mostly take pictures of. Guess it didn't matter now, though, the thing was broken and in the street somewhere, and the encryption would delete anything that wasn't already destroyed if anyone tried to back it up now. "We're almost there. North or South parking lot?" didn't seem to matter much, but they were approaching from the North, and getting to the East or West sides would make this a hell of a bumpy landing. She didn't answer him, like he knew she wouldn’t, probably still pissed about the phone. They couldn't have anyone placing Talia here, though, of course he had to break the thing. Those were their personal phones, they didn't have business stuff like the Guardians, 'cause, well, they weren't Guardians. They were just kids, mom wouldn't have let them tag a class B villain yesterday. Or today, for that matter, if they weren't the only masks in town. Guess there was Alex and Andrea Faust, somewhere around here, that kid Nucleus had taken in, maybe some other people loosely connected to the community, but for the most part, they were it. She, mom, probably wouldn't have let him do it alone, either, but he used Talia's phone to text her, and she'd recognize the number. Had a photographic memory for phone numbers, Anne Scarborough, he'd done it on purpose. Distract anyone who was coming looking for him with his phone, use Tal's to get mom's attention and let her know the two were together moving on the target. 

I mean, he’d have welcomed some backup of course, but there wasn’t likely to be any coming. He knew that masks often did seem to pop out of the woodwork in these situations, but on a time table like this he doubted anyone’d even have heard about anything by the time it was all said and done. Ken was actually rather pleased with himself, a minute ago he’d been dancing with Tal at their Cuban place, and within sixty seconds here they were, flying off to tag a real villain. He’d thrown some cash on their table, left the half eaten medianoches and just went out into the alley behind the joint through the backdoor, threw his phone into a passing cab without the guy even noticing, luckily he hadn’t had a customer who might make mention of the mysterious cellphone flying through the back window, made sure there weren’t any cameras which of course there weren’t in a place like that, threw on his costume in like five seconds flat while Tal did the same, unfolded the scooter after pulling it out of his shitty old backpack, grabbed Tal and just took off. It was scary, sure, but he’d fantasized about doing this for years. That one perfect storm where all the grownups just happened to be off doing their own things, and some real villain happened to pop up causing trouble that just had to be responded to, so they get tagged in, him and Tal, on a real mission with real stakes and real opportunities to prove to mom that they were ready to do this, to be super heroes. And they were… Right? [/hider] 

[hider=Panel Eight] 

[i]F#$%ing hell![/i] Someone really needed to teach Ken that there were controls on these things for a reason. Yeah, if you were strong enough you could just manually drag the things around and make them go the direction you wanted them to go, but shit, that’s not what they were designed to do, or at least not how they were meant to be used. He’d get her killed doing this stupid shit someday, but they were on the ground now, hard landing, but she didn’t think anything was broken, so it was a reasonable success by his standards. Of course, by on the ground she meant on the top floor, roof, of the North side parking lot, which was exactly not where the situation was going down. They wouldn’t be able to just walk into this place through the front door, it was covered with cops and they weren’t going to let these two unknowns walk into this place, no, they’d be waiting for Gravitron, Felitrix, Lodestar, someone with some brand recognition. Australis and Cassiopeia weren’t exactly household names, if anyone knew either of them it’d be Ken, and they’d probably work twice as hard to keep him out of this if they did know who he was. They just let Felitrix and Gravitron’s kid get himself killed walking into an active Class S situation and the media shitstorm they’d catch would put them in an early grave, probably literally, definitely get them forcibly, prematurely retired. She assumed they’d have to go through a sky walk, or just straight up through a wall or something to get inside, but she [b]knew[/b] that they had to move, now. 

“Come on,” she barked at her friend’s dumb ass, still pissed to shit about him wrecking her phone. Could have just left it somewhere, should have left it in his bag in the alley, no one was likely to just rifle through that shitty old thing looking for valuables. I mean, it was a total mess of a backpack, Ken just held onto it for what she had to assume were sentimental reasons. One floor, another, another, and there was the sky walk into the main building. The cops hadn’t pushed in through the lot yet, just locked down the entrances and exits to the lots and would wait on specialists to actually clear out the floors proper, if they even chose to before things were taken care of by the supers. They ran over, the sliding glass was shut down and the metal bars had slid out horizontally, no way through steel like that without some real power tools, or… Ken just punched through and ripped the thing’s hinges out of the cement, of course. “Show off,” but even though it was true, they were in. Two more doors would be in their way, but these ones wouldn’t be locked. When the lockdown protocol was lifted, and it had been lifted, the outside doors remained locked until outside security or police opened them up, but every door inside was automatically unlocked. The exact reasoning behind that had never made much sense to her, but Tal wasn’t going to question why Anne Scarborough set her shit up in strange ways, no doubt there was some asinine contingency that made this a necessary precaution against something or other. 

Flying across the floor they could see that most of the people had already been evacuated, probably right out the front door. Tal assumed that was of the villains design, chances are they were too late and the villains had taken whatever it was they’d come for and were let out with the rest of the civvies. Didn’t matter, still had to be sure. The locker rooms to the lab check in station, and, oh, oh God, oh shit, [b]oh God[/b]. Ken had stopped in front of her, she’d nearly ran into him before side stepping just in time to see the awful, everywhere. Blood, sticky, wet, warm, everywhere blood. This place was just… And the smell. Ken was shaking, really shaking. She wanted to tell him to stop, to move, but she couldn’t make herself speak. This was just… Ken turned, finally, and went hurriedly to a trash can, just started puking into the thing. Didn’t even seem all that gross considering what they were looking at. There were bodies just hanging from the balcony, blaster rifles slung over their lifeless forms, security guards on the floor in front of them, brains showing and just limply, lifelessly looking up at her. She thought she could tell that some other people had come in, and you’d think she’d jump in shock, or turn to fight them, or run or something, do anything, but she just stood there, looking back and forth between the dead guy on the floor looking back up at her, and the bodies hanging off of the balcony, squishing the blood and mess under her shoes whenever she turned to look between the two. 

Someone was talking, but she wasn’t paying much attention. She could feel Ken and maybe someone else nearby, she thought absently that he must have stopped puking and was saying something, but not to her. No, he was talking to the other voice, the new one, wasn’t yelling or anything, just asking a question, like how’s the weather or something. Tal, with a last, long look into the eye of the dead guy on the floor that probably only lasted a few seconds but felt like hours, looked up, back to the balcony where the Ken voice seemed to be speaking towards. There was a girl up there, just sitting on the balcony, all in blue. Seemed strange, all that blue surrounded by all that sick, sticky red. The color was too bright somehow, too strange, alien. Just shouldn’t be… Here. Not like this. The girl was pretty, blonde and brilliant blue, not a drop of red on her, somehow. It was all over everything else. She was saying something to Ken, sounded real casual, too, like, “oh, it’s a tad chilly, could stand a warm day for once,” and Ken was talking again, louder this time, “a warm day? In Halcyon City, in November?” then she was laughing, politely, hand over her mouth even. He wasn’t, though. All at once the sound came back to her, like her ear drums had popped, and Ken was yelling. “What’s f#$%ing wrong with you!? These are people!” she shrugged, that girl on the balcony. Her scarf was flowing back, like it was in the wind or something, and little neon blue butterflies were floating off of it. Almost... Pretty. [/hider]