[hider=Panel Ten][i]Wow[/i], that was like something out of a dream. Here in all this blood and death and chaos, and this beautiful woman drops in from out of the sky and introduces herself with a Guardian code? Couldn’t have shown up at a better time either, him and Tal could use all the backup they could get, and she really seemed like she knew what she was doing. [i]Warbird[/i], Ken had heard of her. She was Nucleus’s sister, right? They’d never met, Nucleus wasn’t known to be hugely social with the rest of the Guardians, in or out of costume, and unlike him and the other young supers the relationship wasn’t really the same. His parents, Andrea’s dad, and Alex’s mom were friends, and well, old. They raised these kids together, you know? Shit, he’d been going on family vacations with the Hathaways, and Alex had been going on family vacations with the Scarborough-Poole’s since before he could remember. Nucleus had never been in a situation like that, certainly not with them anyway. She was a part of the team, of course, but she must’ve been a decade or two younger than his parents, and her sister was younger than her, she was more like a side kick to her then a kid, and she hadn’t exactly raised her. Clearly, though, she had trained her, that was an awesome entrance, way cooler than his lame ass wander into a fight and start throwing up in the closest trash can or Tal’s stand around dazed and confused act. She’d actually distracted him from the death all around him, assuaged his fears for a moment, but only for a moment. 

This was seriously a nightmare. I mean, maybe Warbird had experience in situations like this, but him and Tal sure as shit didn’t. He’d never seen a dead body. Tal had seen some weird shit in her Sanctuary, he had no doubt, her experience must have been a lot different than his after all, but she looked just as lost right now as he knew he must. He was basically just going through the motions before Warbird showed up, like he wasn’t really piloting his own body, some other person was the one talking to the blue bitch, and was just using his body to do it for the convenience of his already happening to be here. He couldn’t even remember what he’d said to her, for all he knew he asked about the weather or something, but he could remember her laughing, and covering her mouth while she did it, like this was some ballroom dance and they were discussing how the host had put on weight over the past few months. At least Tal had the decency not to say anything stupid. He didn’t know how to acknowledge Warbird, and still didn’t feel all that in control of his own bodily functions, but at least he didn’t think he was going to throw up again, so he nodded to the newest addition to their silly little team and turned back to the girl in blue. She was still just sitting up there, didn’t seem very interested in doing anything about them or pressing the advantage of their stupor and obvious lack of experience in dealing with anything even close to whatever the hell this was. 

Him and Tal were in the main room, now, Warbird would be following them shortly if she wasn’t already in here, and unlike the tight little hallway where his dexterous newfound acquaintance had gracefully appeared from the air ducts, this room had high ceilings, good for flyers which him, Tal, and unless she had some awesome jetpack hidden away or something Warbird were not and, given the blue bitch’s position thirty or so feet up on the balcony she almost certainly must be, and on floor level an open set of double doors leading to a stairway. Couldn’t tell what it was for, but he did know enough to know that there was a reason for it to be there, and that it must be what the blue bitch was here guarding. [i]Probably the lab[/i], and if it is the lab, there was still a chance to get these bastards before they got away. He realized it then, they hadn’t been too late, the villains hadn’t just walked out the front door with the rest of the civvies, they were still down there, and if you had to go through this kind of security to get to this point, there weren’t going to be fire exits down there. They had to come back up through this room, it’s why she was here, they weren’t late, they were just in time. Just had to take her before the rest of her team showed up, it was three on one, they had the advantage, at least theoretically, and with any luck maybe they’d get some more happenstance backup. If she’d heard the report, other costumes must have as well. 

[i]Hey, you bitch[/i] went through Ken’s mind, and as he opened his mouth to espouse the same to the woman in blue, he felt his feet give out from under him. It didn’t seem quite right, his center of balance falling away like that, all of a sudden and without any real warning or apparent stimuli. Nothing had impacted him hard enough to send someone like him flailing, he was strong enough to stop a truck at thirty miles per hour, and as far as he could tell no one had even touched him. Yet here he was, scrambling to find solid ground under his feet, and failing. He realized just as he saw Tal floating next to him that it wasn’t him who had been knocked off balance, wasn’t him falling, or her floating. [i]Oh shit![/i] in one, fluid and altogether unsettling motion his perception flipped from that of Tal floating next to him to her, and to the best of his understanding himself, falling, fast, toward the ceiling, headfirst. F#$%, he couldn’t fly, and neither could Tal or Warbird; the ceiling, or floor maybe, was a few stories up from the ground level, or, was it now the roof? Didn’t matter, it was a long way down, and there was no way Tal could fall that far without seriously getting hurt. Pushing aside a dead body with only a moment of nausea, he felt himself cutting through the air towards his falling companion, and grabbed hold of her, before scanning for Warbird. He just might have enough time to catch her too, if he could find her through the falling blood, bodies and random debris. [/hider]

[hider=Panel Eleven]“What a bitch!” Tal had jumped half out of her skin when this asshole who called herself Warbird, ‘[i]Guardian Code beta zero nine[/i],’ like she was some hotshot badass or something and not just a glorified sidekick, fell from out the f#$%ing air ducts and just landed next to them with some silly ass flourish. She’d heard of her, was that lame parasite attached to Nucleus if she remembered correctly, and clearly she didn’t have half of the tact of her mentor. Couldn’t she see that they were standing on a floor surrounded by dead f#$%ing bodies? This place was a living nightmare and she’s acting like they’re, what, in a video game or some shit? ‘[i]D-d-d-Double Points! Epic flourish![/i],’ what a f#$%ing c#$%. She was either seriously stupid, a literal f#$%ing sociopath, or just not paying attention to her surroundings one bit. This wasn’t some, “oh, there’s a fight about to go down? I’ll join in, and make a killer entrance in the process,” kinda moment, she could have gotten herself killed! She could have made her or Ken kill her, the f#$%ing lunatic. Just what they needed, another nut job to contend with; what, it wasn’t bad enough that they were about to face down a girl who casually killed, like, seven human beings just a minute ago, and was now f#$%ing content to just sit up there on her little perch disinterestedly watching the silly ass kids make their fancy little entrances? They were all in serious danger, right now, along with civvies and she’s doing fancy flips!? If they got out of this, she was seriously going to kill this Warbird bitch someday. 

Tal stepped precariously over the bodies of the dead men on the floor, forcing herself not to take a last, long look into the one, cold, dead eye remaining to the one closest to her, from out of the hall and into the main room, proper. Whether or not this, ‘[i]Warbird,[/i]’ bitch had followed her out of the hall she couldn’t say, and didn’t care. F#$% her, this bitch in blue was the important one to pay attention to now, not some wannabe who thought it was cool to scare the shit out of the good guys while they were trying to do their f#$%ing jobs. The hallway with the checkpoint behind her, she stood in a room with a high arched ceiling, and, about fifty feet away and directly below the balcony, open doors leading to a stairway, clearly the entrance to the tunnel leading to the main lab. Seemed like a lot of work to get down there, probably even had those little golf cart things or perhaps a tram down there to get from one end to the other, and with the blue bitch still sitting around she knew the rest of the villains must still be down there, looking for whatever it was they had come for, otherwise why post a guard at the entrance? All the bodies had been armed, so she assumed the scientists and research personnel were still down there, too, or at least the ones who hadn’t been lucky enough to have evacuated by now. They weren’t too late, they could still save those people, could still get justice for the ones that this monster in blue had killed. 

Tal decided right then and there that whatever happened, even if she had to accept for the moment the assistance of this totally inept asshole tag along, they [b]were not[/b] going to let the bitch in blue leave this building without wearing cold steel bracelets or a person sized canvass zippered sack, and though she didn’t like the thought of killing much, she was almost hoping for the latter, [i]those were [b]people[/b][/i]… Speaking of the blue lady, she was still [b]super creepy[/b]. The butterflies kept floating off from her scarf in their macabre dance of life and non-life, here and then gone, and the girl in blue kept her seat on the balcony overlooking the blood stained floor, seemingly motionless, breathless. If the little group assembled before her impressed her all that much, it didn’t show. Even the sudden arrival of the, ‘[i]lady,[/i]’ in the jumpsuit from the air ducts didn’t so much as illicit a blink from her, like she was watching ants in one of those glass colonies go about their regular day to day, boring old tasks and duties rather than looking at a group of super powered opponents. Finally, after their introductions to one another were said and done, and at least her and Ken were in the main room staring her down, she blew absently at the bang of hair covering her eye, revealing the insectoid wings contained within the socket as opposed to the more typical orb of complex ocular tissue, eerily bringing the wings sticking out from the sockets together as she blinked at the breath, like the creepiest false lashes ever devised. [i]What a super duper gross subconscious tick[/i].

Ken started to say something, and then the world turned upside down. Not like, something surprising happened, the f#$%ing gravity in the room changed course, and Tal found herself falling, towards the ceiling. [i]Oh, shit[/i], not only could she not fly, but she sure as shit couldn’t break her fall without harming herself at a distance like this, it was probably forty feet to the ceiling, or, floor she supposed. Blood spattered across her face, and for a fleeting moment she thought that she’d been hurt, that [i]Ken[/i] had been hurt, that [i]hopefully[/i] Warbird had been hurt instead of either of them, until she realized that it had come from her friend the dark haired, one eyed dead guy, and she fought back the urge to throw up while falling headfirst toward the roof. She wondered if this was what people who jumped off buildings must feel like right before the end, she’d jumped from cliffs into the water half a hundred times but she had always known that it wouldn’t kill her. She thought that she wouldn’t, couldn’t die this way, that she had to stop this, that [i]she[/i] couldn’t stop this, and then the dead guy was floating away from her, and someone smashed into her. Ken, he had her, and then they were turning, sharp, fast, all of this had occurred in a second tops, he couldn’t fly, he’d take the blow for her, he could take it. That girl was still just sitting on her balcony, upside down, seemingly unaffected by the gravity whatsoever, just watching how things unfolded for those foolish little kids who thought they could face a real super villain. [/hider]