Half Pint

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

@AndyC Wow, that bit with Braniac at the end of your post is amazing!

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

---

Elbridge shouldered his rifle, taking up the rearguard after appointing the youngest member of his taskforce in the vanguard. He’d phrased it like a reward, but anyone who knew Elbridge understood it was more like tossing the kid to the wolves with a pat on the back. His reputation had preceeded him, anyone drafted into his team from another knew what they were getting in for. He was very much a man who believed that being feared was far better than being loved. He'd practically been licking his lips when Lord got into power and began setting up the checkpoints around the city, to him it was music to his ears. A return to order, his kind of order. The kind where a man with a gun and the authority to use it didn't have to explain himself. Lord gave him a leash, sure, but it was a long one, and Elbridge had every intention of running with it until it snapped.

He stalked through the cavern, boots stomping over each root that had the unfortunate luck of being in his path, floodlight sweeping left and right. The cavern's air was damp and dense, thick with spores. Every few steps, a subtle click from his wrist-mounted scanner confirmed his route, but no sign of the targets. Not yet.

Ahead of him, the squad swept their beams through the cavern's contours, arcs of light slicing through the shadows in rhythmic sweeps. The youngest at the front, Rogers, or maybe it was Ramirez - was already jittering under the pressure. His shoulders twitched with every half-seen glint from the wet stone. The others kept their spacing tight, disciplined, like good hounds. But Elbridge knew the fear was creeping in around the edges. That was fine. Fear sharpened the instincts. Broke the weak ones down. Separated the paper soldiers from the ones worth keeping.

He broke formation, moving up towards the young soldier and slapping a hand on his shoulder, giving him a startle. Elbridge guffawed as the kid flinched under his grip.

"Easy there, killer." Elbridge said, leaning in close enough that his breath fogged the boy's visor. "Don't jump every time a mushroom farts or you'll empty your mag into a rock and piss yourself in the same second." He laughed again.

The kid, Rogers, definitely Rogers - stammered something Elbridge didn't bother catching. He just smiled, all teeth, then gave the shoulder another squeeze that wasn't quite friendly.

"You're on point for a reason, Rogers. First eyes, first blood. Think of it like a rite of passage. Or a lottery. Someone's gotta win the first bite. About time you popped your cherry anyway"

He gave him a pat against the back, too hard to be comforting and turned to stalk back toward his position. Laughing all the while, a horrible sound that echoed through the cavern.

"Stay frosty. And if you see movement, don't freeze. Shoot. Then scream. In that order."

His unit continued their slow advance through the cavern. Silent except for the occasional crude remark from their commanding officer still taking up his cushy position at the back of the formation. Eventually they came to a split in the tunnel.

Elbridge whistled low through his teeth, scanning the fork with a practiced eye. Moss clung to one side like rot, the other looked cleaner, but narrower. He liked neither.

"Well, ain't this a goddamn buffet of bad options." He muttered, stepping up beside his second in command, Karras. Much more respected and reasonable, Karras couldn't have been more different than Elbridge as a leader. Unfortunately he was his junior in rank and experience, and while Elbridge mistankenly thought of him as a friend, his opinion mattered as little as anyone elses.

Karras glanced at the split. "Left path drops off quick. Could be a tunnel system underneath. Right one's tighter. Better cover, but no line of retreat if it goes bad."

"Beautiful." Elbridge said, smirking. He turned, raising his voice. "Alrighty then! Rogers, you're on a hot streak tonight, so guess what? You're choosing the direction."

The kid froze, visibly paling even behind the visor.

"I - uh...sir?"

"You heard me!" Elbridge said, stepping aside with a theatrical wave of his arm. "Pick a path. Left or right. This is what leadership looks like. Real character building stuff. You'll thank me for it later."

The squad stayed still, watching, silent. Karras looked like he wanted to object, but he knew better. Rogers hesitated for a painful moment, eyes darting between the two paths.

"...Left." He finally said.

Elbridge clapped his hands once, the sound echoing around the cave as his grin widened. "Atta boy! Decision made." He turned back to the rest of the squad, barking orders as he faced them. "Rogers, you and Grant take point down the left tunnel. Full sweep, check for breaches, movement, spores, whatever the hell. Radio in if you find anything worth a damn or if you start screaming. Rest of you, hold position."

Grant, a quiet, square-jawed soldier who'd done three tours in a Meta detention camp, gave no reaction. Just a curt nod and started moving. He was used to this kind of treatment. He'd done something to upset Elbridge in his first week with him and had never lived it down. Rogers, visibly scared, clicked his rifle into ready position and followed, one glance over his shoulder at Elbridge.

"Don't worry!" Elbridge called after them, cupping his hands mockingly. "We'll name a cafeteria sandwich after whichever one of you dies first!"

He snorted and leaned back against the damp wall, next to Karras, who wasn't hiding his displeasure.

"You keep burning through rookies like this, you'll run out of meat for the grinder."

Elbridge shrugged. "There's always more meat. Any hot blooded American patriot would kill to be part of my unit." He grinned. Karras couldn't tell how much of that sentence he meant as a joke.

They waited. A few minutes passed, no one daring to say anything. Elbridge had lit up a cigarette and was happily puffing away pondering over what the fillings of the 'Rogers Sandwich Supreme' could be. Then a burst of static through their radio, followed by silence again.

Karras stiffened, his brow furrowing as he looked down at his wrist mounted screen. "That was Grant's channel."

Elbridge tilted his head, listening. Then their comms buzzed again, half a scream muffled by static followed by a crunch. The squad froze.

"Elbridge-" Karras started, but the older man had already pushed off the wall, unslinging his rifle and motioning the unit to follow.

"Right path." Elbridge said, his tone decidedly less jovial than before. "We go now. Whatever took 'em, I want its goddamn teeth."

The squad fell in behind him, nerves tight, the tension could be cut with a knife. They swept down the narrower path, beams slicing through the gloom. None of them daring to question what had taken Rogers and Grant. The right-hand tunnel narrowed the further they crept down it, forcing the squad into single file.

Elbridge's earlier bravado had drained into something colder. He was quiet, professional - stalking like a cougar through the jungle. He moved in closer behind the lead man, no more lounging in the rear. They rounded a bend, and the tunnel opened wide.

The squad spread out instinctively, fanning across the lip of a broad, circular chamber. In the center of the room, the ground sloped down into a wide, bowl-like depression. Two silhouettes knelt at the centre of the chamber, maybe thirty feet down. A man and a woman, half-shrouded by the mist curling up from the cave floor.

The squad stood quietly, rifles raised and pointing at the two figures as they surrounded them from above. Then Elbridge stepped forward slowly, weapon lowered and clapping slowly.

"Well, well, well, lookey what we got here!" The two figures heads snapped around to face him, and quickly began glancing around at the group that had ambushed them. "Looks like we caught ourselves a coupl'a freaks!" He laughed to himself, throwing hand signs down into the pit to signal the unit to begin their descent down the slope. He followed not far behind, casually sliding down the dirt with his rifle hung lazily on his side.

The two metas raised their hands as the unit surrounded them. Elbridge took a sick delight in seeing the concern etched across their faces. They had escaped them in the lift, now they had them surrounded. Powers or not he was sure their little tricks wouldn't match up to a barrage of sustained gunfire.

"Now, you're gonna surrender nicely and let us lock these pretty little bracelets on you," He spoke, unhooking a pair of power dampening handcuffs from his belt. "Or we're gonna be dragging two corpses through the mud all the way back to base." He smiled.

The woman spoke first. "You know we're not going to let either of those things happen.

Reed didn't move. His eyes flicked over the squad's formation, cataloguing their spacing, the angle of descent, firing arcs, even now, the mathematician behind the man was at work. It didn't look good. This felt like a sum he couldn't solve. He leaned over to his wife and spoke as quietly as possible.

"Sue, this doesn't look good. You'll need to keep your shield up as long as possible."

"Naturally."

Elbridge narrowed his eyes. "What was that freaks? You spitting out yer last words?" He laughed again.

Reed back at Elbridge. "Shield. Now."

In one fluid motion, Sue dropped into position and threw up a bubble barrier around the two just as the first barrage of gunfire lit the cavern. Bullets slammed against the invisible wall, sizzling and sparking as if the air itself had turned solid. Reed crouched low beside her, already pulling apart the device in her hands they'd been using to trace the anomaly.

"We can't win a firefight." Sue muttered, straining under the pressure as fresh impacts made the barrier shudder. "We need another plan. This is too much for me to attack as well as keep the shield up."

"I'm working on one!" Reed called back over the thundering sound of the gunfire, his fingers pulling wires free with surgical speed. "I can pulse their magnetic cartridges, force a lockout. But I need a fourty seconds and a miracle."

The cavern trembled under sustained fire. Sue groaned, the effort of maintaining the shield clearly taking its toll.

"You've got ten."

Reed tried to work faster. His hands moving as quickly as they could. It felt hopeless, he couldn't connect everything fast enough. In his haste, his grip slipped, a key coupling clattered to the stone floor and bounced out of reach, vanishing through a crack with a sound that felt impossibly loud in the chaos. The shield cracked like glass. The light stuttered. Sue gasped.

Then they were sure they heard a sound behind all the chaos. A low, subdermal thrumming, like distant thunder. The gunfire slowed as even the soldiers noticed it. They could feel a rumbling beneath their boots.

"What is that?" One muttered, still maintaining his fire.

Another stepped back a pace. "It feels like something's moving!"

A soldier screamed as the earth split open beside him and from it poured things not born of the surface world.

Yellow, slick-skinned, almost child-sized but twisted, deformed. Huge eyes glistened wet in the dark, blinking in odd, insectile rhythms. Their limbs were thin but powerful, ending in claws better suited to tunneling than killing though they proved plenty adept at both.

They swarmed like ants, shrieking as they surged from beneath, dragging the man down into the pit they'd clawed open. His screaming cut off halfway through a breath. Another soldier turned to run, one of the creatures leapt onto his back, jaws widening far too much, teeth sinking in. Blood sprayed across the stone.

One by one, the squad was pulled apart some into the ground, others ripped screaming into side passages. Rifles were dropped. Orders turned into pleas. The cavern was chaos, a pit of teeth and panic.

Sue collapsed to a knee, the shield flickering out. Elbridge saw it all, and lost whatever bravado he had left.

"N-no, no, no, NO!" he screamed, stumbling backward, nearly tripping over one of the discarded rifles. The screams of one of his soldiers rang out behind him, and he spun like a cornered rat, weapon raised with his eyes wide. "What are those things?! Jesus Christ - what the hell are those things?!"

A shriek tore through the cavern, not from the creatures, but from the last man in his unit being yanked into a tunnel wall that hadn't existed a moment ago.

Elbridge broke, he turned and ran, dropping his rifle as his fingers began clawing at the damp rock for balance. He shoved past Karras, or what might've been Karras, his body half-draped over a stalagmite, staring with glassy, dead eyes. Elbridge didn't stop, he couldn't stop.

The walls seemed to close in around him. Every turn he took led to more darkness, more sound, scratching, harsh breathing, movement in the periphery. He could feel them behind him, under him, watching him. Something brushed his boot, and he screamed, a high, wheezing sound, almost childlike in pitch. A flashlight flickered behind him, but no help came. No voices. Only the scuttling. The whispering, chittering static of bodies scraping through earth.

He was hyperventilating ragged, quick breaths as he stumbled again and fell face-first into moss. He began crawling on his hands and knees. "Please, please, I didn't sign up for this! I didn't, I didn't know-"

A small, clawed hand reached out of the wall and grabbed his ankle. Elbridge shrieked like a scared child and kicked, boot scraping free. He ran again, sobbing now, incoherently begging for his life. He turned a corner too fast and slammed face-first into something solid and warm. Not a wall.

He staggered back, blinking tears from his eyes. A small, squat figure stood there, unmoving. Almost childlike, but inhuman. Pale yellow skin, too-wide eyes, too many teeth.

It blinked up at him. Tilted its head. Smiled.

Elbridge reached for his pistol, far too slowly. The light on his shoulder died.

---

Reed held one arm around Sue, supporting her in her exhuasted state as he held a stoic face towards the creatures surrounding them. They approached them differently from the soldiers, slowly edging their way closer and closer to the couple, tens of them, maybe a hundred all pouring out of the holes they'd dug and filling the pit Reed and Sue had made their last stand in. He was equal parts intriguied as he was terrified. Was this were their story would end? Miles beneath the surface torn apart by subterranean creatures? For a second he thought such a sci-fi way of ending things wouldn't be so bad. He knew Sue never felt the same.

The creatures got closer and closer, their hallowed breathing filling the room as they squabbled and bickered in some unknown language. Reed naturally felt his fist grow in size, if this was their last stand, he sure as hell wasn't going without a fight.

Just then, a figure appeared at the top of the pit. He was short, hunched, and cloaked in ragged layers of mismatched gear. For now just a silhouette as he waved a staff to the right and called down to the beings.
"Leave them, my children."

With one command the creatures looked up at the figure and grunted in affirmation. The majority of them scuttled back into their holes, but a sparse few remained around the edges of the pit or peeking out of their tunnels. The figure made his way down towards the two.

"Hello Reed, hello Sue."

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

After my next 2-3 posts I’ll be open to collab with anyone if it makes sense within their story! I don’t see the FF moving out of NYC for any adventures in the near future but for anyone else in NYC or who can get there for a storyline I’d be open to collab.

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

@Half Pint made reference to Reed briefly if that's okay

@Sep

Of course! I loved your inclusion there I’m looking forward to Tony and Reed meeting again sometime in the future! Fantastic post also I had a great time reading it!

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

@Courtaud This is such a sick idea!

Teen Titans: Secret Origins - A Re-Imagined DC Canon RP

Megan glanced up at the frozen fool as he began to charge his attack. This was her moment to shine, to show the team what she was made of, that she was an equal amongst her more seasoned comerades. She drew her fist back, charging forward passed Robin as quickly as she could, ready to sock Icicle Jr. straight in the mouth and halt his big attack.

The closer she got, the colder she felt. Her natural weakness was fire, but that's not to say she was strong against the cold. She felt the snow pelting against her skin, it was colder than cold. She'd never felt frost like this before, it was like a blizzard in the arctic. Fear began coursing through her veins, suddenly she didn't feel so confident she could stop this guy, that the three of them could. She turned back just as Robin called out to her, she could see Kyle not far behind racing to join the two. She couldn't stop him, but she could try and protect them.

Megan raised her arms defensively across her face, the sheer force of energy altering her flight path entirely and sending her cartwheeling backwards out of control. She tried her best to remain composed, regain her balance and steady herself in the air. But she was panicking, this was all too much for her to handle. Maybe she should never have come here, or if she had just tried to blend in with the regular humans instead of trying to help others? Who was she kidding, she was no hero, not like the rest of these guys.

Suddenly she felt an arm wrap around her waist, and she realised she wasn't falling anymore. For a heartbeat, Megan thought it might be another attack, until she realized she was no longer tumbling. She blinked and found herself clutched firmly against Robin's side, the two of them swinging low across the frozen street like something out of a spy movie.

Robin twisted midair, cushioning their fall with a practiced roll. Or at least, that had probably been the plan. Instead, the landing was less than graceful, he hit the sidewalk on his back with a painful thud, and she landed right on top of him, her knee awkwardly pressed into his side and one hand smushed against his chest.

"Sorry, force of habit. I know you can fly."

Megan scrambled to get off him, brushing snow out of her hair and trying not to look as mortified as she felt."Sorry! Sorry!" she blurted, hovering a few inches in the air like the ground had personally offended her. "I didn't mean to...um...crash-land.""

Megan blinked, suddenly all too aware of how close they'd landed, her practically sprawled across him like a dropped coat. Her brain, in its infinite wisdom, decided now was a great time to hyperfocus on how warm he was, despite all the ice around them. That wasn't helpful. Not at all. Her ears tingled with the Martian equivalent of a blush. She shook it off.

"Just never pass up an opportunity to rescue a pretty girl." he added with a grin.

She raised an eyebrow, trying not to react, but a flicker of something small and fluttery lodged in her stomach anyway. That was probably just from the turbulence, right?

Right.

Before either of them could say anything else, Icicle Jr.'s bellow ripped across the block, jolting them both back to the moment. A cone of ice tore its way through the ground towards them quicker than they could react. Megan braced herself for another impact, when a ripple of green flame burst in front of them and redirected the frost safely away.

It was like she blinked and Kyle had appeared in front of them, shouting over the anarchy going on around them. Something felt different about him, he was always confident, but he was like a demon of a man in front of them. She watched in awe as he deftly dodged around Icicle Jrs onslaught and sent a jawbreaker through his ice shield that would surely have broken concrete.

Megan hovered down beside Kyle, her boots pressing into the slush of melted ice.
"Wow, great punch!" She said imitating his strike into thin air.

Her gaze flicked past him, settling on the fountain. Icicle Jr.'s limp body was hanging half out of the fountain, with his head under the water.

"Let me check his mind."

She floated upward slightly, her arms folding across her chest, and reached out with her thoughts. It was like dipping into half-frozen water. Disjointed memories. Panic. Bits of words that didn't form anything solid. Confusion spun in circles around his brain.

"He's out. His brain feels like wet paper..."

Then something shifted. Her brows drew together sharply. A flicker of movment within him. That rising swell of dumb defiance she'd felt in other criminals just before they made one last, bad decision.

"...wait."

Her feet hit the ground just as the villain's head stirred, eyelids cracking open through frost. Megan didn’t hesitate.

She phased through a jagged bank of ice, fist already drawn back. Her whole body moved in a blur of green. The punch wasn't elegant or practiced. But her knuckles cracked against his cheek all the same and he went limp again. She telekinetically dragged him out from the fountain onto dry land.

"I'm not sure if he can drown, but I think it's best not to take any chances."

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

Just so I can keep the continuity of the RP straight in my head, I've got to get clarification on this.

@Lord Wraith murdered Angel, Beast, and Iceman in his first post. @Sep had Iceman make an appearance in his first post, dated two months prior to the start of the game, and get placed into government custody.

Are these conflicting posts, was Bobby taken/given to the Purifiers to be killed after Iron Patriot arrested him, or something else?

@Retired

One is iceman from the X-men and the other is iceman from the hit 1986 film “Top Gun”

Teen Titans: Secret Origins - A Re-Imagined DC Canon RP

@Master Bruce@Hillan I'm just finishing up my post now. Are we thinking Kyle finished off Icicle there? I'm happy to keep the fight going, but honestly I felt that was a pretty epic conclusion lol.

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

These are sick!

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

---

They made their way through the winding corridors of the Baxter Building, taking each turn like they had never left the place at all. It felt like walking through a nightmare. Every room felt like a new liminal space, somewhere they recognised, but had been changed just enough to put them on edge. Where before there was the laughter and nerdy banter of the young geeks that swarmed the building, now there was just sterile silence and the hum of fluorescent lighting. Surveillance cameras tracked them like predators in every room they passed through. The air smelled of ozone and cleaning chemicals instead of burnt coffee and microwave burritos. The heart of the Baxter Building hadn't stopped beating, but it definitely had some poison pumping through its veins now.

Sue led the way, holding a palm-sized tracking device she'd cobbled together a few weeks ago from salvaged lab scrap and a stripped-down Agency scanner. It looked like a half-gutted remote control, copper wiring exposed along the sides, the screen flickering every so often from a soldering fault she hadn't had time to fix. She'd tuned it specifically to pick up the exotic radiation signature beneath the Baxter Building. A steady pulse echoed on the small display, a glowing dot blinking in rhythmic intervals that was bringing them closer to whatever was beneath the building.

"Getting closer." she muttered, more to herself than to Reed. Metallic doors slid open, letting them into a room with various scientists in lab coats working at their desks on computers or gazing through microscopes. A few of them glanced up at the pair, but the majority were too engrossed in their work to notice the would-be handymen enter. Sue nudged reed with her elbow and nodded her head towards the back wall. "Reed, the old service lift is behind that wall, I'm sure of it. We've got to clear this room if we're going to get to the sub-basement."

Reed gave a short nod, eyes scanning the room with quiet calculation. "Alright. let me handle this." Without waiting for a reply, he stepped forward spoke with authority. "Excuse me," he said loudly, addressing the room. Heads turned. "We've got a priority-level systems maintenance request from LordTech, tied to one of the bio-refrigerant lines in this room. Might be a pressure fault. Not sure what they've done to your coolant system, but if that thing blows it'll take half your sequencing array with it."

That got their attention. One of the younger researchers stood up. "I didn't get anything flagged on my work queue."

"Because it's not in your queue." Reed shot back, with a look that could kill. "It's in the emergency failsafe log. Go ask whoever's running ops upstairs if you want to double-check. I'll be here, trying to fix your mistake and make sure you don't all end up doing gene therapy in a puddle of melted alloy."

There was an awkward pause. Another scientist looked uncertain, but the threat of bureaucratic disaster and blown equipment was enough to stir motion. Several people got up, a few murmuring to one another, and within a minute the room had mostly emptied, either in search of confirmation or unwilling to be nearby if the 'pressure fault' went bad.

Sue sidled up next to Reed as he watched the last of the researchers leave the room. "That was actually quite impressive! Much better than talking to the security at the gate."

Reed smirked. "I spent most of my young life writing protocols like that, no one wants to be the one at fault when the boss comes down, that I know for sure."

"Preach." Sue replied, turning to face the back wall. "Looks like they walled over the service lift, this might be trickier than we thought." She moved closer, running her hand along the wall trying to find any groove or marking that might make this easier. With a deep breath she focused her energy and the wall disappeared, turning completely invisible under her touch, revealing the lift just behind. "Bingo." She started using her other hand to knock on the wall, trying to find any soft spot they could use to break through.

Eventually, she did and a smile grew on her face. She had to admit, this was all very exciting. It felt like they were Mr. and Mrs. Smith, on a secret mission to infiltrate the evil scientists lair. She took a step back, putting her hands on her hips, taking one last look at the wall.

"Alright, Reed I think it's time for your talen-" She stopped mid sentence as she turned to see her fiancé sitting at one of the desks typing away on one of the computers. "Reed, what exactly do you think you're doing?"

Reed's hands moved across the keyboard like he was playing a familiar piano piece. "Their system's running duplicate diagnostics loops." He murmured. "That's why everything's lagging."

Sue moved closer and leaned over the desk, staring at the computer screen. "Reed we're breaking in to Lord's research hub and your take away is that you want to help him speed up his system?"

There was a beat of silence as Reed stopped typing. "Fair point." pushing down on the backspace key and deleting several lines of code as he spoke. "It's just weird how inefficent this all is. They're running the same analysis script through two different subroutines, wasting half their memory allocation every cycle. It's like trying to proofread your own email by CC'ing yourself twelve times." He pushed himself away from the desk and rose to his feet, happier now knowing he'd just given whatever IT team oversaw this building the biggest headache they'd ever had. "I can't believe they replaced us with these amateurs!"

Sue smiled back at him, laughing slightly. "Alright, genius, Lift's behind door number one." She pointed towards the wall with her thumb.

Reed didn't respond immediately. Instead, he took a step back and drew a long, deliberate breath. His arm began to stretch, the fibers of his body elongating as if his skeleton were made of taffy and his muscles reknitted themselves on the fly. His hand swelled, fingers widening, palm expanding until it was nearly the size of a manhole cover.

"Going with the oversized fist approach?" Sue asked, amused. "Classic."

"Newton's Second Law," Reed muttered. "Force equals mass times acceleration. I just happen to have a very variable approach to mass."

Then, with surprising speed, he brought the enormous fist back and slammed it forward into the wall like a whip. There was a deafening CRACK-THOOM, like a wrecking ball hitting the side of a bunker. Dust exploded outward in a gray cloud as a spiderweb of fractures raced through the panel. On the second blow, the whole section buckled inward and collapsed in a shower of fractured cement and shredded insulation, revealing the old service lift shaft behind it.

Sue shielded her eyes from the dust, coughing once and waving her hand. "Subtle, as always."

Reed flexed his now-normal hand, shaking off bits of concrete. "It's a lost art."

The air beyond the breach was stale and cold, whispering out from the dark shaft like breath from a tomb. The old lift was still intact, just barely. Rust gnawed at the walls, and old warning signs peeled from metal long since stripped of polish. It didn't look like the most steady thing in the world, but it was this or nothing. They stepped inside and glanced at the controls. Reed tried the switch a few times, frowning as only small shudders of power rippled through the frame. The lift groaned but refused to budge more than an inch with each attempt.

"Motor's still got juice." he muttered, flipping open a scorched panel to reroute the auxiliary relay. "But something's jamming the—"

As they struggled with the controls the galloping sounds of boots filled the room. Within seconds, armed security poured into the lab. A dozen men and women in full tactical gear swept into formation, rifles raised and pointing at the couple. They fanned out in a crescent, surrounding the lift like wolves circling a cornered deer.

"Freeze!" barked the commanding officer, his voice amplified through a helmet speaker. "You are trespassing on restricted U.S. government property! Comply immediately and submit to a detention centre under Order 619-B or we will open fire!"

The two glanced sheepishly at each other. Sue quietly wished their disguise had included masks when she'd planned their infiltration. Becoming an enemy of the state wasn't exactly on her to do list for the day. They both slowly raised their hands as the security forces edged closer. Suddenly, a barely visible bubble shield appeared.

Sue's shield shimmered as the first volley of bullets slammed into it, flattening harmlessly against the invisible surface. She gritted her teeth, hand outstretched, maintaining the barrier's curvature while focusing her other palm outward. With a twitch of her fingers, a razor-thin force construct lanced through the air, slamming into a guard's chestplate and knocking him off his feet.

"Never a dull moment." she muttered, launching another sharp-edged disc that clipped a rifle clean from a second guard's hands.

Reed stayed just behind her, crouched low inside the lift as his arms snapped outward through narrow gaps in the shield. One fist stretched and coiled like a whip, socking a soldier square in the visor with enough force to drop him. Another limb snaked around a desk, sweeping it forward to scatter two others.

Sue's shield flickered for a heartbeat as she redirected a chunk of its mass into a sudden spike that jutted out and swept a pair of boots out from under a third guard. She pulled it back just in time to block another burst of gunfire.

"We need to move." Reed said, glancing up at the emergency hatch and breaking it open with a punch. Reed hoisted himself halfway through the emergency hatch, eyes scanning the rusted guts of the shaft. "Winch motor's dead." he shouted. "We're not getting anywhere with controls."

"So we're stuck?" Sue called back, still holding the flickering shield as another round of gunfire rattled against it.

"No," Reed said, reaching upward, his arm stretching like a rope of muscle and sinew. "We're going manual!"

Before she could ask what that meant, he shot his other arm out the hatch, snaking it around a thick support beam ten feet above. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he snapped the main elevator cable. The platform lurched violently, Sue stumbled, catching herself just before the shield dropped.

"Reed!"

"Got it!" he shouted, teeth clenched. His body elongated upward, anchoring them as he braced his feet against the inner corners of the lift, stretching like a living suspension line. The whole carriage jerked, then began to descend, guided only by the elasticity of his limbs resisting gravity. Sue held the shield in place against the torrent of gunfire, protecting Reed's ever stretching limbs as the shouts of horror echoed down the elevator shaft from the terrified security team.

"Next time we're taking the stairs!"

"Where's the drama in that?" Reed grunted, inching them down floor by floor, the darkness below rushing up to meet them.

"Whatever's down there better be worth it!" Sue shouted, her shield still deflecting the last desperate shots from above.

Reed winced as his limbs strained under the weight. "Knowing our luck?" he called down. "It's not."

The moment Reed let go, the lift groaned one final time and settled with a juddering thud. A hiss of dust rose around their boots as the two stepped out into darkness. It wasn't what either of them had expected.

Instead of concrete, the corridor before them opened out into a yawning cavern, so vast it seemed to swallow the remnants of the Baxter Building's foundation. Jagged rock walls curved outward like the ribs of a fossilized beast, and far above, the ceiling disappeared into shadows. Glowing strands of bioluminescent fungi clung to the stone, casting a ghostly teal light across the floor in uneven, pulsing waves. Pools of water glimmered at random intervals, reflecting pale light like broken mirrors.

Sue lowered her scanner, forgetting for a moment what they had come here to find. She expected they'd already found it. "How deep does this go?" she whispered, stepping forward. The walls were cracked, eroded by time and what felt like something else entirely. This hadn't been a collapse, it was a tunnel.

"It's a world under a world." Reed replied, trailing behind her, glancing at every wall in awe. His silhouette flickered in the eerie fungal light, stretching toward the unseen distance ahead. "No wonder the signals were scrambled. I've never seen anything like this before."

A faint sound echoed from deeper in the cavern, as though something moved just outside the range of their vision. Then silence again. Reed and Sue both turned instinctively, but saw nothing. Just the cavern, neither of them spoke for fear of the worst.

---

Commander Elbridge dropped the last few feet of rope with a grunt, landing beside the ruined elevator. The rest of his unit fanned out around him s they finished rappelling down behind him, visors scanning the shadows, rifles at the ready.

"Target signatures stopped transmitting thirty seconds ago." one of the techs said over comms. Elbridge continued tapping at a wrist-mounted screen. "Dropped below our grid. You're too low for us to give support." The voice on the radio was already fizzing and cracking due to the bad reception.

"Figures." Elbridge muttered, flicking on his shoulder-mounted floodlight. "Typical nerd shit. It's not like we needed em anyways, right boys?"

A few of the soldiers chuckled or called back in affirmation, their footsteps echoing in the vast space as they fanned out behind him. The sound was swallowed quickly by the cavern's damp vastness.

Elbridge moved like a man who'd kicked in more doors than he'd opened, sweeping his rifle across the darkness with the practice of someone who'd done this a million times. He stepped over a strange root, glowing faintly beneath his boot. He didn't seem to notice. Taking a moment to stand and survey the area ahead before addressing his team.

"These meta scum bleed like the rest of us." he boomed "Stretchy arms and invisible shields or not, bullets'll still do the trick. Sweep formation, stay tight. I want eyes on them before they start pulling that sci-fi crap. Shoot on sight."