"What the hell?!" Collin yelped as Tulpa's manifestation suddenly appeared in his room, in his safe haven. The wispy, ethereal being darted for him, to which he expertly ducked out of the way and rolled to the side. Young as he was, there was still a reason he had been chosen as the Ward's leader. His experience was unmatched by his peers.
"It's a trap! They kn-Ah shit!" he cursed, realizing his voice was no longer projecting away from his own body. Realizing he wasn't hearing anything. Again the tulpa attacked, rerouting its trajectory to capture him. Once again Collin avoided it, kicking off the wall and landing near the door. His hand swiftly took hold of the knob, twisted, and pushed.
Hard. The door refused to budge any, locked in place.
"Decoy!" he cried out, now feeling the cold embrace of his former partner's minion enveloping all around him. Just as Tulpa commanded, it had restrained him but good, solidifying and preventing all but the most essential movement necessary for survival. He could see around him, he could breathe, but that was all.
The Wards rushed the area soon as they could. The sight that greeted them could only be described as pitiful. Collin stood directly in front of the door, clearly in an attempt to escape, but unable to break through the lock before his capture. Alessa was the first to speak to him, doing so only to announce his capture. While her tone could be described as soft and kind, the content was all business. Collin burned at the notion, his eyes reflecting only resentment in his eyes.
She thinks she can do this to me? This pretender? This replacement? Talk down to me?Kendall spoke next, only two words escaping their mouth. A simple sorry. Collin paid it no mind, not even bothering to move his eyes to fixate on them. He had no relationship with Kendall. He had, however a relationship with Elliott, the next to address him. The part timer. The loner, the brooding, angsty nerd who couldn't fit in with all his theatrics and stone walls. Back when Elliott first joined, Collin remembered trying to reach out to Elliott so many times. He felt as though he had made more progress than anybody else in befriending the ever-solitary eccentric, but one slip up, one wrong detail uttered in conversation, the use of information that Collin wouldn't have known without his power, and most of that trust went out the window. Now here Elliott was, prancing about like a court jester, daring to sling names at him. How
dare he?! So easily turn on the only one of the Wards to actually reach out and try to connect? Honestly... It hurt. It hurt, and it showed. Collin's eyes drooped down, as he couldn't look Elliott in the face. He may have been feeding information to the Community, a massive betrayal in itself, but this felt... Personal. Alessa and Elliott were his friends.
"No time to waste interrogating Collin," came the harried accent-heavy voice of Decoy through a nearby intercom. A holographic projector manifested the usual overweight Japanese man that the hero communicated through.
"We're getting a massive influx of reports that the Community has started wreaking havoc across the city! They're attacking rival gangs, city heroes, even a university and causing mass panic in the streets. An emergency bulletin has been placed for all Protectorate heroes and PRT troopers to engage immediately." The teens could see the projection waggling its fingers with incredible speed, as though typing on a keyboard. It was clear that Decoy was not paying them any attention, but instead monitoring a high number of screens, processing an enormous amount of data at once.
"Knock him out, or use some other method of restraint on Collin-kun. Full deployment means I can't spare any troops to engage with the second mole, the one Collin has been feeding information to. It also means that he could get away. I am sorry to say this, but the second mole is none other than one of your senior Protectorate heroes, Protean. He's already deactivated all of the equipment I gave him so I can no longer trace his position, but I'm following him on camera. Presently Protean is on the third floor and heading down the stairs. Engage with extreme caution, Wards. He's personally trained you all and knows what you can do. In terms of threat level, the PRT has labeled Protean a Brute/Changer 7. Go, there is no time to waste!"
Headhunter sought out a better position from which to gather more information, but events with his comrades transpired very quickly. As he descended the outside maintenance ladder, he found himself coming more level with the concourse his allies and enemy were situated in. From here he could witness the entirety of the events that were unfolding...
The green clad figure stopped a moment as he took notice of a sudden increase in foot traffic near him. Civilians were not behaving as expected. A very peculiar development indeed. They stayed nearby, chatting away incessantly about any old thing he didn't care to listen to, but stayed just barely enough away that he wasn't getting crowded. Still, more were coming by the second and hanging around his particular area, moving with him. A most distrustful situation indeed.
Then a flash of sparking energy, a current of electricity arcing through the air struck the green hooded man and he doubled over in pain. A deep, machine-filtered cry of pain emanated about, drawing more attention to him.
"AAAAAAARGGGHH!" The surge of energy was over as quickly as it began, and the figure, small tendrils of black smoke now streaming off from his body, turned on heel to lock eyes with Alloy.
"A hero. You should have aimed for the head."The man flung his arm out, revealing all manner of gadgets and machine pieces hidden beneath his cloak. It was apparent that Alloy had fried a good number of them with that current, but it was equally apparent he had many more to fall back on. He grabbed a high-tech blaster looking gun from his belt and held it toward Alloy. That's when he noticed Thunderbolt, Whimsy, and Chatterbox nearby. He cocked his head.
"Ah, a miscalculation on my part. I recognize the three of you from that night. Villains, then, and with a new recruit. Which means..." He gave pause just long enough to press a button on the palm of his left hand. In an instant he became translucent, like a ghost.
"Your sniper should be around somewhere."He lowered his gun, chuckling softly to himself.
"I must admit, I planned on fleeing this dimension in a few moments. I've had my fun and things were getting very boring. The same old predictable this and that. Very droll. But this is a fascinating development. I need no fancy name or title to carry my clout. Such things are beneath me. If you all wish to serve Dr. Dean, then I shall allow it. Otherwise, leave or die. These are your options."He spoke with an air of certainty, as though what he said were not words but the decree of the world itself. He carried himself like a king, expecting every uttered word to be law. Meanwhile, Headhunter noticed something very crucial. Every since Alloy had struck their enemy with her electricity, the environment changed once again, only this time it stayed. He could see the carnage that had been caused in the attack, the people running about, panicking or controlled by Chatterbox, and everything else. It was all static. It had seemed that whatever was causing the constant shift in the environment had been fried, but he was the only one with the right perspective to be able to tell that.
Leaves