Story 2: The Maiden and the Dragon

This story originally appeared in Action Comics #27

Page 1: Aside

‘Meridian City is known for the breadth and variety of its nightclub scene, powered in part by an ordinance requiring a minimum of live entertainment for acquisition of a liquor license. This makes the UP capital a launch pad for any number of future interstellar acts….’ UP Tourist Guide, 2998 edition A jumble of images across the first row of the page, overlapping of a young woman with ivory skin and bright red hair lifting her head off the street, of the pool of blood from the small cut on her temple, of the small spoking pool of something else next to it, of the broken heel of her shoe, of the flight of stairs behind her, of her small green reptile-skin purse lying just next to where she landed, many of the contents of which strewn across the street, all illuminated by the neon holo-lights of the second floor nightclub at the top of the stairs.

The next row is one long panel of the street, showing it is twilight in Meridian City in the entertainment district, with multiple levels of street and storefronts. It’s quiet on the level she’s at, the access roads under the main streets, which would be busy during the daylight but at night are quiet. There are overlapping panels across the bottom of the page of the girl’s hand going into the purse, pulling out a handkerchief and then an electronic key pass that lights when she touches it to read “Hotel Diplomatique”. These panels have narrative captions/thought balloons.

“Ugh… must have tripped. Head fuzzy. Mouth burning. Where am I? Who am…Hotel. I must have a room. Where...There!”

To the far right of the panel we can see the girl’s face, and she is holding a cloth up to her head with one hand and looking down the street, where the a matching emblem for Hotel Diplomatique is visible.

The third row are more stable panels: the girl slumped inside the hotel elevator, trying to make the key pass spit out more data; her staggering into the hotel room, which is small but well-kept with several suitcases piled in one corner; her collapsing onto the bed. She is no longer bleeding, but there’s a bruise forming on her pale, pale skin.

“Room 1622. Yes, I get that. Who rented the room, you stupid thing? Give me a name.”

“Bags. Communicator. I can call management. Check bags. Tomorrow.”

“Bed. Sleep. Can’t stay up. Who hit me?”

Page 2: Metal Lass, Bubble Boy, Miss Anima

BUBBLE BOY

The first row is a long establishing shot of the Meridian City University biotechnology department, which is all white and glass and chrome and science-fictiony looking. There are anatomical holos floating at several places across the shot showing various layers of interior of various different species from various different planets. There are a few students in the room, but the panel composition focuses your eye on three Tallagi: one lovely young woman, a somewhat gruff looking young and the younger Gorvo Van approaching. (Tellag have blue and green skin with mottled patterns. The young woman is a brilliant indigo, with a mottled swirling design around her neck to her ears. The man is a very pale slate blue, almost grey, with a mottled symmetrical design on his face.)

“Meridian City University’s Biotechnology Department is a top tier research facility for comparing the various physiologies across UP Space. For practical reasons their access to specimens is limited, but Darvish Mal of Tellag has recently arranged a grant for the study of her home world’s fauna on one of the city’s trailing platforms, over the complaints of several concerned local citizens….” New Meridian Daily Planet, last weeks’ edition.

On the overlap panels we see Gorvo approaching Darvish and the other Tellag man. The other man is clearly crowding Darvish’s space.

“I’m just saying it’s worth more private research…” the man is pressing her.

“Hardo, this is not a conversation I want to have right now. Or ever, honestly,” Ms. Mal responds

Gorvo bustles up with three coffee-analogs balanced in a force-field bubble. "Here we are, refreshments!" he declares as he less than deftly places one for Darvish on the nearby counter-top but manages to spill some of Hardo's down the front of his force-field. It runs quickly down the field to form a brown puddle are Hardo's feet.

'Oops. I'm so sorry, Hardo. Don't move, I'll mop it up,' he says as he pushes between the Tallagi with a hastily grabbed absorbent cloth in his hand, smearing more coffee up and down Hardo's force field in the process. With a subtle squint of concentration, Gorvo expands his field gently to reinforce the gap.

Hardo takes a step back under the pressure, and gives Gorvo a glare through the now brown tinted force field that’s hard to interpret – part anger, part jealousy –and before he drops his own field and steps back a pace. The coffee, now hanging unsupported, rains down on Gorvo’s field. Hardo looks back up at Darvish. “Fine. Now you’re famous and you won’t help a planet-mate. Hope that works for you.” He then storms out of the room.

“Whew,” Dervash says, leaning up against the lab bench, cradling her coffee. “Hardo may be harmless, but he’s sure exhausting. “Thanks for the assist and coffee, Gordo. You saved my whole morning.”

The final panel of the sequence is Gorvo’s communicator beeping on the Legion channel, with a message from Patin

EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY. GO TO THE HOTEL...

“Oh wow! Sorry, got to go,” Gorvo calls back over his shoulder as he rushes for the exit. “Darvish, I left a microbe agitator running. Please save those little critters before they explode. Back soon!”

MISS ANIMA

The second row of the page is an establishing shot of the Center for Last Chance Medicine, a small building in an unassuming part of the city, easily lost inside the rows of other more prestigious buildings around it. It’s a very thin, building, the usual dozens of stories tall for Meridian City, and we see it shot at an angle to get the whole of it in – the foundations at the lower level corner of the panel and the spire on the upper right. “The Center for Last Chance Medicine exists solely on Charakesh due to the overlapping laws of the UP member species. More established medical providers consider the Center’s willingness to use treatment regimens of uncertain efficacy on the otherwise terminally ill to be an affront to medical ethics or perhaps an elaborate grift, but there are always desperate people willing to gamble, and the occasional patient of beats the odds, sometimes in spectacular ways….” UP Tourist Guide, 2998 edition.

The series of overlapping panels run across the page are of Jinnjahl talking with Dr. Plact, the administrator for her department, a Wynathian man of extreme age.

“I want to thank you again for your assistance. Mr. Wyla is still in suspended animation, but your allowing us to communicate with him indirectly via portraiture is a great boon. A great boon.”

"It's ... only *mostly* him," Jinnjahl points out. "Has he said anything useful for treatment?"

"Quite possibly. We have a much better idea now of the nature of his negative space experiments than we did before, and how they might have gone awry. Gone awry."

"I don't understand negative space," Jinnjahl says, "which would not necessarily prevent someone I have animated from understanding negative space, but -- well, obviously that's not something we've tested. So I hope someone will be testing anything Mr. Wyla's image told them ?"

"Oh absolutely, absolutely. Mans Wyla is the UPs greatest mind in negative space physics. We have people looking over his notes who are very happy. Very happy."

"Just ... pass on that the notes were obtained using untested experimental means?" **Um, obtained through the Center for Last-Chance Medicine is probably enough of a warning there. And I think he's trying to help Mans Wyla, but I also think he's so happy because this is good for the Center - and for him, but don't be snotty, Jinnjahl - not because it's good for the patient. But it's not as if it's *bad* for the patient, I think he does think it might end up being *good* for the patient .**

The final panel of the sequence is Jinnjahl’s communicator beeping on the Legion channel, with a message from Patin.

HOTEL DIPLOMATIQUE. DROP -EVERYTHING-. PLEASE

"Uh." Jinnjahl looks at the communicator, then back at her boss's boss's boss. "My friend says there's an emergency. I've got to go. Is there anyone who could give me a ride?"

METAL LASS

The bottom row of the page is a shot of the Academy, a small compound abutting one of Meridian City’s many parks. There are a half dozen three story ivy-covered buildings, and the whole looks very much like a modest liberal arts college in the 21st century, save that it is surrounded on three sides by the chaotic bustle of the UP capital.

“UP Diplomatic Academy: In addition to training more traditional diplomatic corps the Academy also has classes for citizens of the ‘polite worlds’ – whose social customs are markedly different from the other UP worlds – to train them as ambassadors for their people. Local authorities ask that younger tourists not go out of their way to offend these ambassadors in training…” UP Tourist Guide, 2998 edition.

The series of panels overlapping the bottom of this panel are shots of Dolar on campus, talking to one of the Wynathian instructors. In the first he is approaching her, making a credible approximation of the proper form for opening a conversation.

“Miss Ahn, a moment. Have you encountered this fellow student in the last two days?” The teacher holds out a holo-globe of an ivory skinned young woman with bright red hair.

“My apologies, but I have not. I imagine you are asking because you are aware that we share a class?” Dolar unconsciously shifts into the stance denoting disappointment at being unable to help. “Unfortunately, the class is large and I have not made her acquaintance. But I believe she has not been present for several days."

Her teacher adopts a stance of graciously treating the apology as unnecessary, "We are always watchful when new students arrive given the city's chaotic diversity."

He shifts stance to mild request from a superior "Her name is Jandar Cee. Should you locate her please ask her to call the office. She is a Singeorgi and we want to insure she keeps her medication schedule."

He falls very comfortably into to the teacher to student response stance "The Singeorgi are biologically warriors with a strong fight or flight reflex; honor codes and medications help even their responses and prevent... flare ups."

The last panel of the sequence is Dolar’s communicator beeping on the Legion channel, with a message from Patin.

PLEASE COME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. THE HOTEL -- ITS ON

The shock and concern is plain on Dolar’s face, as she holds up the message for her teacher to read. “I hope this is not relevant, but given what you have told me, we may have found her ."

Page 3: Diskette, Mr. Music

SPLASH PAGE

“One of the Science Police’s primary responsibilities is emergency response. Given the density of the city and the strength of its construction materials full-fledged building fires are rare, but this newspaper questions whether the SPs are truly prepared should the worst happen.” New Meridian Daily Planet Editorial, 2985

A close-up on Patin's watch for a moment in a micro-panel follows, also on the splash: “FIRE.”

The whole of the page is a shot of the Hotel Diplomatique ablaze about two thirds of the way up – flames have engulfed the 15th-18th of the 25 floors, with emergency vehicles on the ground around it and some smallships trying to angle into position to assist. Diskette is standing on one of her disks anchored via warp to the rooftop of a nearby building and is seen to be floating near the fire, while the run of panels across the bottom of the page show Mr. Music running towards a group of emergency responders.

Diskette can see some people on the higher floors, while Mr. Music can see the panic in the fleeing crowd, the fear from the SP and the head of the SP commenting on how they’re lucky this happened after most of the guests were out for the day, but there are still people trapped.

DISKETTE

Diskette runs on a sequence of three disks, jumps, swings off something in mid-air (another disk, this one anchored to a lampost or other solid bar), lands crouching in mid-air, and jumps from there into one of the windows near where she saw someone trapped, using yet another disk to absorb the impact and flying glass.

She crashes through the window unscathed and is hit with the heat rising off of the floor below her and the haze of rising smoke. The two men who had been trying to lever the window open are stunned by her appearance – both in the impossibility of her arrival and her super-heroic costume.

Patin has clearly gone shopping since we saw her last. Her hair--normally white, is now dyed in rainbow streaks and held back by a plain tiara, and while her costume is a white jumpsuit, it's accented by a very short rainbow skirt reminiscent of 20th Century skater's costumes and calf-high boots.

“Miss, everyone is supposed to be getting OUT!” of the men says and the other whacks him upside the head

“Can’t you see she’s a super-hero? She’s just gonna fly us out of here!”

"Sorry, no flying today, but I'll absolutely get you out of here. First, though ..."

Down on the ground, a firefighter hears a voice from nowhere, very distinctly in her ear. "I'm going to borrow your stream for a few moments, can you hold it steady, please? Thanks," before the stream of fluid she had been shooting towards the fire suddenly starts vanishing into mid-air. Meanwhile, Diskette strikes a pose, with one hand braced against a small black disk, and the other quickly sprays the area with a stream of fire retardant with another disk.

MR. MUSIC

Ode moves to the biggest crowd of panicking people and plays to calm them down. If the SP are among them, he hopes to get them talking about how many people need rescuing and where they are. He also does try not to be in a position to get hit by falling or burning debris.

Ode slides under one of the mild repellor fields the SPs set up to keep the crowds protected and lights up a musical riff that snags everyone’s attention and pulls the panic out of the immediate crowd. He see SP Zendak in the crowd, who also spots him and moves over to the costumed young guitarist, who is now dressed in a blue outfit, kind of like a rock star's, bell bottom pants, V-neck top to show off the chest, shiny.

“Am I glad to see you,” Zendak says. “The fire suppression in the building isn’t working – its putting out the fire in some areas just to have it pop back up in another, sometimes back in the same spot. We have a lot of people trying to move down the emergency stairs who are starting to panic, and a handful of people trapped on the higher floors.”

"Huh. That's odd, right?"

"You bet it is," Zendak nods. "Never seen anything like it. Once something's foamed down it really shouldn't be able to burn again. We have a lot of people trying to move down the emergency stairs who are starting to panic, and a handful of people trapped on the higher floors.

“How big a crowd can you calm down?”

"Let's find out."

DISKETTE

The rainbow-tressed teen has just finished spraying down the hallway, buying herself time for her next step in trying to rescue two men from the hotel. As she’s focusing her concentration another figure stumbles into view: She has ivory skin, ginger hair and a large bruise on the side of her head with a trickle of blood coming down from a cut. She’s dressed in a purple skirt and a midriff bearing purple top - like she had been out clubbing - and is clearly unsteady on her feet. Her eyes are focused downward and no one can be sure that she’s seen them yet.

“Hey, lady, over here,” one of the two men calls, waving his arm to call the teen over to their rescuer.

The girl jerks her head up, clearly startled at the noise, and inhales as if to call back, but instead unleashes a gout of flame from her mouth that lances towards them.

Diskette concentrates, trying desperately to push her power, to make it something like what it should be, to make a hole in space that would deflect the flame blast on one side and give the two men a means of egress to the ground on the other .

Unfortunately it doesn’t work. She manages to catch the flame blast with the solid floor of his disk, but it remains a scant foot in diameter, too small to do anything useful…

Page 4-7: Everyone

This is a pair of enormous two page spreads of the Hotel Diplomatique fire from above the skyline angled to be able to take in much of the city. It bleeds directly off the page to give the scope of the crisis in the city. The panels for the Legionnaires are overlaying that massive panorama

MR. MUSIC

“Let’s find out.” Ode pushes his way through the crowd, Zendak communicating ahead to make way for the young hero. He makes to the perfect spot where the buildings around them would form a natural amphitheater that would reflect his music all around them.

He takes a deep breath, calming himself, and says, "Never know till you try."

Then, he starts playing again.

The music, quiet singing and guitar at first, touches the people near him, and then his decade of training with the Space Monks of Cosmic Harmony lets him project perfectly, his voice soaring over the crowd, echoing against the metal and glass canyon and touching nearly every heart and mind. As usual not everyone is calmed, but so many are that the near stampede in the stairs is averted, with people moving quickly under the SPs direction.

This is shown in a kaleidoscope of scenes, opening with people ready to crush each other to dozens of faces in near panic and then not, to those opening people carrying someone else down the stairs.

Unfortunately the roaring of the fire on the burning floors, the crackle and sputter of the foam suppressant systems and the screams of panic prevent the music from touching the people on those floors.

DISKETTE

Diskette is on the floor above the worst of the fire. She is trying to rescue two civilians and is facing off against Dragon Maiden, who is unsteady, has a visible head wound and breathes fire.

Patin opens up a small portal to the nearest copter . "This is Diskette--Can you make a pickup at the window I broke to get in here? I'm going to send some people out; it's mostly stable for now, but they can't stay here."

“What?!?” the pilot says, then an affirmative “We saw where you went in. Moving to assist….”

"Get behind me, there should be a pickup soon." She puts herself between the dragon girl and other rescuees. "You need help. You were hit on the head, and I think you may have started this fire. Please don't breathe fire on me...here's a datapad if you can't talk without...igniting."

• • She doesn't seem hostile,** Diskette thinks, **But she's dangerous. At least this way I can keep her attention on me if we can't get out of this without fighting .**

MISS ANIMA

Miss Anima arrives on a hovercycle on autopilot, to a rear exit designed to let taxis drop off and pick up passengers, where a turn-around exits onto three streets. She takes advantage of weighing much less than its expected passenger load to overgun the hover and let it take her clear up to the patio cover shielding arriving and departing passengers from inclement weather, where she will be visible to the Science Police and departing hotel guests below, but not in the way.

She's wearing a white jumpsuit with a multicolored pleated skirt (each pleat is a different color; and has correspondingly colored pencils, along with a black and/or grey pencil, in a pocket inside the pleat. This it helps her keep track of which of the colored pencils are where) and a black-and-white jacket. She reaches into one of many jacket pockets to take out a small loose-leaf book, flips it open to an early page, and touches a familiar picture.

With a shimmer of light her uncle appears, “And where are we today, Little One?”

Miss Anima gestures at the burning building in front of them, and says, "I don't know if they need help evacuating, but I'm sure they need help searching ."

Her uncle nods, and says "The crowds are under control, Little One. But there are six people on the burning floors. An older man who is barely alive at the center of the fire, and a woman who is not far from him. Two floors above them are four others - two men who are scared, and two young women who are fighting. One of the women is extremely angry and scared. I can barely sense thoughts in her. The other doesn't like herself very much right now."

Miss Anima hits the all-Legionnaires channel and says, in a voice trying to project to the science police below, "Six people on the floors on fire: man nearly dead in the middle of the fire, woman near him; two men and two women two floors up. The women are fighting."

To her uncle, "Do you think you could guide new arrivals in?"

"I can try, yes."

METAL LASS

Metal Lass tears up to Miss Anima and the other Slan at top speed, silver skirt swirling, her body signaling deep-concern-but-not-yet-panic. “Do you know whether any members of the Legion are in there now? I have learned something they need to know!"

Miss Anima looks at her uncle's animated essence. "Are any of the minds near the fire those of the teenagers helping last time you were active?"

"One of the fighters, yes."

DISKETTE

The wounded girl in the hotel looks at Diskette with a confused expression that turns to fear, and then unleashes another gout of flame from her mouth that rakes along the ceiling, then down the wall where Diskette and the two men had been standing a second before the young Legionnaire had grabbed both of them and twisted the three of them impossibly out of the way. The flame blast finishes on the floor which, already weakened from the fire below, collapses.

The whole section of wall falls away with a sickening groan, raining flaming debris, two panicked men and one rainbow clad super-heroine towards the street. Before she falls Diskette sees the look in the young woman's eyes turn to panic as she turns and bolts back into the building.

METAL LASS & BUBBLE BOY

Dolar’s face falls and she whispers “no!” as she reaches into her satchel and pulls out a graceful-looking, abstractly shaped titanium sculpture. Face set with determination, she throws it toward the space where the people are falling and spins into “The Storm Centers And Scatters.” As the metal sculpture hits the ground, it also grows upward toward the falling men, its top spreading into a wide funnel.

Running through the crowd, Govro appears, wearing a white jumpsuit with royal blue piping on sleeves, collar and cuffs, gloves, belt and chunky boots.

Gorvo gestures and flings a series of broad, pizza-shaped force bubbles upwards. They're relatively soft and flimsy, but should serve to cushion a fall long enough to redirect the falling victims towards the mouth of the sculpture.

He shapes his personal force-field into a cone in front of his mouth to amplify his voice. "Try to go limp! We've got you!"

**Stars and shards, I hope we've got you**

The trio of shapes bang into the blue lights suddenly floating in mid-air, bounding once and sliding along the translucent force into the funnel, which carries the three of them to the ground in a tumble. Bubble Boy is able to close the force field before the burning rubble can follow the falling figures.

WHOLE TEAM, A MINUTE LATER…

Diskette arrives on the ground, helping make sure "her rescuees" are all right, then separates and joins the rest of the group. "Thanks for the rescue, Bubble Boy. Again. There's a girl there; she breathes fire and I think she probably started the fire, but...something's off; she's been hit on the head and seems out of it. I tried to talk to her, but I couldn't get through; she spooked and blew us out of the window."

“Her name,” says Dolar, “is Jandar Cee. She is a Singeorgi student at the Diplomatic Academy, and although I do not know her well, she is normally quite friendly. But my teachers believe she has missed at least one dose, if not more, of the medicine that suppresses her fear reflex. And since she is afraid,” - Dolar points at the burning building - “her body tries to protect her.” As she speaks, she shifts into the form denoting resignation to the obvious. “We must calm her somehow, or she will continue to spout fire.” Her eyebrows quirk upward. “Being inside a burning building she does not know the way out of probably is not helping her calm herself. Does anyone have ideas how we can help ?"

Jinnjahl points up at the gravskimmer nearest the hole in the wall. "I bet it has a loudspeaker, or someone could boost Mr. Music just outside the fire so the smoke doesn't stop him from singing? Also, my uncle -" she nods at her uncle's animated image - "says there are two more trapped, right in the center of things, and that the man is nearly dead and the woman is near him."

Dolar looks at Gorvo. “Are your force fields flame-proof? If so, perhaps you and Mr. Music could combine calming with containment.”

"That's a great idea. I should be able to hold back the flames and heat, over a limited area at least. I'm not sure how well music will penetrate though." He turns to Ode and asks. "Can you work your music round corners? I can make a force-wall and have the sound travel over the top."

"I can get your music where it needs to go," Diskette says. "The most useful thing my disks do is reach hard to reach places, after all."

Ode nods slowly, brow furrowed. "I'm not sure calming her works as well if we're locking her inside a force field, but... let's give it a try."

"I guess that leaves me and Metal Lass for the other two," Miss Anima says, looking dubious but reaching for another notebook.

MISS ANIMA AND METAL LASS

Dolar’s limbs shift into a form proclaiming resolution in the face of fear. “If you can find them quickly, I can try to strengthen the beams along our route. But we should ask the SP to have a gravskim waiting for us near a window. We may need to exit quickly."

"And we should go now, before the fire gets worse or kills the injured," Jinnjahl says, heading for the gravskimmer and pocketing a few sketches as she goes. "If I say 'gasp,' take a quick breath and hold it. If I use this one it should put out a lot of fire, but it does that by pretending to be oxygen, so we won't want to breathe until the fire has used it all up. Which -" her eyes go to the hotel - "shouldn't take long."

The gravskim pilot - who due to the law of the conservation of NPCs turns out to be Officer Erin - has the five Legionnaires on the roof of her vehicle as she brings it up to the burning floors.

"Are you sure about this," she asks one last time before the two teens leap into the burning building. (There is either a blown out window or Metal lass can peel part of the wall back.)

"We're going to give it a try," Miss Anima says, "and there's no time to spare." **Or I'd have five hundred pounds of fire extinguisher on a wheelbarrow. Next time we discuss planning, start drawing!** She gets ready to jump. "We're not promising not to come back without them or anything silly like that, though." Miss Metal’s skirts whip around her legs as she lands, spins to face Miss Anima, and shouts “Which way?”

"In, then right!" Miss Anima jumps.

Metal Lass catches her hand to steady her landing. Together, they run.

Miss Anima keeps an eye out for fire extinguishers, fire hoses, etc. She's got several drawn in her kit, but apart from the waste of energy, they're either part of a generalized kit or not very portable. She's considering using a large one anyway, just to cover their line of retreat in the 30th century equivalent of fireproof gel.

As they rush through the halls, Miss Metal tries to feel what the metal in the building is doing - trying to sense areas that are weakened, so they can avoid them, if possible. She shapes her hands and moves her arms, feeling the flow of the metal in the building, and prepares herself with the floors framework Both girls scan the smoke filled hallway as best they can, trying to see through the haze and listen through the flames. Miss Anima is following her uncle's instructions as best she can, but the chaos around her makes it very difficult. They get to the right spot in the wall, but there's no doorway, and it's Metal Lass who is able to find that this room, for some architectural whim, has its door off line from the rest, hidden behind a collapsed piece of wall.

Miss Anima fumbles for the knob, and then yanks her hand back, thinking, **Okay, the public safety warnings AREN'T overkill, I have every reason to think the inside of that room is on fire and I almost tried to just open it anyway.** She touches the door with the back of one hand, reaching inside her costume for one of the sketches she picked up on her way up with the other.

The door isn’t blisteringly hot, which is good. It’s likely that whoever is in there is suffering more from heat and smoke than actual flame.

Metal Lass grits her teeth and looks over at Miss Anima. “Ready? Let’s get this door open and see what we’re up against.”

"You open it," Miss Anima returns, crouching low to the ground with her hair unbraiding itself and spreading around, "I'll look for them. Can you use metal to carry them, or do I need to bring out someone strong?"

“Wait until I see whether my idea will work.” With that, Metal Lass flicks the door open.

The door pops opens, and there is blessedly no gout of flame. The room past the door is deeply smoke filled, and there is no sign of movement from within. Miss Anima presumes 'wait' was on hauling people out, not searching for them, and goes in, breathing as little as possible and as low to the ground as possible, tiny tentacles spreading from her head and peeking out from the tops of both shoes. She guesses at the center of the room and tries to spiral out from there. If Uncle is still around, she'll think a wordless question at him.

She feels the touch of her Uncle's mind for just a moment and then he's gone, doubtless vanished in a sparkle of light. She starts her search pattern but it's clear the heat and smoke are going to get to her no matter how she tries to avoid them. Fortunately it isn't long before she finds the first of the two forms, unmoving but hopefully still alive.

"One here!" She stands still and moves her tentacles around, checking the immediate vicinity, hoping the two were nearby, and making ready to call in reinforcements. If she doesn't find the other... she visualizes where the door is and considers where the other might have been going from here.

Metal Lass peers into the murk. *That cannot be good for any living thing,* she thinks. *No time to clear it. I must try to bring them to me.* Reaching for the floor near Miss Anima’s voice, she spreads her hands into “The Sea is Calm and Deep”, flattening the framework under her friend into a solid sheet, then shifts into series of beckoning movements that draw that plate closer to her.

The floor shifts smoothly, like the waves coming into a shore, and drops Miss Anima and the elderly man at her feet. Both girls can see he’s still breathing, albeit shallowly, and his body is covered with small burns. By all rights he should be dead.

If Miss Anima’s uncle was correct, there is still one more person in that room….

Miss Anima considers alternatives, and stands in the doorway, with a tiny bright flashlight held in several tentacles -- the light won't illuminate anything else, but hopefully it's still visible. "Would you be able to make the floor -" she's interrupted by a coughing jag at the r, and doesn't fight it, letting herself cough and then spitting out murky mucus - "move so that one bit at a time it all goes between us and the light?”

“Like a factory conveyor belt?” Miss Metal broadens her stance and stretches out her fingers. “Let’s try it."

The floor shifts and creaks, and Dolar can feel the stresses in it as she tightens up the metal in some places while she thins it out in others in order to get the desired effect but for now it holds.

The two girls can make out a shape on the floor that is likely humanoid, but someone is going to have to go in to check assuming Metal Lass doesn't further stress he buildings infrastructure.

“Stay here,” Dolar tells Jinnjahl. “But when I return, I think we will need that strong helper to share the load.” Taking a deep breath, she plunges into the murk, stepping carefully on the places she knows the floor is strongest.

Jinnjahl pulls out Yet Another Tiny Sketchpad and flips through to a sketch of a pilot -- Tom Greenland, 30th century redneck pilot, outpatient (crippled for life, not almost dead) at the Center for Last Chance Medicine. No power she knows of(*), but he'd been the sort of farmboy who wrestled cows on a regular basis before he became a pilot, and since he liked showing off without inertial compensators he didn't let any of it go to fat. He also doesn't know how to panic, even when doing so would actually be a good idea.

[BR: the one page insert: Thrilling tales from the institute of last chance medicine!] Best small-craft pilot in the galaxy, just ask him. And he may even be right -- unlikely, it's a big galaxy, but he *was* as good a pilot as he thought he was, and he's as cocky as they come. Unfortunately, he repeatedly ignored the fact that if you keep trying "Hey, ya'll, watch this!" dangerous impossible-looking stunts, no matter how good you are, eventually the law of large numbers catches up with you. He *almost* did ran the asteroid field that last time, he survived the crash, he even got the crippled, pre-stripped for weight to begin with, and airless(**) craft home while crippled himself. It's quite a story, well-told in his video-autobiography, emphasized by the film the craft was taking. (He was tryng to take a video of a certain stunt.)

Of course, she had him in mind as a *pilot* when she added him to her collection of sketches, but carrying someone shouldn't be a problem, and carrying two someones is probably possible (though risks dropping one; she doubts he's trained for it.) And Jinnjahl suspects, from the time she animated him before, that the animated image of Tom Greenfield will think that being in a burning building is kinda cool, cooler for being in there for a real reason instead of just there to take a cool video.

The real Tom Greenland is alive and out of suspension, but still crippled(***) from the collision. He's rich - orders of magnitude lower than R.J. Brande, but he did quite well as a courier / trader, his investments prospered, and his autobiography sold well. He's rich from a perspective of personal expenses, not from a corporate perspective. But money is no substitute for his health, so he has contacts in the Center For Last-Chance Medicine. He did *not* think there was any chance that if Jinnjahl drew him as recovered and animated the image, his recovered self might know how it came about -- it's not as if he's undergoing treatment there often; he has a life, even if it isn't all he wants out of life. However, he thought that the contribution his contact suggested and a few stupid questions were a small price to pay for an afternoon accompanied by his healthy self. Being stunt-piloted by "his healthy self" isn't a replacement for actually doing it himself, but it's a better second place than being piloted by anyone else. (If he didn't want to keep decent relations with the Center for Last-Chance Medicine for that one in ten chance they'll find something with a one in a hundred chance of working, he'd've made Jinnjahl a job offer, to animate the image three or four times a week to take him joyriding. He may *still* make her a one-time offer for a few days, to fly out in a large comfortable craft with a singleship attached, and have his healthy self fly him on the stunt that almost killed him. Get it right this time. Or maybe really kill him. Or maybe he'd ask his double to do it alone and get the video he was after.)

(*) He may have luck. Or human endurance.

(**) Almost airless. Leaching air out of the airlock to recharge his suit saved his life. But the stripped-down ship didn't have a system for that, so he had to improvise. The story occupies two-thirds of a surprisingly gripping chapter of his autobiography giving technical details of the crash.

(***) His spine was crushed and so was the back half of his left arm, shoulder to elbow, inclusive, and a little bit more. After lots of operations, his back has been fused together, the left arm has been mostly deboned (with a plastic bone that supports everything and can be moved in any which way but doesn't have tendons.) He has essentially an exoskeleton prosthesis. The left *hand* works, or they'd've just amputated and replaced it with a full prosthesis. They *did* just amputate his legs and replace them with prostheses, which attach to an exoskeleton prosthesis around his torso. They work okay and have some tricks real legs don't do, but don't *seem* like real legs to him (also, wearing them is uncomfortable and they have to be put on every morning; he also has a hover chair for the first thing in the morning, and it has "arms" to pick him up with because if he's not wearing his prosthetic arm he can't lift himself. While wearing the prostheses, he can do almost everything except twist (spine fused), but he has to be slow and careful. There are some health complications from no spinal signal to his lower torso, which are mostly dealt with by the exoskeleton around his torso that he has to wear for the legs anyway, but it's one of a number of reasons he sees his doctor at least monthly, sometimes weekly.

Dolar inches her way into the room, doing her best to try to reach the remaining victim while holding her breath and trying to minimize the smoke getting into her eyes. Her years of physical training serve her well, and she's able to almost reach the prostrate* form without any personal harm...when the weakened floor gives way under her weight, opening a chasm in the metal reinforced molded plastics to the raging inferno below.... As the chasm opens, Dolar turns her forward momentum into a frantic leap forward, towards the thicker part of the floor where the unconscious humanoid lies. She lands almost on top of the woman, but like someone trying to escape a hole in the ice the added weight there is starting to over-stress that spot. Without some action the whole will collapse shortly.

Miss Anima remind Tom Greenland to *stay back* -- he's a man of action, he might well jump after Metal Lass, and his weight added to hers would probably make the bend worse.

There's no time to *think* which of the sketches Miss Anima has is the best one to use, let alone time to find it, so she uses the best of the ones she'd tucked away for quick animation in case of emergencies.

She jumps *back*, so that the heavy thing she's about to conjure is a little ways farther from the weakened floor, and brings out a HUGE self-contained fire extinguisher, way too heavy for her to carry. If the circuitry works, it'll self-activate; if not, using the manual options (and long hoses) will be her next action (or Tom's, if he's here.)

The space beside her shimmers and is filled with the emergency equipment, sketched at showroom in the weeks since that first team meeting. Immediately sensing the smoke and temperature conditions of the environment the thing sprays foam madly, filling the room with an oxygen extracting chemical. Its weight speeds the floors' collapse in all directions, and Miss Anima is forced to leap clear. Tom grabs her and the unconscious man, yanking both of them to safety.

Inside the room the overwrought floor gives way, sending Metal Lass and the unconscious woman plummeting, but the foam has already done its work and there is no fire under them to consume them.

"AAAAA!" Metal Lass clutches the woman she was supposed to be rescuing as they fall, and the metal sculpture in her satchel stretches out to form a simple curved sheet to protect them from falling debris.

• Don’t land on her!* Dolar thinks, as she tries to get her feet underneath her. As she twists in mid-air, the metal sheet rotates alongside her, flipping upside-down to form a curved slide beneath the falling females.

"Are you all right?" Miss Anima peers down, debating jumping down in a more controlled fashion.

“I seem to be unharmed.” Metal Lass calls through the chasm. “But this woman needs help soon. I can carry her to the window if you can tell the flyer to meet us there!"

"You'll have to open a way out," Miss Anima points out, "And they'll probably see that. But -- I'll go with Tom and the other guy back to the window we came from, they'll definitely see *that*." **We should probably go down the stairs, but - eh, there might be fire blocking the way, and besides, with Tom around for only three minutes I'm not denying him the fun-for-him of jumping into a gravskimmer for an actual reason.**

“Then hurry, before he disappears!” As they vanish from sight, Dolar lifts the unconscious woman and works her way to the nearest window to await pickup .

Tom yells “ya-Hooo” as he leaps from the burning building to the Gravskim, holding the unconscious man.

BUBBLE BOY, DISKETTE, MR. MUSIC

Having deposited the other two Erin pilots the gravskim up three floors to where Miss Anima's uncle said the confused girl was. "Now be careful!" the young SP tells them as they leap into the building.

"We will," Patin says. "I'll lead the way; I've done this before. If only once."

"Better than never," Gorvo agrees and falls in behind Patin, throwing up a force field ahead of them and overhead to guard against sudden ceiling collapse. "If there's a sudden explosion or the ceiling falls on us, I'm likely to bubble the lot of us. Don't be frightened; it's purely instinctual."

Ode nods. "Let's do this."

The three leap to the opening that Diskette fell from earlier - her with her usual flawless grace with Bubble Boy and Mr Music stumbling a little on the landing, but everyone is safely in.

Bubble Boy's force field is protecting them from some of the heat and smoke but it;s still an uncomfortable trek through the building, looking for the wounded and scared young woman whose native power caused such chaos.

Diskette, taking the lead, hears the distinctive sound of flame being breathed out up ahead, to the left, and can ascertain that the girl is in the stairwell. The door to the stairs is partially melted but intact.

"That Dragon girl is definitely in there," Patin says, as a couple of portals appear above and below a couple of loose bricks, which begin falling for a few seconds before accelerating to a blur. "I'm going to get the door open and try to distract her, then you guys can do your thing. Be ready at the signal" she starts running towards the partially melted, closed door, tucking into a roll as a whirring red blur passes over her head and crashes into the door with a bang. She vaults through the suddenly open door, if necessary spraying more borrowed foam some the same poor firefighter, maneuvering to the other side of drug denied, disoriented dragon girl so her friends have a clear shot using yet another pair of disks to vault over her head. (that's 6 or 8 power spent on disk creation, and if I have an action left, it's obviously being used on evasion).

The door shatters under the onslaught and Diskette leaps inside. We have a wonderful shot of her suspended in the air as she’s leaping to the landing one floor over Dragon Maiden – who has moved up to the next floor, so she’s on 16, Ode and Gorvo on 15 and now Patin on 17 – where either Dragon Maiden is blocking Diskettes foam blast with a her flame breath or vice versa.

In any event, the startled girl acted instinctively, but Mr. Music and Bubble Boy go can act with relative impunity.

Ode starts playing "The 59th Street Bridge Song", an old Terran favorite (also known as "Feelin' Groovy"). Slow down, you move too fast You got to make the morning last Just kicking down the cobblestones Looking for fun and feelin’ groovy Ba da da da da da da, feelin’ groovy (Cf. [1])

Mr. Music, taking risks against contracts with powers that were old before Humanity entered into space, tries to soothe the girls mind.

The ginger-tressed girl looks confused at the sound, and Ode thinks he sees it starting to have an effect, but she raises her hand to her head to clear it, touches her scalp wound, winces and her eyes sharpen into hard points.

Gorvo forms a broad, flat force field like a snow shovel and scoops up whatever fire retardant foam is available before attempting to dump it all over the flaming girl.

The blue shimmer of Bobble Boy's force field picks up a mass of foam from the hallway behind him and hurls it at the girl. She spins at the shadow of it approaching and unleashes another gout of flame, but the fire splashes off the force field before Bubble Boy opens it to douse her with the foam. She looks shocked, sputter and clearly got some of it in her mouth. Maybe it will douse her fire?

Diskette prepares to use the stream of foam to block any flame as she tries to talk down the injured teen. "Jandar, right? Jandar Cee? I know you've been hurt; that you don't have your medicine, and you're afraid. But we didn't do any of that; we're trying to help. Listen to the music; please; come back to yourself, and then we can find out who is really responsible for all this."

The girl shudders a little bit, her voice hoarse. "Who? Is that who I am...? am i?" She looks around at the conflagration and blanches, "Did I?...NO!"

Her hands half up to block the results of her actions from her sight she sprints down the stairs, right into Ode and Gorvo. The latter had moved instinctively to block any burst of flame with a force field, but when the girl tries to breathe she gets nothing. Instead she plows into them, engaging in a deft hip check and shove that indicate legitimate combat training. Caught off balance Gorvo doesn't take any damage, but she sends him tumbling off the stairwell into the open air of the shaft...

A second later there is a loud THUD!

The Tallag boy bounces off the stair rail three stories down and falls back onto the stairs, rolling down to the next landing.

"Ouch!" Gorvo gasps as he rattles inside his personal force field like a pea in a can. A little dazed he scrabbles to get his footing and clear his head.

"Gorvo!" cries Ode, distracted by worry.

Diskette says on the communicators "Gorvo, are you all right?"

"I'm OK. Just a bit shaken," Gorvo replies on the comms.

"All right," Diskette says, picking up a piece of rebar broken loose either from the fire, the fight, or both, "Ms Cee, I'd prefer to have you calm down, but if you can't listen, I'll make you." And running/leaping off a combination of conjured disks, she proceeds to charge at Jandar Cee swinging her length of rebar as if it were a slightly ungainly, but still serviceable sword.

The girl turns and again tries to breathe flame at Diskette to stop her charge, and the panic in here eyes in visible to everyone. The flame sputters at first before it catches, but that split second delay is all the time that the warp-powered wonder needs to close the gap and deliver a wicked blow with the length of steel.

Even with her confusion and failed defense the existence of her martial training is evident as she twists her arm up to parry the attack, but the blow lands hard and fast.

The girl drops to the ground, obviously out of commission.

The fires are still roaring around them, and there are still people on the higher floors....

Page 8: Everyone

The rescued and the rescuers are picked up by gravskims. The one holding the five teenagers, Jandar and the two still unconscious people, is heading right to an SP emergency station

Officer Erin, her helmet off and her red hair flowing, has set the gravskim on auto-return as she clambered back to check on the patients.

"We got really lucky here..." she say, adjusting some dials on the face masks over the two unconscious people. "Wynathians would be dead by now."

"My own physiology is too close to Wynthian myself," Patin thinks, "am I really cut out for this kind of work?”

“Do you recognize the injured beings, Officer?” asks Dolar, her hands crooked in the form showing concern for a hurt stranger.

Erin glances over, heedlessly stepping through Dolar's personal space in her rush to get to the other woman. "Personally, no. But the readouts say they are Terrans. No one else could have survived that."

"I *hope* we were lucky," Jinnjahl murmurs. (That is, it's possible that there were enough people left caught in the smoke that for it not to be surprising that there were a pair of Terrans in the group, with just the Terrans surviving.) In a louder voice, she asks, "Do you think they will recover?"

Erin nods, "They should. Terrans can recover from darn near anything."

She turns to the still unconscious Jandar Cee, "What happened to her?"

"We're not sure," Diskette says. "Based on her head injury and disappearance, though, we believe she was attacked and denied her medicine, then left the building where her powers proceeded to go out of control. We'll hopefully be able to learn more when she wakes up; she wasn't talking much earlier.” Dolar shifts into the form that denotes uncertainty in the face of a mystery. "Jandar Cee is a fellow student, and if my impressions are correct, she will be horrified by what has happened."

"So, she's as much a victim as everyone else in the building," says Ode. "We'll need to find out who did this to her.”

"Did this to her?" Erin echoes back. She checks the girl over. "I'm not saying you're wrong, but see the bruising on her ankle? That's consistent with a twist and fall, and these are not the most practical of shoes. The autodoc is showing she still has alcohol in her bloodstream. It's entirely possible she had a couple drinks, took a bad step and had an unlucky landing on her temple."

Honest curiosity plays over Dolar’s face. “How would you discover whether her condition was an unfortunate accident or the result of a deliberate act of violence, Officer?” Her body echoes the question, shifting into a stance that asks for patience from a master toward an ignorant apprentice.

Erin had started moving to the cockpit but stops to answer Dolars question. She tucks off her answers on her fingers while standing just a few inches from the Mentaxian. "Ask her, first and foremost. Canvass the area, find out where she got hurt. Talk to people who might have been there; was there anything odd happening; Check security footage, look for signs of struggle or accident at the site. Have the docs check her wounds, see if there is any particulate matter in it that would say what she hit. It all takes time and footwork, both of which, sad to say, are not in infinite supply."

Ode's brow furrows in thought. "What happened to her medicine?" he asks, tentatively. "If it was an accident, someone should have found it? Right?"

Erin turns to Ode and nods. "And maybe someone will. Zendak has someone combing her room right now. If it's there that tells us something. If it's wherever she got hurt that tells us something else. Accumulate facts, sift clues from facts, arrange clues to truth."

"Glamorous super criminals are in the holo shows, kids." She pauses as she climbs back into the cockpit. "Most of them anyway."

ELSEWHERE

In another part of the city, a large man dressed in black, his pale scalp shaved clean, his body all either the sharp angles of jaw and shoulder or the rounded one of muscles honed for explosive strength, drops a heavy, long handled mace onto a table in a dimly lit, well apportioned room.

Standing nearby is a much smaller man - standing half the other man's height - head equally shaved, darker of skin, pale of eye, with a gemstone embedded in his forehead as a third eye. He too has a long shafted weapon of some sort strapped to his back, but we can only see the shaft of it.

"Is it done?" the smaller man asks.

"Yeah," the first one says, twisting the cap off of some bottled drink and taking a swig, "The girl went down with one hit, then woke up and burned the building down. Told you I could hit her just right..."

"Your mace skill is well known to us. That is why you are paid. Here is a holo of the next."

The image is a teenage boy, green skinned with flanges protruding from his face at several places.

"Another kid? Not much of a challenge, unless this one also has something special."

"Not yet. The others, yes. This one is just... royal."

CONTINUED IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF ACTION COMICS!