1: The Witches of Salem-Zero

Page 1: the Substitute Heroes

Inside the midtown park bower that is the unofficial HQ of the official Legion of Substitute Heroes, Twidd Davi, aka Gyroscope Lad, is balancing on a narrow branch of the one the nearby trees, looking on with amazement as K’kk’Kshhhh, aka Flora, aka Botany Girl, is playing with the small plant creature that just 15 minutes ago dropped from her body like a fruit falling from a tree. The creature was already gamboling around the bower, showing a speed that its Arcadian mother no longer possesses, if she ever did.

[BR: Gyroscope Lad is at least temporarily part of the Substitutes to bolster their headcount, if not their actual effectiveness. Now is the chance for everyone who doesn't have a Substitute Hero to consider inserting one during the next couple scenes of recruitment.]

"It's a… Flower Child. We Arcadians… will produce them… occasionally. It means I met… my time to flower… but there were… no Arcadian men nearby… to provide. They are considered \to… be an excellent omen."

"Plus… they're very fun!"

[Myles, Diane, Josh, this scene serves two purposes: one it's to give exposition as Flora and Jandar try to convince Rubbermaid to go out for the Legion open call happening today, and two, because Diane's daughter Emily arranged for a birthday present for Diane in the form of a sidekick for one of her PCs. Happy Birthday, Diane!]

Vikrak Sheer, Rubbermaid, can barely contain her excitement as she bounces up and down on the spot. "Flora! You're a mom! SO EXCITING!"

She involuntarily bounces higher and careens off the leafy roof of the bower. "What are you going to call them?"

Flora's laugh is like wind through branches. “Oh Vikrak, I’m not a “mom” —this little one is more like another part of *me*. Though it’ll never grow as large. Or get as smart.” She reaches toward the rounded, multi-legged creature, and it scurries into her arms. “I guess it’s more like I grew a dog.”

“It’ll come to me naturally, but I guess it does need a name that you can all use. What about “Faun”, because it jumps about on its little legs?"

"So more like Robot Boy's Proty, then?", Dragon Girl asks. "But it's not an animal, like a faun, no? It's a plant, just a fast one! What about Rootlet or Rooty?

"Speaking of routes, have you thought about the tryouts today?"

“Only to think that I’m not ready to try again!” Flora exclaims. “But Vikrak should definitely try this time — she's showed she can really bash bad guys!"

Overhead Gyroscope Lad chimes in, "Absolutely! She's the only one of us who hasn't tried out and I think she's straight on the line for it."

“That’s right!” Flora adds. “She’ll bowl them over! What do you think, Vikrak? Will you try?"

Rubbermaid laughs a little self-consciously. "With you pals behind me how could I not apply? If I get rejected I'll be in very fine company! The Legion were dumb not to take you all."

"You won't be, though," Jandar says, "not with what you can do! But they didn't reject me! I...almost had an accident before I tried out and chickened out. And I'm glad I did! I'm not ready, not unless I learn to control myself--and this way I get to hang with you all! But I'm shooting on you to make the leap, Vikrak!"

Vikrak tries to remain calm at the thought of the tryouts, but can't help but bounce up and down in place. "What time do the tryouts begin?"

"9! They had to push it earlier this time since there were so many more applicants expected, they say. I think next time they might have to do multiple rounds with smaller panels acting as a filter--like larger competitions do."

Vikrak suddenly looks worried. "It just struck me. If I do get a place in the Legion, will I have to stop hanging out with you all? You're my friends! I don't want to leave you. Who would tidy the bower? Who would make the hot chocolate, and the caffeinated fertilizer mix for Flora?"

She hugs Flora and Jandar, squeezing tight.

Jander hugs back. "No way! You'd probably be too busy to patrol and practice with us most of the time, but that doesn't mean we can't be -friends-!"

Page 2: Earth Child, Diskette

Patin is standing at the spaceport, dictating things into a Computo brand amanuensis (it’s a small sphere with a orange-red mass of Kirby dots inside) while she waits for the just landed private shuttle to disembark.

<BR: Josh, go ahead and insert whatever Felos or Legion business you think might be relevant here; its Legion try out day so this may be part of it>.

The shuttle lands and the Ranzz family disembarks – Garth, Ayla, and Mekt tumbling down the stairs in their excitement, with Linda Bethsdotter [Beth, any last name would be good, this is a placeholder] their Terran au pair following after. Mr. and Mrs. Ranzz follow after at a more stately pace. The Ranzz family are classic Wynathian: high cheekboned, long-limbed, and the kids bearing an incredible similarity to each other and their parents. They are also immaculately dressed, perfectly coiffed, and have the sort of wealth that immediately blends into non-ostentatious good taste. Except for Garth, whose hair looks like it went through a blender.

The kids spot Patin in her Legionnaire's gear immediately and sprint over, again except for Garth who trips en-route and Beth has to snag by the collar and wrench back to his feet before he ruins his clothes on the pavement.

"It's Diskette! Hi Diskette! We got attacked by pirates and you were there!" Mekt is bouncing up and down with excitement. "But they haven't come back since then, because they're afraid of Linda!" Ayla adds.

"You're letting in new members today?" Garth asks when he catches up. "We could join! We could be Triad Kids because there are three of us!"

"That's not a super power, you dummy," says Mekt with a mean chuckle, "having a cohort is just normal!"

"No, it's not," Diskette says, "but we can't really say what's a super power and what's not. We can only decide what will help, not make things harder. Whether it's a weird power like mine" -- a tiny disk appears in front of her mouth and she blows into it, ruffling the hair of one of the children from the matching disk she created before she drops them, "an acquired ability like the Negative Man's, or a species power--like the human endurance I entirely lack," she smiles at Linda, "it's really all about what you can do with it."

Linda smiles back. "Well, and *how much* things will help. I can only assume that human endurance, or having close teamwork, would help; that doesn't mean it helps enough."

She smiles at the kids. "But, it'll be fun to try, and it's an honor to be invited to apply."

Patin shrugs. "I'm not sure it is, really.

"It's...some of us have unusual backgrounds, like mine, Ode's, or Robot Boy's, but for the most part there's nothing really that elite about us.

"It's what we're trying to do that's extraordinary--the goal, not the members. Trying to become something extraordinary, even if we didn't start out as anything that unusual.

"Don't look on it like an honor. Think of it more as a challenge." Patin grins.

Mrs. Ranzz extends her hand, "Patin, so nice of you to invite us to the ceremony today. The children are, as you can see, interested."

"So they are!" Diskette laughs, but not meanly. "Well, we do have a minimum age, at least unless we decide to waive it for extenuating circumstances. But once they get old enough, they should try out!"

As the group head to the gravskim, Mr. Ranzz manages to sneak in a quiet word with Diskette, "Ms. Felos, if you have a moment after the ceremony, I'd like a chance to talk to you and Mr. Voxis about an… issue of concern."

Patin nods and drops her voice to a similar level. "Of course, Mr. Ranzz. I'll arrange for it."

Page 3 top: Chameleon Boy, Miss Anima, Metal Lass, Robot Boy

In the time before the opening of the second round of Legion tryouts, Miss Anima, Robot Boy and Metal Lass are using their powers to set up the stadium the Legion HQ's 'ballroom'/secondary story space: assembling the podium for the legionnaires to set and the various equipment, targets, weights, and so on for the prospective members to display their powers. Given the bewildering array of 'powers' that candidates have shown in the past this isn't simple, but the diplomatic Dohlar, the prepared Jinnjahl and the analytical Adom are doing their best.

Nearby Ree is in a large leonine shape, stalking in small circles.

"Observation: You appear agitated, Chameleon Boy. Soft sentients often find verbalizing their concerns useful in ameliorating them."

"It -- It's a test," says Chameleon Boy. "Tests make, um, soft sentients nervous, I guess."

“That is completely understandable,” Dolar states, as she deftly twists a pair of barbells together. “I, too, am always nervous before an exam. But Ree, remember that you have succeeded when the stakes were much higher!"

"That was... kind of... almost... by accident, you know," Ree mutters, flushing. "I didn't remember I wasn't... me."

Adom stops working to turn and look directly at Ree. "Gentle Reminder: That might have been true when you rescued Flora from the collapsing Dr. Wyla, but the historical records show you were cognizant of your persona when you assisted in the protection of the Last Chance Institute. Hypothesis: you are allowing fear to cloud an accurate observation of your displayed capabilities."  

Page 3 Bottom: Superboy

Not far from a many-mooned gas gas giant, Superboy materializes in the 30th century, having passed through the kaleidoscopic tunnel that is the visual sense of time travel. The boy of steel quickly realizes that this is not the Terran solar system – he has moved wildly in space as well as time.

Not terribly far away is a satellite, set in a wide but stable orbit around said gas giant. That had been what was pulling him here. A quick examination of the satellite with his super vision reveals a small plaque.

"Greetings! This is the Time Beacon, a designated absolute point in spacetime for calibration and reference for time travel. You are in the Charekesh system, the year is 3017."

Woah. I knew they’d be expecting me sometime, but I didn’t think they’d go to that much trouble. Still, it’s good to have a signpost — I didn’t really appreciate how _much_ time and space there is to get lost in.

[BR: OK, so the time beacon is an established part of LSH continuity, normally located inside the Time Institute in Metropolis on Earth, and Superboy used to just fly forward in time since the LSH was also on Earth. So, this is an explanation as to how he got where he needed to be on his first time-travel attempt. I figure Tok built this working off designs left behind by Manns/Negative Man, but no one wanted to have it, ya'know, in the middle of the city. So it's out by this gas giant: close enough for people to spot the nearby planet, far enough away for Charekesh to activate its defenses if something nasty comes through.]

[Diane, this scene is mostly for Clark to muse, orient himself a bit, find the Legion HQ and then get blown away by the next two page spread.]

A quick scan of the system with that same super-vision reveals some small colonies on the gas giant moons and much larger cities on moving islands inside the sunlight of the lone planet in system's habitable zone.

As he approaches, he's able to make out what must be, based on Bubble Boy's description, Legion HQ…

There it is! I wonder how much time’s passed for them since they visited 1993? What if they’re not kids anymore?

Only one way to find out.

In between him and the Legion building there's a bewildering array of activity - space ships from tiny two person sport craft to small free traders to larger personal ships to industrial shipping cruisers to planetary diplomatic craft to an enormous pleasure liner. The species on them are equally varied, from palm high beings who look like classic faeries to walking amoeba to beings with reptilian skin but trilateral symmetry to ones that would look completely human were it not for the avian wings on their backs. The bulk of the beings riding and operating on the ships appear human but... are they? or is that morphology something that species co-evolve towards, like crabs?

Oh look, there's a ship piloted by sentient crabs.... [ https://xkcd.com/2418/ ]

Okaaay. Feeling like the country bumpkin from an interstellar backwater right now. Which I guess I am, no matter how excited they seemed to meet me.

The traffic is converging on several space stations, each of which seems to be in orbit over a trio of Long Island sized moving platforms, each of those holding covered nearly completely with moving cities that are navigating around the planet to stay inside the daylight zone of the world's slow rotation. He has to take a wide loop around the city to make sure he doesn't interfere with traffic up and down from the station, and that lets him come in at a low angle to the aged spaceship at the docks that matches Bubble Boy's description of the Legion base....

And they sure picked a spot in the middle of all the action for their HQ! No good to wonder how they find people who need help, with all this right at their doorstep.

Cresting over he finally gets a clear view of the gallimaufry of beings in costumes lined up outside, the bystanders, news reporters, and clusters of people carrying Legion of Super-Heroes merchandise.

[This image corresponds with Page 4-5, and Superboy can be seen in the upper right hand corner of the page and just below him on the roof of the Legion HQ is Future Boy, waving him down.]

What _is_ all this? It looks like Comic-Con on steroids! Is it like this outside their clubhouse _all the time_?

"Superboy!" Future Boy, now dressed in futuristic clothing, not his costume, waves up at Superboy. "Come down, you're in the right place and even the right time! I...dreamed of being on this roof, waving at you, but I didn't really know what it meant until the beacon sent me a signal! You've arrived on a great day!"

Clark lands next to his futuristic friend, glad to see that he has barely aged since their last meeting. “Glad to be here, Future Boy! But what’s happening? Is it some kind of festival?"

"Not exactly," Tok says, "It's Recruitment Day -- the day we get to consider new applicants to our little superhero club! We don't get to do this often; the last time was the first one, when I joined.

"So, want to apply to join the Legion?"

“Are you kidding?!” Clark exclaims. “I’d love to. What do you need me to do?”

Future Boy smiles broadly, and begins to explain.

Page 4-5: Mr. Music, Bubble Boy

Quick space here for the two of them to be discussing the logistics of the day: that if last round was a media curiosity, this one after their exploits in the past few months, is a full-on circus. It's a couple of panels before we see them look out the window at the line below, containing this list of people all queued up to gain Legion membership.

Beau Boy (super fashion-sense!) Kid Krakatoa (head can explode; only survives because he's a Terran) Rubbermaid (Super Bouncing Powers!) Amazing Ameo-boy (turns into a thick viscus goo that can digest anything, albeit very slowly) Bolt Boy (super speed without super reflexes or durability) Superboy Luminous Lass (glows with a soft white light all the time) Kit Kid (owner of the cosmic tool kit) Gymkhana Girl (has a very clever and nimble horse) Livermoreum Lad (transform into that element; lifespan once activates measured in seconds) Leek Lad (onion powers) Charm Chatelaine (can create magic charms from Wynathian myth) Earth Child (Terran endurance) Jim Me-Lad (dressed like a pirate) Ominous Boy (surrounded by an aura of dread) Calcul-Lad (can do super fast mechanical calculations) Eyeful Ethyl (360 degree vision from having eyes around her head) Tusker (has tusks that he can extend) Miss Misla (this is a Wynathian animal very similar to a giraffe – she can extend her limbs and neck great distances) Barricade Boy (can turn into a wall of steel)

Gorvo Van looks over the queue of would-be Legionnaires that snakes in front of the downed spacecraft the Legion claimed as their headquarters. His eyes pop at some of the weird and wonderful individuals waiting outside.

"Ode, did you know we have a humanoid giraffe in the queue?"

"Remind me to make sure we have plenty of drinks and pseudocaffeine pills to hand. This is going to be a long day."

Ode looks over the queue. "Gorvo... what's the rule about duplicate powers, again?"

[Given Chameleon Boy could theoretically duplicate the giraffe thing, the player could use a refresher of what the rules are here.]

[MC Good question: Wikipedia says "Each Legionnaire had to possess one natural superpower which no other member possessed"]

[BR it's in campaign niche protection for the players and logistical support for the characters. it's to make sure there aren't 15 people with Force Field powers on the roster, even though a corps of people with force field powers would be helpful. In theory someone could join with just super-strength as Robot Boy's real power is being a robot and the super strong person would doubtless be stronger. Classically Superboy and Supergirl were exempt from this process in both directions - other people with powers they had could join, and they could both be on the team at the same time - with the explanation of "It's freakin Superboy, OK?"]

"Hmm, it's pretty straightforward. No duplicated natural powers, so we'll never have another Tallagi, for example, unless Monster Boy had turned out differently."

Gorvo looks glum at the thought of the late Tallagi rival.

"I don't get it," says Ode. "He's got an amazing ability, and he uses it for..." He trails off, sighing. "It's great so many people want to help," he says, looking at the queue. "But we can't take them all."

"Looking at the candidates outside, I'm guessing some will rule themselves out pretty quickly... Not that I think we shouldn't give them all a fair hearing. Maybe some could be reserves? Or we could franchise out to other planets?"

"Anyway, it should be fun meeting new faces. Not everyone can join the Legion, but everyone deserves a chance to shine."

Ode nods absently.

There's a small sequence of panels with his thought balloons showing the various folks in line in smaller groups, on various planets, costumed as members of the Legion, proclaiming their identity as a franchise, as they rescue various pets from trees, put out fires, divert meteors, capture the occasional criminal, and, most importantly -- HOLD CONCERTS!

A similar sequence (nice idea, btw) of panels shows Gorvo thinking of fighting interstellar gangsters, fending off giant monsters, rescuing crashing starships and finally, sharing hot tubs with adoring fans.

Page 6-7 top: Superboy, Rubbermaid, Earth Child

Future Boy walks Clark into the line, which is constantly adding new people and shuffling a little as individuals question whether they should do this and/or where it would be most advantageous to be in line. (this is a long panel across the two page spread)

Clark ends up between a boy who is vibrating in position – the motion of his feet stirring up little clouds of dust – and a girl who is glowing slightly and humming to herself. It takes him a moment to place the tune as "Heroes" by David Bowie.

When he turns to look at her she sees his shirt and says "Hey, another fan of ancient Terran music!"

Clark grins. “You could say that! I’m a big fan of the classics. What’s your favorite band? And what brings you here?"

“Oh, I love all the great female singers of the pre-heroic age. Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, First Aid Kit... and I’ve always enjoyed the Pretenders.” She sees the growing confusion on Clark’s face until he hits on the Pretenders. “You’ve heard of them?!”

“I have,” Clark replies. “But I kinda like Joan Jett better."

She smiles, "Chrissie was a big advocate of hers! Joan Jett…That's a pretty 'deep cut'" she adds, proud of her use of old Terran slang.

“Why am I here? I’m Luminous Lass. My family’s shuttle was trapped in a chromatic explosion and each of us kids got the power to generate light...” her glow intensifies from the faint background love to something that makes people nearby shield their eyes.

“It’s not much but ever since I got this I just wanted to do... something.” She nods at the Legion base. “And they certainly are something!”

“They sure are!’ Clark looks at his sneakers for a second, not sure how to explain. “Where I’m from, there’s no way to learn how to be a superhero. If they take me, I’m betting I can learn a lot from them.”

"Yeah. I really want to learn from Mr. Music." She gets the same predatory/dreamy look on her face that Lana got when quizzing Clark about the Legion leader. "So, what power do you have?"

I’m really strong, and super-fast,” says Clark. “And I can fly. But after looking around at everyone else, I don’t actually know whether that’s terribly special."

A few people ahead of him is Rubbermaid, who is between Kid Krakatoa and Amoeboy. The latter says something indecipherable to her, but when he repeats it, she makes out a bubbly "Didn't you help save the park?"

Rubbermaid grins broadly. "Yep! I did my part. I'm Rubbermaid," she adds, sticking her hand out to shake. "What's your name?"

…burble… "Call me Amoeboy." He says, shaking her hand for just a split second, Burble…"My species can dissolve almost anything inside our bodies." Burble… "I don't know if that's enough to get in, but I'm honored to even try,"

"Me too," Rubbermaid replies. "We have to remember that the Legionnaires are people like the rest of us. They saw a way they could help and acted on it. If I don't get in it's not going to stop me helping others."

She gazes up at the space-ship headquarters. "I do hope I get in though."

Further back in the line, Linda is waiting and people watching behind a dark-haired Wynathian wearing a night blue outfit and cloak, He has an emblem on his chest that might be the silhouette of a gothic castle.

She's the only one standing near him – he's clearly in the queue but everyone else had been shuffling away from him – and he is giving her a slightly petulant look. He concentrates for a minute and Linda can feel a slight prickling in her skin, the sort you get from an enjoyable horror movie moment, before it stops.

"Who are you?!" he finally asks with an irritated edge to his voice.

[BR: Poor Ominous Lad's powers are resisted with a d20 save vs. Endurance. He doesn't have a prayer here….]

"Linda Cook. And you are?"

“I’m Ominous Lad! Mine is the power to strike disquiet into every mortal soul!”

He stops posing and adds “except yours, apparently.”

"Terran," Linda says half-apologetically, "and stubborn."

“Ah. Well. Ok then.” He looks dejected for a minute and then says under his breath “mine is the power to strike disquiet into every Wynathain soul!”

Just behind Linda, at the outside of Ominous Lad's radius, is a girl wearing flowing blouse, split skirt and tights all of bright pinks and lavenders. "I'm sorry, did you say you were Terran? Like, currently just off Terra?"

Seeing Linda nod, the girl goes on, "I'm Shantalla Ywel, called 'Charm Chatelaine'. Do you know anything about Terran nature magics, by chance?"

"Well, talking about 'Terran spirit magics' is misleading. The era in which magic was most practiced was well before unification, and different traditions practiced different spirit magics. So if you're talking Australian, that's the Dreamtime. The Chinese had ancestor worship, and they split things into yin and yang and the elements of fire, wood, earth, metal, and water. The Japanese thought everything - plants, animals, rivers, rocks, and so on - had spirits called kami. Other cultures had other beliefs about spirits and magic, separately and together -- not all spirit beliefs involved magic, and not all magics involved spirits.”

“Wow! That’s a lot of variables. And probably why they aren’t practiced as much as no one tradition was able to set up a spiritual groove into Terras gestalt psyche. Do you... practice any of those yourself?” She adds, clear afraid she might have caused offense.

Seeing Linda's head shake, she stands a little straighter, “On Wynath we have just two traditions - the spirit magic of charms inside objects that sounds like your kami, and the spirit magic of Hyrade, the planet in our solar system that many believed held the spirits who moved to their next level of consciousness…”

Page 6-7 Bottom: Eventually everyone

This is a series of six stacked two panel columns, each with someone trying out.

Stack One, Chameleon Boy

Ree is standing in front of the recently completed judges table, looking at the people he's spent the last several weeks observing. He knows their kindness, their generosity, their interpersonal dynamics, and he's still a little bit scared….

"Uh, hi, I-- Um. Uh, um. I'm... here?" he says. "Um. So... what do I do? I mean... you know what I can do. Um. Turn into things. I mean animals. Um. What do you need me to do next?"

"Turn into a chicken and play 3D checkers with me," Future Boy says. "You don't have to win, but I want to see how you play. When you're a chicken."

With a pop there's suddenly a chanticleer rooster in the middle of the room weighing in at about 8 kilos. (a brahmin would have been too big, and the chanticleer is exactly what people see when they think "chicken"). The bird pecks at the ground a few times, struts over and starts moving pieces on the checkerboard with his beak in a way that approximates play.

After a half dozen or so moves the chicken cocks it’s head, places one beady eye on Future Boy, and deliberately picks up a piece with its rooster talons before executing a series of jumps claiming 3 pieces that gets kinged in the back row.

[BR: conferred with Lisa offline. Ree rolled a 5, which is a full success with his 12 int. Tok rolled an 18, which is a fail with his normal int but a full success with his precognition kicked in. It makes sense that Ree was able to lure him into a bad position by playing into acting like a chicken. Tells us quite a bit about how Ree works.]

Stack Two, Kit Kid

Kit Kid is wearing a costume that looks very much like mechanics coveralls. Lanky with a shock of green hair uncommon on Wynath, he's carrying a rectangular box that appears as a chunk of night sky near a nebula, with colors and lights shifting slowly around it.

"So, uh, I found this in a crashed spaceship. There was a signal from it that didn't match any transmission I'd ever heard, but I think it was a distress beacon once I teased it out of the radio. I got my folks to land and look around. Whoever had been on the ship was long dead, just dust and metal skeletons, but I touched this and heard it say "genetic lock established" in my head. And now only I can open it. Sometimes only I can lift it. And inside there…, well there's every tool you'd ever need. And it talks in my head, telling me what's broken, what tools I need to fix it."

"I looked around and realized parts of the United Planets are broken. And I want to help you fix it."

"That's..." Diskette trails off for a moment, letting herself show regret. "Amazing, actually. You're exactly the kind of person we're looking for, and I don't know what that does, but it sounds fascinating.

"But we can't. Our rules--and yes, I know, this was my idea, but I'm wishing we could bend the rules now--say you can't be accepted for something you have; just something you are. If you can demonstrate a power that is yours alone; not an item you have that can be lost, stolen, or break, that toolkit sounds amazing, but just the toolkit doesn't qualify. I wish it did."

Tylr Amee, aka Kit Kid, looks a little dejected and then starts arguing "Awwww! Bend the rules. I know I can join you! It's not fair that it's just super-powers! I can…"

There's a blur of motion and Proty shoots past Kit Kid, its gravitic tractor beam yanking the cosmic tool kit from the boy's hand and flying a dozen meters away with it. Tylr lets out a yelp, and before he can recover Robot Boy is directly in front of him with a boost from his boot jets, his metallic form seeming to tower over the comparatively tall Wynathian.

"Declaratory statement: it is not a question of 'fair', gentle sentient. It is a question of safety. The situations into which the Legion inserts itself are inherently and unpredictably dangerous. No one here doubts your courage or your nobility, but it is the nature of a functioning organization to not allow members to take unnecessary risks."

Proty has come back over and dropped the kit at Tylr's feet. "Suggestion: While you cannot become a Legionnaire, that does not mean the Legion cannot assist you. Several of us have contact with organizations that could direct you to where repairs are most needed."

"Question: would this be acceptable?"

Kit Kid snatches up the toolkit, which is currently luminescent as its exterior is displaying a stellar birthing ground. "You could do that?"

Mr. Music nods slowly. "I think we could."

Stack Three, Rubbermaid

Rubbermaid enters (bounces into?) the room and stands before her heroes. Yes, she's fought alongside them, but is that enough?

"Hi! I'm Rubbermaid, from Esot IV." Vikrak bounces in place. "We've met before, I hope you remember."

She springs from her spot to ricochet around the room a bit before returning to her spot.

"I'm sorry. I get a bit fidgety when I'm anxious. I want to help the Legion help others, and I hope my rubber-ball abilities are good enough to make the cut. I'm tough, agile and keen to help out."

She pauses, uncharacteristically still. Eyes down, she finishes. "I just want to help."

"I think you can excel, or at least, I hope so." Diskette says. "For your tryouts, we've prepared an obstacle course. Actually, my friends have prepared an obstacles source--I provided some early ideas. It has barriers, quick turn-arounds, and, I'm told, some very tricky setups in the middle. Get in, get around or through anything in the way, and get out with whatever's in the center in 10 minutes.

"Oh, and you'll have an opponent, who's trying to do the same thing. Me. I won't hold back, but I also don't know the layout, so I can't just cheat my way in and out. And the rules are that you have to enter each room in and out, so I'm not allowed to get a momentary advantage and just leave, even if it's in my range--but you're going to not want to let me get my hands on the prize.

"If you can stop me."

Stack Four: Superboy

Superboy cautiously walks into the room, taking in his first views of the inside of a spaceship. There on the table is Future Boy, Bubble Boy, Mr. Music, and Miss Anima, but also a humanoid robot, a cute girl with a sword on her back, and a severe looking girl who looked human… Terran…or Wynathian, but probably wasn't.

“Um…hi!” Clark says. “I’m..…Superboy? At least, that’s what Future Boy called me last month.” He pauses, realizing that this panel probably knows more about his abilities than he does. “So, I was in a spacecraft that crash landed on Earth when I was a baby. There wasn’t anyone else in the ship — my parents — the people who found me and raised me, said that it looked like it had been built just for me. So I don’t really know where I’m from originally. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that I can do a lot of things that most people can’t. I’m really strong, and really fast, and I never get hurt. I can see in the infrared and, if I focus, in X-rays. I can hear much better than most people. I can fly. And I just found out that I don’t need to breathe in outer space, and I can travel through time. That’s how I’m here now.”

“But I came because I want to help people. I’ve been trying to do that by writing for my school paper at home…I just feel that I could do more? And I’d love to learn from all of you."

Stack Five: Leek Lad

Leek Lad strides into the room, projecting false confidence. His clothes are layers of thin brown cloth, but his visible hands and face are vague translucent, and the Legionnaires can just make out the bone structure under it.

"Hello! I'm Siras Kqant, aka Leek Lad. After an accident at my clan's farm, I was exposed to experimental plant matter… but survived and gained the proportional powers of an Onion!"

"And those are?" Mr. Music is genuinely curious, never having given much thought to how strong vegetables are, proportionally speaking.

“I can root myself into the ground with a second's notice, resisting attempts to move me. My skin can become super slimy, so I’m impossible to grapple. I’m resistant to diseases that affect Wynathians. But my main power...” he pulls out a small knife and cuts the palm of his hand. The room is immediately filled with a tear-gas level chemical irritant fills the room.

"Bubble boy, gas shield, now!" Future Boy shouts just in time, as his powers (and good sense) gives him a sense of what is about to happen.

[JK: they have got to develop a code system. I mean, they might have, in which case he might call "Code Orange"]

Gorvo manifests a blue bubble around the assembled Legionnaires, a surprised look on his face changing to understanding as he hears the complaints of the candidates outside. [Off-panel pointing word balloons: "What is that stink?", "Holy Nebulas, the smell!" etc.]

"We'll take your word for it," Gorvo says. "Robot Boy, do you have a fan attachment?"

Robot Boy raises both hands and uses the gravetic attractors on them to suck the chemical irritant towards him, where a quick blast from his thoracic furnace neutralizes it. "Statement: I believe the air is sufficiently pure now."

Leek Lad has the self-awareness to look abashed. "I… um… I got carried away there."

"We... _did_ ask," says Mr. Music. Once Leek Lad has left, and before the next candidate comes in, he says, "It's... _unique_. And powerful."

"Yes," replies Bubble Boy. "He has potential, but I'd be worried about the fallout. We can't go round tear-gassing passers-by and hostages. I guess we see what other candidates bring to the Legion."

Stack Six: Earth Child

Linda finally enters the room, seeing the looks of relief on the Legionnaires faces after having dismissed the unpleasant Ominous Lad. Just outside the door she can hear the Ranzz kids cheering her on.

"Hello, everyone. I'm Linda Cook, Terran. Call me Girl Grit, I guess. I can do many of the things most people can better than most -- I'm stronger than most, I can shoot straight, that sort of thing. But I don't have powers which let me do things anyone else can't. What I *can* do is keep going and going through effort and damage and exhaustion.

"If that's something you'd consider, I'd suggest you set me to run laps or something of the sort and take the next six candidates and come back to me later."

"No need for that," Diskette says. "We all know how tough Terrans are...ones who haven't been damaged by genetic experiments, anyway." She shrugs. "You play the hand you're dealt. But no; our concern is more how you'll handle situations where you're facing powers that do things nobody else can--can simple skill, ability, and Terran endurance get you far enough when you're facing someone whose powers are more overt? Which is why we've decided your test is..."

Page 8: the tests

Chameleon Boy

That moment of satisfaction of having leveraged Future Boy's expectations was short lived as with a rainbow shimmer of light a thick, layered, transparent dome appears over Ree's head, with magnets across the bottom of it that seal it to the floor with a thunk. There's only 8 CM wide passage over his head as an avenue of escape.

From between the two outer layers of the dome, water starts to gush into the chicken-holding hollow.

LP: Water snake of some kind.

The tunnel takes a turn and widens to run parallel to the floor, which opens into the center of a wall of a one meter high by 2 meter long space with flat walls and curved, metallic floor and ceiling, both of which are glittering with upthrust sharp edges – no clear path below in his current form. There are a set of platforms hanging from the ceiling that could be used to traverse the distance with good leaps, but those cables look flimsy…. On the far side of the space is an exit platform.

[BR: TEST – THE ULTIMATE SQUIRREL PROOF BIRDFEEDER: the first platform for the first two and last two platforms will hold up a 5kg creature landing, but not the 3rd. Something that is ruable enough to ignore the blades on the bottom, something that can stick to the side walls, something can leap from cable to cable, or super quickly changing to something with longer reach when the 3rd playform gives way, or a running forward change into a bird with momentum then changing to something smaller to land on the far side exit as a test of speed….]

Sticking to the side walls? Sounds like suckered tentacles, something kinda octopoidal. Though actually, maybe a bird or bat here because of what follows.

The second Ree, in any form, steps onto the exit corridor it catapults him up through a hole in the ceiling. The passage 10cm square, is vertiginously fast and will end with flying through a laser grid unless he stops himself. There's another passage at a right angle to his fligt that he would have to get to.

[BR TEST – THE CAT 0 PAULT! Turn into something larger or with anchor points or what have you that can stop the forward momentum (or something that would reflect the 'lasers', and he would bounce off the wall on the far side and fall back down tis tube]

Here's where the octopoidal form with suckered tentacles works best, yes?

The exit passage from the laser-tube has several hanging felt ribbons, that combine to leave the passage behind in pitch darkness….

[BR: TEST – BLIND AS AN TERRAN WINGED MAMMAl:It's a quick labyrinth that is easily navigated if Ree turns into anything with sonar or bioluminescent abilities or any other reasonable way; just smell won't work because it was just created out of thin air. ]

A biolouminescent deep earth mole from a planet that has such things and maybe doesn't call them moles.

The labyrinth opens into a 1.5 meter square shaft space where Ree can see an exit passae some meter higher than where he is in this shaft before the ceiling drops a quick meter to cover it, and then start descending….

[BR TEST – UNDER PRESSURE: Finally a chance to turn into something strong, but with some space constraints. That increase in strength should be enough to push the ceiling back up and then a change to something smaller for a very rapid escape through the exit before the ceiling falls in again.

A powerful simian type to push the ceiling back and jump and grab for the opening, followed by changing into something more feline and small to scramble up into the opening.

The last chamber is just a… dead end. The floor and walls echo hollowly when tapped.

[BR: NO WAY OUT BUT THROUGH: here's the "screw it just turn into a bear and crumple the walls with the force of the change…]

Bear it is, followed by shaking his head to clear it, turning back into a chicken, and walking over to the board to make the next move in the game.

Superboy

The scene opens with Clark over the ocean, with Bubble Boy and Robot Boy observing from a gravskim platform (for the moment) Gorvo says "According to the UPSV Naiad there's a crashed spaceship of indeterminate origin on the ocean floor near this point. You have 5 minutes to bring it up, undamaged. Adom and I will be nearby to step in if it looks like there's going to be an issue. Timer starts... NOW!"

[R: Myles, feel free to edit the above to be more in Gorvo's voice. I figure he and Adom will be following down underwater to observe.]

Clark immediately starts scanning the waves with his X-ray vision, looking for anything on the ocean floor that might be a spaceship.

The water muddies his vision a bit, but he can make out a large artificial shape under the water. An unconscious deep breath and seconds later Clark is flying through the water to the vessel, which is a classic “rocket” shape. He can see one of the tail fins has already snapped off but the other two are intact, if covered under a layer of silt. [BR: imagine it looks just like the rocket on the cover of a Heinlein juvenile]

Once Superboy is below the surface, Gorvo turns to Robot Boy and offers a bet. "I bet he's quicker than five minutes. This is Superman we're dealing with."

Robot Boy turns his 'face' to Gorvo "Statement: Not Yet."

There’s no visible light down here at all, but just enough UV at the roughly 150m depth for him to be able to see and maneuver - trying to do this just via X-Rays would give him a headache. Still, the X-Rays do tell him that the ships frame is intact, it’s interior walls are both substantially intact and radiation resistant enough to block X-Rays, and the exterior skin is degraded from the seawater. He’s not sure he can lift it directly without crumpling the skin....

The north side of the wreck is slightly easier to see because of the Cherenkov radiation coming off the... decaying skeleton of that giant turtle...?... some distance away.

Well, _that’s_ weird. Clark thinks. He shakes his head — no time to waste! **OK, rocket. Can’t just lift it, can’t see inside. Maybe there are controls on the inside?**

The south side is in shadow, so it takes him a couple of seconds to survey the ship and find the airlock.

Bingo! Still, if the skin’s degraded the controls might be shorted out, too. I’ll have a look, but I need to start thinking about a Plan B.

[DK: So, what does this airlock look like? Is it in good enough shape to open?]

[BR: Yes indeed, it appears to be in working order. X-ray vision even reveals where the external manual override is so he can cycle it from here. You can get through the airlock and the interior is full of water, there are three trilateral bodies in here, the controls are in shutdown mode and the power plant would need a jumpstart. There are three hairline fractures that let the water in. I'll let you describe the search and next steps]

Clark opens and pulls on the manual override for the airlock, and then slides it open to enter te waterlogged ship. The hairline fractures on the walls had, over time, let out all the atmosphere and filled it with water. The bodies of the crew – three aliens with trilaterally symmetrical bodies – are inside. He can't hear any life in the ship, or see any heat on the controls.

Let’s take care of those cracks first, so the water doesn’t break her apart if I can get her moving. Clark focuses on each crack in turn, welding them shut with his heat vision.

OK, _think_. I can’t see through most of these walls, so finding the engine might mean hours of looking, not that I’d even know how to start it if I found it. But if I can’t see through the walls, they’re probably pretty sturdy. And if Mr. Andersen’s physics class is right, pushing on one of the internal beams should distribute the force I make over the entire ship. So, find one of the main struts, then hang on and fly up…slowly

(After a panel of Clark straining upward on a ship beam trying to lift the ship, and failing...)

Wow, that’s heavy! Gonna have to get rid of this water.

The next several panels show Clark opening the airlock and securing the bodies he can see, rushing to the far side of the ship, and exhaling with a mighty WOOOOSH. The water gushes out of the ship, carrying with it one last body that had been floating behind a work surface, out of sight.

Oh no!

Already moving at super-speed toward the airlock, Clark caroms off a bulkhead to catch it before spinning the airlock shut.

With the ship empty and sealed, he heads back to the main strut and tries flying -up- again.

This time the ship moves, and once it’s off the floor the added buoyancy of the air makes it easily to carry up. Robot Boy and Bubble Boy see Clark surface with the ship, his red flannel shirt flapping in the ocean breeze, as the teen of steel lifts the vessel free of the ocean

“Satisfied statement: Four minutes, seven seconds. Well done, Superboy.”

Gorvo applauds the Kryptonian, calling out "great work, Superboy!" adding in a side whisper to Robot Boy. "Told you."

When the trio are back on New Metropolis (and the crew of the Naiad have thanked the legion for their help), Robot Boy produces a modest sized box he had set aside.

“Congratulatory Statement: Well, done, Superboy. Since you arrived here not expecting this initiation I suspect you have not acquired the uniform for which you will later be known. I felt it best to give you this so you will have a standard Iconic Uniform to match the other Legionnaires.”

He hands Clark the box, which contents a black faux-leather jacket with the Superman “S” shield on the back.

“Earnest inclusion: I acquired it as a souvenir on Clarksday and it did not fit my robot frame. I think this is a better use for it.”

Rubbermaid

This is one long panel showing the exterior of the obstacle course, filled with BOOOIIIIIING! WARP! BOUNCE! LEAP! BOING! "Watch Out!" "Coming Through" "oof!" And finally Rubbermaid flying out the far right hand side of the maze.

Earth Child, Metal Lass, Robot Boy

Robot Boy gets down from the judging stand and places himself solidly some 5 meters away from Linda.

"Statement of Rules: Inside this chamber we have hidden a handheld control unit. Your task is to locate it and use it to deactivate the exercise. Those Legionnaires on the floor will be attempting to restrain you, but will not take any action against the control unit. Contestants should avoid serious damage to one another. The time limit is 3 minutes."

Metal Lass steps between Robot Boy and Linda, places her hands together, and silently makes a formal bow to her opponent. As her hands separate, repeating the form of The Growing Vine, Linda can spot a flat ribbon of soft metal, growing longer by the second.

“When you are ready, you may begin.”

(If Metal Lass is involved on the opposition, Linda will dump some stuff out of her pockets while setting up.)

Round 1

16: Earth Child Linda grabs two of a set of bamboo-like hollow sturdy rods, throws one up to lodge in a light fixture, and pole vaults with the other, bringing herself to the top of a set of exercise equipment (which had been used for earlier contestants to demonstrate strength and agility), from which she jumps to a hula-hoop-sized vertical ring that had been used to for flying applicants to demonstrate precision. She retrieves the pole and uses it to spin herself around, to view the area from there and attempt to spot the control unit -- or if she can't do that, rule large swaths of the room out as places it couldn't be hidden.

[BR: die roll is a 9; spotting hidden things in combat test clearly includes her Army Brat profession, that's a Full success. Upshift one for her heightened senses and it is a superior success, good enough to make out where it is. Her leaping up and searching her cost her 10 Movement, she has 56 left]

Spinning in a quick circle she's able to spot a section of wall that had been recently modified - a slight warping of the metal producing a rectangle 11cm wide and 30cm long, just the right size for a hand held remote - located so that Robot Boy would have been between her and it had she not moved up. Clearly Adom is not the most tactical thinker in terms of not telegraphing the remote's location.

16: Metal Lass Dolar's quick execution of the form 'Setting the Falcon Free' sends a ribbon of metal sailing toward the ceiling ring that Linda is perched on.

[If successful] It hits one edge of the ring and pushes it into a fast spin.

[BR: Attack roll is a 1! 16 HP and movement damage. Linda rolls with 6 HP takes 10, 16 remaining, unconsciousness roll is a 90 so no worries; 40 Movement remaining]

The ring accelerates rapidly, quickly moving like a centrifuge and hurling Linda in a random direction. There's a very loud series of thuds as she hits a gap inside of the exercise equipment, having caromed off one of the metal uprights. Her doubtlessly dangerously wounded body lies out of sight inside the equipment.

<Reaction from the crowd, as this impact would easily have hospitalized a Wynathain? Metal Lass, moment or fear over possible outcomes? Mr. Music has fought alongside her before, and knows how tough Linda is but damn that would have shattered a couple of his bones... Diskette, could even a terran with full endurance live through that?!? Miss Anima, that's... not how an arboreal Slan would have reacted to the fall, let's put it that way. Bubble Boy, remember how shook up you were when Dragon Maid tossed you down the hotel stairs? OUCH!

Miss Anima gives the falling Terran a look of horror. (She KNOWS that Slan are fragile and Terrans are ... very not fragile, but an uncontrolled fall is a primal fear. And while Terrans are far more durable than Slan, they are also HEAVIER than Slan.) Her eyes go to the medical staff on call and she holds up a book of drawings, in an unspoken message to tell her what they need, if they need anything they don't have available.

Mr. Music visibly winces.

"Oh no!" Patin exclaims, remembering how many times she's avoided falls like that by inches--and been reminded, once again, that due to hr condition she can't take damage "like a real Terran". But could even her oldest sister, whose modifications were more cautious sacrificed none of her Terran toughness, survive, much less keep fighting after a blow like that?

Metal Lass’s eyes widen in surprise and dismay as she starts running toward the fallen aspirant— did she miscalculate her throw and inadvertently harm another sophant?

Regardless of how the Legion responds, the readers, but not the Legionnaires, can see Linda inside the weight gear, diffusing the impact with a roll and keeping herself low to the ground and temporarily out of sight. She can still see the modified stretch of wall, and is now parallel to Robot Boy rather than him between her and her target. Did she plan that fall?!?

14: Robot Boy The Metallic Legionnaire closes the gap between him and the fallen Terran's position, quickly lifting 2 ton piece of exercise equipment to give him a clear view of Linda's doubtless wounded form, Instead he finds her crouched and alert.

[BR: Robot Boy has a modified Asimov's laws, so it takes a Charisma save to do HP of damage to someone. it's entirely in keeping for him to rush over and spend his action trying to rescue a dangerously wounded sapient. Instead he's now standing over her, holding a very heavy piece of equipment.]

1: Earth Child Linda leaps up, grabbing on to the equipment. Not that she weighs much compared to it, but it's an unexpected addition to the equipment's weight. Swing along it, plant herself past Robot Boy, and try to use the heavy Legionnaire as a launching pad for rapid movement to a wooden baseball bat, which she grabs while tumbling to the remote control. If this knocks him off-balance or even prone, grand! If not, well, the primary goal was to get where she's going, with a non-metallic weapon.

If she can pick up the control unit she will.

If there are additional complications before she can pick up the control unit - and she's rather expecting them - she has the baseball bat to whack at metal cages which start growing, or to whack away any metal aiming straight at her, or whatever.

The Legionnaires at the judging stand just see a blur of motion as the Terran girl heaves herself up, climbing rapidly up through the lifting equipment - at one point using Robot Boy's arm for a foothold - and then leaping off of it to a smooth roll that has her come up with a solid wooden bat that had been set aside for potential use.

Behind her Linda can hear "Declaration: Oh No." and then a crash as the load in Robot Boy's hands over balances and sends him to the floor under it. Followed by "Declaration: I am unharmed."

By the time Adom has finished that statement Linda is almost at the spot where the control unit is hidden behind the wall plate.

[BR: quick ruling that people can declare a "no damage past Movement" against foes with passive defenses have a better chance of throwing, knocking down, discommoding or unbalancing them. This means Linda's 'attack' on Robot Boy needs a Full rather than a Superior success, which she makes with a roll of 10. We're counting the weight set as a scrounged weapon, so she does 2d8 (roll) 12 points of Movement to Robot Boy. This doesn't really _do_ anything - he has 50 movement and it's almost the end of the round - but it captures the effect. All told this costs Linda another 15 movement, she has 25 remaining.]

1: Metal Lass [BR: Diane, you're up. Linda has quickly spotted the thin metal veneer you placed over the control cubby, is there with a wooden bat, and you're not allowed to do anything to the control unit (like say, put another thick layer of metal over it). Your opponent is battered and has been jumping and running around like mad, maybe she's off balance enough for you to be able to properly entangle but she sure looks like she's ready. Alternately, your martial arts might let you throw her back away if you can get some leverage.]

Metal Lass leaps toward Linda and spins, grabbing at the far end of the baseball bat.

[DK: Linda is holding a lever — let’s see if a momentum advantage can knock her off balance]

[BR: and in a (cecks math) 1 in 400 chance, Diane rolls another 1!]

Once she has a hold of the baseball bat there's a yank which Linda instinctively counters and then Dolar flows into that force to move with the bat forward, past Linda, levering the Terran up and over with her own strength. Linda has a moment of two meters of clearance between her and the ground before she hits with a disorienting thud.

Again, everyone on the stand visible winces. Surely this…?

[BR: that's 24 movement damage and Disorientation. But since Linda ends the round with 1 (1!) movement there's no additional effects.]

Round 2

16: Earth Child [BR: New round, new movement score, Linda's at 16 HP, 62 Vitality and 66 Movement. She is Disoriented this action (Character's even Fighting attacks are reduced by one level; Even Fighting attacks against character Boosted by 1 level); because this is a condition caused by someone of a higher Power level she needs a Superior success on an Endurance check to recover. That's a 7 or less for her, and the die comes up a 7, so she'll be fine in a second.]

[BR: Beth, because Linda has a sight speed edge over Metal Lass you'll be able to take a shot before she starts flowing again and makes it almost impossible for you to hit her while disoriented. And while Metal Lass is between her and the remote, it's well within reach. ]

[EC: Rules said not to hurt the opponents, and Metal Lass is likely a glass cannon, so not a good person to attack while I'm not at my best. Let's just go for the remote. (I'm assuming Metal Lass launched her by letting go of the bat; if not, she'll snatch up anything else not metallic.)

Linda feints towards Metal Lass, backs off, hits the metal layer lightly to determine where there's some give (doesn't want to damage the remote) and then reverses the bat and drives the skinny end in, trying to poke a hole in the cover. If she does so, she immediately tosses the bat to her other hand, plunges a hand in and reaches for the remote. If she can just shut down the exercise, she will; she's gonna have bruises tomorrow already. If not, on defense until she can pull out the remote and figure out how to operate it.

If she can't penetrate the metal layer, well, this is where she needs to be for next try.

[BR: You'd have to roll really well to KO her on one shot, but yes, it's possible for you to do so. Still it speaks well of her that she's not wildly swinging a bat while disoriented. I'm going to call for a general fighting check regardless to get past her and smash the wall. The die roll is a 6, which is a Superior success dropped to a Full Success due to the Disorientation but that's still good enough.]

Metal Lass is slightly shocked _despite_ knowing what she knows about Terrans to see Linda roll up and swing the bat in her direction. She flows back out the way of the wild attack, and then sees the feint for what it was a second too late. Linda's hand plunges into the hole in the wall and comes out with the remote.

Linda yanks out the remote and sees Metal Lass, Robot Boy, and Proty all arrayed to subdue her just as the button clicks and a buzzer goes off.

16: Metal Lass Metal Lass finishes the bout as she began it, with a formal bow, this time flavored with the form denoting satisfaction with a pupil/rival/opponent at the completion of a trial.

“My congratulations, Linda Cook. You managed that even faster than I had predicted."

 

Page 9 Top: Mr. Music. Diskette

As Superboy is off on his test, Patin leads Ode into the hastily arrange meeting with Mr. Ranzz, Linda Cook's employer and the father of the children that Mr. Music and Linda rescued during the pirate attack.

"Thanks for seeing me on such short notice," he says, and Ode can hear the truth of that in this voice, but there's a counterpoint that indicates that people of Mr. Ranzz's wealth pretty much assume anyone is going to take a meeting with them.

"I was hoping I could interest the Legion in a… problem that LGN Consolidated, our company, has inherited..."

[BR space for an assumed agreement to go ahead' and the TL/DR is the prior business partner to a mining company stirred up political/religious terrorism and then dropped the problem on Ranzz's lap as the new business partner. He wants the Legion to look into it before more people get hurt.]

"...A few months back. Station Salem Zero is a 150-year-old, generational family facility that mined rare elements from the proto-planets of Salem System; The founding families are on their 8th generation, and the community contracts with outside agents to provide advanced equipment and transport of the mined materials for sale."

He calls up a holo of the station, a classic spike and ring design tethered to a mercury-sized mass with a beanstalk elevator, which itself has a sizable installation on it. The system around it is full of asteroidal debris and several similar planetoids.

"Ranzz just acquired the contract from GBK Distributed, only to find out that there's a political issue on the station that's caused violent unrest. GBK had been pushing for accelerated mining, deeper mining, cutting safety levels…" Mr. Ranzz glances over at Patin, "The usual idiocy from people looking for short term profit over generational growth. LGN returned normal schedules, we're updating the safety equipment, but the native religious faction at the center of the unrest is continuing the violence. They won't even give the local Science Police a clear explanation of what they _want_."

The frustration in Ranzz's voice is clear to Ode, even if the businessman is good at hiding it, "This is a very minor part of the LGN portfolio, and we could just cut ties... We will if it will end the violence. But Salem Zero needs _someone_ so be filling this service, and I don't want to pass this problem along to someone else without knowing I did all I could to stop people from getting hurt."

"I've seen first hand what your new team can do. I was hoping you could visit Salem Zero and see if you could look into things."

[BR: My intent is that Diskette lead a team with the 4 new members, to counter-balance who was on the last mission to the 20th Century and show off the new PCs.]

Page 10: Everyone

This page is dedicated to the actual induction of Superboy into the book, plus of course the other three new members (but it is his name on the cover...).

Ideally I'd like the imagery to be the sort of Pomp and Circumstance thing that you get from non-jaded teenage kids forming their own institution, with the Legion flag flying under the UP one, the crowd of onlooker cheering the new members getting in, thesolem taking of the Legion oath. I'd like to avoid the "oh hey yeah, we're all too cool for school so this isn't a big deal" because it is a big deal to the kids and the campaign world.

I'd love to hear briefly the facial expression of the new inductees for the artist...

Now, depending on how things played out in the Ode and Patin thread there may be more on this page, or maybe it's just Mr. Music announcing that the new members are all official Legionnaires.

Clark J. Kent — trying to look solemn, but a little too excited to quite carry off the gravitas.

Vikrak tries to stand still, but her natural bounciness gets the better of her as she thrumms in place. Her expression is one of wide-eyed excitement, her mouth forming the 'O' of 'wow!'

Ree is totally not too cool for this. He's not bouncing; he's very solemn, and earnestly serious when he takes the oath.

Linda looks solemn, but shock keeps showing through. (Who me? I mean, I'm good, don't get me wrong, but I'm not SPECIAL.)

Page 11: Diskette, Superboy, Rubbermaid, Chameleon Boy, Earth Child

The whole of the page is a shot of Salem Zero station, including map call outs to make it clear that the classic spike and ring design has the ring as a primary living habitat and the spike as the spaceport, ore storage and refinery space.

The beanstalk has several different elevators in it – two for people, two for ore up and one for detritus back down to the planet. Total time in the gravlift vacuum tubes for passengers is pretty short, and less time for the solids as they don't have to worry about G-forces on the passengers.

The planet-side station has a secondary living habitat, the entrance into the mining tunnels, and the initial cracking station where the bulk of the mined mass is sloughed off to get to the ore that needs to be moved up to the zero g refining area in the station to be processed.

There are also some cutaways into the planet showing the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta shafts. With the Delta Shaft running much lower into the planet than the other three.

There's an image of the shuttle flying into the scene from the upper left that can have conversation between the Legionnaires as they approach and do a final interrogation of the ships computer for information. (It's not impossible for Superboy fly outside the ship and do a reconnaissance of the area, aside from the fact that he has _absolutely no idea what would be normal_.)

[JK: Is Superboy travelling in the shuttle? Or is he flying along-side it with a radio communicator going to the main team?]

"Do you want to do a flyby, Superboy," Diskette asks. "I know everything's strange to you, but it's still possible you'll notice something that will help out later."

“I’ll do my best!” says Clark, and takes a slow pass around the space station, taking notes in his reporter’s notebook all the while.

He tries to, at least: the icy vacuum of space messes up his pen something fierce... 20th century technology, what are you gonna do?

The station is jaw dropping in its technological complexity - they have a literal beanstalk, for pity's sake - but it also looks old. Well maintained certainly, but it's clearly seen use. On the scale of space technology the station is certainly not _ST: STG_ with its sleek perfection. It's not even _Star Wars_ with its lived in realism. It's _Alien_. The only things that have the same clean-lined, new car feeling of the LGN ship you came here in are a dozen vessels anchored at the orbital part of the station and the beanstalk at various points. Emergency escape ships, freshly installed with the same LGN logo.

There are a dozen similar planetary masses in the system, and it looks like this station used to be anchored to a different one, possibly at three or four points, before being moved to this one. (The scale of that little move is astounding as well.) There are small habitats on that mined-out planet, and the surface of it near those habitats looks smoothed... polished, almost... carved... in a sort of zen garden design. Then it hits him: someone is making the entire surface of the planet into a sculpture.

There's a second panel that's a call out of the shuttle docking, and meeting with the LGN Consolidated supervisor and an agent of the Salem Zero planetary government, both of whom are on a bulky industrial gravskim platform while the Legionnaires are outfitted with the latest in lightweight Future Boy-designed jetpacks. (Or, in Clark's case, flying.)

"Good morning, um, 'Legionnaires'." Says the man, clearly dressed as a local. The tone in the government agent's voice isn't so much dismissive as confused. After all, he's been informed that the LGN agency was sending in specialists, and the Legion's fame isn't as pervasive in the mining colonies (yet). "I'm Director Chenne, representing the freely elected government of Salem.

"Welcome to Salem Zero," says the woman, a slip of a thing who is towered over physically by the local official but her tone and carriage makes it clear that she's a true power player here, "And I'm Plant President Stal, from the LGN cooperative. My supervisors speak very highly of you."

"Thank you, Director Chenne, President Stal." Diskette says, "I'm Diskette, though you can call me Patin if it makes you more comfortable. My companions are Earth Child, Chameleon Boy, Rubbermaid, and Superboy. We've been asked to help stop the attacks and unrest, and that's what we intended to do, as Legionairres. We just want people to stop getting hurt."

Director Chenne nods "I'll drink to that. No one has died so far, but the witches are escalating their attacks."

Diskette can almost hear President Stal's eye roll. "Hyann, they aren't witches, they aren't ghosts, it's not magic." She turns to Diskette, clearly seeing a daughter of the Felos family as a sympathetic ear, "We're most likely dealing with an outside agitator group trying to disrupt the Valorium mining operation to weaken the United Planets. Salem Zero produces the highest quality Valorium ore in the UP."

Linda frowns. But why are they *called* witches?

"My father's an anti-gravity engineer," pipes up Rubbermaid. "He uses refined Valorium in all the high flux density applications. It's invaluable!"

"Well, it's valuable," Patin says. "If it is an external actor...unless they're also targeting other mining operations, it's mostly going to raise prices and lower availability. I'm not ruling anything out yet, but in that situation, it would be just as likely to be an unscrupulous investor as an enemy of the UP.

Vikrak watches the various cargo lifters and containers moving about, unloading from the beanstalk cargo pods and delivering ore to the start of the refining production line.

She thinks, **I wish I could get a better look at the production line. Dad would love to know how and where his Valorium comes from!**

Clark focuses his attention on the crews at work behind Stal and Chenne with a junior-reporter’s eye. They’re in earshot — how do they react to the“witches” comment? Is it an insult? Do they support the guy who’s in charge of their government?

Clark can spot a grimace or two at the Plant President's dismissal of the witches. His immediate sense is that the locals' side with the Director Chenne's 'superstitions' take.

Chameleon Boy is looking at the schematics and trying to get a sense of the whole space -- planet, station, beanstalk, mines.

With a few seconds he can orient himself here to the map he saw earlier, get a sense for the timing of things, and is pretty sure he can navigate himself to anywhere on the station. Years of training sneaking into spaces are in his brain somewhere, finding the angles for him.

Linda is keeping an eye on entrances and exits. Also, anything useful as a weapon and anything likely to prove a threat. She's classic human, so motion naturally catches her eye.

Diskette asks "So Director, why do people call them witches or ghosts?"

Before Chenne has a chance to respond, Linda spots motion down at the mine entrance, some sort of cloudy forms… It might just be dust smoke, but there's more to them, the hints of form inside them… and then the clouds grab several heavy pieces of equipment that had been resting lightly magnetized against the bottommost part of the cylindrical chamber, the foremost of which is heading directly at the gravskim holding Chenne and Stal. And past that is the shuttle the legionnaires came in.

The space in the room fills with a malevolent chittering as the cloudy entities create havoc by pulling things from the lowest part of the room through the zero-gravity space.

Page 12: Future Boy, Miss Anima, SP Officer Gigi Cusimano

Another image of a shuttle in space, this time a smaller Science Police shuttle approaching Mons Wyla's asteroid lab. The shuttle pilot, Science Police Officer Gigi Cusimano is a new member of the cast. A Wynathian with short brunette hair and pale skin, she was tasked with bringing the Legion to this potential crime scene.

"Yeah, this is what I was afraid of…" Gigi says to Future Boy and Miss Anima. "The initial SP sip that came through to pick up the Taurus Gang found no life signs and the asteroid on an irregular orbit. Whoever picked those guys up did something to the station – vented the gasses, set off an explosion – that left it spinning."

She points down at the docking bay, "The other ship didn't see this, but look there – I'm guessing it was a bomb or a parting shot on the docking bay. There's nowhere for us to link up. Someone is going to have to come back out with a much bigger ship to stabilize this with a grav beam and then install a universal docking joint."

Miss Anima studies the moving docking bay. "I know no life signs were detected, but I'm still reluctant to delay, on the off-chance there's interference - remember, this was for scientific study - hiding a life sign or two, somewhere with a limited supply of oxygen."

She looks at Future Boy. "A much bigger ship is a bit outside of my range, so I don't see stabilizing the asteroid from outside, unless you have a brilliant idea.But with you to figure what needs to be done and me to make machinery in a hurry, I think we could stabilize it from the inside."

She turns to SP Gigi. "Think we could approximately match speeds close to the broken bay?"

"Nope. I'm sorry kids, but even the best navi-calc in the world isn't going to be able to safely get the ship that close. If I tried to predict it we'd just smash the ship up..."

"I could probably pilot us in," Future Boy says, "but we'd have to deal with the rotation once we docked. Instead...Miss Anima, if you can give me a really big shotgun and some shells, I should be able to stabilize the station in...I think three quick shots should do it. Maybe four if I miss one of them."

"Sure...." She reaches for a book of pictures, puts it back, pulls out a couple of pencils and blank paper instead. "Give me a little while; I don't want to scale up an existing picture because I want to scale up the size of the shells and NOT scale up the size of the shot that's inside them."

She starts sketching, "Really big -- ten times normal shells? More? Less?"

Future Boy looks briefly at the station and Miss Anima's sketchbook. "Nine, I think, will do it. If you could also add in a tripod it will help quite a bit with aiming; I don't mind flying back with each shot and getting stopped by a tether, but anything intended to nudge the station is of necessity have quite a bit of kick, and even aiming low that's an extra factor I'd like to be able to leave out.

The next panel is Future Boy outside with the giant gun, magnetically adhered to the skin of the SP vessel, keeping a careful watch on the rotating station and getting into the zone of its apparently erratic motion. He fires then once, twice, three times and with that the station is stock still in space.

[Rolled a 1! WOOT!]

From inside the ship Gigi says "I have never seen anything like that in my life. Grife, I've never even _heard_ of anything like that…."

The next panel is the two figures entering through the damaged docking bay with their rocket-packs. {BR: are you trying to arrange Gigi coming along? She's currently keeping an eye from the ship, since she doesn't have one of your hyper-high tech flight rigs and someone needs to be with the ship – these are problems the Legionnaires can trivially solve if they wish to….]

Miss Anima looks at Future Boy. "I'd like to double-check that there's no one on board, first. Okay with you? Thoughts?"

"Easy enough," Future Boy says. "and also impossible. The life support's currently running at a base level, and it's consuming energy at a steady rate that supports the idea that nobody's breathing the oxygen or heating up the air by moving around or breathing. So there isn't anyone on board…

… who breathes or has body heat. Including us; since we're wearing pressure suits, our heat transfer is minimal and our air transfer is nil. Someone in a pressure suit might have shown heat traces I could see in the logs, but if they were careful and concealing their presence, they might not.

"So while I can cautiously say that the place seems to be empty, it's still possible that we'll see other evidence that shows that the station's inhabited after all.

"Unless we see any evidence of someone living here, I think I'd like to get the power running. It's going to make everything easier, whether it's checking the computer system out or just having lights so we can see what's left in Wyla's digs."

"All right. Fixing stuff is your department; just let me know how you want me to help."

The pair head first to the command center, in hopes of getting the power running being as simple as telling the central computer to go off low power mode. There they find the keyboard interface for the computer shredded, looking like a dragon had gouged it out of the workspace with giant talons and dashed it onto the floor.

There's some other sign of upset but nothing else as radical as that.

"Only one keyboard for the entire station? That seems very odd," Future Boy says.

On the way to the engineering hub Jinnjahl is able to make much better time, making use of the lower gravity of the station and her natural acrobatics to perform some cursory additional searching for habitation. While she doesn't make it into the lab spaces. aside from some cleaning drones in standby mode it looks like Future Boy's assessment was correct: there's no one here.

That doesn't make it easier to shake the certainty that she's under observation. Maye it's just the feeling of Wyla's presence in the personal effects scattered about. For an introvert he kept mementoes of his past labs, locations and friendships across his workspace.

"...and that's another thing that's odd," Future Boy says. "Why are all the lights left on? In a station like this, well, I'm sure some of the solar collectors are still working but it's clearly running in low power mode. So why aren't the lights kept off, maybe with motion detectors putting them on at minimal when we approach, rather than kept at a low light constantly? What purpose does it serve? I mean, if I saw plants or anything, maybe, but there isn't even the remnant of anything like that.

"Anyway," Future Boy continues, "it looks like the guts of the system is entirely functional; it's just the keyboard that was wrecked. So if I can pull some wall panels down I can probably rig up a crude interface by combining switches from the keyboard with bits of my suit, maybe run a wired connection to my handheld. Except...that can't have been Wyla's only interface, can it? You don't set up a system with only one interface, that one an oldstyle keyboard, and no backups, do you? Maybe a voice interface? Computer, can you hear me? My name is Tok Kallot, also known as Future Boy with the Legion of Super Heroes. I've been working with Doctor Wyla, building on his work, and...with him having ascended to a different style of existence, it's possible he'd want me to have access to his work. If he were paying attention. Which for all I know he could be, but let's assume not. Plus, the most recent thing that happen ed, with him imprisoning his enemies here? They were our enemies, too, and I'm sure he'd want us to follow through on it."

Nothing Happens

"Worth a shot, anyway; nice thing about it just being the two of us is that I don't have to worry about looking silly." Tok smiles through his pressure suit at Miss Anima.

Miss Anima looks around the room, and back up to the corridor to the mementos of Wyla's life, and whispers "he never intended anyone else to be here...."

She pulls out an older sketchbook and with a rainbow shimmer summons the man himself back into his sanctum. There's a strange moment where he hovers between two states, his old and current selves, before settling into the man as he was in the drawing.

"Jinnjahl, Tok, hello! Where are we?" His breathing is labored in the thin oxygen but a voice quickly cuts in.

HELLO, DOCTOR WYLA. WELCOME HOME.

Page 13 Top: Bubble Boy

The Top row of this page is Gorvo on the grounds of the university, where he's meeting with Darvesh. The two of them are standing about a meter apart, with their casual use force fields as barriers between them, looking out across the ocean from the towed lab that Darvesh had set up to research tellagi fauna.

"I still can't believe he's gone…" Darvish says, holding herself as if to ward off a chill. She is, of course, speaking of Hardo Senn, the self-styled Monster Boy. "There were only the three of us here. Now there are just two…."

"It's funny," Gorvo says. "Back home we're almost used to losing people. Tallag is such a hostile world we grow up facing death practically every day. I never thought we'd face it here. What a stupid waste."

He looks at Darvesh and sees the pain in her expression. In a low voice, he recites an old Tallagi oath. " We will stand firm. We will stand together. Our shields will not break and we will not yield. One day we will find peace and put down our shields."

Gorvo slowly reaches for Darvesh, dropping his personal shield as he does, to fulfill the ancient oath. "We are Tallagi and nothing will come between us. For we are one."

She lowers her shield as well as she steps into his personal space and gives him a hug. When they first met her chin would have rested on his shoulder, now her eyes are buried there, her tears darkening his white suit a testament to how much he has grown in the last year. "Nothing will come between us. For we are one,"

"I know I did everything I could. But he was so angry all the time...about feeling weak. About hating you, and I guess me, about his own injuries." There's a pause. "He was going to kill you, wasn't he?"

Gorvo's expression clouds for a moment, thinking back to that day in the ocean with the unfathomably large Gameras, spurred on by Monster Boy's urging. The enormous gullet, flooded with seawater swirling down, dragging the Legionnaires down.

He shakes his head. "I think, I hope, that Hardo didn't realise how far he'd gone. Hate is a poisonous thing and he was suffering."

He returns the hug, and raises his force bubble, the sign of shelter and trust. "It's okay to mourn, Darvesh. I won't melt."

[MC: A good point for Dolar to enter the scene, right?]

[BR: sure! Though my original thought had just been to pull the camera back to see Dolar out of sight behind a tree with an anguished expression, looking like she's in a midcentury romance comic, even as she doesn't say anything in the scene.]

[DK: I was thinking very much along the same lines as Brian. But c’mon, it’s Dolar. Her face reveals nothing, even as her body shifts in the form denoting “suffering personal loss to advance a loved one’s happiness". (I guess you can keep the single tear.)]

Page 13 Middle: Mr. Music

This row is Mr. Music alone in his chambers, meditating, trying to purge his psyche of the damage caused by using his music to try to directly hurt someone after the thought Gorvo had been killed.

Ode sits cross-legged in simple (but, obviously, very flattering) clothing, eyes closes, breathing slowly in and out, meditating as the monks taught him.

In his mind, he dives through memories, most shown as calm waves of pleasant things, more than a few sparkling with joyous events. But he "swims" past them all, searching out darker, more ominous knots of memory.

Finding the one he seeks, he hesitates a moment, then plunges in.

Again, he sees Gorvo fall to Grave Gatling's bullets. Again, the angry denial, and Mr. Music's hand moving to his guitar.

The words "They think... they can just... I'll show them who's made a mistake" float through the dark sphere of memory, tangled with staves of chords.

In the next panel, these surround a smaller, darker orb. Floating over it are the words "I was going to..."

The next panel shows the inside of the second orb, where a sneering Ode is playing. Staves of chords swirl from his guitar around the thieves -- who are starting to rip each other apart.

[BR: this works for me. Diane, are you still good with Dolar interrupting this to ask the oh so casual and emotionally put together team leader for cross-species relationship advice?]

[DK: Sure am. What if Ode opens his eyes to find Dolar sitting cross-legged in front of him, utterly silent and still, waiting? Kind of like in Bedtime for Frances. "She was so quiet that she was the quietest thing in the room. She was so quiet that Father woke up all of a sudden with his eyes wide open.”]

[LP: That works.]

The next panel shows Ode's face, eyes closed, and a thought balloon: "This is NOT what the masters taught me. How could I even think --"

Page 13 Bottom: Mr. Music and Metal Lass

Then his eyes open and register surprise as he sees Dolar.

"...Metal Lass?"

Dolar shifts into the form that denotes a necessity to tell uncomfortable truths. “Ode, you are leading the Legion, and there are two things you must know. I am sorry that I have kept them to myself this long.”

“The first is about the Pirate King.” She shifts into the stance for reflected shame from a relative’s treachery. “I think you know that Captain Ahn is one of my clan. One of my kinsmen. What you do not know are the responsibilities that fact creates for me.”

Another shift, showing the determination to protect one's family. “Our braid system promotes responsibility to others in Metaxian society. Each clan is bestowed benefits and takes on limits of power in return. The alliances bind our actions, and protect weaker clans. Ahn Yuan has ripped himself out of that system, and his actions, when they become known, would damage the reputation of our line and ripple down our braid alliances, sowing chaos along the way. I discovered his treachery, and so the responsibility for ending his treason falls on me. I must find him and stop him."

Another. Fear in the face of death. “This is complicated by the fact that I attacked him — injured him —as we tried to free the ship. I did it because it was necessary [a flash of the form for responsibility to protect innocents], but because there was no ritual challenge, he could attack in turn without limits. And he did. He tried to kill me."

And another. Carrying a heavy burden beyond her years. “But I still live. So when our paths cross again, I am obliged to either capture Ahn Yuan and return him to Metax for judgement and punishment, or to kill him myself."

"I thought that you ought to know. I understand if the Legion wishes to step away from this.” Ode thinks about this, then says, "Is there... some... procedure for issuing a formal challenge?:

Dolar laughs bitterly. “Can you imagine Metaxians leaving something like that to chance? There are protocols, both written and verbal."

"Would Ahn Yuan accept one? And is there a way to... to take killing off the table?"

“He may,” Dolar answers, with the form for uncertainly about a stranger’s motivations. “If only for the chance to prove that his choices were honorable in some sense. Or — because I would be acting as representative of the clan — he might think it would be amusing to crush me. But speaking to your concern, one point of a formal challenge is to negotiate an endpoint other than death. If he accepted one, it could be designed to prevent either of us from killing the other."

Dolar now shifts into the pose for relating news about a mutual friend. “The second thing is that it appears Gorvo has — at last — told Darvesh how he feels about her, and she has reciprocated those feelings.”

"...oh," says Ode.

A shift. Surprise at one’s feelings after an anticipated event. “I encouraged him to do this. I thought that if I cared about him, I should try to increase his happiness. I thought that if he were happy, I would be happy in turn."

Shift. Wishing for a different outcome. “But I am not. I am heartsick and alone, and I do not know what to do. Why do I feel this way? I did what was proper!”

Dolar curls into herself and sits absolutely still as she begins to cry.

Ode's words appear over a series of flashbacks.

The first is over Ode moving his hand to start the sequence of chords that would make the thieves attack each other.

"If it were easy -- If it always brought us joy..."

The next is of Ode sinking into Gorvo's forcefield, thinking, "I... could get... used... to this..."

"...there wouldn't be people like Ahn Yuan. It's easy to do what's proper, what's right, when there isn't a cost. Or when things work out."

The next is of Ode and Dolar on the gamera's shell. Ode's arms are buried in the soil and he's weeping with the gamera's joy and his own hope, whispering "Maybe... maybe the others are..."

"It's hard to do what's right and stick to it, day after day."

Back in the present, if Dolar's the type to accept a hug, Ode is hugging her [DK: Hugs are good! Normally Metaxians avoid touch, but we’ve also got the whole Legion-as-kin thing going and Dolar’s super-upset.] before the triple panel of flashbacks.

"There's an old Terran poet who said 'I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.'"

(The Milton quote is in fancier calligraphy, of course, and probably footnoted to give him credit.)

"But... " Ode sounds tired. "It seems... we have to run that race... every day."

“So we do,” Dolar whispers. “But oh…it hurts."

Page 14: Diskette, Superboy, Rubbermaid, Chameleon Boy, Earth Child

BR: OK, so here's the breakdown: First off, all of the response to this is the full page spread on page 14, which is shot like we're looking down the barrel of this station and the chittering cloud forms are throwing things at us, with the usual sub-panel break outs for what people are doing.

Due to detection checks where Earth Child got a partial success bumped to full because of her superior vision and Rubbermaid got a partial success, those two are going to act first, and only Linda has enough time too do something that _stops_ Stal and Chenne's gravskim from getting hit, while if she fails Rubbermaid will have time/space to minimize the damage. If Linda succeeds, Rubbermaid will be positioned to prevent any damage to their shuttle.

Beth, remember Linda's hella strong compared to a Wynatian, has a ton of movement, and is wearing a flight rig that she's acclimated to pretty quickly with aforementioned movement and her background.

Linda races towards the machinery headed for the skimmer, leaps, and cuts in her flight rig as she shoulders it. She's hitting it at an angle, not head on, and not trying to stop it entirely; she's trying to redirect it somewhere harmless. Into another bit of machinery in a harmful direction would be best. "Guys, there's something at the center of those dust clouds."

[BR: roll is a 7, which is a Full Success on an Agility + Army Brat test to pull this off. Linda takes 11 damage between the impact and the heat, but they are two separate sources of damage so she can roll with each and take everything to power – she is at 26 HP and 58 Vitality. Unfortunately the roll wasn't quite good enough to make sure it doesn't hit your shuttle…]

Already displaying a command of her jetpack that would put Bubble Boy to shame (to be honest, he might have been thinking of something else when he was practicing…) Linda loops low and around to match direction with the projectile and then slams into it. It's a bone rattling hit, but she then kicks the flight rig's rockets into overdrive. The heat from the rockets is uncomfortable to painful on her back and legs, but she can feel the projectile changing course.

The figures in the smoke are screaming and chittering at her as the clutch the machinery, but are unable to fight her course correction. She flies by the dignitary's gravskim with a half meter to spare, but is keeping up the pressure to make sure it doesn't hit the Legion's shuttle.

100 meters.

80 meters

50 meters….she's not gonna make it.

Rubbermaid runs forward before kicking off and tucking into a ball aiming to carrom off the station wall into the debris alongside Linda to amplify her push.

[BR: roll is a 2!]

There's a loud "BOOOOOIIING!" as Vikrak hits the far wall and then a second "BROING!" as her hard, high velocity bouncing form slams into the side of the mass, knocking it nearly off line, then back to the shuttle, off of that and returning to the incoming mass with a series of incredible midair flips. Before the impact of the spirit-driven mass against the shuttle Rubbermaid expands to her largest, spherical form, and her body pushes the two metal objects apart with a loud "WHUMPH!" as Linda is engulfed in Vikrak's pillowed body

The machinery continues its flight towards the 'up' end of the cylinder, with Rubbermaid letting go of Earth Child, whose shifts her rocket pack back on.

[BR: For everyone else, aside from this shot on that gravskim _someone_ will be able to discern (I leave it to who responds first and thinks they have a chance to see it) that the damage isn't aimed where _people_ are, but instead at other equipment or just lobbing things out past the air screens and into space. This doesn't mean there's no chance of people getting hurt from collateral damage, but this is an attack on leadership and material. Please feel free to describe one or two cool things you're doing to minimize the damage.]

Diskette gestures, and a wave of disks appears briefly in front of a patch of a leading edge of the rubble, reversing their momentum and using them to cancel out the motion of other projectiles by slamming them into them, and summons another set of larger disks so the Legionairres can use them to quickly get themselves where they need to be. "We need to protect people, but if you can, also keep an eye or ear out for whoever may be controlling the swarm!"

[BR: roll is a 4, I'm going to assume 5 Vitality spent to create 5 different portals, and let her adjust as she gets new information]

Diskette's actions produce a surprising result: the rubble she snags with disks come out flying in the opposite direction… and immediately slow, reverse direction and start flying "up" towards the top of the cylinder. This does limit the effectiveness of her plan to slam the leading edge against the second wave. Seeing this. Diskette shifts the orientation of her attack, moving the debris she can catch to the center of the docking bay, where it will 'fall' away from anything vital.

Superboy races around the space, caroming off walls when they’re available and flying when they’re not, while grabbing each moving object he can reach and stopping it in place.

[Roll is a 14]

He stops the first chunk of machinery – which has picked up considerable velocity - and moves on to the next, only to discover that the first chunk is back in motion as soon as he lets go of it. He makes the same realization that Patin had a second earlier: these things weren't "thrown" in the zero space, they are somehow 'falling' upwards, with the chittering spirit things wrapped around them and pushing them on.

With effort he is able to grab the second large piece, move it back to the first and hold them both steady, but he knows once he lets go they will just take off again. Clark's not a master of 30th century engineering, but these things feel "heavier" than their 1990's equivalents would be. Maybe the 30th century just builds really dense, but each of these feels about three times as massive as it ought… for something falling upward in zero gravity.

[JK: Well, in a comic Diskette's revelation would show up in dialogue, so...might as well. Also, she's adjusting the angle of her position of her discs > after they've been manifested? That a capability upgrade I think, albiet a minor one unless she starts flying them around, but no objections; I assume the deal is that it's the same basic constraint as resummoning them but doesn't cost stamina.]

"Legionairres, the spirits might be just a special effect the objects aren't thrown, but being pulled!" She shouts through the communicator. "And it looks like they're targeting property, not people, mostly."

Seeing his allies handling the heavy lifting, the shapeshifter leaps through one of Diskettes disks to get as high overhead as possible and shifts into a xalxian raptor (assume condor wings, goose neck that's mostly a rope of muscle and owl head, all over very broad and sharp claws) to scout for the perpetrator. Down in the bottom of the well he spots a quartet of figures - assuming standard humanoid sexual diversity it's three females, one very large male - that are dressed in flowing garments of an eggplant shade very much unlike the bright safety orange of the work crews but good for moving in and out of shadows.

Which is what they are doing right now.

The minimal gravity in the space makes it impossible for Chameleon Boy to follow up with the xalxian raptor's diving attack, but he can make it to the wall, shift to an Ispep arachnoid (a daddy longlegs of one meter diameter body) famed for its rapid transit up and down the enormous trees of its native world) and fairly rockey down the side of the chamber to get close to them before they can escape.

[BR: Lisa, are you trying to follow or confront?]

Flashing back over the reading on the station's fauna Ree had found himself doing on the way here, he settles on a grey-green bird originally imported to assist pollination inside the station's green spaces that, of course, escaped and became a standard part of the station's ecosystem.

In this shape he darts out of the chamber to keep the quartet in sight.

Page 15: Diskette, Superboy, Rubbermaid, Earth Child

It's another few minutes of work for the Legionnaires to bring the crisis under control – understanding the physics of the problem they can…

... start corralling the debris to the center of the room while the young Kryptonian stations himself at the exit and begins spinning in place, his arms outstretched, to create a downdraft that stops the material from flying into space.

[BR: someone tell me how the 4 Legionnaires still in the room are able to corral the equipment to the center of the enormous cylinder without it flying out the atmosphere retaining force field that makes up the airlock. Don't overthink it.]

Once the chaos is under control the effect… stops. The screeching cloud shapes fade away leaving just a mess. Diskette gets a quick chance to check up on her team and finds one of them – Chameleon Boy – missing….

[BR: questions for people who might be willing to talk more now? next steps? How does Diskette respond to Ree going missing?]

"All right, there are two possibilities," Diskette says to the rest of the team (out of earshot of the officials).

"Possibility one: Ree did exactly what I asked, tracking whoever caused the attack, and somehow forgot to signal anyone that he was going off on his own. Understandable, given that were busy at the time, but we should really do something to our communications to make it easier to signal these sorts of things so someone can provide backup if needed.

"Possibility #2: Somehow during the distraction, he got captured--or alternatively tried the "follow someone" plan and they turned the tables on him. Ree's tough, but it's still entirely possible.

"We're going to act as if he did #1 for now. If he is tracking someone, we don't want to make this too obvious or spoil his cover by hunting for him, and if not...I'm sure that will become obvious at some point."

Unstated is the third possibility, ranked either above or just below possibility #2: That Ree has somehow managed to forget he could talk and started acting like an animal again. Best not to foster likely unfounded doubt in the capability of the team members.

Rubbermaid frowns, wondering if the Legionnaires shouldn't try harder to help their missing team mate. "Superboy, you don't hear anything? Anything at all?"

Clark listens *hard* and scans around with his X-ray vision for good measure.

His super-senses pierce through the construction, but he's scanning for an unknown quantity: there doesn't seem to be any active crime going on, but the problem with trying to find a shape shifter is that they could be...anyone.

“I’m sorry Rubbermaid -- I can’t find him. I just don’t know what to look for.”

"An animal scent, with your super nose, or the skitter of claws on metal with your super hearing? Nothing? Poor Ree!"

“The problem’s that I don’t know which animal to pay attention to,” Clark says, sadly. “But I’ll keep an ear open. As soon as Ree reappears, we’ll know it.”

Hopefully. Clark adds, in thought.

Diskette continues, ignoring the hushed aside "President Stal, is this sort of attack typical?"

Stal, still seated on the gravskim, looks shell-shocked. "N... No. I haven't actually _seen_ any of the attacks... But..."

Chenne steps in, holding out a hand to help Stal to her feet. "Nothing has ever been this bad. They have been incidents in isolated areas, where people saw the cobolds. Or there was just inexplicable damage. But they don't appear on screens, so there's been no recording of them. No one's ever seen them off Salem or recorded them here. It's easy enough to think it's just an old wives' tale if you're not from these parts, and probably easy for folks from these parts to blow them out of proportion."

"So these kobolds--cobolds I guess," Diskette asks, "this isn't a recent thing. That's the creatures we saw moving around, making things fall in unnatural directions, right?"

"The Salem Zero station, she wasn't the only one. There was a Salem 1 and a Salem 2, newer designs from this prototype, that didn't last. We rescued as many as we could, the old stories say, and that's why it's such a large but tight knit community here. But the people from Salem 1 and 2, they didn't respect the planet or each other. That was what everyone decided. They didn't respect the world they were living off of. There was no community and no reverence."

Chenne is steering the gravskim to the edge of the room as they talk, and the Legionnaires can see the truth in his words: everyone here is pitching in, helping out, trying to get things cleaned up and going. Linda can liken it to the comradery of a military unit, and Clark can see the tight knit nature of Smallville after a tornado.

"It's not magic and ghost tales to us on Salem Zero. It's Religion. We take from these worlds, so we have to respect them before, during, and after the process. People, when they need to get away - more away than here - head over to the last world we cleared and work the machines that are raking the surface down, cleaning it up, letting it know it's not forgotten."

"This attack, so out in the open, with so many people seeing it, is going to make a lot of people very scared. The stories of the cobolds are old, from the Lost Salems, but people remember them. That's what the witnesses to the attacks say they saw, that witches are riling the cobolds up here."

He looks over the Legionnaires and his co-leader. "Maybe they are. or maybe it's like you said, some outsider trying to spook us with legends. But this wasn't any little spook. If it wasn't cobolds, what was it?

"I don't know," Diskette answers. "But...we've seen something like this before. A few weeks ago, when the Legion base was attacked, one of the attackers used a power that looks just like the attack we just witnessed. Maybe she's involved--and if not, maybe it's someone else with the same powers. It can't be a coincidence that her powers look just like a cobold effect."

Stal asks "Do you have a holo of her?"

<BR: It's my birthday so I can take executive plot action.>

Linda, who had spent part of the trip familiarizing herself with the Legion's rapidly growing array of adversaries, nods, and after a few seconds calls up an image of the mysterious woman in violet garb (though not a lot of it) in a glowing holo of yellow light.

Stal snags the image with her own data pad, "We can compare that to our personnel records, which are pretty much the same as the residents of the station. We might be able to identify her..."

[BR: anyone else have alternate methods/paths of investigation to put forward?]

“Are these things alive, or are they some sort of machine?” Clark asks. “Because if they’re alive, they have to be eating _something_, and if they're mechanical, someone’s going to be doing maintenance on them. Either could be an opening to trace where they are on the station."

Chenne shrugs, "They're spirits. Or so the legends say. Spirits of the planet. But maybe not. We'll run some power drain studies on the equipment. Maybe we’ll find where they're being generated from. Or fed from, I guess…."

Linda, who had spent part of the trip familiarizing herself with the Legion's rapidly growing array of adversaries, nods, and after a few seconds calls up an image of the mysterious woman in violet garb (though not a lot of it) in a glowing holo of yellow light.

Stal snags the image with her own data pad, "We can compare that to our personnel records, which are pretty much the same as the residents of the station. We might be able to identify her..."

[BR: anyone else have alternate methods/paths of investigation to put forward?]

“Are these things alive, or are they some sort of machine?” Clark asks. “Because if they’re alive, they have to be eating _something_, and if they're mechanical, someone’s going to be doing maintenance on them. Either could be an opening to trace where they are on the station."

Chenne shrugs, "They're spirits. Or so the legends say. Spirits of the planet. But maybe not. We'll run some power drain studies on the equipment. Maybe we’ll find where they're being generated from. Or fed from, I guess…."

Page 16: Chameleon Boy

The Arboreal Darter moves from cover to cover, making best use of its size and speed to keep from being noticed as it follows the quartet down a series of passages. Instinctive glancing reveals to Ree that this series of twists and turns and alleys, circuitous as it is, tracks with an absence of security cameras that are supposed to be in the public spaces of the station. Key cameras have been taken out to give just enough blind spots for this passage.

It leads to a disused elevator, the panel broken and an 'out of order' sign on it. Not surprising that it isn't a super high priority for repair given how out of the way it is – the quartet have passed by a half dozen other elevators just like it that are working fine – but the big man pulls a small but serviceable prybar from his pack and levers the door open enough for the women to pass through.

They do, dropping into the darkness. Ree can hear chittering from the air as they vanish one by one into the shaft.

[BR: Lisa, it looks like the big guy is going to stay here and, if Ree could hazard a guess, close the door back up. Are you going to a) try to follow the women, b) stick with the guy, c) report back, d) something I'm not thinking of.]

With a flick of his wings Ree darts through the doorway. He hears a quick foul word from the started man, but there are no repercussions and no sign that his disguise has been penetrated.

The women are all falling down the shaft as if they weighed a tiny fraction of their real weight, the chittering entities supporting them as they fall.

They fall a long way, and unless Ree intends to change form or do something suspicious his avian shape will beat them to the bottom...

The Arboreal Darter lands and stars pecking innocuously at the debris at the bottom of the shaft, which turns out to be the top of the elevator proper. A moment later the three women land, one at a time, and the darter flits up and away to keep from being stepped on. With a gesture the oldest appearing of the women directs a smokey beast to flip open the access hatch into the elevator, and the three women drop into it one at a time.

Ree can see that the hatch isn't fully open - it's balancing on its pivot point, and the moment the smoke creature lets go or dissipates it will fall back into a closed position. Risking it he dashes through, banging his head on the inside of the elevator in a fashion convincing for a not too smart bird being caught unawares, and then with a mad flutter flees the broken elevator through the pried open door.

[BR: this is the result of just barely making a subterfuge check to keep acting like a regular old bird when the door started to close]

The oldest of the women chuckles at this humorous display and, as the younger two laboriously push the elevator doors closed, flicks her wrist. One of the chittering smoke creatures flies over to Ree and engulfs the Arboreal Darter. The moment the smoke touches him Rees flight goes wild - his weight is completely wrong, all the body's instincts are at war, and he flails around helplessly for a moment before slamming back into a wall, this time with considerably less planned grace. By the time he clears his head, the three women are gone, down one of the branching corridors of this disused intersection.

[BR: and this is the result of a hit doing 20 points of Move damage after Ree had already been flitting around. No physical damage, but he was stunned and by the time the weird weightlessness wore off they were gone.]

Page 17: Diskette, Superboy, Rubbermaid, Chameleon Boy, Earth Child

The next page has the main group inside Stal's office overlooking the central chamber – the ceiling is a giant window displaying the grandeur of Salem Zero – and both of the plant officials have something.

Stal starts, showing a different holo of the woman in violet, clearly taken in the non-flattering light of an official ID card. "Dawan Ximo. She was born here, lived here her whole life until last year, worked a variety of support jobs, was suspected of some minor thefts between 18 and 16 months ago…"

Chenne grunts, "there are no 'minor' thefts on Salem Zero. We're too close for that."

Stal seems to have recovered her poise from the shake up earlier, "Of course," she says, "In any event she had enough credits on hand to get a passage off station, apparently to Rimbor."

Linda knows of the planet, one that exists just barely on the inside of UP law and common to mercenary companies… and pirates. " If you want to disappear, there's no better place to do it than Rimbor."

Chenne grunts again, "Good riddance to bad rubbish."

He nods over to Superboy, "thanks to this young man's suggestion, we've found unexpected power draws here, here and here," pointing out spaces on the three dee map of the station. All three are on the planet, all distant from the rest of the station, but not terribly far away from each other.

"But there's no security footage of anyone coming or going from there, not for months. They're abandoned spots in the station."

"I think I can explain that," says Ree, standing in the doorway of the office.

Vikrak claps her hands in delight, a loud slapping sound. "Ree! You're safe!"

She takes a step forward before she remembers she's a Legionnaire and very serious. She just about manages to keep it to a little bounce in place.

Diskette is a bit more restrained in her response. "Not kidnapped, I see." She grins. "Good. I take it you found someone to follow?"

He recounts his adventures following people. "...and so, there are places your cameras don't see," he finishes. "But that's not magic. Everything I saw could be explained by that sort of thing or by superpowers. I mean... I suppose you could call that magic, but at that point, you're committing to calling a lot of things magic just because you can't see every step of how they work."

"Well," Diskette responds, "that's true, but that doesn't mean magic doesn't exist. Not all powers come from the same source; if there are some that act like magic and can counteract one another, we might as well use the word. I mean, Ode learned his powers; he didn't get them from genetics or weird science or anything; I don't know if that's magic, but it's closer than anything else I can think of--except maybe Grave Gatling's creepy gun."

Clark can’t suppress a shudder at that reminder of the gun at the quarry. “That thing was just *wrong*."

Linda speaks up from her position watching the door and out of line of sight of the windows, "Well, this isn't a species-power for this world, or any planet we know of, but still at least four women can do it. So either it's magic and they all learned it, or it's a mutation and they all have it, or there's an origin even that they all shared. What else do we know about Dawan Ximo that might shed some light on which of those it is...?"

"Just that she's from here," Diskette says. "And the four other women who can do it are from here too, so maybe there's some kind of being or substance or something else that grants these abilities; whatever it is, it's probably here. If it's an alliance, it's probably with intelligences who have an issue with the mining--that might explain a bit of the nature of the attacks, but even then, why now?"

"Maybe they discovered something, some kind of treasure that they could grab if the mining stopped?" says Ree. "I mean, that's just guessing. We need to find out more."

[JK: I'm not quite sure what the GM's leading question was intended to elicit, but...sure, try this.]

[BR: I'm not really sure either – that was a clumsy line construction on my part. Part of it was what Josh provided, but really I asked a question one of the NPCs should answer. Oops. So the team has three physical places to explore, they have someone with special Tracking powers (Linda) who could be brought to the site where Ree lost her quarry, they have access to the station records if they want to make a relationship web for their target to see if anyone in it matches the people Ree was following that might shed some light on what's happening.]

Rubbermaid opines. "Maybe we should see if we can identify the people Ree tailed before we go looking in abandoned corners of the station. Information is power, France is Bacon, after all. Better to have some handle on who we're facing than meeting them blind on their home turf, no?"

“I agree.” aays Clark. “And once we figure out who they are, we should see whether there’s a way to track their finances over the past few months. Both spending and sources of income. 'Follow the money', as they say where I’m from."

There's a quick review of the data leads to a few data points that I'll share out of character

• Ree is able to identify two of the perpetrators – the man and the younger woman – as Davan Xuan (Dawan Ximo's cousin) and Hala Jora respectively. The three of them were very vocal in the protests against Salem Zero's prior outside management's pushing for deeper mining into the planet. They were, by all accounts, among the more militant.
• The pair are both employed in relatively menial capacities but in the mining operation and have clean work records – very much keeping their heads down in the new regime. Or maybe with LGN now in place their issues have been addressed. You have addresses on file for both of them.
• The other two women Ree can't get a good match on, from the files. To clarify from Diskette's earlier statement, there are a quartet of perpetrators, but only 3 are women)
• Still, there's a financial connection between Xima, Xuan and Jora – the two that are still on planet did a money transfer of much of their funds to Xima shortly before the date she left the system. The logical explanation is that they helped fund her departure. This left them "a little bit skint", and following Clark's advice you dig further, finding a series of smaller money transfers to them from a larger web of people. This correlates to the most religiously militant part of the protest network.
• Clark's earlier observation about power sources at three sites on the planet. As Ree has pointed out, these fall into the subtle network of security outages that let the saboteurs roam undetected around the station. It's possible, in fact likely, that the women Ree lost have vanished to one of those spots.

What are your next steps?

Page 18: Metal Lass, Robot Boy

“I’m afraid we don’t have very much to start with,” Dolar explains, as she walks through the flower-lined quads of the UP Diplomatic Academy with the tall and metallic Adom Threy. “It’s more like a whisper of a rumor than firm facts and figures.”

Her stance shifts from the form denoting ‘equals taking on the roles of teacher and student' to one for ‘gratitude for a talented friend’. “But we now know that the Pirate King is a Metaxian, and as far as I can tell there’s only one Metaxian who could have been in a position to slip his obligations by faking his death. He was a student here twenty-five years ago, so I hope the school’s archives can tell us more about Ahn-Yuan-who-was."

"Observation: in an education structure there is always bureaucracy and records, Adom responds "Which should provide us a foundation for the investigation."

"Statement of personal concern: Of all of the opponents the Legion has encountered in its short history, the Pirate King concerns me most. Under normal circumstances it is my responsibility to provide protection to my soft-kin. I fear with him the opposite would occur."

“You are right to be worried,” Dolar responds, slipping into the stance for "concern for a friend’s well-being”. ‘All Metaxians can instinctively sense and work metals, but most of us can only manipulate a small amount for a short time. He is the strongest bender I have ever encountered, and I have no doubt that he would damage you if he had the chance.” She shifts into the stance denoting "determination to protect the weak". 'I would protect you the best that I can, though I wonder whether Tok might have some ideas about disrupting our metal sense. That could be a challenge worth pursuing before we meet Ahn Yuan again.'

Before the conversation can go any further Professor Noah, Dolar's primary instructor for the times when she is at class – don't worry, the academy has constructed a work study program tailored for Ahn Dolar and her Legion activities – approaches the pair before adopting a passable stance of Instructor Interested in current field of study.

"Miss Ahn, I wasn't expecting you today. I presume this is Legion business. How tan the Academy assist?"

Dolar begins formally, adopting the pose for a student asking for aid from an honored teacher. “Professor Noah, we would like to examine the school’s enrollment and classroom records from the first Metaxian students to attend the academy. Although my government believes he was killed in a space accident, we have reason to believe he may still live, and is leading the pirates attacking UP shipping. We hope to learn more about his past and his possible motivations."

As Metal Lass shares her story, Noah's face grows more concerned. "O dear. That's… that’s very bad."

“How so?” Dolar asks, shifting into the stance for intent curiosity. “He is certainly behaving badly, but I suspect you are thinking along other lines?"

Noah shakes his head sadly, and it's the first time that Dolar can picture her instructor being 'old'. "Ahn Yuan was one of the first students through this program, and as always we were concerned about how young adults from the Polite Worlds would integrate to UPs less... formal social norms. He started with a period of self-enforced aestheticism, during which he impressed everyone with his discipline, endurance, and leadership potential... he started a dawn class in the Forms for other students, for example, and would work through the night over and over to assist struggling classmates... something snapped. There's just no other way to put it. Off campus he embraced a sort of wild hedonism that has never been equaled. Food and drink consumed in abundance; reports of dancing, fighting," he reddens slightly "orgies. It was as if he was trying to force feed himself a lifetime of everything his prior aestheticism had denied him."

<All of this is discussion over a flashack panel showing Yuan doing all these things in lurid red on yellow>

He shifts his stance to one of remembrance of ancient regret, "And we at the academy were unprepared for it. His prior leadership position let him pull many of the class down with him, and to a soul they lacked his stamina and brilliance. They couldn't keep up physically or intellectually. There were some educational failures, a near death from overdose. We only had one class of prior instruction and Ahn Yuan made us question whether the entire academy was misguided. Were we doing more harm than good? Then he and several of his coterie 'borrowed' a shuttle - there was questions as to the illegality of it - something went wrong and he redeemed himself by molding an escape craft for them, containing the life support and radio for them to be rescued. But he was lost in the action, the shuttle exploded and there was no body recovered."

"It was easiest to report back to Metaxia the heroism of his final actions rather than highlight the personal failings that brought him there. By all accounts, in the end, he apologized to those he had led up there, and led astray, gave his life to save them. But if he's still alive...."

Professor Noah leaves this hanging, and Robot Boy completes the thought.

"Conclusion: the shuttle accident was staged, and the speech of contrition was scripted and rehearsed. Ahn Yuan could have created a second escape pod, and had had transport waiting. He planned his death to act anonymously for a quarter century."

Dolar nods, while shifting into a stance denoting satisfaction when suspicions are confirmed. “The question still remains whether he merely wanted to escape the limits placed on him by clan and braids, and his career as a pirate is merely to feed his vices, or whether he had a larger and longer-term goal. Perhaps some answers lie in the records.” She stops at a sudden thought. “….Professor Noah, do any of Ahn Yuan's coterie still live in the city? We may get a better sense of him from his former friends."

The scene shifts to inside a very small apartment in downtown New Metropolis. Very small. Their presence on a pair of flimsy chairs - Adom is literally locking his legs in a balanced position to appear to be sitting on the chair and Dolar is using her powers to bolster its framework (hers could probably support her but it doesn't hurt to be sure for courtesy's sake). They are looking onto a tasterfully appointed three level dwelling with cathedral ceilings occupied by an older Faeruni man, who has settled his 20 cm form (and his wings) onto a chair on the floor at eye level to the two youths.

The youths have already been informed that this man, Abbi Apsri, is not a Faeruni, but at Rhankani, from a Faeruni colony world that got separated and evolved into kleptocracy based on extensive ties of mutual blackmail, threat, and obligation.

"Aan Yuan?" he says again. "Who's reanimating that corpse?"

“That would be me”, Dolar begins, with a formal dip of her head to indicate her position as a supplicant to a more knowledgeable elder. “I am Ahn Dolar, and Ahn Yuan was my kinsman”.

Be calm, she thinks. This is a negotiation, not a conversation. With a deep breath, she remembers her diplomacy training and stills her body for the keeping of secrets. Tell truth, but tell it slant.

She continues, “This is my friend Adom, who will serve as record-keeper and witness for our conversation. I am here because my clan believes that the Diplomatic Academy lied to us about Ahn Yuan’s conduct in Median City before his death. If this is true, we want to know the extent of their deception. It would bring us certain….advantages."

She leans toward the diminutive sophist. “My research says that you were one of his boon companions at that time — tell me what my kinsman was like."

There's a tiny snort, and the size of his face makes it almost impossible for Dolar to read if her gambit has paid off. "Of course they lied. His antics put their entire program in jeopardy."

His tiny face looks wistful, "the sheer volume of debauchery he initiated. The glorious, adrenaline-fueled violence. We came soooo close to dying so many times, and so close to being rubbed out at least once…." He seems to preen a little at that last thought, as if reveling in a personal triumph.

"Ah those were the days. Before we all became so civilized."

"But yes, the school lied. They stepped in for us to minimize the punishment for offenses, moving things to internal discipline, which Yuan led the group to understand were meaningless. With his death they covered up the whole thing in administrivia, deeply mourned, selfless death, saved his classmates. It couldn’t have resolved more neatly if it were scripted."

He straightens his back and settles his wings, "His death changed everything, of course. Things went back to 'normal' when he was gone, and we all learned to play nice."

“Did he have a larger goal for all this glorious debauchery, or was it just for fun?” Dollar asks, shifting into a stance denoting curiosity in one’s self-interest. “My clan’s elders made much of his intelligence."

He snorts, "The boy just got off a bass akward, super repressed planet. Of course he went nuts. I'm surprised more of you don't! I figured he was gonna, what's that Terran term? Prince Hal it once he was done with school and lost their protection. Make nice enough that he could land a cushy offworld gig and with the pretense of good behavior."

Robot Boy leans over to Metal Lass and vocalizes at a volume that only she can hear, "Observation: Apsri appeared inordinately proud of their antisocial behavior concerning nearly being 'rubbed out'. That might be a path of diplomatic advantage?"

Without changing position, Metal Lass shifts the topic. “It sounds like you had quite a time together. What happened when you were nearly 'rubbed out’? I suspect you had an important role in that adventure?"

The tiny kleptocrat nods, clearly relishing the reminiscence “yeah, he would have been killed if not for me. I was able to pull some strings through family connections and get him a face to face with the Architect. That stopped the local as then controllers from removing him after we accidentally botched one of their plays.”

“Impressive,” Metal Lass replies. “That connection could have been very useful for Yuan, if not for his untimely death...."

Page 19, top: Superboy

Clark finds himself alone on an alien world for the very first time. Well, not at first, as there are the Wynathians who make up the population of Salem Zero everywhere, but by the time he reaches the isolated section of the ground part of the base he is well and truly alone. The technology, while more advanced than earths by orders of magnitude, is still technology. The people still appear to be fundamentally people. The could be the interior of any high tech office building in the 1990's with the overhead lighting and tope walls, but the quotidian surroundings somehow mane the dislocation stronger.

The future is sure an interesting country, but I guess warehouses will always look like warehouses, no matter the time or place, Clark thinks.

The room, when he enters it, is empty, at least to conventional senses.

<There isn't anything immediate here, but if you want to look around you may find some clues…>

Huh. No one here now. Looks completely empty. Let’s see what we can see in infrared and X-ray.

The quick scan of the room with his super-vision reveals something subtly different – there is a dusting of nigh-microscopic particles that turn up on his x-ray vision as having a significantly higher density and energy-blocking profile. It's not as problematic as lead, but it might as well be. Focusing his eyes to more microscopic it's not anything he recognizes, even down to the molecular level.

I guess this is that valorium stuff they mine here? Jeeze, it’s _everywhere_. They must have been keeping a ton of it in here.

The next panel shows Clark brushing his hand on the wall, trying to clear a space in the ubiquitous valorium dust.

Wait a minute…Rubbermaid said that this stuff was used in high-end antigravity devices. And those things in the loading bay, whatever they are, were making objects fall ‘up’.

The dust skitters away from his hand as he swings it, repelled by his presence. Whoa — that’s weird. What makes it act like that? Is it like a magnet, but with regular matter? And if that’s true, how do they mine and store it?

I bet Rubbermaid will know! Clark thinks, and keys up his communicator….

Clark opens the channel to Rubbermaid and hears a sudden cacophony of her distinctive activity - sproinging and springing - before the cannel drops dead and is re-opened by Diskette, saying Instead, she thumbs on on her communicator and takes a defensive/counter-attacking stance herself, and says "we just came her to talk. You're clearly not trying to hide what you're doing, at least not from us, so why? Why attack and sabotage the local government? What have they done to you?"

Other unknown voices in the local accent. "You're all outsiders! You don't know the harm you're doing! Why can't you all just walk away!" sobs one, while another yells "Our power comes from their pain! and I'll bring that pain back onto you!"

After that there's a loud thud followed by the sound of heavy objects slamming with great force into a hard surface. It's almost like bombs going off.

[BR: Diane, it's too far away for you to reach quickly even with your normal flight speed, but if you use your Super Speed power you can bootstrap your normal 99 Movement at x8 effectiveness for flight, and will make it there on your action (14) but with a mere 30 points of Movement left.]

[BR: feel free to have the first part of your thought balloon on this page.] THEY’RE IN TROUBLE! Clark realizes, instantly turning to speed out of the empty room. HANG ON, I’M COM—

Page 19, middle: Earth Child and Chameleon Boy

<Lisa, just let me know what shape Ree is in as you approach the site.>

The pair of new Legionnaires approach their designated location and Ree can see Linda somehow get more limber as they get closer – her stride becomes softer and quieter, her body clearly prepared for some sort of action – and before they get to the entry of the supposedly big open space she stops and gives Ree a significant look that communicates

"There's someone in there" and "Go Look"

Ree moves like the rodent he's pretending to be, not going directly there, running about seemingly at random.

Ree scrambles into the room, rodent-like, sticking to the walls and corners. Inside the room is the large man he tracked earlier. who split off from the trio of women when they entered the elevator shaft. The man they later identified as Davan Xuan. He's at a small folding table, on a small folding chair, doing something delicate to a piece of machinery with a soldering iron. If Ree had to make a guess, Xuan was modifying a stolen security camera.

[BR: Die roll for sneaking in is an 8, which is a Full success normally dropped to a Superior success due to the size change. He's not aware you're there. You're free to take another action.]

Ree slips just outside and tries to take the shape of the younger of the women he saw earlier.

[BR: While we didn't discuss it, the women did speak a bit in their transit, to Ree can make a passable stab at her voice.]

As soon as Ree enters the room, Davan jumps to his feet. Ree can immediately see the suspicion in his eyes...

[BR: you need a Subterfuge test, which for this initial moment is against Intelligence to capture the look and feel of the target. You rolled a 16, which is a Partial success, but imitating specific people needs at least a Full success. So, he's going to see through this in seconds UNLESS you call on one of your personality traits to either reroll or boost the result by one to 'Full'. His traits are Curious, Mischievous, and Hungry, so if you want to just let me know which one and give a couple lines of Ree's though process as to which one...]

[I think the only one that makes sense is Mischievous.]

He's not buying it... makes sense, these people haven't gotten as far as they can by... by not being paranoid. I mean, they enchanted a BIRD. Okay, that bird was ME, but... hm... maybe if I play with that angle...

Ree-as-woman puts a finger on the man's lips. Then, they make a show of doing a slow check around the room, as if checking for listening devices, closing their eyes and concentrating, doing a quick double-check outside the room just in case.

[Ree is having fun with this; hence, Mischievous. He's not doing anything deliberately slapstick. That would be stupid. But he is hamming it up just a bit.]

Ree-as-woman walks around Davan Xuan with a hard glint in their eye, as if wondering if he's, oh, been replaced by a duplicate or bugged or otherwise tampered with. Finally "satisfied", she visibly relaxes and nods to Davan, as if to assure him that NOW he can be sure they're secure.

[BR: ooooh, I like this...]

Davan's look goes from wary to confused to nervous, "Salan, what's wrong," he whispers, "Is Grandmother Sula safe? Is it those outsider children? What's happening?"

"She's safe, she's fine," says Ree/Salan, hurriedly, as if to reassure. "They're just more troublesome than we'd thought, so you're absolutely right to be careful! They say they just want to understand." Ree/Salan gives a bitter laugh. "Understand! How could they?"

(Ree's hoping to get Davan to voice at least a partial explanation of the why.)

He snorts “like the new boss is ever different from the old boss. Like they didn’t prove last time that all of them are Khazad-doomed.”

He stops then “but what are they doing now? Why are you here? Where do you need me to be?”

There's a sudden blur of movement as Linda comes barreling into the room - she's obviously fallen back down the corridor to get a chance to build some momentum, then cornered into the room - and in route she snags a piece of Davan's equipment off the floor. The random gear swings in a long arc that catches the surprised Salemite on the back of the knee, sending him tumbling to the ground with a painful thud.

While stunned by the attack, Davan is not unconscious, and is foregoing his immediate attempt to get back up waiting for "Salan" - who was clearly correct in her security concerns - to deal with this upstart.

Ree moves, shifting to a form that can pin Dayan to the ground, and tries to do just that. [Large dog/wolf/badgerthing?]

"Actually, I think you've fine just where you are," he says.

Before Dayan can move the 500 kg Dire Badgerthing strides over him, laying an enormous, splayed paw on each shoulder, the burrowing claws digging into the floor with audible crunches.

The last panel of the sequence is a shot of the enormous fanged furry face delivering Ree's line.

[BR: the attack roll was a 5, which with the Boost turns into a Superior success. "Damage" is 15 HP and 15 movement, which would shut him down if you were trying to do damage, so I'm treating it as such. I think we can close scene there....]

Page 19 Bottom: Diskette and Rubbermaid

The final pair of Legionnaires are approaching the third spot that could be a base for the Salem Zero attackers – like the other two is a big spot on the map that is purportedly a storage area. As they approach there's a tangible, growing anxiety in each of them. By the time they reach a spot where they can see the entrance but not be seen, Diskette is having to control her hands shaking and Rubbermaid is sweating.

<BR: This is an externally generated effect, but the girls may well consider it to be normal tension for whatever reason you think most likely. Is Patin super worried about failing her first mission as field leader? Is Vikrak's self-confidence cratering? Is one kids anxiety feeding the others in a death spiral? There are no mechanical effects for this (yet) but it is a role playing opportunity.

"This is a bad idea," Diskette says. "Yes, I know it's at root my plan, that's not the point. We shouldn't have split up like this. Someone's going to mess up and be spotted, and that will alert all of them. Or someone will get ambushed; I know everyone can handle themselves, but someones's going to mess up."

"We're Legionnaires, Diskette! We'll be fine." Rubbermaid asserts while a doubtful expression crosses her face. She glances over her shoulder. "I don't think we're being followed.... But I'm new at all this. Maybe we're being followed."

She bumps into Diskette while reversing along the passage and jumps in fright. "Sorry! Sorry!"

"Wait, you're worried about being followed? You, the nigh-invulnerable girl? And...scared? That's not like you at all," Diskette says, concern for her teammate pulling herself for a moment out of her own navel-gazing. "Actually, wait. This isn't like either of us. Because it isn't us. Something's messing with our emotions, making us anxious and scared. All our justifications are just that; our minds trying to come up with reasons for how we're already feeling."

Rubbermaid pulls a face, anger getting the better of her externally-imposed fear. "What a rotten thing to do to a person! Grr, that makes me properly mad. If I had my hands on whoever it is right now I'd..."

The reader never finds out what Vikrak's intentions are. The pair are startled by a sudden shift in the corridor they are in: with the chittering screech of the ghostly apparitions surrounding them the teens see the ceilings slant upwards suddenly. The hall they were in, along with the room they were approaching, has taken on a conical shape. Vikrak is able to recognize this as a funnel design, likely for either accepting material bein poured down from above or to direct material being sucked up and out from the storage room.

Whatever the intent of the design is, the Witches of Salem Zero have used their spirit-powers to greatly accelerate it, the conical shape slamming into place with a loud clang, before spirits fly out of the central room and snatch up both girls, hurling them upwards. The pair slap into the ceiling and start sliding 'upwards', into the room.

They see the three women below them, the younger two motioning with their hands to direct the spirits, and have precious few seconds to react before they go flying off the edge of the cone and into the central well of the 'funnel', where they will lose any contact with a solid ground. The older woman is raising her hands.

[BR: Josh, Diskette was 'barely' hit with a roll of 12, but had worse luck on the 2d10 damage roll, taking 18 points of Movement; she is down to 34. Myles, Vikrak was well struck with a roll of 4, but did better on the 3d10 damage roll, taking 10 points of movement, she is at 30. In a few seconds Grandmother Sala will go and you'll take a LOT more movement damage... if she gets you below 0 move you'll be Trapped, suspended in midair. You both have time for one action. Attack her, attack one of the other witches, set up an evasion to keep from getting hit, try to get out of the room, something I'm not thinking of....]

30: Diskette "Scare us, and then trap us?" Diskette asks. 'Pick one. Or,, none. Real gravity has never scared me, so why should the fake kind?" With a gesture, she makes two portals appear, one in her paths, and matching ones outside the room and behind their attackers, letting her momentum and the artificial gravity carry her through hers. If she has action left, she'll kick at Grandmother Sula, trying to put her in between Diskette and the slide to oblivion.

[so a reposition and an attack!]

[BR: to be clear, the women are inside the room, roughly 1/3 of the way from the center to the door, and not in the doorway/passageway that you came from. The anti-gravity effect doesn't seem to be in the whole room, just on the girls (and probably the mechanisms that set up the ceiling. I'm editing slightly to account for that, and to not have to have Myles rewrite his action.]

Diskette vanishes through her hole and reappears 'falling' sideways with what had been her upward momentum towards Grandmother Sula. Her passing through the portal seems to have dislodged the spirits, so they aren't continuing to push her up, as per her plan, but the moment her foot 'connects' with Grandmother Sula - actually hitting a few inches away from her - a spirit materializes and painfully yanks her foot and ankle straight up and away. She flies in an ungainly mess over the elderly woman's head, but recovers enough to land on her feet.

Were it not for her years of training that maneuver might have broken her ankle.

[BR: OK, here's the deal - Grandmother Sula used her action on 31 (!) to set up a Gravity type defense. That's a total defense against conventional attacks, meaning you need a 1 to hit her. In addition, anyone attacking her who rolls less than a Superior hit (in Diskette's case a 3 or lower) get an immediate gravity counter attack for damage. Diskette rolls a 3 exactly, so while she didn't hit, she also didn't take any extra damage. This is one of those defense types that takes a full action to set up and maintain at this level, so Sula will be burning her 31 action each round keeping it going. And yes, from the way I wrote it the level vs level modifier doesn't apply to determining if the attack damages you - that would have been overkill.]

[JK: Ouch!]

16 Rubbermaid Rubbermaid tucks and spins, before whipping out straight, attempting to fling herself off centre and into contact with the walls of the cone. **Got to get bouncing! Need to spring off something!** [MC: Mechanically, attempting to dodge/evade the next attack and set up to rebound off some surface.]

With impressive precision the Esotian executes a prefect maneuver, kicking off from the angled ceiling to begin bouncing madly around the room in an effort to avoid the spirit forms.

[BR: the Evasion gives you a -5 to be hit until your first action of next round]

16 Grandmother Sula Grandmother Sula chuckles as she watches Patin's flailing over her head, but turns her head slightly - doubtless assuming her opponent is more hampered than she turns out to be. She and Vikrak are moving at the same time, so she just sees the Esotian fly away from the wall when she waves her hands and an array of ever so slightly differently colored chittering spirits form and launch themselves at the Legionnaires.

What follows is a mad set of panels where the girls leap, dodge and evade the spirits - driven mostly by Rubbermaid's almost omnipresence as a madcap sphere around the room preventing any real targeting of the two - before Diskette can position herself for her next action.

[BR: another Mechanics breakdown: Grandmother Sula is level 7, so she's getting a +4 to hit Diskette and a +6 to hit Rubbermaid just on that. She overconfidently made a multiple attack, which means she has to hit each of her targets for any of her attacks to land. She rolled a 3 to attack Diskette, easily clearing it, but a 16 to hit Rubbermaid, which due to Rubbermaid's evasion misses by 1 point. Ergo, Vikrak's bouncing around the room protected both her and Patin from the attack, as seen above.]

15: Diskette "A direct approach isn't going to work," Diskette thinks, "not with the gravity powers and those imps. " Instead, she thumbs on her communicator and takes a defensive/counter-attacking stance herself, and says "we just came her to talk. You're clearly not trying to hide what you're doing, at least not from us, so why? Why attack and sabotage the local government? What have they done to you?" (intent is to redirect whatever they try to throw at her, assuming it's not words, with a portal or portals).

15: Mother Ayie, Sister Salan The old woman [BR: while I'm using their names here for simplicity, I want to reinforce that as of right now only Chameleon Boy knows them in the other thread] doesn't respond but the two younger women do,

"You're all outsiders! You don't know the harm you're doing! Why can't you all just walk away!" sobs the middle one, while the younger yells "Our power comes from their pain! and I'll bring that pain back onto you!"

The tittering and screeching increase as the older of the two directs her power directly at Diskette, sending the spirits to grab her and drag her up into the air.

[BR: base chance to hit is 14, level vs level increases it to 15, and Diskette's normal defense type doesn't affect it; the die roll is 6. This does 25 inches of Movement damage. Almost any other Legionnaire would be hosed at this point, but Diskette's 26 Agility gives her 54 Movement and between the two attacks they've done 43 and she used 5 for her attack; she has 6 Movement left and that means she's not Stuck.]

Diskette tries to block these with her shields, but the spirits slip nimbly around them and hurl her back towards the slanted ceiling. She flips in mid-air and lands on her feet, turning an uncontrolled slide into a run

The younger instead waves the spirits at some of the objects in the room, that the spirits surround, and lift slightly in the air. With a series of dancing moves - throws and kicks - the youngest of the three sends these objects speeding towards Diskette.

[BR: Here is where Diskette's defenses really come into play. Base chance to hit is 13, but she needs a Superior success to hit through the shields so a 3 or less, which becomes 1 when the Level vs. Level penalty comes into play. The roll is a 5, which would have hit but for Diskette's awesomeness.]

There's a shot of Diskette broken field running _up_ the side of the slanted wall, her feet finding traction both on the wall proper and on small disks she positions to push herself back where she wants to go to control the forces dragging her away from the floor, as furniture, small equipment, and other detritus slam into her "floor" and her shields or get redirected. She looks exactly like a war movie hero running through a mortar bombardment, just vertically.

At the last second she snags one of the incoming objects inside a disk and it suddenly reappears a bare meter away from the youngest attacker. The metal cylinder catches her a glancing blow in the shoulder, sending her spinning.

She loses her balance and falls with a thud, only to rise up second layer as the spirits return her to her feet

[BR roll is a 14, which is good enough to hit but only for movement damage. She takes 14 movement but is not otherwise affected. Still, it does confirm that she has not set up any defensive fields….]

14: Superboy [Diane, the back half of your thought balloon here, plus your action.]

"—ING!"

Superboy zooms into the room in a blur and skids straight into the trio of spirit-directing women as he tries to decelerate.

He slips around the youngest at the last second, and is horrified to see his slipstream grab the girl and throw her towards the wall. Clark intervenes, grabbing her before she hits and then in a burst of inspiration gouges his fingers into the metal plating of the wall to pull some free and bend it around the girl's hands, pinning her to the wall to keep her out of the fight.

Clark snaps back to normal time to get a sense of what's happening in the room….

[Sister Salan is Stuck, so she's not going to be able to move or evade]

Page 20: Diskette, Rubbermaid, Superboy (Maybe whole team)

31: Grandmother Sula Diskette, as the only Legionnaire left in the room, sees a look of absolute shock and horror on her face as she stares up the exit chute into the inky night sky.

"Oh my..." she whispers.

Then her demeanor shifts, her facing turning hard and determined, and with a couple of flicks of her hands she sends spirits to grab her compatriots and hurl them from the room down one of the other exit corridors. There is a horrendous screeching of metal as the spirits pull up on the ad-hoc bonds that Superboy had created to hold the youngest of the three seconds ago, but ultimately both women are flying out of the chamber.

The oldest woman is moving more slowly, and is in the room for several seconds longer.

[BR: OK, so Grandmother Sula has decided to play the "we are out of here!" card, but because of Clarks ad-hoc restraints last round she can't get both companions out, herself out, and maintain her Gravity defense. Diskette can _just_ spy this change the air around her (Intelligence test for a Full success came up a 6), and has time to take advantage of this if she acts immediately.]

30: Diskette

The sharpest Legionnaire immediately scraps the line she was working on about needing to be creative to beat their elderly foe. "Granny's open," she shouts, and drops herself through a warp as she directs her wristband weapon to form itself into a fencing baton as she begins her assault by falling through the portal she's just opened in front of the anti-gravatic octogenarian.

[BR: Not sure who she's shouting to... the rest of her team is in space....]

[JK: Yeah, but her radio is still on... and she doesn't know the initiative order]

Diskette is more familiar with the instances of changing angle of gravity than anyone else these Witches have faced, and casually drops "up" through a hole that takes her "down" and sheds the spirits clinging to her. Patin lands directly in front of the old woman and, fully aware of how dangerous she is, clobbers her with her fencing baton.

There's a loud 'crack' and the woman falls to the floor. She appears to be unconscious.

[BR: attack roll is an 8, easily hitting the 'defenseless' (in a technical sense) woman. Damage roll is also an 8, and the d% KO chance doesn't come through. Grandmother Sula's Charisma roll for playing possum is a Full Success, and Diskette doesn't manage to beat that with her perception check. Not that it matters much since Sula goes next anyway, but I'm leaving space here for Diskette to talk for a second thinking the woman is at least stunned before Sula acts.]

"There," she says, their strongest foe finally down, and calls out to the still awake foes, "All this unpleasantness could have been avoided if you just -talked- to us. If someone is being hurt by the mining, we're not going to stand by--we're superheroes!"

16: Grandmother Sula Behind Diskette there is a horrible screeching noise as the floor of the passageway that the old woman hurled her compatriots thru wrenches upward. Metal and regolith fly into the air to form an indeterminately thick wall between this room and the two younger women, who are already picking themselves up from being spirit-handled away from the fight.

Creating a disk to act as a rear-view mirror, Diskette has just enough time to see their shocked and worried faces as their path back to the fight is shut off, and then the rolling wave of planetary debris and metal shards blocks all sight. Diskette can't even accurately judge how far that wall extends, though she can likely get past it if she wants to.

During that split-second eye flick the old woman begins floating upward her body shrouded in chittering, malefic appearing spirits. "You can end this here, child. Just walk away."

"But it won't be over then, will it?" Diskette responds. "We'll be back at square one, waiting for your next attack with no idea how to make a lasting peace."

"You're a child. The last time we 'just talked to management' about their actions their off world monsters threw the grandmothers down a mine shaft. Oh… no one mentioned that…? I know now you mean well, but just walk away…""

16: Rubbermaid [BR: If I understand the plan properly, this is a saved action of Rubbermaid flying through space. Myles, feel free to add thoughts here.]

15: Diskette [Josh: I missed that you had an action again here. To keep things moving I'm assuming you're saving it for a redirect.]

15: Mother Ayie, Sister Salan The two other witches are out of sight, you have no idea what their actions are.

14: Superboy (Rubbermaid Saved Action) [BR: to no one's surprise, Clark manages to roll a 20 or less on a d20, and sheds the "Entombed" condition. Diane, you're up, with Myles immediately to follow.] Clark spots his bouncy teammate as she floats into space, (*OH NO, RUBBERMAID* reads his thought balloon) and flies to a point where he can intersect her arc and arrest her flight.

[Space for reaction from Myles, and so Rubbermaid can catch Clark up with the plan — remember, he has a communicator in his ear, but no spacesuit]

With a nod and a huge grin, Superboy takes aim and lobs Rubbermaid back into their exit hole, before flying close behind her.

[BR: Taking some liberties with this. Myles, I know you were on board with the plan, and feel free to edit and add in the spaces above. The roll for the fastball toss to get her into the room is an 11, just good enough to it the narrow hole with no loss of accuracy. Rubbermaid's attack roll is a 1. Since she already tried hitting in her dense form to no avail, and because I like the visual, and because hitting her at 200 kph in dense form might just kill her, I'm assuming she inflates before impact.]

The fastball throw sends Vikrak screaming down Superboy's exit path like a bullet from a gun, and Rubbermaid can see that Diskette has maneuvered the woman directly under the tube. The instant she's out of the narrow processing shaft she inflates to her full size, casting a shadow over the old woman, who has just enough time for the villains shocked look of impending loss ™ before the bounciest legionnaire slams into her with an enormous **WHOOMP!**

Superboy follows a split second later, just as Rubbermaid is rebounding off the ground, and the elderly woman who casually dismissed him earlier now remind him of Wile E Coyote post cliff fall. She's very, very unconscious.

"Well done, Superboy and Rubbermaid--They can't have gotten far," Diskette says, and opens a portal to what she estimates has to be past the debris (based on the trajectory the women, combined with knowledge that their first flight wouldn't be limited to momentum but probably wouldn't be able to turn, so the Granny would have had to leave a gap at the end of their flight free of debris), stepping through but leaving the portal open.

It actually takes her three tries to find an open space - the power of the unconscious old woman is clearly immense - but once she does she steps through and finds the passage branches in a couple of different directions. While the ground is covered in debris and dust from the prior eruption, there are no footprints or evidence of passage. Worse, nearby is an elevator door which, based on Ree's account, the women could have used to drop to any floor of the complex sans car or tracking.

[BR: Intelligence check to follow them is a comes up a 15 - there's nothing more Patin can do on her own]

Vikrak pops through the portal and takes in the scene. "Can you hear anything down that elevator shaft, Superboy? They could be anywhere."

“I’ll try,” says Clark, as he glides through the portal. He stands at the top of the shaft, closes his eyes and listens...

Clark concentrates but he can't find a way to isolate out the women he's looking for from the crowd. As Chameleon Boy had learned earlier, the spirit chittering apparently doesn't appear when the witches are doing simple levitation for movement, and they don't appear to be talking, There's just no good way to isolate them

[BR: Not with a 19 on the roll there isn't! Space for Clark to pass along that negative. ]

Clark sadly shakes his head. “Nothing. I’m sorry."

Immediately after Clark says that Ree and Linda step through the open disk.

"It's ok" Earth Child says, "We know where they're going and what their concern is. Bottom of mine shaft Delta."

The Terran girl has already pulled up a map of the base, "This elevator leads pretty deep.

At some of the blank looks, she adds, "Ree was able to question Davan Xuan as one of the other cultists and he said all the offworlders are 'Khazad-doomed'."

She gives a beat to see if anyone else gets it, [BR: remember that thanks for Superman late 20th/early 21st century Terran pop culture has much more visibility than you'd expect. Of course, Superboy has every reason to get the reference. If anyone else wants their PC to recognize it, feel free to claim the next line.]

Clark looks incredulous. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

"Khazad-what?" Diskette asks, "I mean, I get that it's Tolkein--we had the old Terran 3 season series on autoplay when I was growing up. But what does that even mean?"

"The last managers dig too deep. The witches are afraid we might wake something up, or are afraid it's already awake..."

"Oh, right, right. We're in a -mine-. So on top of the mystery of what's powering up the "witches" , which -maybe- we can get a good answer to once our guest wakes up, there's something old and dark and powerful--or so they believe, which the mining woke up. Hopefully, this won't end with Superboy telling all the rest of us to run away while he fights whatever this is solo and then is presumed dead for an entire season--I hated that part."

“No Gandalf option, check.” Clark says. “So, did Mr. Ranzz explain exactly _how_ GBKDistributed was cutting corners?"

Linda shakes her head, "First, I don't think our 'guest' is waking up any time soon; I checked her over when I tied her up and she's going to be out for hours at least. I've already called station medical to get someone down here.

"Second, I don't think this has to do with safety. It's religion. None of us have seen it for the same reason the Ranzz family and their employees didn't see it - we were thinking it's business. This group of protestors' main complaint was the depth of the Delta mine. The Salem culture has pilgrimages to the asteroids they've finished on to sculpt them into monuments to the world. I don't know if there is anything down there, but these people think there is... they're willing to fight, maybe die for it. Odds that the remaining witches are too volatile to not track down now."

[BR: Again, this is all the sort of stuff that Military Brat with Tracking Abilities would put together, so I don't feel guilty with letting it in Linda's mouth here. Plus it keeps things moving for our last couple pages - we don't have time to do a long head witch questioning session draining momentum. Josh, don't forget that Grandmother Sula did accuse GKBDistributed of murdering the witches negotiators last time they tired to talk, which makes it more likely the two escapees will do something radical now if not stopped - and it's something to follow up on later]

"We need to evacuate Delta shaft!" says Ree.

[He figures there's a small chance it'll convince the witches they can negotiate and a much larger chance that it'll get people out of the way of... whatever it is the witches or the theoretical "balrog" try to do.]

Vikrak springs to attention. "I can drop down the shaft and scout around for people to evacuate. Superboy too. He's Super-Fast!" “Hang on,” Clark cautions, “It’s an active workplace, right? The two of us can’t possibly pull everyone out in a reasonable amount of time, super-speed or not. There’s got to be a fire alarm or something that we can pull. Get most of the workers to shut down their equipment and leave on their own. After that’s done and there’s nothing down there _except_ witches and fanatics….that’s when we can make our drop."

Page 21: Mr. Music and Bubble Boy

The current leader of the Legion of Super Heroes, having spent some time perusing his collection of Terran mystery novels, is striding down Hoose street with his right-hand man, Dr. Watson, Archie Goodwin, love of his life, the one the only Gorvo Van (who remains blissfully unaware of his his devastating cuteness is wreaking emotional havoc on his allies.

[MC: It's not easy being blue.]

[LP: So true.]

"So, Ode, we're going to interrogate The White Raptor? How do you want to this? Good cop, bad cop? Detective savant and his dim but dashingly handsome sidekick? We should go in with a plan."

"No..." says Ode, slowly. "Neither of us are his type."

Ode's thought balloons: "Fortunately." and a picture of Ode, Dolar, and Alba all looking mopingly at handsome, blue Gorvo.

Shaking himself out of this reverie, he says, "And he's wise to good cop, bad cop. We've all see the same vids... That's it! Gorvo, you're a genius!"

"I am?" Gorvo looks confused. "I mean, I am, obviously, But you'd better explain it to me."

"He's seen the same vids -- some of them, at least. He's got a Code." Yes, Ode pronounces the capital. "And not all of his... um, coworkers? Co-criminals? They don't all follow it. And while we're not his type -- I know who is!"

At the corner of Gow Avenue there's the entrance to the Science Police holding facility, where the pair are ushered in to chat with one of the first villains they apprehended, Alba Coryax, the White Raptor. The general thought is that perhaps these two might have more luck that Diskette, who Ode suspects might have an emotional entanglement with the lithe, winged thief.

"He's been on good behavior," the guard says, "didn't even try to escape when the break out happened."

Coryax enters, sees them, and gives a disappointed sigh over which legionnaires are present that confirms to Odes trained ear that the emotional entanglement goes both ways.

"How can I help the self-appointed law?" he says, dropping into his chair.

Gorvo will follow Ode's lead in this.

"You could tell us everything," says Ode, not expecting that to work, but figuring it might amuse Alba and play into his internal script of himself as a debonair and suave criminal trading quips with his opposite numbers.

Alba gives a little grin and settles back his chair with a ruffle of feathers. "Well, my parents were simple circus folk, running a series of "angels among us" scams on gullible settlers. Life was good until the big boys moved it, with their vast arrays of cosmic lightshows to convince people to abandon the planet before the apocalypse...".

Ode can tell from the tone in Coryax's voice that yes, he was indeed falling into the role, and that all of the above was obviously BS.

Ode listens, and applauds when Alba's done. "Nice," he says, with genuine appreciation. I mean, sure, it's BS, but it's well delivered. "So, you went to work for the 'big boys', and brought something real to the table. You know what you do well, and more importantly, what you _don't_ do well. Sure, you got caught, but so did some others, and frankly, you had more class."

Alba nods his head in acknowledgement of the compliment, "Burglary is a much more precise art than Robbery. Anyone can be a violent thug."

[BR: Made a roll on Grovo's Xenobiology] Gorvo is able to form some theories about Alba as a scientist, if nothing else: the file the SP handed him on entry to the room is wafer thin. There are a lot of Coryax from Gander - the planetary equivalent of _Drel_ (translates to Medic) from Tellag, or Smith from Terra. It might be his real name, but it hasn't been linked to a real identity. But looking at him, knowing Ganderites are originally from Terran stock, 'White Raptor' isn't more than two or three years older than them. And in that time he hasn't seen heavy labor.

"So I have to wonder," says Ode, falling into his role as well. "Why didn't they break you out? I would've."

[Ode's thought balloon of Ode-as-Criminal-Mastermind! He's seated at a huge SPACE ORGAN! Without missing a note, he turns his head and gives illegible orders to his various Eighth Notes!]

Alba shrugs, "Second order contract. They weren't obligated to." But Ode can hear the note of bitterness in Raptor's voice. By Alba's view, they _should have_ broken him out; it would have put him in their debt.

Based on his body language and voice, Ode suspects Alba kinda likes the idea of owing someone a 'marker'. Ode knows the term 'second order contract.' Someone else set up the customers, and maybe even the targets. There's someone behind Alba.

"That's short-term thinking," says Ode. "But... does it mean your contract with them is done? That you owe them nothing?"

"I'm not selling anyone out, if that's what you're hinting at," He shrugs, "But it does mean that I won't be accepting any other contracts from them if the Architect sends them my way. Personal preference."

"Not that I expect _that's_ terribly likely anyway, from what I hear."

[BR: to clarify here, Aba just dropped the nickname at least of the person arranging his jobs (the Architect) and implied that something has changed with the Cosmos Club somehow that made its way through the grapevine to him. He's not going to divulge more on either in this scene, but you can ask on other topics....]

"What did you hear?" Gorvo butts in. "Are you burglar non gratis at the moment? Who could possibly replace you?"

"That's a good question," says Ode, thoughtful. "It's not like good burglars are easy to come by, even if you know who to ask."

He just smiles enigmatically, playing the part of the professional who won't cross certain lines. Then he says, "I wouldn't poke around there is all. They're off the map now."

"Are we done here?" he adds after a second. "I mean, send my best along to Diskette and all, but,,, are we done?"

"Sure," says Ode. "Let's go," he says to Gorvo.

Page 22: Future Boy, Miss Anima, SP Officer Cusiamo

Tok smiles. "Oh, that's brilliant; I should have thought of it. But I didn't! Doctor Wyla, we're in your base. Your current self-imprisoned some enemies here and then went off to contemplate the mysteries of existence, or something like that; certainly he's way beyond our reach. But meanwhile, the enemies escaped and made a mess of things here; we'd like to get things stable and find out exactly what happened. Will you help?"

"Oh my!" he says, his eyes twinkling either at the excitement of something new, or the information of his new self, or that he's aware of everything and is putting one over on the teen heroes. "Well that's unexpected. OPHELIA*, can you engage the following: "One: accept vocal commands from these two individuals, Jinnjahl (single designation only) and Tok Kallot. "Two: raise life support to functional levels until all vocal commanders are off the station. "Three: play back the security tapes for the last time time non-vocal commanders were in station."

[BR: Orbital Personal Habitat Engineering and Life-Support Intelligence, Artificial]

He looks over at the Legionnaires, "Will that do?"

"I should think so, thank you sir. Good to meet you, Ophelia."

PLEASURE says the flat voice. PLEASE REVIEW THE SECURITY TAPES ON THE CLOSEST MONITOR

The monitor shows the appearance of the confused New Taurus Gang. There's just a few seconds of milling around before Black Mace manages to restore order, and a few seconds after that Grey Archer turns to Mace and Violet Witch and says "I have to go... I'll call the Arc..." and then she vanishes.

Violet Witch bursts into tears and Mace has to comfort her - their bearing towards each other makes it clear that they are romantically connected. As he's doing this Grave Gatling and Talon Lad are moving around the room, until Talon finds the computer entry terminal. He says "Hey, just like a game console. I'll get us some control over this place!"

There're a few minutes of Talon Lad working at the computer terminal and getting nowhere, with Grave Gatling glowering over his shoulder [BR: and giving a task penalty under the Cyberpunk rules!]. Once Violet is under control the pair come over and watch, seeing Talon getting increasingly upset at the computer system that is well beyond his skill as a teenager who is way too eager to prove himself. Eventually he rage-snaps, his hands grow into his titular earthen talons, and he rips the entire console from the wall and tosses is across the room.

Gatling responds by taking a half step back, loosing his smoke-hammer and pointing it straight at the angry teenager. His voice is a sepulcher whisper "You may have just stranded me here you idiot..."

The fear in Talon Lad's eyes is palpable, but it's warring with an angry teenager's need to save face, and he's just about to raise his claws and do something EXCEEDINGLY stupid when Black Mace steps between them.

"Stand down." Talon drops his hands, while Gatling is still pointing the gun.

"Dammit Grave, stand down." Mace stands there, facing the gun, dropping his voice so that OPHELIA has to increase the volume to catch it "He's a kid. He looks up to you. He's as angry as you. And he didn't strand us here. Once Del-Fi's tulpa gets home she'll call in the cavalry."

Grave lowers his gun and stalks off.

OPHELIA fast forwards through the next 36 hours, with quick snippets of the New Taurus gang in various moments, including Black Mace acting in a fatherly fashion towards Talon Lad, his acting as a partner to Violet Witch, and of Grave Gatlin stripping and cleaning his antique pistol during the group's sleep period (does he sleep? he doesn't seem to...).

At the 36-hour mark a ship approaches the asteroid and docks. The camera in the landing bay shows the airlock opening and two figures entering - one a Wynathian woman moving with the aid of arm braces, whom Violet Witch immediately snatches up with her power (the visuals of which are, again, not caught on camera) and pulls over for her and Black Mace to hug.

The second figure to enter is another Wynathian wearing some sort of power armor.

"Is that the Arc..." Talon Lad starts to ask when Black Mace cuts him off. "No."

"Draftsman, good to see you," Mace continues. "Thanks for the lift."

The figure looks around, "Not what I expected with your history with us, Eblis. If you want to stay on the contractor list, make sure I don't have to do this again."

The group board the ship, and as it departs it fires some missiles that damage the locking bay and set the asteroid spinning.

END OF REQUESTED RECORDING

[JK: If they can tell it's a Wythian inside the power armor, does that mean the face is visible? They'd recognize Draftsman if they saw him again?]

[BR: the Draftsman could be a Terran, but odds are good he's a Wynathain. The two are indistinguishable. But what Terran needs to wear power armor? it's like putting plate mail on a tortoise! The face is greyed out a little from the visor but if Tok were face to face with him again - or Jinnjahl with her artist's sense - would have a good chance of recognizing him.]

"Well that's...it's good to see them when they're not guarded. But mostly, we now know how they got out--Grey Archer was a projection, not her real body, so she was able to recall it and ask someone for help. And unless I miss my guess, her regular self is the Wythian. And they're just contractors--villainous contractors, but there's someone even worse calling the shots. Which we knew, but...to what end? The Arch-what?"

Jinnjahl looks just as perplexed by the title but adds. "They're not just individual contractors. Mace is making them a family, but it looks like it's taking a lot of emotional effort for him to do so."

Page 23-24: Diskette, Superboy, Rubbermaid, Chameleon Boy, Earth Child

The claxons are ongoing as the Legionnaires watch everyone move in a trained but hurried fashion out of the mine shaft. It had taken little coaxing to get station management to agree to the plan, given how quickly the legionnaires had rounded up the other "witches". Once everyone is out, Vikrak and Superboy drop down the shaft proper, trying to make best speed into the depths.

[BR: How are everyone else getting down? Diskette provided transport? Flight harnesses?]

[JK: Let's go with both -- flight harnesses with a Diskette-provided quick leap into the danger zone (as an extended action).]

[BR: Clark may find this eerily similar to his last mission with the Legion, ending with a conflict in a mine….]

At the bottom of the shaft Clark can make out the echoes of panicked breathing ahead, just as Linda squats down to examine the bottom of the mine with its cracks and branches. "This way, I think. There's no tracks running in this direction, which I think means their wired floating effect might have wiped it clean."

Where she's pointing is past a safety barricade, into a clearly off limits part of the construction.

[BR: That tracks with the direction Clark can hear breathing; with a really good roll he can confirm 2 of them, and they aren't getting closer. He has not tried any other super-senses as yet.]

“I can hear two people,” Clark adds. “It sounds like they're really scared. I’ll see whether I can pinpoint where they are.” Peering down the corridor, he focuses on the infrared band of his super-sight.

Seconds after that statement there's the now terrifying to annoying chitterings of the spirits, writhing out from the crack and grabbing hold of the light rails illuminating this area. The rails bend and twist upward under their pull, and the lights – newly install and top of the line by LGN Consolidated – stubbornly refuse to go out completely. The space is now bathed in shadows and flickering lights. The lights are flickering off time from one another, so every few seconds there's a moment of deep darkness (lit only by some light from above), and other times its full light as they both hit together.

[BR: Just imagine that sort of Paranormal Activity now there's light now there isn't horror movie camera work.]

"Fantastic," Diskette says. "Well, they're here."

Clark can definitely see the heat signatures of someone down the crack in the shaft, but only for a second as the two of them drop somehow even deeper into the planetoid. There must be some further crevice down there.

[BR: I'm assuming someone is following them in, but who/how? You have a couple of options for how to get right behind them via super speed/teleportation/terran sprinting that I'm expecting you make use of.]

The women are dropping down a narrow fissure in the rock – narrow enough that Vikrak's inflated form couldn't fit through it – the ghostly silence of their levitation effects now eerie based on their increasing exposure to the chittering ghosts. A few more seconds and they'll be at the bottom of the fissure and out of sight.

Behind them, the Legionnaires can now make out the voices of other Salem Zero residents - most specifically Director Chenne, President Stal, and a cluster of emergency services staff (for Chenne) and security personnel (for Stal).

[BR: Look - it's inconveniently placed NPCs, and making use of the law of reducing named characters!]

"I'll never fit down those narrow fissures," Rubbermaid declares. "I'll round up the Director and the others!"

Vikrak spins, rolls and bounces off in search of the Director and entourage.

Clark turns to Linda. “I know you’re great at climbing, but we need to move fast. Would you like me to carry you, or do you want to teleport with Diskette?"

"I'll have Diskette drop me somewhere they might not expect," Linda says, adding pragmatically "Plus if something dangerous happens to you, well, I'm tough but not invulnerable."

With that, she and Diskette vanish through a portal, somewhere in the depths below.

meanwhile, Ree shifts into a form that can slip through the fissure and maybe be ignored as local fauna for a few critical seconds. (Probably more lizard than bird, as they saw him in bird form. He could try to be their missing member, but a) that's boring because he's done that already, b) it's fight time, and + c) they'll figure it out in a heartbeat.)

The Lizard skitters down the chasm, it's broad, gummy foot pads adhering to the rock face.

The "escaping" "witches" are surrounded the moment that they hit the ground: Diskette and Earth Child are there before them, appearing through stepping disks to their flanks. Superboy flashes down to the shaft the moment the witches are out of the way, and Chameleon Boy is quickly thereafter hanging in the shaft atop them, unnoticed as a small reptile.

"Look, whatever you're going to do, just think for a moment," Diskette says. "The old woman will be fine after some rest and recovery...and nobody needs to be hurt any further. We can talk this out...and if there's something horrible coming for the miners, we can handle it.....as long as we know what it is. I mean, we have Superboy for the big stuff, and the rest of us can handle everything else." It's pretty clear that while Diskette is being as friendly as she can to two people who just tried to kill the teens, she's willing to consider them part of the "everything else" if she has to.

Both women jump and start scrambling away, further down the path behind them. They've hit the stage of panic where they aren't even using their powers. The younger of them trips and falls as she staggers backward to get away from Superboy's sudden presence, and it's clear to Diskette that the fight has gone out of them.

That's when Linda catches Patin's eye and nods down towards the ground. It's not just rocks, there's several skeletons on the ground. The Terran can recognize that the remains are consistent with falling from a great height, likely being battered by the shaft walls on the way down.

Clark can't help but see something hovering in the UV to X-Ray part of the spectrum coming from behind the two women, in the direction they're moving. To him its dazzlingly, has-to-shield-his-eyes-from-it bright as it flares and pulses. With one pulse suddenly there is a massive screeching chittering noise and the entire cave floor lurches upward.

Everyone else can hear the noise, clearly emanating from the space behind the women, and the earthquake is immediately noticeable. The younger witch simply passes out at that point – she might do herself an injury if she lands on the heaving rock – and the other is grabbing onto the wall and crying.

Both Clark (from the time he covered the Pentecostalist preacher coming through Smallville) and Ree (from some store of memory he can't quite access) can see that teir responses to this aren't fear… they are a religious fervor. Whatever Is behind them in the passage, whatever is causing this, is holy to them.

Diskette casually drops a portal below the falling woman and deposits her safely on the ground (using a second portal set to cycle her so she "unfalls" upwards cycling a few times before the portals vanish, setttling her gently on the ground.

[If she has enough distance to send the "witches" further away from danger she might try that as well even if she has to leave, then return, but she doesn't want to send Superboy away at what is very likely to be a Superboy-level problem. Of course, Clark -could- insist.]

[BR: Her range is enough to get the women back up to the top of the shaft, but there's no way to be sure that the upheaval isn't as bad up there.]

[LP: Who's getting the two women out of danger? If no one, then Ree will shift to some kind of shape that can handle that part (which could be a bit challenging, as he has to carry them AND fit through various passages, even if he's taking one at a time). If that's under control, Ree will try scouting ahead in lizard form.]

Earth Child leaps forward, tossing the unconscious witch over her shoulder and quickly directing the other one unresisting back towards the exit with swift, certain moves.

"I've still got my flight harness on; I'll get these women up," Linda tells Patin, "And see if Vikrak needs any help."

It's amazing how rapidly the terran girl had taken to the mechanics of the flight rigs, and with the whine of the rig operating at its highest capacity for the weight of the three women, Linda disappeared up the shaft.

In doing so she passes Chameleon Boy in the shape of a strange terran lizard that changes color to match its surroundings. Scuttling at is best speed, Ree gets past everyone to slip into the space ahead. Behind him he can hear the others starting to move.

The space is glowing with UV light <BR: I just looked it up and yes, Chameleons can see UV light...., coming from a gently curved wall ... Maybe some sort of buried orb or sphere? There's a number of veins or tendrils coming off the orb and merging with the wall to Ree's right. They clearly come out of the orb at where the surface folds and wrinkles before it touches the wall.

<Lisa, space for some sort of comment or thought here

Ree's thought balloon: What IS that?

" gulp "

"Be careful." Diskette says, "Whatever's ahead is dangerous--enough that it's where these women drew their power, and enough that they think it's going to destroy the whole mine, but it hasn't hurt anyone. Yet." Diskette says as she advances into the darkness, expecting danger.

Diskette advances around the corner <with Superboy presumably alongside her and, from the light of her holo-comm - sees the dull-gray smooth metallic wall. Unable to perceive anything in UV it looks well carved, but hardly impressive.

Then the right hand wall cracks slightly, the arced and pointed tendrils pop free and scythe across the space, as the walls surface swings open with impressive speed. Behind the wall is another sphere, itself displaying a series of concentric circles of silver, then a deep sea blue, and then pure, consciousness swallowing black.

It's an eye. And it just opened. And it's looking at them. Overhead, where Rubbermaid's attempt to corral the local dignitaries and their entourages is complicated by the floor heaving upward…

Rubbermaid adjusts to the heaving floor easily as she's well used to reorienting herself several times in seconds as she caroms about. She bounces beneath one of the dignitaries as he's thrown backwards and absorbs his momentum with her squishy body. He 'pops' out like a flustered cat on a trampoline, landing unsteadily on his feet.

Director Chenn responds with a loud "Oof", but with a wild windmilling of his arms keeps his feet.

She throws her arms wide as her rebound pushes her into two other milling officials. She sweeps them off their feet and not incidentally out of the way of a falling light fixture, now swinging loosely from the ceiling...

"Come along now, gentle-beings! This location is definitely no longer safe; we have to get up and out." Plant President Stal and one of her security profile - the ones who got swept up and out of the way seconds ago - immediately start moving forward again. Upon seeing her moving, Chenn starts moving, and the rest fo the group, immediately out of danger, continue their forward motion. Rubbermaid bounces herself in their way and starts a one girl push against the tide... She hustles and herds the confused, protesting people ahead of her. Her resilient body and compact strength are a surprise to any would-be dawdlers. The group stops, seeing reason as there's another upheaval in the ground, and most of them realize they are half committed to a dumb course of action. Only Stal is pushing forward now, her face very much that of the scientist in the Monster Movie who has just declared that they have to see IT.

With a little adjustment (her voice box is also elastic) she raises her volume to an unignorable shout. "Move!" [BR, OK, I was going to have Stal get past you to have Earth Child stop her, but this is all kinds of awesome.]

Whatever psychosis had gripped Stal, Vikrak's shout breaks it, and the lass of elasticity is able to get her moving back to the exit with the others.

Vikrak takes one look behind her to see Linda emerging from the crack in the wall, covered in dust and grime, carrying the two Salem Witches over her shoulders, "Flight rig overloaded near the lip. I had to climb the last 10 meters..." she says at a jog as she catches up with her teammate.

Back below

“Hello there,” says Superboy, “Nice to meet you? I guess you’re what the witches are trying to protect. We’d like to help, but it’s hard to help when you don’t know what’s going on. Can you help us understand?"

KRYPTONIAN. whispers the voice into the minds of Diskette, Chameleon Boy and Superboy. WE THOUGHT YOU LONG LOST. WE ARE... I AM..... IT IS COMPLICATED. FORGIVE THIS INTRUSION.

Clark feels something rustle in his mind, and the memories of sticking his hand into straw to remove elements of that days breakfast come to him, and watching chicks crack out of shells under a heat lamp.

I AM A CHICK, INSIDE AN EGG. ALL OF US ARE. GROWING. WAITING FOR HATCHING. “So the proto-planets are…eggs. That means the valorium they’re mining here is actually part of your body? Or is it something your mom left in the egg to help you grow?

<BR space for inevitable question

MY VEINS BROUGHT MASS FROM THE EGG, BUT THEY ARE NO LONGER NEEDED. WE ARE BEYOND THAT. SEVERING THEIR ENDS DOES NO HARM, AS LONG AS THE BODY IS NOT EXPOSED.

"So as long as they don’t take too much or dig too deep you’ll be OK, is that right? What are you going to become? How much longer is it going to take?”

<space for possible response here

Superboy turns to look at Diskette. “We know the last mining contractor here was bad news in pretty much every way. You’ve talked to the new guys. Do you think they’’ be on board with those kinds of changes?"

"If they aren't, Brand will make them, eventually," Patin responds, looking more relaxed than before peacable communication with this huge new being happened. "And we should be able to get through to them in the near term--the spacequakes will help. But I'm more concerned about this immanent hatching. What kind of timing are we talking about--and what's going to happen? If the...brood, I guess...doesn't need the "veins" any more, that's good, but we'll need to make sure nobody's hurt on the next step...or does anything everyone will regret. Including damaging the eggs. Is that about right?" She directs to the being.

"And when the hatching happens... do we need everyone off?" asks Ree, not bothering to shift from lizard form. "What kind of structural..... um, fallout are we talking about? It's all secondary to life, but the more we know, the more we can help. Um... do we... need a doctor or a midwife? Or just to get out of the way?"

WE ARE QUICKENED BY THE SUN, the mental echo tells Clark, and the image of the yellow dwarf around which these planetoids orbit swallowing them as it moves to red giant stage. NONE WILL BE HARMED WHEN WE ARRIVE.

[BR: It seems very on brand for 2021 to have the sense of wonder moment I've angled towards for a year to turn into an infographic on relocation logistics.] “That’s amazing, but…” Clark’s eyes cross as he tries to calculate the lifespan of a being that spends a billion years as an egg. “…wow, that’s a long time. For us, anyway. If the goal is protecting you, while us shorter-lived folks scrape away the stuff you don’t need anymore but we really depend on, we might have to get a lot more people on board than just Brand and company. For a lot longer than we’re going to live."

I BELIEVE IN YOU, KRYPTONIAN. he hears, GOD BLESS YOU ALL. EVERY ONE.