LC: Super Scrubs Issue #1

SUPER SCRUBS
ISSUE #1:
DARK TIMES FOR LONGSHOT CITY

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SOMEWHERE IN THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS

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It's a crisp fall morning as one of JANUS's ATAP* vehicles climbs the winding mountain road that leads to the old army testing grounds that the powerful and secretive organization took possession of a year ago, just after the Squadron tragically fell while defending the planet. It's a lush, green landscape -- these are some of the oldest mountains in the world -- but a lonely one. Few people frequent these roads and tails, and mists sometimes hang strangely in the air long past dawn; trails are often found completely overgrown after just a few years of neglect. Nature reclaims its own quickly in this place, and abandoned facilities and homes as as common to see as ones that are occupied.



On the big-wheeled, multi-axeled armored vehicle (the less charitable among you might call it a bus), an attractive, tall black woman with an impressive afro stands, talking to the four other occupants, using handy grab-bars to keep her balance. Samantha Fox is the so-called Media Specialist for the team, a woman hired to make sure they don't say the wrong thing to the press, to make sure they look good as they try to fill boots that are about twenty sizes too big.



The woman has a tablet she's reading from as the ATAP noisily and jerkily gears down to climb a steeper slope.

"Alright y'all, we're almost there, ten more minutes," Sam says. It's difficult to tell where she's from. Her accent isn't thick, but she's definitely got southern roots in the U.S.

"You all know, this isn't a test to see if you make the team -- we're past that stage, you're good. Today the brass wants to see how you all do as a team. You know -- because you haven't... well, you haven't been a team until now. So I suggest you figure that shit out quickly, and watch out for Baker. That woman might seem like she's on your side, but, well -- trust me. Jane Baker is on Jane Baker's side. Don't cross her. Don't fuck with her. Don't look at her funny. Just do what she says."

Clapping her hands, she raises the energy level and points at each member of the team in turn. "Alright! Psion, Arachknight, Blue Ray, Nocturne, Atrophy! You all ready?!"

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Editor's Note: *ATAP stands for All-Terrain All-Purpose vehicle

[ +- ] ATAP

Psion is a frail old man slouched in a wheelchair that must have been muscled into the ATAP as there is no ramp. His body appears almost skeletal, his limbs thin and bony, and his long fingers twitch for no discernable reason. When Sam speaks, he looks up at her and licks his chapped, dry lips, his eyes filled with an unexpected intensity that belies his appearance.

When he speaks, his voice is thin and reedy, and he punctuates his words with little laughs, as if everything he says is some kind of inside joke that no one else is in on. "Yes, yes, Miss Fox. Heh heh... Ready and willing. Heh. Ready and able. Heh heh... Yes..."

He doesn't seem to notice the rest of the team around him, instead staring off into the distance as if taken by some memory from long ago, but he nods incessantly, like a bobble head that someone won't stop touching, his head moving up and down and from side to side as his lips curl upward and pull thin across his discolored teeth in an exaggerated, cartoonish smile.

Sable rolls her eyes dramatically, as the old coot repeats himself over and over in that thin way that he did. She sits, arms folded, with her heavy black boot pressed against the seat in front of her. Her face would have a very unhappy meeting with her knee, were the machine to come to a sudden and unexpected stop.

She had spent the drive stock still, as if pretending to be a statue would stop the others from trying to talk to her. She’s a little too hot in her leather jacket, but too committed to the look to take it off! Beneath that are her black tights under her black shorts. When the woman starts to speak about Baker, Sable handles her laser sword absent-mindedly, still looking out the small, rectangular window of the large vehicle.

Feigning disinterest, she looks at the holo-watch on her wrist to see if the Old Bum had been in contact today.

Nada…

With a dramatic and heaving sigh, she breathes the word:

"Ready!"

Nocturne's eyes are moving around the vehicle taking in the new 'team; she had no choice but to be a part of. When it had first been offered to her she had imagines something more akin to her old scout squad. Trained soldiers, who had everything together, were disciplined knew what they were doing. Right now she was sorely disappointed. One of them looked like a victim of prolonged feeding even.

The mask she wore hid her detailed study of the others. She had been informed that the black and red full body suit she wore wouldn't stand out, and it was standard for 'heroes' on this world to wear such things. In fact the person who had designed it had insisted on the hood saying it 'looked cool'. Yet one of the others was just in a jacket and what she understood to be normal clothes for these people. One was in a contraption he seemed to need to move, that she had had the joy of helping lift into the bac with her better strength than these 'humans'.

Maybe she shouldn't have had so high expectations. After all the humans had been desperate enough to ask an alien they knew nothing about to join this team. Nott hat her true nature had been revealed to the others, it being on a 'need to know basis'. Apparently if asked about how she had powers she was to say she fell in a 'vat of toxic goo or something'.

She takes in the warning about this Baker. Just follow orders. She nods. She can do that. 'I am ready'

The fully spandex suited champion sat in the ATAP with the rest as a show of team spirit, his suit almost old-fashioned in the light of how the rest were more present-day accoutred, harking back to a more silver age sentiment, especially with the hood over his head and the domino mask around his eyes. Muscled, yet lanky, almost 7 feet tall, he appeared slightly too big for the confines of the vehicle. The colour scheme denoted that he was no champion though, with its deathly hues of grey, off white and black highlights. Neither did his appellation, perhaps that was something Atrophy ought to get around to reconsider if he was going to bat for the good guys. For times were different now, that golden age had passed. Even the ones in shadow had to step up and into the light.

And that was how Atrophy found himself in present company, ready to be some other kind of ubermensch.

The voice was low, with an unnerving vibrato rasp. "Always."

Sable is about to bring her second boot up and place it onto the back of the seat in front of her. She’s about to mouth off something about her taxes paying for this thing too, and so she could do what she wanted. Except, well, Sable wasn’t exactly sure she’d ever paid taxes. Sure, she’d had a gig at an old movie rental place but that had closed down. Not to mention it had all been under the table money.

She sees the Arachknight shoot back the finger guns and snorts air out of her nostrils in mild amusement.

Would they know about that?…

Best not to bring any of that up.

"Wow! Lookin’ cool!" she says, and then rolls her eyes as the spider-girl looks uninterested in taking the bait answering.

Psion nods when Max addresses him, but it's unclear if he's responding to her or just moving his head around in that odd manner he has. He looks around at the others, licking his dry lips as they move soundlessly, almost as if he's mouthing the words of his inner dialog. Occasionally he grins and lets out a tiny laugh. He appears completely disconnected from reality, and as he thinks back, his eyes almost roll back into his head in an off-putting manner to anyone who looks his way.

He remembers being "recruited" for this team. His nest egg had been stolen. Over a hundred years of halfway decent investments pilfered by some dirty investment banker, supposedly "reinvested" and lost, but Psion was no fool. He knew when someone was lying. He had dug into that thieving bastard's thoughts and had not liked what he'd found. The man had bilked hundreds of millions from investors. Psion had forced him to sign over all his personal wealth and assets before putting him in a coma.

"Sleepy time..." he said aloud and laughed to himself.

Of course the government was suspicious; there was no legitimate reason for the investment banker to sign everything over to Psion. There had been obvious coercement. But every agent they sent to interview Psion came back unaware that they'd been sent to meet with him, forgetting he even existed. It had worked for most of the last fifty years. Make them forget. People didn't want to remember. But then they did. They came in force, with more than questions. They sent others, not ones meant to enforce the laws, ones who broke the laws to uphold them. They had equipment that told them when he tried to make them forget. They knew. He couldn't fight them all.

"Can't fight city hall," he said aloud as he glanced at Sable.

So he finally told his secret. He had nothing to hide. He was superior. Let them know his power. But they had talked and talked and talked and somehow made him remember. He had been the hero once, a long, long time ago. He had been a paragon of duty and justice. He had lost his way, grown old and jaded. He could be that again. The one who did most of the talking had been pretty, his weakness, a pretty girl asking him for help. Always his weakness, a pretty face, a smile, nice eyes.

"Always the eyes," he said aloud as his eyes moved to Nocturne, then another laugh when he saw her mask. No eyes he could see.

So he had agreed to help. What else was he to do? He didn't die, that seemed apparent. He just kept going. He'd tried being king, he'd tried being a hermit, why not complete the circle, go back to being a hero. He laughed to himself at the thought of John Oldman, the hero. He should have asked for spandex, which made him laugh out loud again. Nobody wanted to see this frail old body wrapped in spandex.

He was laughing as he looked at Atrophy and said, "nobody wants to see that..."

At heart Atrophy agreed with Samantha Fox. This is no team. The Terror Titanics would wipe us in a flash, much less the Squadron. Magnetron alone would have cleared the youngsters easily, said one internal voice.

Hey you said you'd give the next generation a chance. We're better. We'll be better. You'll see, was the other voice of optimism.

But what came out was a murmuring assent at Psion's observation. "Indeed," replied the rasp. Atrophy was sure he recognised the psionic, but that would have been decades ago, a wholly different man in his prime, "yet here we are. Saving the day for JANUS." They had powersets that the global defense initiative didn't. That made them necessary, relevant.

Atrophy stepped out of the vehicle as soon as it came to a stop, not prepared to be cooped up inside for much longer than he had to. His cape billowed more dramatically than expected when he exited, and by force of habit his feet didn't actually touch the running board nor the ground right in front of that when he did so.

Nocturns gaze is fixed on Fox, and it may appear she is being stern... whereas she's actually just trying to make sense of what she is saying she was using a lot of words she had not been taught. Some she caught as things Sonja, of those teaching her had defined as 'slang'. This language was confusing. Perhaps she would ask for more lessons in this slang when back. It would also extend their lessons and at the moment they were some if the little contact she had that was always with same person. Other than those that had caught her in the first place and the weird guys who said he was a scientist and kept asking her to do weird tests.

She had grown fond if the linguist through their attempts to understand each other. Though they had used a device Sonja had designed to help as well.

'I can breathe. The suit is fine' She tries to mimic the gesture with the hands they were doing. A human form of salute?

She was growing more concerned by the one in the mobility device. He did not seem all there. Or was he just using more of this 'slang' and she was the only one confused by him.

As they come to a stop she gets up to leave. She found she was taller than a lot of the humans, 6 foot 3 in their system, but she was still dwarfed by the one being referred to as Atrophy.

Atrophy's comment brought Psion out of his reverie. "Saving the day." He nods and grins at Atrophy. "Not quite like old times, eh?" He laughs then, a longer, louder laugh than he's let out before. He remembers. He may look like he's lost his marbles, may even act the part, but he remembers. He remembers it all.

"Aright, cool cool, let’s shake on outa this bus, everyone," Fox says from the front as that door and a wider side door hiss open. The latter will allow Psion and his chair an easier exit.

If the guy even knows what planet he’s on! This old fart passed his psych exam?!

"Watch your step dream team, don’t wanna turn an ankle now, right? It’s just about show time…"

Outside the vehicle, when the group has lined up (if you can call it that), four people approach, escorted by a bevy of JANUS troops. Two of the four are soldiers, likely attached to whatever weird quasi-military ORG structure JANUS was using, but the other two looked… different. One of them, a handsome and well-dressed Asian man, perhaps of Chinese heritage, comes forward.


"Hello everyone, I’m John Lung," he says, shaking each and every hand that’s offered. He and Samantha share a nod — they must already know one another.

"I’m going to be your liaison, your aide during this process. Good to meet you all. Right here we have some more people wanting to meet you all. General McKenzie — he heads up this whole project. Answers only to the Special Security Council and the President. General?"



"At ease, everyone," the bearded man of about sixty says with a warm rasp, "and thank you for coming, and for offering your service. Welcome to Project Reignite. I look forward to seeing what you can all do."

John Lung nods and smiles slightly.

"Thank you General. Captain?"


"Thank you General, Mr. Lung. I’m Captain James Barnette, and I’ll be planning and commanding your missions. I look forward to working with each and every one of you. You all have some big shoes to fill, but we’re going to give you the damned biggest boots you every saw, team."

"Oorah," the blonde next to Captain Barnett says without a hint of emotion or energy, her arms clasped behind her back. She’s tall and shapely and fit. Wears a close-fitting tac suit. Carries a lot of presence.

"And this—" Lung begins.

"Hi. I’m Jane. I run Tactical and I’ll be training you."

No hand is extended, but her eyes, steel-gray, bore holes into each of you. "Good luck."

Sable looks blankly at the old man as he talks about not being able to fight City Hall. The last year, if anything, proved that you could. Sable just hoped that hero-killing didn’t become a common occurrence.

As the others file out of the bus, she taps at her holo-watch again. Her brow furrows and her eyes roll when she sees nothing new on the small wrist-device.

Why hadn’t she checked in? She knew how big today was…

Usually, Aqee was up Sable’s ass about this or that or this again. Not today. At least mom had checked in, but Sable hadn’t bothered to reply just yet. Mom would know that this was super top-secret stuff and so she’d know to wait and not call.

Wouldn’t she?…

Sable offers a weak, perfunctory hand shake to the top brass, save for the Captain. Sable takes an extra moment to take that man in.

Whew…

A far cry for the stale smelling old guy in the truck, and Captain Spandex in all white! She stays quiet as all this is being said, though feels tempted to make some smart remark at the idea of filling big boots. Weren’t hers big enough?

No, Aqee and mom would both give her shit for trying to be funny right out the gate…

"Big boots," mutters Psion as he looks past the gathered suits and military personnel. "Fill them indeed, Captain."

His gaze stops on Jane Baker, as does his nodding head and muttering. Something about her seems to affect him. Perhaps he sees inner strength and resolve, perhaps he's just checking her out, but she seems to have his full attention.

He resists the urge to probe her mind. If anyone here holds secrets, surely it's her or the general. Secrets were always worth having, especially if he was going to be stuck in this little team of almost-heroes. But he'd promised to be good, to not use his powers on those in charge. They'd proven that they had some kind of device to put his power in check, and as much as he wanted to probe and test that restriction, find a way around it, there would be time. Now was not that time.

"Oorah," he says automatically when Jane does, a little more firmly than anything else he's said so far. He remembers the greeting, repeats it back without thinking, his back a little straighter, eyes a little brighter. He remembers the sound on the submarine where it all started, 1953 off the shore of Korea, the dive klaxon, the men adopting the sound as their own, inspiring each other, finally shortening it to "oorah". He'd been an old man already then, but he'd worn the uniform, commanded. It had been a lifetime ago. Before his legs had failed him.

He lets the past slip away and meets Jane's measuring gaze for a moment, steel in his eyes. Then it slips away and the doddering old fool is back, head bobbing, a grin on his face as his gaze wanders off into the distance.

"The brass." Atrophy muttered in an even lower voice than possible for him, for he instinctively wanted to flinch from this meeting with the military complex that the JANUS hierarchy was structured on. He had to remind himself he wanted to do this, despite his aversion to the likely need for regimentation and following orders.

But they were polite enough, and grateful, and positive, and it seemed churlish to behave even the slightest bit entitled. "Difficult times. Desperate measures."

Atrophy did like the project codename though, which he uttered out loud in a warmer voice, deeper in timbre than anyone had heard him speak thus far, "Reignite."

She may still be learning this places military structure, but she remembers the ranks and can just tell some of these are people to be respectful to, the way the hold themselves. She goes rigid, standing still, prefect like the soldier she was trained to be. After they spear she goes to tap her fingers against her neck, her worlds version of a salute. No that was wrong. What was it here. Hand to head right?

'Ready and waiting for orders.' She nods. The ;superhero; thing she wasn't sure about. But follow military orders and act as a squad? She could do that.

After the initial introductions, General McKenzie gruffly waxes on, not very poetically, about the importance of Project Reignite. About how the world has lost its most stalwart defenders, and how the next generation needed to rise to the challenge... everything you've all heard twenty times by now from a variety people.

He doesn't say, "y'all need to kick some fuckin' supervillain ass," like Sam Fox did, but the General still more or less reiterates that same point. He talks about Mimic hunting and killing solo supers; about the Leonetti crime family employing super-thugs and putting the police on their back foot in a dozen cities. He talks about John Apostle building an army of religious zealots, about Emperor Karkus reportedly being en route to Earth with an intention to add it to his "Unity." And a least a half-dozen other super-powered goons, crooks, psychopaths and ne'er-do-wells.

"But before we get too concerned with those specifics," Captain Barnette says, nodding at the General when the man gives him the signal to take over, "we need to gauge where you all are as a team. You'll all have gone through batteries of tests already. Today, this isn't about your individual strengths and weaknesses, or your powers."

The man walked the line, looking at each would-be superhero in turn. He gave a little wink to Arachknight, who was a known quantity to the man, then continued.

"This, this here today? This is about threat assessment. It's about setting priorities, and it's about working together as a team. Today we all witness just what you can do. Today we set a baseline."

"Yeah okay, that's great," Jane Baker says as soon as Barnette finishes, Kneeing the dramatic moment the Captain was going for in the balls.

"People: get your shit together. Work out your kinks, settle your nerves, say your prayers, limber up, listen to your fight song... whatever you need to do. Behind me is a proving ground, and any minute now it's going to be full of shit trying to hurt you, kill you, or kidnap or murder a whole bunch of innocent schmucks who are in harm's way."

The wind blows, tousling the blonde's short hair, as she makes eye contact with each and every candidate again. "I'm not going to tell you what's out there. I'm not going to coach you on how to approach the bad guys. This one's on you. Pass, you get the good stuff. Fail and we have a field hospital, right over there."

Another pause as she points and distributes more steely stares.

"Clear? Questions?"

And like that, the group is left to make their preparations!

Sable chokes down her rising desire to roll her eyes at this Baker. She had been warned against taking the bait back on the way in and now she understands why.

The way the young hero saw things, Baker should be sugary sweet with the crew gathered before her… even the old man. Unless Baker thought that she could do half of what Sable could do.

She’s reminded of that night in the alleyway. The steaming hot capsule that had crashed into the dingy side street, cutting the top corner off an apartment building on the way down. The impact had sent a shudder through the surrounding blocks, and Aqee had contacted Sable and gotten her on-site to investigate before the vessel had stopped sizzling!

Too hot to approach, she remembers how Aqee had talked her through unscrewing the thing with her energy. Sable had worked at the capsule for a long while, until the top half keeled over.

The thing had pounced on her, like some jack in the box that had been set loose through the girl’s own efforts. Aqee had had some special name for the thing, but Sable would only ever call it the Cyclops. It had set upon her just as soon as it had been freed from its pod, and then the two were off; as the Cyclops gave chase all over Longshot City.

Wicked fast and brutally strong, it was all Sable could do to not get punched right through the middle. Not yet ready to deal death with her laser sword, she had only stopped the thing with a successful energy blast, just barely matching the power of its massive limbs.

Having fought to a stalemate, the thing took off with a leap, and slipped into the city that night. Too exhausted to try follow it, Sable took the lesson, the draw and some solace in the fact that it had been her that investigated the crash site and not emergency services.

Coming back from the memory, she grips up her hilt, and the laser sword pyewws to life!

"Let’s just do this already!" she says!

So that where some of the Fallen Legion dispersed to after the Squadron broke up their headquarters in the heart of the Vatican. That the Legate and his cohors would stoop so low as to be employed by the Leonetti crime family. Atrophy used to get annoyed at their rallying cry "Pax Romana!" for there was nothing peaceful about their repeated attempts to reestablish their vision of the holy Roman empire over all Europe. The Legate himself was a match for Atrophy on any given day, strength for strength, on the occasions when the Terror Titanics tangled with them. But the roman warrior was a superior martial combatant and nigh invulnerable in his full regalia of breastplate, spear and gladius reputedly forged by Vulcan himself, and shrewd in military tactics.

In their last entanglement, but that was surely a decade ago, Atrophy dropped him off over Mount Etna, with the power flight giving Atrophy the edge this round. The Legate would survive that; his legionnaries would find some way to retrieve him for sure.

"No questions." Atrophy snapped back from his momentary reverie to Jane Baker's last prompt. "Begin."

Sable snorts, despite the tense situation and the memory of Cyclops floating just behind her eyes.

She hadn’t heard more than a few words from the rest of the group, besides the old man in the wheelchair.

Frosty…

So, it was a test. He was too old to be tested. He'd proved himself over centuries. He could just show them...

No. No, he'd agreed to play nice. In this war, he had chosen a side, and his side had rules.

He'd sat out the modern wars, lived off his questionably gained assets in relative anonymity. He'd still be doing so if he hadn't gotten careless in his old age. Careless... he'd have to pay better attention.

He looked at his compatriots, the rest of the so-called team. They were just a bunch of kids except for that tall guy. These fools in charge were going to get these kids killed. Kids killed. He remembered the kids. The twins. Julian and Lilian. His grandchildren. The'd inherited something from him, maybe something from their grandmother. They father hadn't had powers, but those two, with their mental puppeteering... he should have killed them both. But they were blood. He couldn't kill his own kin.

Kill his own kin. He'd done it before. He'd have to do it again. His bloodline didn't need to continue. Should have killed them both, instead of leaving the one in a coma and the other hell-bent on revenge. "The Marionettes" they'd called themselves, and they had some sort of personal vendetta. What, because Daddy didn't love them and he, in turn hadn't loved their Daddy? It wasn't his fault. He'd never wanted children.

Dahlia had told him. It was 1948, Lisbon, that mansion they shared up on the hills of Alfama, overlooking the Tagus River... the place had been gorgeous, a refuge in a neutral country during a war that had nothing to do with either of them. Dahlia was on the rooftop terrace. She'd refused the champagne, told him she was pregnant with his child. They'd never discussed it, never even hinted at the possibility. All they shared were psychic powers and a love of danger, well... and a passion neither could explain. They never would have worked, not as parents. So he'd left her, left the money, left the mansion, left that damned baby she'd tried to use to entrap him.

The kid had never come looking, but the grandkids did. Twins. Powered. Thinking they had some kind of score to settle with their granddad. He must have looked like an easy target to them, in a wheelchair, old, frail. He'd shown them otherwise. Blasted that kid into the back of his own skull when he tried his mental shenanigans. He should have killed him. Should have killed his sister, but she begged... "please, Grandpa, please..." on her back on the ground, hands held up in surrender, pathetic and pleading. It's how he'd left her. He should have killed her. Should have killed them both. They were powerful, those two.

He snapped out of his reverie. Well, nothing they might throw at him would be as bad as another run-in with the Marionette twins, or at least the one that was left. He'd heard she was gunning for him. He never wanted to see her again.

"Should have killed her," he says softly, but out loud, and looks up at Atrophy, then out over the proving grounds.

Slowly his aged body lifts up out of the wheelchair, feet hovering just off the ground, hands down at his sides, palms forward. He floats there, waiting, suddenly looking more formidable, more coherent, his eyes alert and bright.

"Bring on your challenges," he says, and his voice is loud and firm. There is no trace of the frail old man as he hangs in the air ready for whatever comes.

'Are we ready though? We do not know who is going right and who is going left' It was not quite the same as the saying in her language but seemed close enough. 'To 'get our shit together' should discus how it is each of us do that. This is about teamwork yes?

Just rushing in without discussing what everyone could do, who should handle what sort of thing, they would not be effective soldier. Or heroes. Or whatever. They were meant to the be a squad.. well team.

"Quickly then," says Psion, his voice still strong and sure, almost as if he were someone else entirely. "What do we all do? Our powers define our roles in combat, and our roles should define our positioning."

His confidence is unexpected, but then he seems to fall back into his usual persona as a memory is triggered, repeating himself in a sing-song voice as he says, "define our positioning" again and lets out a little laugh, something one might expect from a teenaged schoolboy. It only lasts a moment, and his confident voice returns.

"I can move objects with my mind and my psychic blasts work against living foes. If we face constructs or robots, the best I can do is toss them about. I can read minds, perhaps determine enemy tactics. Defensively, I can protect myself, sometimes others." He looks around him at the others, his eyes focusing hard on them one at a time.

"What do you do?" He asks to the group. "Quickly now, we may not have much time."

"Strength, flight, invulnerability. Things, people, I age them." Atrophy rose off the ground as well, positioning himself in front of the other four, before turning around to reply. The Terror Titanics were also a quintet, though very different from the team assembled here, yet familiar enough for Atrophy to hazard a test formation.

"For open conflict, I will take point. Sable and Nocturne on either side, reinforce or charge accordingly. Psion behind, positioned to be able to see the field of engagement. Arachknight remains mobile, to roam and cover." Classic, almost old-fashioned, but serviceable until they could gauge each others' abilities.

I’m a motherfucking Jedi!… Sable is about to say, until the klaxon rings out. She had been stood, flat footed, as she looked up at the floating and robotically-assisted heroes she had tossed her lot in with when the thing sounded a cut her off!

Everyone had suddenly become so talkative! It warmed the heart!

"I fight. Jump. Move things with my mind. I have this…" she says, holding up the humming laser sword for all to see! The gathered heroes are cast in a shimmering blue light when she brings it up for them to see!

"And I know how to use it!" she says, only half lying!

She nods. A leader. That would be good. She nods again as Apathy starts giving out tactics. That was what she wanted. Direction. A plan.

'I am strong than hu.. than most people. I know how to fight.' She pauses. She started the conversation but how much to give away? 'I can drain people's li.. energy. If necessary'

Sable makes a face at some of the heroes that had been recruited.

Aging people? Draining energy?…

That sounded like people she’d have expected to be fighting against rather than with…

"What is the mission?" Atrophy began to hover to get a better view of the two uncovered buses. "Rescue? Eliminate?" One of those options was clearly his old villain mindset, but he didn't yet know the nature of the test.

"I believe that is part of the test," Psion said, lifting himself higher into the sky for a better view. "Situational awareness. Determine what is happening upon arrival, rescue innocents, identify enemies, ki... disable them."

The grin that spreads across his face is not entirely sane. He'd been killing enemies longer than any of them had been alive. It was easier to take them out since he'd developed his mental powers. You just crushed their psyche and forced them into the dark corners of their own minds. They rarely came back out if you pushed the door shut hard enough.

"It will all be clear soon enough. Shall we move in?" He defers to Atrophy. The tall man seemed to want to lead, and if there was one thing Psion did not want it was responsibility for the entire team. These greenhorns would be lucky to survive training. Maybe if they died he'd be able to return to relative anonymity and live out his final years in peace and quiet. He'd had his time in the spotlight. Heroing was a young man's game.

"Hellooooo! Down here!" Sable says, as the others seemed to be in some unspoken race skyward.

"Maybe the test is thinking on your feet! You know… reacting. Not over planning!" she says, happy she got a nice double-dig in against the others!

"The test is yet to start." Atrophy replied to Psion's prompt to move in, waiting for Jane Baker to give the green light. He didn't think that preempting the test was part of the test itself, "And what do you make of the situation - down there?" He started to mouth his words coldly at Sable, but thought it better to sound more friendly to his new team and softened his tone at the end. It would take a bit more time to get used to them.

Psion turns his head slowly to look down at Sable, his expression bordering on disdainful. "Some of us do not do so well on our feet," he says in a fairly condescending tone, gesturing briefly to the wheelchair he recently abandoned.

"Now mind your elders and get into position as Atrophy instructed." His voice borders on openly hostile. He's definitely making the case to be on the bottom of the list of potential team leaders, whether intentionally or not. His eyes scan the potential battlefield ahead of them, and he prepares to jump, psychically, into action.

"Careful you don’t end up on your ass, old man." Sable says, rising to the bait. She ignores the cool question.

"And share all my secrets? Don’t think so!" she barbs at the men looking, literally and figuratively, down on the young hero!

---

THE TEST: ROUND ONE

---

---

Moments before the second klaxon sounds, signifying the start of the exercise, Commander Jane Baker steps closer to the team.

"Stand ready! This is a live-fire exercise, people! Get your goddamned shit done but try to not get hurt! It's ten times uglier out there on the streets right now, so if you capes can't handle this you should just get back on the ATAP, ASAP!"

Raising her voice as the tension rises, as all the JANUS staff settle into their safe positions and as the alarm warms up, she's shouting by the end.

"These two buses are full of innocent civilians! Little old ladies, well-behaved children, pregnant women, nuns, men who aren't assholes! You super-types are to protect them! The two vehicles need to move through the base and out onto the tarmac! When they do, the exercise will be over! If they all get squashed, incinerated, blown up or cut to pieces, the exercise will be over! DO YOU COPY?!"

Blip Blip BLAAAAAAHMP!

The klaxon rings out -- and the two buses begin to slowly roll.

As the team prepares to move out, the two buses take off unexpectedly, speeding ahead at better than thirty miles an hour. One of the drones near the rear of the base can be seen to move forward, and it looks like there's more activity in the building where foot soldiers of some kind were seen earlier.

Moving at high speed on those strange, spindly legs, Arachknight keeps pace with the buses for a time, then peels off to the north so she can climb up onto an abandoned structure and get a better view of what seems about to become a battlefield...

Sable sneers. She didn’t remember taking a vote, and wondered if the media team was all that keen on a hero named Atrophy leading the revival of justice across the globe.

Didn’t exactly send the right message…

"Oh yeah, great idea! Web up the bus!"

That way, when the goons set it on fire, everyone is trapped inside. Genius… the young hero leaves unsaid. If this all fell the shit, Sable wanted to be far away from the reason why!

Seeing Arachknight swing right, Sable swings left! She runs and then makes a leap, so that she can get atop the first building and scan that side of the training exercise!

Leader? Arachknight's word caused Atrophy to pause for a moment. He looked at the others, from his vantage point. It is true that there was a need for one, if only to make sure a would-be team remained a team, as opposed to operating as individuals all acting of their own accord. Already Sable, Arachknight and Nocturne had advanced, while Psion hung back doing whatever he preferred to do. Did it seem like Atrophy was the only one who had ever operated with a team before, albeit a villainous one at that. As for being a leader, Was he one?

He flew even higher, just so to properly get a complete overview of the testing grounds, and began calling out instructions.

"Psion, if you can, keep us able to communicate with each other. Keep the mental probes to yourself.

Arachknight, web the buses, not to seal them but to stop them advancing.

Everyone, do not let the buses reach the apron! That's too open an area to protect them. Redirect them until we can clear a path. Psion if needs be, hold or push them aside.

Sable and Nocturne, clear that path, go quickly." The voice that utter the commands was still as raspy, but somehow carried over the air to his ... teammates. Atrophy himself eyed the three drones that hovered at the far end of the field of engagement, he had a feeling he'd have to deal with those very soon.

Sable isn't far behind Arachknight in terms of response time, and the dark-haired girl moves athletically until she gets within leaping range of the buildings that the buses are about to pass on their left. Muscles tense and send the girl airborne, landing her deftly on that rooftop as the opposition continues to advance. Another drone whisks forward to close the distance, leaving the third hovering in place near the road leading to the runway.

Whirring and thumping sounds from near the cliff-face north west of the base; something large can be seen moving among the trees there. Some kind of mecha?

As it's go time she begins to move. Atrophy has said she and Sable go either side.. except Arachknight had gone her side. She hesitates a moment, but then when the new orders come she quicks into gear. Clear the path. She can do that. Follow orders and fight. She takes off in a sprint.

Expecting Arachknight to do as asks on the busses she ignores them moving to run past them to take point, or at least keep pace, looking for any threat to take on.

---

THE TEST: ROUND TWO

---

With Sable, Nocturne and Arachknight in position, and with the two veterans in the rear in the air, the buses continue to move forward, slowing for the turn they are approaching.

The building beneath Kai suddenly shudders and rumbles, making her take a sideways crab-step to maintain her balance. The structure was once a garage or maintenance building of some kind; the front doors are huge. Metal screams as those doors are suddenly smashed open, torn from their hinges by something forcing its way out of the structure.

Arachknight has a front row seat as she watches four mecha-jaguars the size of horses burst out of the building. Metal claws gleam and glowing eyes hum as the mecha-beasts race for the buses -- and Nocturne!

As the building nearby starts to shudder the soldier immeadiatly turns her focus to it, changing her course. Robotic creatures were not quite what she was expecting to come out, but it wasn't the oddest thing she had encountered.

She moves to intercept, throwing a punch at the closest robot, confidant enough in her strength to take out these enemies.

The lead robotic beast, loping towards its target, meets Nocturne head-on!

The lead bus lurches forward then, trying to race past the prowling cats...

It was a thing heroes did, wasn't it? Prioritising the safety of civilians even if their enemies got away or even at great risk to themselves. The thing was that they did so willingly, unthinkingly even. That was the part most alien to Atrophy, unthinkingness. Did he care for them enough to do likewise?

He took off, speeding straight for the bus that had trundled so quickly ahead of all of them. Along the way he zipped near enough to the team to repeat brief instructions: "Nocturne, take care of the jaguars. Arachknight, don't let your bus advance. Sable, northwest, on the slope, don't let that thing get close. I'm going for the runaway bus. Psion, cover me from those drones if they close in."

The second bus has slowed to a near crawl as it waits for the first to make the turn and move off. That makes it an easy target for Arachknight, and when the gliding heroine lands on the roof and then leans over to see who is aboard, she sees that there must be at least fifty occupants in the vehicle's seats. Occupants that appear to be... robots? Labor robots, from the looks of things, that were a few generations old. They might have been from the seventies... maybe the eighties or nineties -- but they looked nothing like the life-like androids that various labs were producing in the 2020s.

Someone has at least taking some care in dressing them up. Their plain, oval faces and skeletal, bare metal bodies are all done up to make them look a little more human. There are wigs, suits, sweater vests, dresses, sandal and black sock combos, backpacks, briefcases, swimwear -- it is a motley collection of artificial people if the spindly-legged super ever saw one.

With that, Atrophy sped off, his cape fluttering aerodynamically for the first time in a while. He had to get to that bus before whatever was on the slope reached it first.

Stopping the bus right when the jaguar-bots are approaching seems like a bad idea, but Atrophy's the boss, so the Arachknight jumps off the bus when it slows down for the turn and webs up the bus' wheels to stop it from moving.

Caping flapping, Atrophy soars overhead as the Arachknight webs up the bus' wheels, bringing the big vehicle to a lurching, shuddering halt. The robot driver mashes the accelerator and works the gear shifter, but the coach's transmission only grinds and slips as the webbing holds. Seconds later, Kai hears a ding from inside the bus as one of the riders pulls the next stop cable. Two side doors suddenly hiss and open -- and the mechanized riders start pouring out onto the road! The eyes of the four monsters jags blaze as they see their primary targets milling around before them....Then, from the trees in the north west, at the bottom of the cliff, the other threat makes its presence known. Looming up from the leaves and boughs and branches is some kind of huge mechanical spider or crab. Massive, armored legs move with an eerie synchronicity as the machine comes to the edge of the base, then levels some sort of long-barreled weapon at the lead bus. An electromagnetic hum fills the air as the weapon charges -- and then fires, rocking the machine backwards as a searing beam lances towards its target.

Too slow and too late to prevent the first attack from hitting the bus! The small mercy was that the vehicle had rumbled to a stop. That made it a sitting duck out in the open, but it allowed Atrophy to finally manoeuvre himself into a position where he would be able to defend the bus against any other weapons aimed at it.

He needed to buy time to move that bus out of the way, and for that he needed to to shut down that mechanical spider. His moniker, Atrophy, came from the fact that he could age things rapidly, just by focussing his concentration on them. Hand outstretched and palm open, he aimed at the tank, attempting to reduce its shiny metal and hydraulic parts into wear and tear and rust, especially the laser.

Atrophy did not hesitate. There was no way he was going to let the spider tank fire off another shot if he could help it. The former villain extended his entropic aura, intending to return the mecha to its orginal state of unformed metal!

The truth was that the frustrating aspect of this entire affair had begun to chafe. Why this absurd test? If JANUS had all these resources to throw at them, they would be better deployed against whatever they were supposed to go up against. Atrophy came with his best behaviour, with restraint, to show he wasn't a villain, that he had left it behind.

But these machines, they were ridiculous. He didn't have to hold back. It had been a long time since he unleashed his full power; around him everything withers and crumbles. Including this one. One inexorable pull of his hand, and the spider tank groaned and creaked as its metal began to buckle, unable to support its own weight. Its chassis began to collapse, its legs splayed. With a crash it flopped onto the cliff face and then started to roll down, but there was no chance for it to become a dangerous object threatening to smash the bus with its momentum. It hit the apron with a resounding slam, and its entire body flew apart into its component parts in a cloud of debris.

As Atrophy turns the tank -- and much of the surrounding landscape -- to ruin and wreckage, the third drone buzzes forward, joining the two that now loiter over top of the building that may have infantry or soldiers of some kind in it. But then, visible to virtually the whole team, a green laser emits from that third drone, painting the already on-fire bus behind Atrophy. There's a flash as a sizzle as a homing missile races forward, leaving a contrail behind it as it streaks towards its target!

Sable, standing atop the building and watching the carnage unfold, sees the rocket spat from its launcher and then orient itself in the direction of the bus!

There was little else the young hero could do besides reach out a desperate hand and wordlessly battle with the trajectory of the weapon with her mind. She reaches for the thing, and tries to impose her will on it, so that she might toss it harmlessly into the trees!

She strains as she concentrates on the feat…

The young hero reaches out. She can feel the presence and the pressure of the thing. She can feel its intent, and the velocity that was sending it to fulfill that intention. She pushes against it, and then tries to grab on to it.

If she could just get under it… If she could just force the thing up and away from the bus. She focuses her mind, extending her hand out. She feels herself envelop the deadly weapon, and then she summons all of strength to fling the thing wildly away, sending it into the wilderness and letting the energy behind the thing resume control just as it smashes into the rocks!

As the missile wavers in the air and then streaks off to the west, exploding dramatically against the cliff face framing that edge of the base, rubble rains down on the westernmost buildings. Luckily the integrity of the mountainside seems intact and the rain is short-lived.

Atrophy, in the middle of it all, having just watched the jet-propelled munition race past him, clearly under one of his teammate's control, sees two of the airborne drones buzz in closer to him -- and open fire with chattering, rapid-fire machine guns! Orange tracers light the air as the pair of UAVs try to knock the would-be hero from the sky!

Down near the second bus -- the one Arachknight webbed up, the robot jags are on the move. One bears down on the highly mobile heroine; the other goes for the small pack (15) of robot civilians that have climbed off the bus!

---

The missile would've presented more danger, but Sable took care of that. Atrophy turned to the UAVs to contain the hail of bullets so that none of them hit the bus. If he could deflect them back with his invulnerability, that would reduce the number of enemies they had.

Psion flies closer, all the while watching the pile of robots attacking each other. So much metal. So few minds. Nothing like the real world. He remembers another bus in another time, soldiers with guns, someone on the bus he cared for... those soldiers had been easy. He'd force them to turn their guns on each other. These mechanical cats and flying gun turrets would not respond. Which left him only one option.

High in the air, tracers lance into -- and bounce off of -- Atrophy!

The projectiles ping and pang as they ricochet all over, into the ground, the air... and back at the drones. One of the machines warbles and shudders in the air as a round takes out one of its four rotors, sending it spinning.

Elsewhere, Psion is cruising in closer to where Arachknight is trying to hold back a small army of big metal cats. They don't see him, or perhaps they do and they ignore him. Either way, the mentalism uses his mind to lift one of the two-thousand pound monsters from the ground, straining under the pressure, he then tries to slam it into one of its fellows!

Psion watches the robot cat slam into its counterpart and grins gleefully. They had told him they'd be keeping him in check, but this was a free for all of carnage, and the thought of destroying their expensive robots amused him. He looked at the other cat-bots. He'd have to do it again.

But then he remembers Atrophy's command... link us up. He reaches out to the minds of all of his teammates. He's never done this before. His power was always to read their minds, control their thoughts, make them do the things he wanted them to do. Just... communicating... seemed like such a waste. But he was game to give it a go... for the team.

Sable feels something at the fringes of her mind and pushes against it!

I don’t think so, old man… she says, trying to keep the one-time villain out of her mind. They had comms for that!

She sizes up one of the panthers below her, on street level, and gets ready to pounce on it herself. She leaps from the building, and ignites when blade as she falls! She aims down, hoping to skewer the thing with plasma energy as she lands!

Atrophy had wondered what was taking Psion so long to link them up. As far as he remembered his former teammate Neurotic doing so, it ought to have taken but a split second, and gave them all the advantage of being able to instantaneously communicate with each other. In fact, the networked minds gave them a slightly better chance to anticipate threats because of their combined senses. But perhaps Psion's mental powers didn't work the same way.

The last thing Sable thinks before connecting heads with the mech is -

Uncool…

She had really imagined herself coming down out of nowhere and cutting that thing in half. Now, she was heading right into the trees!

Okay that could have gone better. She jumps up even as she hears Atrophy tell her to deal with them.. and then watches as the others join in. Okay that hurt her pride slightly, but no they were a team. They were helping out. And she needed to do her part. Not be the deadweight.

Yet even as she thinks that she feels an intrusion, and fights against it, not wnating anyone in her head, friend or foe.

She runs to the closest mech and instead of a punch she tries to rab it, and using the momentum of her charge to spin and throw into into another.

Nocturne makes up for the jags getting the jump on her earlier by exhibiting impressive super-strength from such a limber frame. The mecha-cats are heavy, but she seizes one and throws it into another with enough force that the second machine explodes in a furious fireball, showering the area with debris!

---

---

Before the woman can celebrate or even look for her next target, a pressure in her head makes her wince behind her mask. Sable Reyes feels it too! A... presence!

Not with a sledgehammer old man, a voice from Atrophy's head replied to Psion even as the telepath attempted their mindlink with all the subtlety of an invasive psychic domination. Signal your intention first."

Psion reached out and joined their minds, the surface thoughts, basic communication, forcing the link when some resist. He remembers pushing into other minds in the past, breaking them, leaving those fools in a coma. He could do that now. He could break them all. He could dominate these military idiots, have them eating out of his hand. But he was one of the "good guys" now. He didn't do that anymore.

He reaches out to the others. Their irrelevant thoughts buzz like annoying gnats. He doesn't want to be connected to them, but Atrophy had issued a command, and he was part of a team. His thought broadcasts across the mental connection with all the subtlety of someone shouting directly into each of their brains. "We are linked for communication."

Slightly less invasive, he replies to Atrophy. "You asked for this."

Once back on her feet, the Arachknight glares at the mechaguar that slashed her. It's probably not the smartest move, but instead of pulling back, she swings her mechanically enhanced fist at the robot-animal's face, wanting revenge for the injury.
If she's still standing after this, she tries to stay close to the bulk of the 'civilian' group.

Wait until I get my hands on you, old man… Sable thinks rather than says! Instinctively, she knows that she can do that.

You two never heard of technology?… she barbs. That’s what happened when you had two ancient dudes running the show. Solutions in need of a problem…

"You'll get used to it, it's like a nagging parent in the back of your mind," came a brighter, younger(?) reply to Sable's response.

"Potayto potahto," Psion thinks at Sable, then reaches out with his Telekinesis to lift the mechajaguar (3) and slam it into the ground.

"I didn't link you to hear your whining, little girl," he sends as he slams the mechajaguar downward. "Children should be seen and not heard."

The Arachknight quickly positions herself in front of the bus, then waits for the last moment before the jaguar reaches her to jump out of the way, trying to make the creature hit the bus, carried by its momentum.

Children should be seen and not heard…

"Then why did you include me in the comms, genius? Here, check if you can see this!" Sable says out loud this time, before shooting a rude hand gesture Psion’s way!

She brings her blade back up around for the next attack; hers or the mechabeast’s!

The non-moving lead bus was a sitting duck for whatever the drones and soldiers were likely to send their way. There could only be so many missiles to swat out of the way before one of them got through. The best way would have been to forge ahead and clear a path through the enemies in front, but the other four were tangled behind Atrophy in a morass of mecha and panicked civilians.

He needed to move the vehicle, now. We're going to grab the bus! The voice telegraphed their actions to the rest of the team as Atrophy first wrenched the door handles to break their mechanism, so as to prevent them from swinging open halfway in midair. He stooped over to lift the entire bus, making sure his grip held true onto the undercarriage. He began to float upwards, to seek the best direction, and decided to make a go for it through whatever the enemy might throw at him! Cover me!

Smoothly, quickly Atrophy launches into the air, carrying the burning bus with him as the missile that was screaming towards the vehicle go whistling by. He soars past the drones with his payload, intent on moving the robot passengers to safety... and then realized that the drone is still painting the bus with its laser, and the fast-moving warhead is coming around, zeroing in!

Atrophy considered trying to take out the missile with his entropic aura, for his hands were full, literally, from carrying the bus overhead. But that would still leave him vulnerable to any remaining attacks. Could he make it to the safe zone in time? He pressed forward, as speedy as his flight could take him, aiming for the far end of the tarmac. According to the rules of the test that should suffice to achieve the goal for this bus. He tried to avoid the three drones ahead of him, and half anticipated that the ground troops would be taking potshots. Hopefully he could tank the hits.

Onward he pressed until he reached the target destination far end, and quickly set the bus down. He had reached the end point! Turning around, he saw that the missile was still zeroing in on his location!

As Atrophy soars past the buildings nearest the runway, small arms fire suddenly crackles in the air. Battle rifles and light machineguns flash from the windows in three different buildings, chasing the hero through the sky with high-velocity fire!

Gunfire sounds from the north end of the base, and the locked-on missile continues to bear down on the bus Atrophy is holder!

It was too much to hope for, that Atrophy could fly straight through the defended zone without having the soldiers pepper him with small arms fire. With his hands full, short of using the bus to block the bullets, there was nothing he could do except trust his invulnerability to deflect the hail of gunfire.

She fights the intrusion, but she's never had much practice versus psychic attacks. As she feels her defence breaking she tries to shove all her secrets to the back of her mind. But well, if you try not to think of pinks elephants.

There's a flash, of a human in old fashioned garb, a blue starry hand on their forehead as they begin to age, along with feeling of energy, euphoria, as the owner of the hand. Psion. No Nocturne, feeds.

'Stay out of my mind. You were not invited' She growls. This wasn't good. How much could be seen? Then after a pause as she thinks the words as well, her annoyance clearly coming through with the message.

She again chargers the closest robot. Her previously tactic did work, though as she grapples the creature for a moment her eyes going to Psion. Oh how she'd love to throw it at him right now, break this link. But no. They were a team. A squad. She had to adjust to these ones, even though they were nothing like the one lost.

So with a grunt she again tries to launch one mechakitty at another. Two ships one blast.

Sable shakes her head, and pulls a leaf that had caught in her fringe! She reaches around, until she unlodges the stick that was prodding her in the small of her back!

"Shit… That sucked!" she says, gathering herself up and climbing out of the groove she had driven into the forest floor!

Please tell me you dealt with the jags… she thinks to the others, but the continued sounds of battle already give her her answer!

At the northeast end of the base, Atrophy feels bullets striking him, but he is unharmed. The sum of the troopers shooting at him is only that they are poorer for ammunition by the end of their protracted barrage!

The streaking missile, though, bears down on him, on the bus he carries to safety...

"Don’t try it!" Sable says, as the thing leaps at her! She brings her laser sword up and swings, all the while wincing at the thought of what the bulk of the thing would do if she could dissuade it from attacking!

A drone? That's the best they can do? Psion flicks a shield up to defend himself, dismissing the attack entirely.

He had suffered the combined small arms fire of the soldiers while maintaining his grip on the bus, whose engine flames continued to lick at him. Reaching the end zone, Atrophy barely set down the bus, but had no time to deal with the incoming rocket. But he sure wasn't going to let it blow up the vehicle he so dearly risked himself to protect, even for a test. He moved to stand between the bus and the missile, and braced for the impact of the explosion.

Sable and Arachknight both fight off the quadruped mecha attacking them. The young saber-wielder sizzlingly scores the big cat's armor in several places as she drives it back; the reserved, green-clad heroine knocks the other machine's head off with a powerful blow.

Two cats remain on the prowl... both heavily damaged.

In the air nearby, Psion might cackle as streams of bullets bounce and ricochet off his telekinetic shield, leaving him completely unharmed.

---

At the other end of the base, Atrophy sets the bus down and sees the inbound missile. He races to intercept it with his body, taking the hit -- but he is too slow! The resulting explosion drives the hero back, blowing the bus to pieces and showering the safe zone with flaming robot civilian parts! A dozen of the bots are blasted to bits outright, but another half dozen run silently screaming from the flaming wreckage. Without assistant, they will burn to death!

This is a stupid exercise, he thinks to himself and probably broadcasts across the connection. Real civilians would have been easily forced to stay on the bus.

He again decides on less subtlety, and hurls one mechajaguar at its remaining partner.

"Come now," he sends over the link, unaware that the explosion they all heard was not actually the sound of success. "Let's not let Atrophy win all the acclaim."

Atrophy could feel the disdain for the test rising within him even as he failed to intercept this last rocket. The objective was to escort the bus safely past the finish line, and yet the attack had still followed through, and there were still 'civilians' on fire to rescue.

"Your rules, not mine." He called out to Baker and the rest of the audience who were presumably watching this from their feeds as he began to rise into the air again, once again surveying the various skirmishes he left behind. "You sure you'd prefer all possible enemies utterly destroyed before you end this test?"

"Barnette said it's not a test of powers and capabilities. It's a test of who we are." Atrophy said this through mindspeak, so that the brass couldn't hear it.

Nearby, the webbed-up bus revs its engine and spins it tires, trying to break free of the sticky strands... but the vehicle just rocks and lurches, held fast.

As Arachknight herds one group of robots back onto the webbed-up bus, another group of five machines pause and shutter and spark as some old programming blocks shake free and they return to their original modes of operation...

Eyes red, the five formerly innocent robot civilians glare at Arachknight, Sable, Nocturne and Psion.

"ELIMINATE!" one of them cries robotically.

"ELMINATE!" the other four cry in unison!

---

THE TEST: ROUND FOUR

---

Behind Atrophy, the six burning robots stumble and keel over silently, eliminated from the scenario -- the scenario that is beginning to anger more than one team member!

With the Mechajags taken out, two groups of enemies remain -- the trio of drones, and a squad of what look like soldiers or troopers occupying buildings near the center of the abandoned base.

Nocturne is also getting frustrated at this. If these enemies were alive and breathing she could have made quicker work of them... And now the ones they are meant to be 'protecting' are being hostile. Was that what humans were like?

She let's out an annoyed noise and goes to run towards the robots aiming to pick up at least a couple and shove them back on the buss. Then maybe Arachknight can seal the door.

The red-eyed robots resist, trying to spread out and evade the webs before encircling and wailing on the nearly exhausted young heroine! But alas, the machines are too slow, and in short order Arachknight has them webbed up.

Nocturne demonstrates her own high mobility as she runs for the trees and begins gathering the 'terrified' robot civilians...Unfortunately, the group has scattered, so recovering them all isn't easy. Nocturne recovers two three of the five stray machines, leaving a pair still in the woods...

Narrowly dodging being crushed by a falling mechajaguar, Sable turns away from the melee with the civilian robots! They look to be almost back under control, and so she turns her attention to the drones overhead!

Not that far in front of her, she spies one! She gauges the height, and the trajectory the thing was flying. She waits a moment, making doubly sure she’s got her calculations correct, and then she springs for the thing!

Bringing her saber up as she leaps, she flies at the drone! As she hurtles past, she swipes at it, intent on landing back down to earth with the thing scattering about her in pieces!

Atrophy was less annoyed that he was the target, than if the drone had turned around to attack the bus instead. He hovered in position, unflinching, still positioned between the vehicle and the drone (and whomever else might come his way), arms akimbo, staring off the drone, letting the bullets ping and ricochet whichever way they did.

Psion looks at Sable as she lands in a shower of sparking drone parts and nods. "Efficient," he sends to Sable.

Then to Arachknight and Nocturne he sends, "One of you collect those last two, the other take the wheel." He sends an image of the bus. "I'll get this pile onto the bus."

With that, he lifts the stuck-together civilian stand-ins in one lump and attempts to shove them into the door of the bus. After a few attempts, if the pile is too misshapen to fit easily through the door, he plops them onto the roof and hovers above, intent on following the bus. He has appointed himself their geriatric-psychic protector.

It was a laughable sight compared to the destructiveness unleashed by the spider tank and the earlier missiles, the drone whirring back and forth unloading its entire clip after clip to damage Atrophy. He hovered, letting the small caliber ammunition spray him like coarse sand, as the drone got closer and closer to concentrate fire, until finally the stray ricochets took out one of the propellers, sending it crashing down to the ground.

Sable brings her deadly weapon up lightening quick! Aqee would be proud of the speed with which she had learned to wield the saber.

She steps forward, intent on marching towards her attackers, while sending their bullets melting to the pavement!

---

THE TEST: ROUND FIVE

---

The gunfire in the middle of the camp finally stops when the last of the drones suddenly zips southward, flicking on its targeting laser, painting the web-stuck bus with a glowing green beam. Predictably by now, there's a WOMP-WHOOSH sound as the flying machine launches a missile! It streaks towards the packed-to-the-gills bus! A hit would be a robot massacre!

Atrophy had come to the conclusion that the exercise was also a means to see how much destruction they could cause, and how far they were prepared to commit to that destruction would reveal what kind of commitment and morality they brought.

He was too far away to see Sable go down, and also equally far to stop the missile. But he was most proximate to the final group of foes, droid troopers in the buildings. He wanted to decisively take them out, at one go if possible. Eyeing the old wreck of a military craft that sat at the start of the tarmac, Atrophy moved forward, away from protecting the bus. It was time to make that plane fly again.

The old jet -- once used for airline hostage training scenarios -- creaks and groans when the annoyed veteran takes it skyward. For a moment the old bird hangs together, almost looking majestic in the right light as it makes what will be its last flight. But then, perhaps ironically, the thing starts to fall to pieces. One of the wings, the tail, an engine. There's a thunderous roar as the wreckage falls back to the runway, and Atrophy is left holding part of the plane -- and wondering if he's leaking the energy that gives him his powers...

Sable sends bullets skittering to the ground as hot, melted fragments! One catches her in the leg, as it ricochets off of her blade, which brings her down to her knee with sudden screaming pain!

Then she’s off balance, and the barrage is just too full and too many. She deflects a few more, but the effort exhausts her, and throws her off balance in the other direction. Then the hits come, and she Sable is gone to the dirt!

Of course all the available tech, robot spiders, attack drones, mecha jaguars, would be in tiptop condition, all except for the one thing Atrophy had elected to use. The beached aircraft creaked and groaned as he lifted it, and in truth Atrophy could see it was an old aircraft. Still, he had hoped that he could have hefted it far enough for it to be dropped on the troops issuing out of the buildings.

But the plane began to fall apart before he could make the short distance.