Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Bits o' Legionnaire Business Post-ZH Legion: Legion Of Superheroes #126-130

Whoo way to up the ante!

Zoe to the rescue - headstrong, but she didn’t give Imra too much attitude . That’s what I like about Zoe, she gives bass only to those who deserve it

Lol at Imra calling Tinya out

And the worry for Garth…

The energy source is Wildfire!!! It must be!!! Whoohoo

Poor Ferro… and what can Vi do against Jaz… and uh oh, that’s the problem with impersonations, if there’s a dupe…

This is gonna be epic.

It's funny, Ibby - almost everything you're commenting on for this last part were all last minute adds/revisions.

But Thank you!

Poor Andy!!

Poor Vi!! Although if this leads to a Kinetix/Kid Q tussle, that could be interesting to see! They are both pretty powerful but in very different ways!

I am not too worried about Cham, he's a smart cookie

And I am with IB, that has gotta be Wildfire! I was suspicious with the energy pulses on their own, but now I'm positive! Or whatever the anti-energy equivalent of positive is lol

shows that revising is good hee hee

man, a Kinetix / Kid Q battle would be super interesting! Reminds me of the couple of panels we got of Kid Q vs. the Progenitor in Legion Lost 12

First off, sorry for the gap between reviews - please message me when you put up new sections so I can keep up-to-date, thanks.

My thoughts as I'm reading this:

Imra is the go-to Legionnaire in every boot, isn't she? Her telepathically trying to wake up Jan and Ayla was nicely written; well done filling in their back storyleading them to this point, and their shame at what Meta had them do is understandable. Ayla asking after Reep and Garth was sweet.

Dayvid and Greyfire aren't experienced at being stealthy, are they?

Tasmia and Zoe's little spat was fun! Hope that leads somewhere as friction in a team is always an entertaining read, especiallly when neither are entirely in the wrong.

Glad to hear the resistance has a man on the inside, that'll definitely help! Not sure if he's all that competent given what we've seen so far but he's survived this long so fingers are crossed! Trackers and Pathfinders are different, good, there was too much overlap with Shikar's abilities back in the day.

Good to see Ayla and Jan back on their feet, hopefully they'll keep it together enough not to lose it if/when they go face to face with Meta and his crew.

Nice to see Chuck being useful and helping Brainy with strategy.

Great cliffhanger - 'dead or alive!' eek!

Ayla is pissed - watch out! Pity she missed Repulse as he really does deserve a bolt of lightning to the face.

Smart of Imra to stay close to her more physically destructive teammates. Also, nice you're limiting Jan's powers so he can only ifluence one sentinel at a time, no changing the plaanetary atmosphere to defeat an overpowering force in this story! Zoe puppeting he sentinels was clever, good move!

Brainy being Brainy... yeah, it always looks bad when he does these random stunts but I'd trust him amping up the distress signal. The guy ain't stupid y'know Chuck

Mon El to the rescue! Fantastic, he's the Legionnaire you'd most want to arrive when you're being overpowered isn't he?

Sensor being mistaken for Quetzacoatl was strange - were their ancestors Aztecs in your version?

Great use of Cosmic Boy slamming the sentinels into the mountain!

Very sweet reuinion of Zoe and Vi, bless them.

"If Meta only has his Workforce goons as his main support base, we can take him down, along with his empire. We have a lot of work to do." umm counting chickens before they've hatched I fear.

Is Dawnstar using Hawkgirl's mace there? Nice

Meta is a nasty man, taunting the Legionnaires like that. I can just imagine how much he'd enjoy doing it too. Garth being anxious over Ayla is understandable.

Jo throwing Meta through one of his own ships then telling Garth off for being a hothead was great. Nice character growth there.

What is Lyle up to? TBH he's one Legionnaire I never really liked so if he vanishes and isn't seen again I won't mind

XS and Gates being tactical in the battle is god to read, not all Legionnares are impulsive (Garth I'm looking at you)

Val really is fearless isn't he? Going up against Meta is pretty suicidal. Nice save from Dawnstar.

You write the fight scenes really well. I don't like writing them so struggle but yours really flow well. Well done!

Poor Jo taking that beating, but he's the only one who could survive it on this team. So why did Meta leave? I take it that Lyle did something sneaky to distract him?

Ah, there's Lyle on the cruiser, nice save there.

So, Meta's gone to check on his palace and situation at home. Wouldn't want to be Dune having to explain what hapened.

Good to see Ferro have some fun despite his dreadful situation - "I could do this all day" haha

Is Om-Vir the real name of Meta? I didn't read the reboot so have no clue.

Ouch! Blasting an arm off id serious punishment! Repulse should have seen that coming really as Meta is clearly crazy.

"Any citizen of Starhaven found to be providing assistance of any kind to this Legion will be subject to immediate execution." Ah, things just got even more serious! Another great section there GL.

Not sure I agree with Imra not getting involvedand focussing on retrieving her teammates first, but okay... it does lead to the espionage Squad getting some action though so I'm not complaining too loudly

Zoe and Tasmia on the same team - there's going to be fireworks, isn't there?

Brainy's plan seems quite sound, distract while removing the Outpost, destroying the factory where sentinals are built and confronting Workforce.

Zoe doesn't really scream competent espionage team member really, does she, so wise to keep her off that team. Her lashing out at Tinya was unexpected though not uncalled for, PG can be a princess and does need reminding of facts from time to time. Your Zoe is a lot more fiesty than I usually think of her and I really like it.

Right, I've run out of time now but will get back next week to finish this review.

GL, this is great fun and I've thoroughly enjoyed it, please do message me when you put anything more up as I'm often not around so can easily miss things.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing as this has been fun, and I'm looking forward to more, more, more!

C

Oh no worries at all! I'm just happy you're reading!


With Jan, I feel like he's too often portrayed as almost god-like, when he actually has a limited power set when you think about it. Don't get me wrong, he's powerful, but there has to be some kind of a focused range. For Zoe's little stunt, my first envisioning was that she'd build it around herself like some kind of mecha, but I thought that might be a bit too much.


This is a really good question, as I've been wondering how much backstory to shove into this. The main thread here is that the scientists from First Nation tribes in the US decided on this plan to rally their tribes to leave Earth and settle elsewhere; they knew that there was power in numbers. To boost their population, they reached out to indigenous peoples outside of the US and to the broader American continents, as well as a few other places, so some of these folks brought their own mythologies with them. Space travel would naturally alter the view of myth and religion, and even more so when some of the population gained the pathfinder gifts. So now, hundreds of years later, you have this society where some tribes have merged and beliefs altered, so certain archetypes and deities can merge or alter as well. Who knows, maybe the Orandans visited the ancient meso-American civilizations?


I felt like Dawny needed something to kick ass with.


Wow! Thank you, Harbi! High praise indeed! Truth be told, I agonize over these, and its part of the reason it takes me so long!


Another great question! Meta, as far as I'm aware, did not have a civilian name, as he was only in two issues (maybe only the one). Come to think of it, I don't think ANY of the Workforce were given actual names. But I wanted to go for something that sounded Daxamite-ish, then I remembered Ol-Vir from the classic Legion, so I just changed the 'L' to an 'M' to be kind of an homage, but not using the character himself.

Repulse as Kort Grezz, of course, is Magno Lad of the LSV from the prior continuity. I don't think DnA ever made that connection there.


Repulse isn't too bright.


As I see it Zoe is the nicest person in the world. But if you somehow cross her, prepare for her wrath.


Absolutely! I really appreciate you reading and your comments!

good point re the "powerful" trio of Element Lad, Kinetix, and Kid Quantum II. I will add Zoe and Jazmin here, all three cna do a lot BUT they do have a range and mass limit - so they can't make magic happen, let's say



I gotta say GL, your version of Zoe speaks to me so much. you take the elements of classic Zoe and highlight them, and I can relate - I am also nice, but when crossed I can really lay it down and that is exactly how I read your Zoe, she's generally nice, kind and caring - but can give a talking-to to those who deserve it!!

I don't think that they ever really say what most of their limits are in the reboot; its just whatever the story needs. Which I guess is one of the reasons why Legion Lost rubbed me the wrong way - Jan's depicted as godlike AND a theoretical physics genius! The 3boot had a good angle that they started with for him where his power only lasted for a limited amount of time (a couple minutes IIRC), but it made no sense in practice, as if he would convert one element, let's say nickel - into a gas like Argon, physics dictates that it would disperse, so either that destroys the thing or does some kind of damage.


Thank you, Ibby! Coming from the worlds biggest Kinetix fan, that is high praise! I just tried to take what Stern & Merlo put on the page, as there are plenty of examples. She's not that difficult a character to write, at least I find it so(I think I need to work on more sarcasm, tbh ). I don't know why she got sidelined so much in the McAvennie era. Maybe he had a problem with the character, I dunno, as it was when he took over when she went sideways.

re Jan in Legion Lost, yeah... the power usage was OK in my mind, as he "evolved" before he became the Progenitor. I can gloss over the "using his powers to keep the Legion alive, keep himself alive, AND bring the Outpost back into reality" bit as he has shown similar levels before, barely. and I agree, the 3boot went too far in the other direction.... having to touch the objects he transmutes, oh dear, makes it tougher for gases. and the time limit, also oh dear. for reasons you said, but also... in a combat situation, then he has to keep touching say, an enemy's weapon? not very handy...

but the calculations bit before jumping back into reality, like HOW was he smart enough to do that? but ok, handwaving.

Zoe was also not written consistently all the time, although one saving grace is they limited the amount of mass she can affect from her first appearance ("no turning buildings into monsters" as she put it, which is still quite high but not too bad).

Jazmin, do not get me started. Even before DNA she was already doing some new things, and after DNA her levels slowly skyrocketed. in the Robotica story she suddenly became able to speed time up too...

and yeah, re Zoe's history. a bit sad, as she added a lot of spice to the mainly nicer team. DNA's treatment of her also baffled me, as her few lines of dialogue under them showed they "got"
her, and they gave her a couple decent power displays. it is like they badly needed a deus ex machina and thought Zoe's background would fit it... but what a waste of her personality! and the deus ex machina- Terrorform powers did NOT help!

So, I'm back to get up to date - my thoughts as I'm reading:

Vi having a little rant to Cham was interesting. We're used to her being quite meek so it's good to see the stresss getting to her a bit and her needing to vent. And her empathy with Ayla being distant was sweet; nice insight. A more powerful source of energy... Wildfire perhaps? It wouldn't be the first time he's been siphoned to provide energy for a moraly bankrupt empire.

Tinya being the princess and deciding to go alone is kind of in charcter, she's always been a bit cocky.I guess being literally untouchable would make you like that. So, Reep and Vi are splitting up too to cover more ground - this isnn'y going to plan, is it? And, let's hope Tinya doesn't need a hypo...

Clever of Cham to feign illness rather than confrontthe guards. Oh dear. changing into an unconscious guards form only works as long as they remain unconscious and don't raise the alarm... And running into Dune is bad luck, things are away to get tricky for our favourite Durlan!

Poor Ferro, but at least it was him taking the beating and not one of his less durable teammates. Time stopping - ah, Jazmin?

Starfire energy - haha wasn't Starfre the original codename Dave Cockburn wanted for Drake?

Bless Zoe's impatience, we've all paced at one time or another the floor so know how she feels. Brainy getting annoyed at being distracted was cute, it must be really annoying being the go-to person whenever anyone wants some impossible bit of information. Zoe to the rescue! She can be impulsive but storming into an enemy's stronghold takes it to a new level.

Great stuff GL, very nice characterisation and action scenes, well done!

Now I'm up to date I need to ask, will there be more, more, more soon?

you got some things I didn't, Harbi! like Starfire being an original name for Drake! and there only being two hypos, leaving Tinya without one and also indeed Brainy's annoyance at being disrupted, especially when he is thinking about something else! all great bits!

I'm going to try for later this week! I wanted to get to it last week, but things were REAL busy. The good news is that I have it outlined, I just need to add to the skeleton, so it's just a matter of sitting down with enough time and silence.

I'd love to ask Waid about this at some point - did he realize he overstepped then just ignored it? It will be interesting to see if Shooter does anything with this. But to your other point, I can see Jan somehow evolving himself - he was able to un-crystallize himself after Mordru, for example.


Yeah that had to be plot-required, but it would have been better done if Brainy had left some notes or something....


Yep, and didn't it change a bit from when she was pre-tail to post-tail?


I mean I get that they could have a hero figure out new tricks, but you're right. Hey, it helps when you're the writers favorite.


It's another "if I could ask the editor" things - like you said, DnA could write her personality (to a degree, anyway, we only get a few pages worth of "real" Zoe from them, but it stands to reason they could have kept going), but it's literally McAvennie's stewardship - as soon as he takes over she goes to the anomaly. Luckily we get a few issues of her normal before she's Terrorformed! It's only when Wacker is editor when she starts talking normally again, but that was literally for one panel.

yeah agree, thanks for pointing out re McAvennie - I should have checked that he had the helm during both the Anomaly and with DNA!

re pre-tail and post-tail, I do not remember any comment re Zoe's mass/size power limit, but I do remember her only being able to affect inanimate objects before tail... then immediately after tail, with her first power usage, we see her smack Empress into a wall. Then blast Persuader directly with a raw bolt of power. So... there goes the inanimate objects thing. funny enough, in that horrible Titans/Legion Universe Ablaze story, Zoe's power is given as "controls inanimate objects"... but we never once see her use her powers in that story, lol! just lol at how bad that was!


re Jan, I guess what they were banking on was that we would just be stunned enough by everything being revealed, to buy the Progenitor story as barely plausible lol

As Starhaven's sun began to climb over the capitol city, people were already out of their houses and lodges, as an Imperial search force had raided the Nez Perce district just after dawn.  The force, consisting of ground troops reinforced by several winged soldiers from above, had pulled out a score of tribesmen, both winged and original human, and were herding them at gunpoint towards the district's central spire, while dozens more followed out of fear and curiosity to witness the scene and state media cameras filming the event.  One older Pathfinder was pushed to the forefront by the armed soldiers, his grey hair pulled back in a disheveled ponytail contrasting against his dark clothes. The white wings of the man seemed atrophied somewhat from disuse, but he held himself proudly as he was ushered forward to stand before a visored man partially encased in a metal sheath and a cloaked woman who stood atop the steps leading up to the  building entrance. 

The old man was roughly shoved up the steps until he was a few steps beneath the scowling, visored man, standing beneath the building's awning, which wrapped around the perimeter with decorative supports jutting upwards at an angle every ten meters, hung with orange and red decorative banners. The visored man looked down, reached out his arm as a silver filament shot out and wrapped itself around the old Pathfinder's neck. "TELL ME WHERE THEY ARE," Repulse yelled as another filament tendril lashed out and struck the Starhaven elder across the temple. "WE KNOW THEY WERE HERE."

The man, even with cold liquid metal wrapped around his neck, appraised Repulse with an air of derision. "Why should I talk to a bootlicker like you?" he croaked out with as much disdain as he could muster, "You aren't the true chiefs of Starhaven," he gasped, "You never were. You think your powers make you invincible, but your pride will be the end of you." The man's grey eyes burned with defiance.

A steady, deep voice, but one full of menace, spoke from behind the spire as its owner drifted down and around the face of the building from above. "Kort," Meta said, "Allow me." His dark cloak billowed behind him as he drifted down towards the scene, flanked by personal aerial guards.  His eyes gleamed from beneath his hood as he drifted closer, but still above the awning around the spire. "Chief Martinn Joseph of tribe Nez Perce," he said, "You can spare yourself, and your tribe of all this suffering. You just have to answer a simple question." He stopped drifting and hovered above all. "Where is the Legion?"

"I don't address those who have not undergone the trial of Wysoccan as an equal," the old man said defiantly.

"Very well," the emperor said simply. "Kort?"

Repulse, still holding the chief around the neck via a filament extending from his arm, nodded and sent two more strands out, wrapping around the man's forearms and lifting him into the air.  With his free hand he signaled soldiers to the side who were guarding the other prisoners.  Those soldiers pulled three of the prisoners, fellow Starhaven citizens, aside. "Your turn, Amber," he said.

The cloaked woman lifted an arm and with a gesture three ochre bubbles formed around the heads of the three prisoners. Instantly they began to convulse from the lack of air, which only became worse over the course of the next few moments. Joseph's face twisted in a combination of anger and fear at the torture of his friends.

"All this humiliation and torture you and your fellows are facing in front of your tribe for what? Some outworlders?" Meta asked with mild amusement. He nodded to Amber, who snapped her fingers and the bubbles of viscous liquid disappeared as fast as they had been conjured. The three prisoners gasped noisily and spat sap onto the ground. "You have served the citizens of the Nez Perce, and Starhaven as a whole, for most of your life," Meta concluded.

The old Chief glared at Meta and even with his throat constricted managed to shout. "Outworlders?  Who is the real outworlder here? Starhaven was a wonderful republic before you arrived. We built the society that we had always wanted until you came here and ruined it! Outworlder. Now you've corrupted it all! We've become the society we left behind to follow your false promises..."

Repulse hoisted him up farther and tightened the grip around the chief's throat, cutting off his speech. "We'll find out where the Legion is eventually, old man," Repulse said in an almost tired voice, "even if we have to tear this world apart."

A rasping sound came from the old chief, and it took a moment to realize that he was laughing.  Meta scowled and said, "Very well."  Two red beams shot out from Meta's hood and burned through the chief's chest, instantly killing him.  His body went limp in Repulse's bonds as he hung in the air.  Meta then fired his eye beams at the three prisoners and sliced them apart as he burned them.  Much of the crowd screamed and surged away from the building's perimeter "Let this serve as a warning and a reminder to all who choose to aid the Legion," he said then rose up into the air, "Retribution will be swift on conspirators and their communities."   Meta fired his beams into a nearby building, crumbling the façade and instantly setting it ablaze.  With that signal the imperial forces began to swoop in and target citizens from the air while the ground soldiers started ransacking the nearby structures.  As a final statement, Repulse swung the chief's body around and impaled it on the supports surrounding the lodge.  The dead chief's limbs dangled as Repulse retracted the metal filament tendrils back into his suit.  The gathered subjects began to flee in terror.

Meta drifted down to the steps of the lodge, standing next to Repulse and Amber.  "What do you think?" Amber asked in her silky voice, "Will this flush them out?"

Meta crossed his arms across his muscular chest. "The Legion are soft," he said, "They'll run out of hiding to defend the weak as we cull more of the sheep here."

"Well get ‘em, don't worry," Repulse said.

"You should guarantee that," Meta said as he turned to Repulse.  Even behind Meta's dark mask Repulse could almost feel the sneer on the emperor's face. "Unless you are looking forward to returning to the so-called United Planets?"

"No way boss," Repulse said as he shook his head, "I like being at the top of the food chain here."

Meta uncrossed his arms and levitated a meter off the ground. "I've spent years here building my empire. I will not let it go," he said. His eyes narrowed, "And never forget that I am atop your ‘food chain' here."

"Y-yes, boss," Repulse stuttered as he averted Meta's gaze.

At that moment, a large explosion erupted from the north and the power feeding the area failed. Meta quickly rose straight up in the air, paused a moment, then shot away, his winged forces stopping their assault on the citizens and following him as fast as they could keep up. 

Repulse turned to Amber who was staring at him with disappointment. "What are you looking at?" he said to her, "Let's get out of here." He bounded down the steps to the nearest hovercraft.

yay, more!

ugh... the chief was a great man. Meta did think this through, re the Legion would be compelled to help if they were here....

I like Amber staring at Repulse in disappointment. There's hope for her yet!

Legion Of Superheroes #130 - Coriolis, Chapter 2

Apparition stared at the energy discharges happening faster into the relays. "Cham, come in!," she shouted into her ring. "Sprock it! What's wrong with this stupid thing?" Tinya changed the ring mode to pull up homing signals for Chameleon and Vi, but only saw two faint signals that kept wobbling in and out of reception; she couldn't even determine which of her teammates the signals were supposed to be. "Grife, I'm gonna need to find them," she thought, then stared at the energy mass for a moment.

"Hey," Tinya said directly to the energy, "I'm just taking a wild guess here, but you're Drake, aren't you? All the Legionnaires who were on that station arrived here at different times and you were one of the first of us to disappear into the wormhole. Can you flash or something if you're Drake?"

The golden-orange mass of energy began to pulse rapidly at regular intervals in response.

"Holy sprock!" Tinya whispered. "Okay," she said aloud, "Since I don't have any way for you to talk to me, I need you to pulse once for 'yes' and twice for 'no', okay?"

She was returned with two distinct pulses.

Tinya rolled her eyes, but couldn't help but smile. "Really?" she asked, "You're going to joke at a time like this?"

One pulse.

She grinned despite herself. "Are you working with Meta?"

Two pulses.

"Is Meta holding you captive?"

One bright pulse. Meta found Drake after he came through the wormhole, and somehow is harnessing Drake's power, Tinya realized.

"How'd you like to help us take down Meta?"

Another single, brilliant pulse in response, so much so that Tinya had to shade her eyes and turn away for a moment.

"Okay then," she said blinking her eyes clear, "If I'm able to get you out of this contraption, I need you to travel down the conduit they've hooked you up to and take out their power station. It'd be pretty good payback for however long you've been stuck here."

Drake flashed another energy pulse.

Tinya looked around and saw the eight nodes pulling in Drake's energy were connected to posts that led to the walls of the spherical chamber. The posts connected to eight smaller conduits that collected into a black box set into the bottom curve of the chamber that led directly to the conduit itself on the outside as some kind of transformer.

"Drake, are you able to control which of these energy nodes you can discharge into?"

Two flashes.

"Okay, we just need to be careful then," Tinya said to herself.

Still intangible, Tinya floated up and passed her hand through one of the collection nodes, taking care to do it while missing a discharge, and the node popped and smoked in a short circuit. The result was Drake's energy starting to distend out of the virtual cube it was being held in, but still contained. "So it looks like we're going to do this the hard way," Tinya muttered. She repeated the process with three of the other nodes that faced the entrance to the energy discharge tunnel and Drake's energy mass started to push out of the cube and towards the transformer.

"Get into the circuit and go as fast as you can down the conduit!" Tinya called out as a tendril of Drake's energy touched the black box and created an arc from his old housing into the transformer, "I'll be right behind you!"

Drake's energy arc finally subsided as his essence fully transferred out of the cube and the chamber, so Tinya flew up, phased through the door and chased the brilliant flash of Drake's energy passing down the tunnel, illuminating the entire length with brilliant yellow light and wrecking the conduit from the northern source as it passed down towards the city. Tinya flew as fast as she could to chase him, phasing through all the catwalks, equipment and rocky barriers that were in the way, even as the guards began to panic and flee in confusion down the catwalk towards the main power station.

Tinya finally got to the end of the tunnel and flew straight through the wall into the main power plant chamber, where Drake's energy was still pouring in from the conduit, but it was quickly overloading every transformer and energy transfer unit within the building. Maintenance staff and guards alike dropped whatever they were doing and bolted for the exits as massive power arcs jumped between components and showers of sparks rained from more and more quarters, until finally the core of the building exploded. Tinya had to resist the urge to dodge as metal and concrete debris flew through her harmlessly.

As the smoke cleared, she could see Drake's amorphous energy shifting below, so she drifted down closer. "Drake, I need you to wait here," she said, "I'm going to get some help."

Drake pulsed several times as Tinya pulled up the tactical map from her ring to find her squadmates. To her pleasant surprise, her team signals were stronger and she dove towards the closest one.

yay! more good stuff.

Clever Tinya. thanks for writing her in a balanced way, despite her being the "bad guy" to Vi and Zoe, she's still a hero after all

So cool that Drake can still control his energy form well enough, despite a containment suit...

... and I guess whatever they destroyed was also what was dampening the ring signals eh?

Yeah, I mean c'mon, while she may be a snob, she's still a hero

Drake's had a lot of time on his hands to practice.

And yes, on the last question.

"As long as you stick with me, people will just see us as three Imperial guard officers," Jeka said as they landed discreetly outside a building by the Royal spaceport, "Just stay calm and stick to the plan."

Brainiac 5 disabled the force field which had carried Chuck Taine as they had flown from the safehouse. Imra had quickly gathered them after Kinetix had run off and told them they needed to accelerate the schedule. They quickly took off, using Sensor to hide their presence. "I’m still skeptical of this illusion casting," Brainy said.

Jeka’s tongue flicked briefly in annoyance. "Just think of my powers as a kind of science, Brainiac 5," she said, "Just because you can’t yet quantify their existence doesn’t make them less powerful in the right situation."

"Is that a challenge?" Brainy asked as his eyebrow shot up.

"It is a fact," Jeka replied simply and curled herself up into her hovering form so her space was compacted and no one would accidentally trip over a tail they couldn’t see.

"Can we just get moving?" Chuck urged, tired of the debate.

The three moved out of their cover and walked behind Jeka, who appeared as a ruddy woman with long silver hair in the black and red imperial uniform of a colonel. Chuck and Brainy, by comparison wore the illusion of two tall dark haired guards serving as escort. As the trio approached the base entry point the guards took note of her rank insignia and stood at attention. They walked past without incident and turned towards the landing fields, the space elevator tower base looming kilometers in the distance.

"Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?" Chuck asked as they increased their pace towards the shuttles.

"A little trust goes a long way, doesn’t it, Charles?" Jeka asked. "Now once we get to a shuttle, I’m going to..." She was cut off as a loud explosion from the north, setting of chain reactions that reached the spaceport, igniting underground power cells and fuel storage. Instinctively, Brainy activated his force shield around himself and Chuck, deflecting some of the debris, but a chunk of tarmac hit Jeka square in the head. At once, the illusion faltered and they appeared as normal and her floating, coiled form dropped to the ground.

"Sensor!" Chuck cried and knelt down to help her only to be stopped by the force field. Several of the Starhaven Pathfinders had already lifted into the air when the explosion happened, and immediately saw the Legionnaires revert back into their natural forms. They tried to signal to others over their wireless systems, but they were useless, so they opted to charge the three instead and began to open fire shooting directly at Brainiac 5 and Chuck, with the bolts glancing harmlessly off Brainy's force field, but forcing the two of them away from Jeka's unconscious body as the Pathfinder squad formed a perimeter around her.

Brainy did a quick scan.  "She'll be fine, the team will get her later," he said, "but we need to get to that shuttle.  Move!"

Leaving Sensor, Chuck and Brainiac 5 moved as fast as they could, the force field adjusted to deflect any fire from the pursuers, half of whom had stopped to apprehend Jeka.  Sprinting as best as they could for fifty yards, Brainy jumped into an open shuttle's door as Chuck closed in, ten yards behind. Brainy reconfigured his shield to enclose the shuttle so that Chuck would be protected, then began the launch sequence.

Chuck finally dove on board and pressed he button to close the door and retract the ramp. "Brainy they’re shooting at us!" Chuck cried, as the pinging of deflected bolts bounced off the shield.

"Hang on!" Brainy called out as he deactivated his shield and pulled the control yoke back to hover into the air. With the shield down, the weapon fire could be heard impacting the actual hull of the shuttle, and Brainy steered the craft around so it faced their attackers, then hit the afterburners to surge towards the soldiers. Brainiac pulled back and the shuttle pointed up and shot into the sky as their pursuers scattered on the ground.

Chuck clambered into the co-pilot’s seat. "Nice flying, Brainy," he said, "But I think they are following us." He pointed at the proximity sensor and several armed Sentinels could be seen closing in from behind.

"I think I should confess that while my 12th level intellect allows for expertise in many subjects," Brainiac 5 said as the wing of their shuttle was clipped by blaster fire, "being a pilot is not one of them."

"Well, that’s just great," Chuck said, "Give me the controls. I’ve played enough Star Force Command to practice this in simulation." He took over and immediately put the craft into a barrel roll that had them pointing back down to the ground.

"Charles!" Warned Brainy.

"I got it I got it!" Chuck replied, "I just need to get my bearings with the controls!"

"Please do it before impact."

"Okay, here we go!" Chuck said and the shuttle leveled out and shot back into the sky. He banked the craft over so that he could see the path of the space elevator reaching out into the sky, with the orbital space port gleaming white beyond the atmosphere. Their pursuers, however, kept on their tail. "I can’t shake these guys," Chuck said in frustration.

"You boys need a little help?" a bright voice called over their earplugs.

The orange form of Candi Le Parc flashed by them for a moment then one of the Sentinels vanished from the sensor display.

"I’ve got the first ones, don’t you worry," Candi said, "I’ll let Umbra take the others." Brainiac 5 adjusted the sensors so that he could see behind them and saw Tasmia cast a large inky cloud around three more Sentinels that she dove directly into. In a moment, one Sentinel dropped out of the sky, followed by the other two with smoke trailing their metal husks. The cloud retracted into Tasmia, where she hovered brandishing one of the Sentinel’s blaster rifles.

"Good luck up there boys!" Candi called into the comms.

"Thanks, Monstress," Chuck responded, "and thanks Umbra. We’re gonna need it. Sensor might be captured down there, she got knocked out when the explosion happened."

"I’m on it," Umbra said at once and she dove towards the ground, "This’ll be fun."

The shuttle cleared the Starhaven atmosphere and began its approach to the space station, growing rapidly in the viewport as they closed in. The Legion Outpost sat untouched but tethered to the edge of the outer station ring. Brainy touched one of his holocontrols and the doors to one of the remaining docking bays of the Legion Outpost swung open silently.

"We need to hustle when we get in there," Chuck said as he started the landing sequence to enter the waiting landing area. He pointed to the sensor array. "I’m seeing multiple Starhaven cruisers inbound on an intercept course."

yay! there was more!

Wise of Imra to accelerate things after non-espionage-y Zoe stormed off

lol at Brainy questioning Sensor's illusions. what does he think about telepathy then? I like this, as I cannot really remember Brainy and Sensor every talking even when they were on the Outpost together! and I love how Jeka handled it, classy, like a princess

ooh, and Jeka getting in one last potshot at Brainy lol. A little trust indeed


Oy, now that I think about it, Tinya's and Drake's explosion was very definitely not subtle and espionage-y... at least the wrecked systems will give the Legion some advantage!

lol at the convo while flying, and Chuck learning to fly through video games...

wait, Monstress is yellow and not orange? but it was a treat seeing Candi and Tasmia swoop in!

also digging Tasmia's expanded darkfield powers, and having Candi and Tas go for Jeka.

yay! lots of nice action!

That was fun - I may poke around with some of that to tighten it up, but I love the idea of a man of science like Brainy having issues with an Illusionist.



Yep, that was Tinya's thinking.


Thank you - need to fix that!

PS - you'll like what I post tomorrow.

Looks like Tinya made the right call and Drake joking around even then was hilarious and so him too

yay can't wait!

Reep shifted his form to duplicate Dune as closely as he could in order to confuse the guards that had been following him, as they started to open fire. He grappled Dune and they began slamming each other into the wall in an attempt to get an upper hand in the battle as blaster bolts rained around them, some hitting and stinging both Reep's and Dune's bodies.

"Stop shooting, you fools," Dune called out, "You're hitting me!" The guards stopped firing and lifted their weapons in the air as he and Reep struggled. "There's one problem you have in your strategy, Legionnaire," Dune rasped so that only Repp could hear, "You haven't been me long enough." Dune formed a rectangular surface almost the area of his broad chest and it fired out and hit Reep as a piston with full force.  Reep was flung back, stunned and crashed into the wall behind him, reverting back into his Legionnaire form. The soldiers again brandished their weapons and aimed squarely at Reep.

"Enough," Dune said, "This one is mine to handle."

An explosion rocked out and shook the entire structure, knocking many of the soldiers off their feet and decreasing the structural integrity of the room even further from the damage caused by Reep and Dune. The lights in the corridor also went out completely leaving everything in pitch blackness until emergency lights came on at intervals in the corridors, small spotlights compared to the standard bright illumination, leaving most of the hallway in a dim light.  Shaking off his lethargy as the others still were recovering from the blast, Reep picked himself up and ran down the hall towards the detention blocks, only to find the passage collapsed. He stopped briefly to consider how to get himself through the debris when an anvil slammed into his left shoulder.

"You're not getting away from me," Dune said. His form had been traveling as a sand slide down the corridor and he built himself into a wall surrounding Reep, pinning him against the wall. Before he could transform into something small, a tendril swept out from Dune that hit Reep behind the head, stunning him again. Dune struck Reep again with a double punch, one to the face, then another to the chest, causing him to double over.  "Too bad there won't be anything left of you to prove I killed you," Dune rasped in what passed for his laugh while he closed in himself around Reep, causing a mini sandstorm with his granules, moving fast enough to erode the skin from the Durlan.

For Reep, the sound of the rushing sand filled his hearing as he tried to clear his head. He was starting to shake it off until Dune's sand started to scrap and bite through his uniform and hands, filling his mind with nothing but pain.  It felt as if he were being rolled endlessly down a finely graveled hill after being tossed from a fast-moving speeder and Reep couldn't help but cry out in pain.

He thought he heard another explosion; the rumbling of structures tearing down again led him to believe that another explosion had ripped through the facility, and he could see the wisps of sky and daylight through the sand and in the eye of the sandstorm above him. All at once, he felt an energy surrounding himself and the feeling of being lifted up through the opening of the spinning vortex of sand around him and he was carried over the air in a green force field.

"Cham, can you hover on your own?" a woman's voice asked him through the fog of pain in his head.  Thankfully, it was starting to fade now that he was out of the sand, but much of his arms, legs and back stung as if he'd been dragged across a spaceport tarmac.  He focused on the voice and found Zoe Saugin hovering above him as they both hung twenty meters in the morning air, a grey poncho whipping in the wind over her green uniform.

Reep focused as he was used to and found the ring easily responding to his willpower, enabling him to hover without Zoe's assistance. He nodded back to Zoe and said, "Kinetix, Dune is still down there! And what happened to the guards?"

Zoe looked down and saw Dune reforming reorienting himself after using his form as a miniature sand dervish.  He stood in a curved alcove blasted into the debris where Reep had been standing. "Don't worry about the mooks," she said casually pointing her thumb behind her, "and I'll have Mister Sandman here busy in a quick sec."  Reep looked around the ground and saw a rough pyramid made from the building debris while Zoe scanned the ground for any exposed plumbing conduits.

"Did you do that?" Reep asked looking at the pyramid.

Zoe looked over briefly and flashed a quick smile. "You have to understand, Cham," she said casually while pulling up a water pipe out of the rubble with her telekinesis, "I've spent a lot of time on archaeology digs, so I have an idea of how pyramids are put together." She swirled her hand and a large stream of water arced from the pipeline and shot directly at Dune.  "Here's mud in your eye, Clayface," she called with a wink.  Before he could significantly react, the blast of water hit him straight on and turned into a slow moving lump of wet sand piled in the alcove.

With the water still slamming into Dune, Zoe turned to Reep.  Her green eyes showed concern as she looked him over. "Are you feeling ok, Cham?" She asked, "You look pretty rough."

"I'll be ok," he said, "I won't be able to transform until I've healed a bit.  It's not great for a Durlan to transform when we're not all in one piece."

Zoe's face softened in worry. "I'm sorry Cham," she said, "I don't know Durlan physiology well enough yet, otherwise I'd try my healing on you." She returned her attention to the water, increasing its force until Dune was reduced to a wet sandbar that stretched several meters out of the alcove.  "Now, where's Vi?"

yikes! nice try from Reep, mimicking Dune to at least confuse the guards (and focus on Dune itself). Ah, at least Tinya's gamble is paying off re causing a distraction

and thankfully, Zoe's rushing off paid off too! yay! and hah, thank you for referencing Zoe's archaeological knowledge. turning Dune into a pyramid, priceless! and wow, Zoe is being cautious re trying her healing, what character growth