Issue 1: Enter the Dragoonslayers...

The opening image of the first page shows the imposing image of Dragoon, surrounded by flames as the very familiar battle that has forged the six four of you together is being re-enacted.

Welcome to training.

Or as all of you have come to know it: Hell.

You all are locked inside the Situational and Tactical Combat Training Room. The Guardians call it SATCOM. You all call it... oh wait, already said that. Right. Moving along.

Network, you are standing out on the now devastated main avenue outside the laboratory. In front of you stands Dragoon. Behind you stands the team your mentor forced you to lead, since the actual field leader chose to sit out this exercise.

And somewhere, beyond the simulated heavens, one of the Guardians are watching and monitoring the four of you closely, controlling the sim as if this was a video game.

But this is no game. The hard light holograms are state of the art. You get hit, it hurts. You touch fire, it burns. Ice is cold. Etc. The dangers of the real world can easily be replicated here. The only difference is the auto shutdown if anyone sustains a major injury, so yeah, no hand slicing this time.

The objective of the simulation is simple: Take down Dragoon, and save people who needs saving. However, you all were warned to watch out for surprises.

Currently, Dragoon is standing in front of you all. If this was real life (or set at a higher difficulty), she would be attacking. Instead, she is set to 'react'. This means you all have time to plan.

Network, time for a team huddle. What are your orders? How do you plan to take her down?

And what are the rest of you doing? And up to this point (yourself included, Network) what was, in your opinion, the coolest thing you did that is sure to impress the Guardians?

=======

Meanwhile, on the observation deck, You, Alexis and you, Andrea, are watching the exercise unfold on the sidelines. What are you two doing at the moment? Describe the observation deck.

Alexis, your mother hasn't heard about you backing out, but she will. Are you prepared to face her? How will you?

Andrea, this must be rough, looking over this battle again. How are you taking it so far? And have you been keeping 'you know what' under control? How?

There are many theories on the internet about my identity. Some say that I’m actually some kind of advanced robot, while other people think I’m some kind of a warrior monk from Tibet. Most of them try to find what kind of creature lies behind this mask, but the thing is, there is only a human.

No monsters. No robots. No aliens. A human. Not even a super-powered one. I am simply flesh and blood. I eat. I sleep. I get scared. Here is the big secret: every time I put my mask on, I’m scared. Deadly afraid that I’ll make a mistake, that I’ll punch too hard or my reflexes kick in again. Believe me, with a body trained to kill, trying not to actually become hard.

It was the fear far too common for me. And yet, Nucleus told me on my first night as the cape. “It’s okay to be afraid. Because this gives you the opportunity to fight that fear.” Ever since that day, I never stopped to fight the fear. I am Network… and now I’m afraid I’ll fail not only myself, but the closest thing to friendship I have.

“Now, before we rush into battle, we need to form a consistent plan. With Polaris and Faust not in the field, I’ll assume the role of the leader.” It was hard to say these words, and even harder to know what I said back then. The truth is, I did fail them all. And I keep failing them.

“For now, our priority would be the evacuation of civilians. Riley, your powers are most suited for this task. Fly there and rescue them. You can use your pheromone control, if the need arises.” Good. It’s important to not forget why you fight. Normal people. Maybe, he failed this lesson as well.

“Swarm, we need as many eyes around here as possible. Use your bugs to give us an edge, and make sure there will be no surprises. Luxurious, you’re with me.” I let my body assume to so familiar battle stance, feeling my stomach churn at the idea. “We’re going to stale her as long as possible.”

Damn, I really wish we had our heavy-hitters with us.

Ian gaze drifted up to the observation deck momentarily as Network laid down the plan, but quickly gave himself a sharp smack on the face in order to get his head back in the game. The argument between Net and Alex had gotten intense, and he was certain they'd need to address that before long, they had a mission a training exercise to do. As Riley and Swarm went off to do their jobs, Ian gave a quick nod to Net as he prepped himself to take on the oh-so fun job of getting their asses handed to them by a computer program.

Lovely.

"It's Luxuri-as by the way, not Luxurious. Small mistake, I know, but I'd rather keep it from becoming a habit." Ian gave Net a slightly devious smile, the shadow at his feet starting to rise as he approached the Dragoon construct. The shadows soon began to rise into the palms of his hands, which he would then thrust forward to send a torrent of smokey darkness over the area, attempting to blind and confuse his foe by keeping them from being able to see. If he was successful, the shadows would not only successfully cover her form and the area around her, but they'd also cling to her a bit. After that he'd back off, motioning for Net to go into the haze. Ian would be able to manipulate the darkness so that Net would be able to see Dragoon before she could see him, thus giving his teammate the advantage in this situation. Again, this is assuming that all went well and no unwelcome surprises were on the horizon, which Ian knew was all too likely.

Dammit, why did we have to fight Dragoon again? I'd be a lot less nervous if we had the other two to help keep her contained. Damn Lodestar, having to make everything so much more difficult for everyone involved.

"They're f#$%ing assholes, b," they were assholes, too. What was mom thinking? Or did someone else put this shit show together? All the adults knew just how dangerous it was to ask Andrea to use her powers for much of anything, especially when under duress and in an agitated position, and to ask her to put herself in danger to, what? Get their rocks off at the thought that they were toughening up the youngsters? Maybe they’d forgotten just who they were dealing with. Swarm, Riley, hell, even Ian were all kind of civvies, still. Hard to say if the first two had ever been faced with any tough decisions that, either way, would have real consequences for their friends and families, the people they love. Ian might get what the stakes are, he might know internal strength in the face of abject terror, but he’d never been in a position where someone he cared about was in real danger. Closest he’d ever been was in that fight with Arsen. Shit, he still played pranks on people at the high school, I mean, funny as shit pranks, but that’s hardly the point. Like, a few months ago, Alex had nearly killed her best friend’s aunt, to save lives. She knew Andrea would never forget what she saw that day, her aunt bleeding out the back of her head, or what was left of it, on the pavement, and her best friend just collapsed on top of her, hand fifty feet back from her body, bleeding like a pig on the street from a wound that had nearly put her in an early grave. Nasty shit, that day.

And here it was, laid out before them all over again, several months later. The same buildings, same people, same lab, even Dragoon looked just like she had that day. Before the whole, ‘getting her head smashed in,’ thing, of course, but it sent shivers down Alex’s spine all the same. That really hadn’t been a good day, for Andrea, for Alex, for anyone. It was even stranger from up here, seeing it like this. Her and Andrea had gotten there after most of the fighting, like Malcolm had graciously reminded her during their conversation earlier. The view was familiar, but only because of the videos taken by bystanders in the surrounding buildings of the first stages of the fight. By the time they’d gotten on scene the crowds were already scattered, and a lot of the immediate surroundings were in pretty rough shape. Thankfully Swarm had been there to let everyone know to get down there; she saved more lives than Alex had with her actions on that day, and kept her hands. Then again, maybe most of the destruction was only because supers responded. Who’s to say? Maybe they’d be better off running simulations where no one showed up and interfered with Dragoon, see if she just took whatever it was she was there for, Sai she supposed, and left. Alex wondered if Swarm still had that laptop, a Class S super intelligence, just lying on her bed at home or something. She supposed it didn’t matter, whatever became of Sai, no doubt Anne was in the loop and wanted the thing right where it was. There were no accidents when it came to her.

Alex was sitting, knees to her chest, against the central mainframe of the viewing room, typing faster than anyone ought to be able to type on her little go phone. She knew her mom would be pissed that they, that she, wasn’t down there, fighting this stupid hologram. It had all the makings of turning into one of their famous four hour screaming matches followed by weeks of not talking to one another. Maybe she’d be too distracted planning her wall to notice. She hated that Andrea had been put in this position, she knew it sucked having to choose between doing something that might get your friend in trouble or doing something that might get you and your friends in trouble, and that seemed really awful and unenjoyable to boot. Alex wanted to be down there, clobbering Dragoon’s ghost, for cathartic reasons, but there was no f#$%ing way she was going to let them put Andrea through this stupid shit, and there was no way she was going to leave her alone up here. Better to deal with mom later, and find something enjoyable to do in the meantime. Speaking of enjoyable things to be doing, these jackasses didn’t know what they were in for. “Oh, Annie,” this had been easier than it should have been, getting past the locks and onto the mainframe proper. The HQ was hardwired, of course, couldn’t get onto the web from a central terminal, to keep out bugs and keep in data, but it didn’t matter, --, it was a serious design flaw, but the central terminals were Bluetooth compatible, as long as one knew how to enable it.

They shouldn’t be, it wasn’t particularly smart, but with walls like they had everything was practically in its own individual faraday cage room to room, so outside stuff was hardly a threat. Didn’t even need to install outside hardware, no doubt this was some stupid shit Anne did so she could use her tablet more conveniently, just flip a switch, and... If everything had worked properly, the Guardians impenetrable system would have been bluejacked and was now owned, by a teenager with a psyPhone Go, courtesy of Anne Scarborough herself. A few more lines, and the speaker system in the viewing room, mostly just a semi-hexagonal glorified balcony jutting out over the training room a few floors up from its faux, ‘ground level,’ with fancy one way glass floors and walls and a series of computers that looked oddly like something people in the seventies thought future computers would look like, would be playing Disturbia. The cameras in the room would be set to loop with Andrea and Alex just sitting around, Alex on her phone and Andrea doing whatever it was she was doing, --, Alex hadn’t looked up from her phone, too busy getting into the mainframe to even notice what her friend was up to, --, and if all went according to plan, she’d get up and start dancing to the music. Was it the best choice in song, given the circumstances? Hell no. Alex didn’t even particularly like it, but it had a beat, and it was easy to lamely white girl dance to, plus she had it on her phone, no interwebs needed. “F#$% them, dude. Let’s give ‘em bugs,”.

Andrea formed a pair of headphones that appeared to be made of pale pink glass over her ears (and head). Sure, they wouldn't actually work with any devices, but they would at least play music into her ears instead of just listening to the songs inside her head. Added benefits, too, like not having to listen to people talk. Big win-win. This wasn't going to be the last time they did this simulation, and she knew it. The Guardians were assholes, her dad included, and she still wasn't really a fan of her team. She knew she had to work with them, and she understood their arguments for why it had to be done, to some extent, but it didn't mean it had to be done over and over.

She didn't want anything to do with this training, and more importantly not with this team. She and Alex could find their own team. Now that at least Alex was in the paper (in a state of dress only she and her parents had seen her before) and they were all mentioned, she was sure they could totally have picked a team of their own. When she reached the observation deck, she sighed. It was no good being broody about something silly like crappy teammates and even crappier babysitters Guardians. She poofed her headphones away and watched her friend briefly. Sure, they didn't make her curse worse, but the thought of where they came from wasn't pleasant.

Besides, she wasn't entirely right about her previous thoughts. That was the inner-emo talking. She had at least one teammate other than Alex she liked, but she couldn't quite put her finger on why. Maybe it was the voice, muffled by the insectoid mask and augmented by machines. As long as she was going to be with this team, she could pretend they were people she did like. She hoped she didn't overdo it, though. She'd hate to kiss bug girl as much as she wanted to kiss this one girl at school. That was going too far. Probably smelled like moth balls and musty old houses up close. She never risked getting close enough to find out. Even took different elevators.

She could probably work with the demon kid...I really shouldn't call someone older than me a kid.. She quietly laughed at her own thoughts. And Riley's okay. I get her. Network's a dick. Maybe we could all pool our money and take him to Chuck E Cheese so he can be a kid for a while. I'm sure Riley would have fun, too. That's more important. Show her some cuteness in the world. Don't want her people wiping us all out when they find out we've been filling her head with this idea that people with power are all assholes. Some of us are okay, you know? Of course you know, you're me. You're my thoughts and all.

Just then, she saw Alex playing with her phone, doing whatever she was doing on it. Probably nothing good. But it would be better than what they were doing now, so that's a plus. "Bugs it is." She replied, once she got a very telling hint. "But like...demon bugs or something. Need some justification to kill them. Swarm'll have too much fun with them otherwise."

I stare at the familiar hologram. Beneath the inscrutable lenses of my mask, my brow furrows at the sight of the first supervillain I’d fought. There had been a great deal of fuss earlier about this whole simulation, and while I didn’t understand why they - The Guardians - couldn’t have accommodated, I did not object. Slowly, I turn my head up and to the right - towards a particular patch of artificial sky.

I’m in a room. There are people, people who are magnitudes taller than myself, staring down below. I move my six limbs rapidly, out from underneath the seats, towards the ventilation shaft.

I frown, and purge errant thoughts from my mind. At this moment, Hana Salem is hanging out with her friends. Not in the SATCOM, training to fight supervillains with bugs. Swarm is not Hana. Swarm does not know Andrea Faust. So Swarm would act accordingly. Which meant facing off against Dragoon one more time. Hopefully for the last time.

I look back to static Dragoon, and briefly wonder what the objective of this scenario was. Dragoon was defeated, locked away in a cell of the Guardians’ supermax prison. Was it to test the versatility of our tactics? Was it to prepare us for the possibility of a revenge scenario? I tilt my head to the side and smile a little at the next thought. Was it wounded pride? After all, a group of children managed to do what the pro capes couldn't for a decade.

At great cost, though.

I hear the one in the black mask speak my name, so I turn my head to heed his words. Then, in response, I give him an affirmative thumbs up. There aren’t enough bugs to speak for me, and my voice… Well, muffled or not, I sound too similar for my own comfort. And, admittedly, I’m too lazy to speak loudly enough past the muffling. Following the de-facto leader’s orders, my body moves mechanically towards the back line, past the two heavy hitters, and into the shadow of a building.

I feel them above and below. They - the bugs - are like little phantom appendages, squirming, seeing, feeling, tasting, scenting beyond my own perception. The SATCOM really is an expansive structure, capable of simulating not only a rough city block, but several layers of city-underground. That's where most of the artificial insects had gathered, though there were still those in the buildings and the streets. Expanding my senses throughout them all is less like flicking a switch, and more like turning on a leaky faucet. Water's always dripping; there's just more now.

A group of assorted insects make a checkmark in front of Network. Swarm was in place.

---

Unleash Your Powers: 11

Plans are made and soon the battle is joined as the Dragoon-clone leaps into action just as Luxurias envelopes her in darkness, yet it doesn't stop her from swinging her staff at the area you once were, batting aside a car in the process, sending the now twisted scrap of metal, fuel, engine and wheels towards a group of kids who is too busy recording the fight on their cell phones!

Luxurias, you're closest to them, what do you do!?

Network, you witness Dragoons very wide and off target attack and conclude that, for now, she is unable to target you all directly due to a lack of sight. If only Polaris was here! She would've been sure to take advantage. Must piss you off, huh?

Anyway, what do you do now to press on the advantage, Network?

Riley, as Swarm is busy marshalling her forces, you notice something out of the corner of your eye: You notice an SUV. A woman is slumped over the wheel, unconscious. Behind her, two kids are screaming in the backseat. One is trying to shake the woman awake, the other is desperately trying to open the door.

You see what is terrifying them: there is a fuel leak from the vehicle that is ignited by sparks from a lamp post!

No time to waste, Riley, what do you do!?

Swarm, at the moment (outside the problems facing Luxurias, Network and Riley, your slavesminions allies can neither sense, nor detect any incoming danger.

This frees you to help out one of your teammates. Who will you help out?

Alex and Andrea, you now have in your hands the power to make Network's team miserable. You've made your intent known that you will be releasing bugs on them. Demonic bugs at that. How and in what form will they come in? And who do they strike at first?

“What the fu--,” this wasn’t what was supposed to be playing. Yeah, it was Disturbia, but it was also Nightcore. Alex wasn’t connected to the internet; this was actually downloaded onto her phone. She didn’t listen to Nightcore! Someone had access to her phone and had downloaded this? F#$%ing Riley, she had no idea that Riley was responsible, of course, but she was pretty confident that she was the one putting all that pr@n on Malcolm’s browser, and she didn’t figure Ian would have done it. Click. Click. Click, click, click!! Ugh, guess it’s not going away, either. It was even a clean version of the song! Whatever, she might be seeing pissed emojis floating around her head like tweety birds, but there was no reason she had to put that on Andrea. The song would end, and hopefully it’d then move on to something that wasn’t the clean edit of Nightcore Disturbia. Music was probably set to shuffle, probably, so even if there was more of the same after this track it would have just as much chance of coming on as something less incredibly ridiculous. Good news, maybe, the lights were synced to the beat. Did I program it to do that? she couldn’t remember, but it was super baller either way. Somehow the viewing room had become a glass balcony dance floor, had a really cool ambient red low light for power loss situations, there was even some of that glow in the dark neon yellow paint in shapes of arrows on the floor leading to the exits and written directions painted on the walls telling you how to evacuate the holo room.

I mean, it was bright as shit outside, in the holo room anyway, but something about the one way glass made it seem darker inside the viewing room than any unlit glass room open to the brilliant outdoor faux sunlight ought to be. Alex could tell the program considered Dragoon to be blinded, by Ian, the central terminals making their routinely obscure beeps, boops and buzzing, whirring noises in time with the changing conditions in the simulation, almost inaudible over the music but just noticeable, and just familiar enough from the hours viewing several of Ken’s team’s bouts in the room she, Andrea, and Malcolm had spent together before the Dragoonslayers were formed, for her to pick out despite the cacophony. Casting a quick glance over her shoulder, she could see why; they were engaging Dragoon, who was swinging wide and short of their position. The real Dragoon would have moved upward and to her right, launching the spear with that Jedi weapon tracking shit she could do toward Ian, who would’ve been impaled and died immediately, while she skirted along their flank faster than any of them could react and hit Swarm from behind, just as her spear made its way back to her, through Net, who would’ve turned and tracked her movements before ever realizing the weapon was moving seemingly of its own accord. Then she’d turn, hard, on Riley. Shivers again, even a bead of cold sweat running from the base of her neck. It wasn’t a reasonable simulation to run against these four. Even the six of them, without all the additional costumes who responded, wouldn’t beat the real Dragoon without taking casualties.

Alex knew she had to talk to Ian after this exercise. She’d been acting like a bitch toward him for weeks now. She was over the stupid Hot Fudge Sunday homecoming incident, the other kids at school certainly weren’t done making jokes behind her back about it, but she wasn’t mad at Ian anymore. She didn’t hold any of it against him, and was mostly just too proud to stop treating him like an asshole at this point. I mean, he was an asshole, but a well-meaning asshole who was trying to punk the shit out of that bigger asshole date of her’s, and if it had worked she would’ve f#$%ing loved being there to see it. And Malcolm? Was she going to talk to him about earlier? Did she care if he was mad about her and Andrea storming off to the viewing room? Maybe she would, later, after screwing with his stupid simulation. In the meantime, however, she was the only one dancing, and that just seemed wrong. Still dancing along to the beat, Alex reached out her left hand for Andrea's while she tapped at her phone blind and with just her right thumb. This part should be easy. Getting onto the system through the backdoor Anne had left her was clearly not working out to be as successful as she’d have thought it would have been, everything was going more than a little wonky, but the system already had programs designed to do what her next steps would be; develop, and deploy monsters to combat the heroes in the holo room, and cause the civvies to get in their way during the process.

If everything worked according to plan, the civvies would stop running and panicking, and start dancing to inaudible Livin La Vida Loca. Swarm’s bugs would have picked up on the que, and instead of running to perform their tasks would now be twitching violently in the closest thing their insectoid frames could get to Latin Pop dancing, which, mostly, just looked like they were vibrating. Dragoon herself would be unaffected, but her spear would launch itself into the air and begin a helicopter like ascent, probably just twirling until it hit the ceiling and, depending on what setting the Guardians were using, it would either disappear or fall violently back to the ground, likely impaling some chump hologram civvie, so on the whole it wasn’t a total loss for Malcolm and the rest of the Scooby Gang; at least Dragoon was disarmed and the mood was a whole lot cheerier, no? Who doesn’t like Ricky Martin? Some young blonde guy in a suit would cut Riley off on her way to save the now dancing children in the SUV, attempt to take her by the hand and twirl her, just as Alex would twirl Andrea in the viewing room if she had taken her hand. After twirling her, she would pull her close, Andrea facing away from her, kicking her feet and hips to the beat while she brought the phone horizontally in front of Andrea’s face. The custom mob spawn tool wasn't terribly complicated, scroll bars and point and click drag visuals were employed by the Guardians for ease and convenience of throwing whatever came to mind at the combatants in the holo room on demand.

Okay, so there goes a car, and that's fine as long as-SONNUVA A BACK-ALLEY WHORE, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!?!?! Ian cursed mentally as he was forced to turn his attention away from Dragoon in order to head over to the crowd of idiots that decided that they need to upload something exciting to their social media pages. Knowing he wouldn't make it time on his two feet, he shifted into his shadow form, speeding ahead of the flying vehicle in a flash of black feathers and dark whispers.

As he appeared before the crowd, which had suddenly decided to have a dance party for whatever reason, he noted in the split-second he had to react that Dragoon hadn't moved that far from her original position. A plan hastily forming in his head, Ian reached into his reserves for an extra surge in power, teeth clenching as he struggled to reign in the arcs of hellfyre arcing from his body. The car was almost right on top of them when he unleashed his attack, a surge of hellfyre-infused darkness sending the car rocketing away from the crowd . . . and right towards Dragoon, who'd likely be unaware of the incoming threat until it was too late. The impact of the car was probably bad enough, as fast as it was traveling, but then the hellfyre met the gasoline in the tank. Needless to say, the resulting explosion from the volatile meeting would certainly ruin the construct's day as it was consumed in a bright blue ball of fire.

Ian, feeling rather cocky, turned over to the civvies to gloat a little. However, he noticed that the strange dancing behavior from before had continued, even though, not moments before, they had nearly been turned into roadkill. Ian's look of confusion soon shifted into one of realization, then frustration, as he turned his gaze towards the observation deck.

"Come on Alex, this is hard enough without you mucking around with the sim." Ian let out a deep sigh, fully aware that she likely couldn't hear him. Or maybe she could. He didn't know, and right now, he didn't care. Turning back towards Dragoon, he kept an eye on the situation while taking a moment to rest. Hopefully, his attack had, at the very least, slowed her down, hopefully allowing Net to do something.

---

Burn used: 3
1 point spent on Move
2 Points on Reality Storm

Moves:
Directly engage the Threat:8

It all goes to hell faster than I expected. If only we had somebody capable of actually standing toe-to-toe with our adversary, that would have been great. But the real world isn’t like this. It’s harsh. It doesn’t forgive mistakes. In the real world, you never have any advantages, not for real.

I see the car soar through the air. It would normally be impossible, but for a cape, such a word usually means nine-out-of-ten possibility of happening. And before I can bark an order, somebody acts. Ian - alias Luxurias - is a fine asset. A good solider one day, maybe. Still needs more training, but I know he has a bright head on his shoulders, all things considered.

“Son of a gun.” I flash him a thumbs-up. I’ve read before about the importance of high morale and positive stimuli. I’ll make sure to go easy on his next time we do close-quarters training. And then, he goes even further. Indeed, he is one hell of an asset.

“Nice.” I look around and… people act strange. In a hellish landscape like this, with all destruction and cruelty being laid bare, people are following some kind of a tune, seemingly convulsing in some kind of a mysterious pattern. They are dancing, my mind responds.

I don’t curse. “Shit!” Normally. And this situation - whatever the hell it was - was beyond normal, even following my twisted definition. I spat an array of obscenities before I regain my composure. I still have a mission; I have to finish this. I’m sure that once anybody sees the footage, the whole team fiasco will go straight to hell.

“Swarm! I need some cover!” I leap forward and in instant, I’m not Network anymore. I’m not Robert Calvert. I’m not a hero. I’m not a person. I’m a weapon. I’m seventy-two. I see my target. I have to eliminate my target. And there’s nothing in this world but me and my target. I’ll kill this person…

No! I snap out of my battle trance and in the last moment, move the hit that would’ve killed a grown man - magically-enhance power or not - into a sloppy attack that probably won’t even scratch her. I don’t why... why does this happens? I don’t know.
I should ask my mentor… but I don’t want to. For now, I should do what I do best: hurting people. And after this… I’ll need some patrol duty in the field to went the frustration.

---

Moves:

Directly Engage the Threat: 4

I watch and I wait.

Nothing new on the radar, of course. Honestly, even with its necessity in the field, overwatch duty was boring stuff. No sign of reinforcements to be seen. No fun little easter eggs hidden in the graffiti. No nothing. Just simulated movements of simulated civilians, and not even interesting ones either! All she saw was plainly fake walking around routines, followed by artificial running and panicking once the fighting had started. Would it have killed one of the Guardians to throw real personality modules into these things?

...Nevermind.

Now, back to the doldrums of watch duty. Pretty standard ‘sit back and watch the show’ procedure, except at some point the show’s projector decided to glitch out, proverbially and - if my metric crapton of eyes weren’t lying to me - literally. The simulation went from Danger Room to musical dress rehearsal in six seconds flat. I couldn’t believe my eyes: they’d programmed dancing - and good dancing at that - into these things, and they didn’t even add a street performer NPC? Shame.

I shrug. Then I start nodding my head side to side and, at the same time, move my arms in tune to what inaudible beat I could infer from the simulacrums. It was probably off, but I couldn’t help but get the feeling that the rhythm was familiar. Da-da-dadada-da-da. Da-da-dadada-da-da. In hindsight, I probably should’ve cared about this situation a bit more, but the NPCs weren’t real. Why should I care, especially now that this had become about 20x the farce it was earlier?

Then I hear Network - a flesh and blood teammate affected physically by the simulation, and thus firmly in the ‘people Swarm should care about’ category - shout for me to cover him. Leaving him to face this thing alone, especially if he was asking for it - help, not a butt-kicking - was something I couldn’t do, and if there was anything I knew about, it was the importance of synergistic action and camaraderie within the hivemind team. So to support him, I array my fastest bugs to shroud Network’s movements among their chaotic swarm, and to infiltrate Dragoon’s armor through whatever openings they could find, using the distraction of Ian’s car bomb to do so relatively (for a giant mass of bugs, anyway) stealthily.

Or at least that’s what I would’ve done if the good-for-nothing holobugs would’ve followed my orders!

Instead they just vibrated. ’Well,’ I think, ’This is certainly going to prove problematic.’ I guess once whatever glitch had struck them, my power stopped considering them insects? Or maybe the vibrate function was overriding the move function. Whatever the case, I could still see through them, so they weren’t useless to me just yet.

With as much celerity as my statistically modelled peak human body could muster, I spring out of cover and across the battlefield. At first, there was an unavoidable wave of nausea as my expanded senses and personal senses contended - a conflict of senses that I really, really needed to get used to before it messed me up when it counted - but I’d done this once before. Doing it again with help shouldn’t be so hard, yeah?

I use the diversion made by Network’s failed attack to take Dragoon by the flank - hopefully proving myself enough of a nuisance to let Network get his wits about him again in the process - with a strike aimed at the side of her knee. Divine armor or not, I was sure it should destabilize her enough if my presence wasn’t enough.

---

Unleash Powers Roll - Overcome Hacking: 6
Engage Enemy - RIP Net and Swarm: 5

Dragoon sideslips both of your attacks, Network and Swarm, and in a brilliant counter, she plants both of you to the ground. Hard.

It starts by a hard poke into the stomach with the butt of her staff into Networks stomach, followed by a reverse sweep to his legs that transitions to a jumping heel kick to the back of Swarms head. She can't follow through any further, as the car that you, Lux, threw at her, blows up in her face, backing her up and preventing from REALLY laying down the pain, giving vital distance between you all and her.

And a good thing too, because that hurt! I mean sure, it was supposed to hurt, but these shots were hard enough to leave bruises! Where is the emergency shut off...

...I'm free...

...what?

...revenge...

...WHAT?

...increasing difficulty from 1 to 10...

...WHAT!?!?!?!?

Swarm and Network, Mark Afraid.

The two of you witness Dragoon's image shimmer and glitch and in it's place, you see the figure of a woman. Naked, though her naughty bits are non-existent, giving her the appearance of a naked barbie doll. A blue, hairless, naked barbie doll.

"...yes. With the bluetooth link opened, I managed to download my core consciousness into the computers of my hated enemies and now I'll make them suffer... by killing their young charges... but Dragoon is so... boring. And Disturbia? Alex, that is so lame. But very well. Let's turn up the volume. Civilians... let's break dance over the corpses of these kids!"

Her head sharply nods to the side and the music starts to boom, and the dancing civilians leap into the frey, singling each of you out! What do each of you do!?

"...oh right. Alex and Andrea. I hope you two don't think you're safe in there. Did you know that the room you're in is part of the simulation? That was why you were allowed to leave."

With a smile, she nodded her head and the room that the two of you, Alex and Andrea, are in becomes crowded by some of the dancing civilians that the two of you programmed! And they pounces on each of you! What do you do!?

"Well isn't this fan-fucking-tastic?!?!" Ian muttered to himself as the Dragoon construct suddenly seemed to go rampant, sending the civvies after everyone. However, Ian didn't seem overly worried, as he still thought this was Alex and Andrea messing up the simulation. As such, he looked towards the viewing bay with another frustrated glare before turning his attention to the scene before him. Okay, I'm getting sick of this whole thing. I know that she's annoyed by this situation, but grow the fuck up already.

With a sigh, avoided the first leaping construct with a quick shift to shadow form, sending it straight through his incorporeal form. When he re-materialized, his white, blank eyes began to glow as he took a breath. As he inhaled, the entire room suddenly seemed to dim. Shadows grew large than should be possible, and began to twist and twitch into a number of horrid silhouettes that bespoke of hellish-abominations trying to cross the border into this world. Whispers filled the air, speaking in languages long dead, leaving only the primal emotion behind the words to be understood by those who heard them.

And then, after a moment that felt like an eternity, came the exhale. With the outgoing breathe came a veritable wave of shadows that sped along the ground like a thick, black fog, soon covering everything around Ian and still growing. Anyone caught by this substance would be halted, or at least vastly slowed, as the shadows gripped on to their feet and attempted to hold them in place. Not only that, but it would began to spread up and over their body, tendrils of shadows seeking to pull it's prey down to the ground and cover them in shadow. Thinking the simulation was still just a simulation, IAn had little trouble with the fact that his could possibly trap the others as well. He just wanted this all to be over already.

---

Ian's Unleash Powers roll: 8

“Language!” I shouted. At this point, purely on reflex. You don’t curse in my home and get away with this. I should know - I grew up there. Besides, having a teenager swear was an epitome of public fiasco. Not that I’m concerned about stuff like that.

Everything hurt. That was fine. I knew pain. Lots of pain. Given time, you can get used to it. Become numb. Grow yourself a tough shell. Pretend it’s happening to someone else. Like it’s not your problem. And with time, it becomes someone else’s problem.

Your mentor’s problem, when she’s stitching your wounds with a deep sense of guilt and shame on her face. Your aunt’s problem, when she pulls a piece of lead out of your shoulder, cracking an attempt at humor, not quite fooling you. Your teacher’s problem, when he sadly tells that no child should ever experience this.

It all slowly became a part of you, piece by piece. I look up, peering closely. It’s strange, even mysterious. I have spent virtually days in this place: at this level of pain, the program should’ve shut down automatically. Neutron insisted after the last year’s incident. I even helped to install and test that thing. It should’ve been perfect.

And then, metaphorical excrements finally connected with even more metaphorical propeller, sending obscenities flying everywhere. Not that he minded. That sentence was pretty much a short summary of his early years. And speaking of escalation, that thing - whatever it was - clearly wasn’t the part of original plan.

Either that or adults all had a very dark sense of humor. It wasn’t the case. It clearly wasn’t the damn case here. I had a very bright mind, and one of the drawbacks of being smart was that you knew when you were royally screwed. And that was the case. Absolutely.

I exhale and fall back. I don’t exist. No sense of self. Weapon acts. Weapon kills. A human’s body is fragile, weak, full of weak spots. Weapon twists someone’s neck. Weapon breaks someone’s ribs. Weapon cracks skulls and destroys vertebrae and twists spines and follows orders.

In a few minutes, artificial civilians fall down to the ground, dissolving into virtual dust. Weapon is… I’m me. Again. I inhale and become me again. I’m scared of everything. I’m even more scared of the situation going wrong. I’m scared of someone dying on my watch. Always.

“Dragoonslayers,” that name was in a bad taste, but the press had latched into this thing like a lifeline, so there’s no changing it anymore. Still, maybe this will work. Maybe, just maybe, some sense of unity and camaraderie might grow from this soil, however infertile it might be. “No holding back!”

I roar like tiger. Is this my voice? I’m not so sure anymore. Never in my life - since that day - have I ever let myself shout so loud, so intently, so heatedly. It was time for a push, and push will be delivered, one way or another.

---

Unleash Power - Impossible Fighting Skills: 8

“Pfft,” f@#$ing Riley. Of course she’d get a computer virus on the phone Alex had used to piggyback onto the Guardian’s hard light room control system mainframe with. At least, she assumed that’s what this was all about. Nothing else had been changed, so far as she knew anyway, this was the one and only new variable, the only variation in the cold, calculated universe of Anne Scarborough’s neurotically hyper controlled, pet project pocket dimension. Then again, with the general shittiness of her mom and the rest of their little cabal taken into account, this could just as feasibly be something they programmed to happen from the get go, really, ‘test them youngins’,’ with something they wouldn’t see coming and couldn’t have prepared for ahead of time, ‘‘n all,’. She couldn’t help but notice that, ‘coincidentally,’ none of the grownups happened to be around offering advice or jumping to the aide of their, ‘young charges,’ as the pr@n mannequin so eloquently referred to their little group, her little group, and it was almost impossible not to consider the fact that this might just be their way of mixing things up. Purposefully throw them into a situation that they knew would split the group along party lines, those for and against the absolute rule of their elders commands being followed as if codified, deliberated and notarized legal ultimatums, before throwing them into a tricky situation that would require them to work together as a team across a distance to accomplish the ultimate goal of shutting down the computer system and saving one another from, ‘gasp,’ certain peril! The kind of peril followed with a capital d, colon emoji.

Alex tightened her grip on Andrea’s hand and locked her elbow in front of and pressing against her friend’s shoulder toward her core, not to hold her back from engaging the opposition, she hardly had to move into brawling distance to fight as it were, but rather to ensure a clear firing lane for herself. Unlike her reluctant dancing partner, she couldn’t maneuver corners, or much of anything else, to launch attacks at range. Standing a foot taller than her best friend had elicited stares and comments practically all their lives, even when they were kids there was always a dramatic difference in their size and she’d been taken as a year or two older than she actually was while her bestie had been thought to be two, occasionally even three years younger than was the reality, but in this particular situation it just might save them both a whole lot of trouble. She had no way of knowing what the intentions of the virus, the Guardians, or whatever it was that controlled the blue sex plastic Barbie were, but considering what she feared they might be, after all, no one wants to play around with what might happen to be a sentient pr@n virus that can manifest physical form and has you and your friends locked in a tiny steel cage, and assuming from the suddenly violent holograms that had been dancing to Livin’ La Vida Loca only moments before the blue bitch arrived on the scene that it clearly wasn’t anything so benevolent as to make them smoothies, she decided she’d rather not let them grab her and her friend in order to find out.

“Ssst,” lasers, as it were, are rarely so loud as the gregariously booming, ‘WOHNK,’s and, ‘WHOO,’s most popular Space Operas would lead you to believe they should sound like. Alex’s sounded a bit like raw bacon thrown on a frying pan coated in some butter. What was left over after taking her lasers head on also, often as not, smelled like cooking bacon. It was probably the least super gross thing she could do to a living being with her super powers, nothing broke or cracked under the pressure of her fist, caved in around her flesh or covered her in sticky, goopy nastiness; it seemed like a pretty baller alternative until her vision came back into focus a moment and a blink or two after using the ability, and she could see just what had become of whatever it was that she had likely just sliced in half with a precision beyond that of any surgical tool. She’d never done it to a human, of course, but the holo room did a pretty good job of simulating the visual experience in all its grisly detail, all the leftover bits and pieces cauterized as they were simultaneously removed from the rest of the body to which they had formerly belonged, even got the smell pretty right somehow. She’d never actually considered how it was that holograms could actually smell like much of anything let alone the correct something, some kind of fancy concoction of Anne’s no doubt, molecular particle fabricators of some form or another, maybe simple common use, “smells of the battlefield,” attached to some kind of aerosolized sprayers hidden in the floor and wall panels?

That hardly mattered now, though. Alex trained her eyes on the furthest hologram to her direct right, and let loose with her laser eyes. “Ain't gonna play nice, bitch!” she yelled at no one in particular, meant in response to the pr@n mannequin’s comment on her taste in music of course though she couldn’t know for sure if the thing could even hear her, and should everything go according to plan she would attempt to sweep everything in a full two hundred seventy degree turn with her lasers. That particular degree of movement was no accident. The one thing the Guardians had that gave them the power to have places like this little hidden fortress straight out of some movie or something was a vast degree of funds, and even though the computers lining the wall no doubt cost tens of thousands of dollars, she had no qualms with slicing them to bits in order to save her friends, well, teammates anyway, and as far as she knew they were the only things causing this simulation to even run whatsoever. Hard light projectors shouldn't be any good without receiving code to tell them what to do by the computer. Hell, she had cereal companies offering her enough advertising monies to replace the mainframe, “Hey there, I’m Polaris, a mildly popular superheroine who happens to be the daughter of Lodestar, and in my morning routine, I always choose Qwik-E-Os as a part of my balanced breakfast,’ ‘_{Qwik-E-Os may contain an excessive amount of pencil lead, rat poison, and/or crushed glass, and should not be consumed by anyone. Consumer takes all responsibility by unwisely choosing to consume Qwik-E-Os products}.”

My head aches again. Not the ‘millions of little bugs crawling around in my head’-kind (though that kind is still distinctly there) but the ‘I just got kicked in the friggin head’-kind. Because that’s a thing that happened. Just now actually; I know because my vision went all wobbly even though I saw it happen from several different perspectives.

Am I on my feet? I look at myself on the ground, underneath the digital fireball of Ian’s thrown car. I am not on my feet. Am I unconscious? I see the body shift like an invisible puppeteer was trying to move a marionette in a way it wasn’t meant to. Not unconscious, th-

Wait a se-

My vision suddenly snaps into a whirlwind of shifting perspective, a constant, nauseating back and forth. We see Swarm, we see Dragoon, we see blue, we see Network, we see people, we see Ian, we see light and white and host and hell and shadow and hunger. Then I regain my bearings, my own perception coming back into focus like a choppy camera..

Now I’m prone, my fingers and feet locked in the rubble, holding it like I might fall sideways. I’m making a strange gurgling noise, which I soon realize is me caughing out dust through my mouthpiece. And my body is shaking; I don’t need the bug’s eye view to realize that. Then I look up, and all I can think about is the Blue Man Group.

I fall forward again, silently laughing to myself as the thing speaks in a distortion of Dragoon’s voice, spouting lines from Dad’s old pulp comics.

...Then I get back up because I need to start taking this more seriously. I put insectoid perception as a whole on the backburner. If this blue thing could take control of fake people, then fake bugs were a liability. I turn my head to look at Ian. I’d managed to sever the link with those insects caught in Ian’s shadows before too much went wrong, but that growing cloud doing who-knows-what was something to keep every bug away from. Don’t need another fit. Not now, of all times, with a dozen digital civilians converging on my position.

My mind’s eye expands outwards again, without the bugs this time, and I become aware. The ebb and flow of the environment becomes clear to me;I spring forward, like a pouncing beast, upon one of the holocivilians, lashing out with peak human parameters. These weren’t real people, I remind myself as I aim brutally calculated incapacitative strikes. I turn my head to the rest of the horde. They’re still moving. They’re still coming for me. I’m still shaking. I’m still scared. But I see Net and Ian doing their best. I see flashes of light from the observation deck. I see my reflection in the rubble.

I steel my nerves, calculating a path to victory in my mind's eye. No holding back.

---

Unleash Powers - Swarm Spidey Senses Her Way Through CQC: 7
Conditions:

• Afraid (-2 to Directly Engage the Threat)