^{Three weeks earlier.
5:44 AM.
September 20th, 2029.
North Brigold suburb, Castleburg}

"Oh, God..."

"S-should we run? What if it happens again?"

"We can't! The Hacketts, the Bensons--they might still be alive under there!"

"9-1-1... Hey, has anyone called 9-1-1 yet?!"

On a normal morning, most people in the quiet neighbourhoods of North Brigold would still be in bed at this hour, or groggily pulling themselves out of sleep with cups of coffee. Today, however, as the sun was still midway through its climb over the horizon, they were on the streets. Bewildered and horrified families gathered outside their homes, many still in housecoats or pyjamas, to look upon the disaster that had befallen the northwestern edge of their suburb.

From one street to another, the sight was nearly the same. The rows of cute houses that had once stretched to the end of each block were now interrupted by a tremendous mound of earth, stone, and debris. A landslide had torn its way into the edge of town, swallowing up dozens of homes in its path.

While many citizens sheltered in their homes or ushered their children into cars to flee, more still stood stunned in the streets, gazing hopelessly through the dust clouds and trying to guess the extent of the destruction. The homes on the hill overlooking the neighbourhood? The highway beyond that? To the left and right, how widely did the destruction spread across the suburb? How much had been lost?

---

^{5:47 AM.
September 20th, 2029.
H.E.R.O. One, Savior Island, Castleburg.}

The rest of the city was enjoying the peaceful morning that North Brigold had been denied. Even on the island fortress that marked the centre of H.E.R.O.'s power in Castleburg, things were quiet. Peaceful. At least until a small Toyota screeched into the parking lot, stopping haphazardly as the driver emerged in a tense power-walk towards the door.

Assistant Director Emily Duff had taken her time getting ready that morning. She had picked out a nice outfit for the day--white pants and a creamy brown jacket that she thought went quite well together--and she was trying something new with her hair. But then, any good mood she might have been in was quickly spoiled when the bad news had turned her peaceful morning drive into white-knuckle race to get to work and coordinate the rescue effort.

"Alisa. Alert the night patrols, and activate emergency alarms for our off-duty heroes. Anyone who can get to North Brigold within twenty minutes needs to start moving right now." Duff spoke into her watch before she was even inside the building.

"Already done."

Face twisted with worry, the Assistant Director stepped inside H.E.R.O. One and rushed to her office. If lives were going to be saved today, she had her own role to play.

---

Whether they had been patrolling through the night, getting an early start on the day, or still getting some well-earned rest in their beds, the heroes of Castleburg would soon be awoken by a piercing alarm from their watches. The sound was a cruel hybrid between whistle, bell, and screeching chalkboard. For some, it may have been their first time hearing it. It was a signal that was rarely used, only activated when an urgent situation was unfolding during off-hours in the city.

"A landslide has consumed multiple homes on the northwestern edge of North Brigold. Current count of missing civilians: nineteen. Current extent of the disaster area: unknown. Report to the scene immediately to assist with search and rescue." The voice of the organization's powerful AI called out to each of them at once.

Even when heroes earn their rest, they rarely get to enjoy it for long.

---

---

at their homes on Passenger Island

Amuné was an early riser most days, but it was even before her usual wakeup time that the shrieking alarm from her watch roused her. She listened to Alisa's update as she pulled herself together, then set about dressing hurriedly. As she headed downstairs, she called Jareth. When he groggily answered, she asked, "I take it I'm driving? You still sound half asleep."

"I'd appreciate that, yeah."

"You got it. Meet me outside ASAP." With that, she hung up, and slid her cell phone into her pocket. In the kitchen she grabbed a couple granola bars, then exited to the garage where her car waited.

Jareth, for all that he was not a morning person, managed to be ready soon thereafter, and he was just locking his front door when Amuné pulled in the driveway. He dashed to the car, and quickly closed the door and buckled up. "Nineteen people missing, my goodness. You should probably take the bridge to Chainstown and then cross through North Brigold; it'll be faster than taking the route through the city."

"Got it." Amuné backed out of the drive, then made for the bridge to Chainstown to the north. There weren't all that many people on the road yet -- it was before the morning rush hour, and she was heading out of the city anyhow. Still, it took longer than she would have liked to arrive on the scene in North Brigold.

By the time they arrived, emergency vehicles were already present, their flashing lights casting a red glow over the scene. The sun was barely over the horizon, but there was a crowd of people in robes and pjs gathered in the streets.

The landslide had taken out dozens of houses, leaving a pile of earth and rubble in its wake. From what Jareth could see from the car, it wasn't clear what had caused it. As soon as Amuné found a place to park, he hopped out of the car. "I'm going to see what the source of all this is," he said. "There's risk of another collapse, if this was naturally occurring. And if not, I want to see what caused this mess." So saying, he concentrated his power on the ground beneath him, and gently loosened a three-foot cube of soil, levitating it a few yards into the air. Standing on the floating chunk of ground, he then directed it along the course of the rockslide, heading towards where it began.

---

---

Eva's room at H.E.R.O. One was dark and cold, which she believed was the same as her. Like all if not most of the other little kids, she was afraid of the dark and especially when she was alone. She only got used to the chilly darkness of her room when her sisters and mother were sleeping in their own rooms. Warmth and affection were hard things to come by after all, especially for a villainous family like the Death Boquet. In time, she learned to love the dark and cold such that she could only sleep once the two conditions were met. Additionally, she also liked being alone. At least no one would see her crying to sleep at nights.

She was an early bird as well, always waking up just at the break of dawn. Eva had this routine where she would make up her bed and open the blinds of her window. She then sat on her bed in a lotus position, arms at rest at her side while she was facing the window. She had her eyes closed but she could always tell when the sun was rising over the horizon when her body was bathed in its warm light. Her once dark room was gradually getting filled with the orange, almost golden light of the sun, and she would just sit there, accepting all of it silently and graciously. She cherished these peaceful fleeting moments as an official start to her day.

As she did her breathing exercise, the once quiet room was filled with the blaring alarm from her watch on the nightstand. "This is Dahlia, reporting. Over." Eva announced back at her watch as she wasted no more time putting on her outfit: white trench coat, black turtleneck, white pants, and black boots. She then got outside her room and knocked hard on every door she passed by. "Gear up people, this is not a drill! I repeat, this is not a drill!" She shouted loudly enough so it could be heard even through the alarm, not that her fellow heroes needed help waking up anyway.

When she arrived at the scene, Eva's heart fell from the sight before her. There were ambulances and police cars everywhere. Citizens in their pajamas were out in the streets, some were begging even arguing with the police to let them go back to the remnants of their home to search for their loved ones or prized possessions that were under all the rubble.

She saw Amuné on top of a hovering piece of earth as he made his way somewhere, so she approached Jareth and nodded in greeting. "Listen up, those who can hear me." Eva said through their comms. "As Alisa said, this is a search-and-rescue operation. Don't rush into action immediately. Acting without guidance from the authorities might lead to even more accidents and tragedies. Ask the authorities first, see where your powers and expertise may be more of help to everyone." Eva paused when she could hear a mother wailing at the rubble, clutching a dirtied teddy bear in her arms as she knelt to the ground in despair.

Eva breathed deeply before speaking at her comms again. "I'll ask the firefighters, maybe my poison could help with all the debris and the posts that were about to fall. Let's make ourselves useful, everyone."

---

Joseph dug through the rubble, the runic tag he'd attached to the rock glowing a bright teal, reducing it's weight from that of a small car to somewhere around that of a bowling ball. He heard the sounds of someone sobbing not far from where he was kneeling, but he did his best to push it from his thoughts, instead forcing himself to focus on the task at hand, and the light of the tiny, glowing coin hovering just above the earth before him.

He had been lucky, if you could call it that. Despite what most people would call common sense, he had still been awake when the landslide took place, busy as always with the task of replenishing his runes for whenever the next incident rolled around. It had allowed him to get a brief glimpse of the disaster firsthand, three of his surveillance arrays alerting him to the atypical rumbling of the earth. He only had a split second to connect his vision to one of them before the wave of earth engulfed it. He'd confirmed that the vision through the other two were similarly obscured as he'd gotten himself ready, and by the time the alarm had gone off, he'd already been halfway to the scene, speeding through the streets on his worn-down old scooter.

After a quick check to make sure nobody was in the path, he threw the chunk of rubble a little way behind him, already turning back to the next piece as it landed in the dirt with a thud.

"Éadrom." He repeated, going through the process once again as he dug in what was otherwise complete silence.

It wasn't until he heard a few voices he recognized that he looked away for a moment, letting out a weary sigh of relief as he realised his usual crew from HERO had made it to the scene. Even if it was still only a tiny few of them at this point, the fact that two of that few were Amuné and Jareth, a clairvoyant and a terrakinetic, might be just what they needed to make the ending of this whole mess significantly less tragic. It also sounded like Eva was doing her best to make sure they were working with some semblance of an actual plan which would be extremely helpful, as he knew how difficult it could be to just wrap your head around the situation in disasters like this, struggling to even think of where to start.

Of course, he could help a little in that regard too, even if it was only by helping them figure out where to look.

"Hey guys." He sighed, turning back to his digging as he spoke. "I've sent out a group of seek runes, the flying coins, to search for signs of life under the rubble. Heartbeats, breathing, calls for help we might not be able to hear, that sort of stuff. If you see one that's just floating in place, there's someone under there. From the feel of it, I think they've found about four so far, but it's only been maybe ten minutes since I sent them out, so there's a good chance they're still ok, and the runes just haven't located them yet..."

---

---

_{H.E.R.O. One, Savior Island, Castleburg.}

---

Riley was not what one would call a morning person.

Waking up early was something he’d had enough of more than a decade ago. Schedules were for people with no say in their lives and he wasn’t one to keep any ever since he took his life into his own hands. Besides, sleeping in late was a luxury, and he intended to take full advantage of it whenever possible, even if his joints didn’t agree with him after the fact. Sure, it would have been more comfortable to actually sleep in his own room, but then he wouldn’t have been able to work on his projects as effectively. It was safer for everyone that he didn’t saturate the housing area with deadly radiation several times a day.

That would be counter-productive.

Unfortunately for Riley, machines cared very little for his personal misgivings.

A soft groan left his lips as he dragged his face away from his desk, blinking wearily at his beeping watch. He glared at the device, wishing he could turn it off with his mind.

If looks could kill, he would–

No, he could do that, but that would just be even more of a hassle. Destroying H.E.R.O. equipment was something he could only do so many times before it became more than just a nuisance. Instead, he simply turned it off, dropping his face unceremoniously back onto his desk to happily snooze the day away–

.... Ugh.

He only managed to ignore it for a few minutes more before eventually lifting his head once again to level a glare at his watch. His gaze dropped and he sighed, finally deciding to answer the alert.

“Alright, I get it.”

Right. He supposed it was time to be a hero.

With another sigh, Riley straightened his less-than-stellar posture, his joints cracking all the way. He was almost definitely going to regret his poor sleeping habits later, but that was a problem for future Riley. It was going to suck for him.

Onto less depressing thoughts; there were multiple reasons why the basement floor was better than his room, comfort notwithstanding. The most obvious was, of course, the far greater amount of space it afforded him. Less obviously, but just as important in his eyes, was the fact that his bike could also fit down there without having to be brought up several storeys. A fact that made it that much more convenient to take it out for a ride whenever the mood struck.

Today, however, the “mood” in question was a far more dire one than usual.

When Riley arrived at the scene of the incident, he had to pause for a moment. An image flashed before his eyes; of boiling flesh and screaming people burning in nu–

He averted his gaze for a moment and let out a shuddering sigh. That time was long over and dwelling on it wouldn’t help anyone now. Focusing on the now, he allowed his eyes to wander over the scene of destruction. Landslides were a destructive force of nature that were hard to predict at the best of times. Sometimes, that had consequences for those who were unfortunate enough to be living close by when one happened.

Riley took a look around at everyone else who had made their way to the area. There were only a few others at the moment, but time wasn’t exactly on their side. Never mind whether or not the survivors would last much longer underneath the rubble; they could never be completely sure that another landslide wouldn’t happen with how unstable the terrain had become after the first.

The homeless-looking hero had seemingly been the first person on the scene and had seen out beacons to find survivors. Magic really was helpful....

“Da. Copy that.”

After confirming that he’d heard the wizard’s words, Riley carefully made his way around the devasted area, searching for any sign of glowing coins. The place was covered in so much dirt and rubble that it was hard to believe there had once been houses there.

Stopping over a particularly large mound of rubble, he took another glance at the coin hovering above it. With a steadying breath, he crouched down and placed a bare palm on the ground. Dirt and stone crumbled beneath his touch, the spread accelerating over time until there was nothing left but dust, the best he could do without causing more harm than good.

Once the rubble was clear, Riley reached into the hole and pulled out an unconscious little girl, taking care to keep his fingers from touching her. He didn’t keep her for long, passing her off to a nearby firefighter as soon as he could. As he turned away to continue his rescue effort, he could hear a woman sobbing in relief behind him, muttering words of gratitude he intentionally tuned out.

Don’t think about it too much. Just rinse and repeat.

_{September 20th, 2029.
H.E.R.O. One, Savior Island, Castleburg
On a mission with: TBC}

---

Madison had been having trouble sleeping ever since the festival. Her main contribution had been to give the real Heroes a pre-emptive warning. She could barely take care of some robots, while other Heroes her age beat and apprehended the bad guys and saved the day. Why? Why was Madison struggling to stand out? When she graduated from the academy, everything felt so hopeful. She was on the first step of a promising career. She couldn't just chalk it up to bad luck or a lack of opportunity. She had the opportunity to stand out one week ago ad couldn't rise to the occassion. Something wasn't working. So she'd gotten up at 4:30am to go for a jog, and was now in H.E.R.O. One's gym, working out her issueswith exercise. As always, her mantra was 'try harder'. If she trained until she suffered, that suffering was sure to pay off. She needed to get stronger. She'll never manage to build a career like this...

Her Hero watch blared the emergency alarm. She put down the bar and checked it. A landslide! Nineteen people missing! Madison started sprinting out ofthe gym and towards the garage. This is what she was a Hero for. How dare she be moping about not being famous yet. People's lives were at stake! Her gym clothes weren't dissimilar to her costume, so when she reached her bike, she simply slipped on her domino mask, then her motorbike helmet, revved up and sped out the slipway. She was driving just fast enough that she wouldn't be pulled over by the cops but might trip some cameras.

She arrived at the scene, quickly parked her bike at the side of the road, and rushed over to the affected area. She immediately dove into the first destroyed house she saw, yelling as she searched the wreckage. It was immediately after that where another voice came in through her watch. It was Dahlia. And she was right. Madison's adreneline was running too high. She skipped step one. She made her way out of the building and joined the other Heroes who'd just arrived slightly after her. She approached the emergency services. Another one of the Heroes, a proper adult who Madison admittedly wasn't familiar with, mentioned that he'd sent coin out and that they'd be hovering over houses with living people trapped inside. Madison tookoff in a sprint. It didn't take long for her to find a coin over a pile of rubble Madison wouldn't even have registered as once belonging to a house if she hadn't seen the coin. She extended her arms to wired, ran them over the street lamp for leverage, and then wrapped her wire around the rubble, using her own arms as a winch as she recalled the steel wire back to her body and lifting the debris. A dusty, coughing middle aged man with a mask of blood on his face clambered out, then turned round to help out his wife, who was limping heavily. Madison lowered the heavy rubble back to the ground once the twoof them were clear and helped the woman hobble to the medical tent. The man clearly was using thelast of his strength just to walk alongside them before he passed out in the arms of a medic. Madison turned back out to keep searching.

A hero had to do many things. Not all of those things were combat.

Wiseman was on the ground for this one, he was already awake since no one really knew if he ever slept in the first damn place. He was multitasking like crazy, with holographic screen floating all around him as he took in every single scrap of data there was. Every news feed, every sound off on emergency radios, every text message sent over the internet. It was an ungodly amount of information for one man to take in, but his superhuman abilities made him the ideal person to which this responsibility would fall. And this freed up Alisa to coordinate in other places, allowing the machine to take care of different responsibilities.

He stood between the ambulances with Angel-5, in a checkpoint set up to treat injuries of anyone who had been hurt in the disaster. Every now and then, Wiseman would hand off a bit of information to people who were too distracted to notice it- Another wave of survivors coming in, the chances of another landslide about to happen based on a quick and easy algorithm he had put together with satellite data, and where to divert attention in order to stabilize the terrain.

"Wiseman coming in," Wiseman's voice cut through the radio channels and alerted the hero in the best position. "Terraformer, I'm sending you coordinates. That is the point the landslide originated from, and it is likely to cave in further. You have at least thirteen minutes before that becomes a possibility."

Angel-5 sweeped over a few injured bodies, taking over for hasty paramedics.

"Oracle, use your foresight to extrapolate based on that, when you are able."

"Wireframe, the house at the end of the street, three houses left of your current location, is crumbling slowly. A rescue team is attempting to get past the front door, your powers may help them. You have more than enough time to reach them."

"Stray, there is safe high ground away from the mud, one hundred feet away from you according to my map. A house already cleared out. If you require a vantage point to set your search runes, that may help."

He looked back at the civilians the paramedics were tending to. With a nod from one of them, Wiseman signaled for Angel-5 to regroup with the heroes.

"Angel-5 is moving into the town, it is keyed to my Lexicon and will know if any of you signal it with your watch. Evangeline, the drone is currently closest to your location if you need. Second closest is Wireframe, and then Fallout and Stray."



Millions of years have passed since the oldest mountains were ground from boulders into gravel, and then from gravel into soil. It was a process that took lifetimes more than an entire lineage of humans had. Living beings had yet to crawl forth from saltwater and by the time they did, it was fungus that had turned the world of stone into one of life.

And it was fungus that trudged through it now. The only tangible difference between mud and soil was how much water there was. Billions upon billions of hyphae strands wormed up through sediment and concrete. A heap of rubble rose up as if an explosion had appeared out of nowhere beneath it. And beneath it was the abomination of life that traced its history back to the first life to ever grace this planet, shielding a badly injured child caked in dust.

Right before Evangeline's eyes.

"Move!" They shouted in that horrific voice. The child shrieked at the sight of their body coalescing. If Mire had eyes, they'd roll them, as they had to stretch an arm out to nudge the hurt kid towards its mom and the sobbing human.

"And stop sobbing! If you can sit there and sob, you can run for your lives!" Mire barked, not seeming to grasp the fact that the mother thought her kid was dead.

"All this mud, I can move underneath it. That's what I am." Mire let the rubble fall before Eva and the bystanders. "Tell me where to go, so I can dig more of them out."

^{5:55 AM.
September 20th, 2029.
North Brigold suburb, Castleburg}

The atmosphere that pervaded the neighbourhood that morning was one of grim dread. Those who had survived without injuries were sent away from the scene, forced to leave their devastated homes behind in the dash for safety. Forced to leave while their friends and neighbours were loaded into ambulances, or still unaccounted for.

The heroes were doing their duty, using their supernatural power to free civilians from beneath rubble that would've otherwise been their tomb, but even being rescued seemed to do little to lift the shroud of horror that had been wrapped around their hearts. Mire's orders, shouted at a tearful mother and her injured child, sent them hurrying off to safety without so much as a thank-you.

Wireframe was not free from this treatment, either, as the couple she had rescued seemed to gaze with a measure of fear at the metallic tendrils that had temporarily unfolded from her body. Superpowers, which citizens often found so wondrous when seen on television or during parades, were suddenly just another source of confusion and discomfort in the chaotic situation. Another piece of normalcy that had been stripped away from these people, along with their homes and neighbours.

If the heroes were to find any thanks amidst this destruction, it would only have been from the professionals undertaking search & rescue duty. Even then, it was only curt nods, brief murmurs of acknowledgment when a hero moved rubble or soil that would've been impossible for a normal human. And then, a moment later, they would be back to work, lacking any energy or freedom to focus on the presence of the heroes when there were people to rescue. They had few orders or requests for the heroes assisting them, only the expectation that they would do what was needed.

Sobs and shouts continued to fill the air, but at least those voices were being heard and answered, now.

After the initial communication through the watches, Alisa was no longer making audio contact with the heroes. Now that they were working, constant updates would likely only have distracted them. If they needed updates on the situation from her, they would need to look down at their watches.

Although it might have been better for their focus and morale if they didn't look.

Despite their initial efforts, and everyone that they and the unpowered responders had rescued so far, the counter of missing persons had been climbing counter to their progress. For every family that was saved, it seemed another was quickly being declared missing. The issue was the scope of the landslide. There were houses on the fringes of the disaster, buildings that stood near the highway at the top of the hill, and vehicles that failed to arrive in the city, speculated to have been buried on the highway itself. At the very least, as the exact size and shape of the affected area began to clarify itself through eyewitness reports and visual data from drones, the number began to stabilize.

Current count of missing civilians: eighteen.

Still plenty of work to be done, or so it seemed.

As Wireframe deposited a middle-aged woman at one of the medical tents and prepared to return to the search, one survivor craned his neck to lock eyes with her from his position on a stretcher. The boy, a teenager whose blonde hair was now caked with dirt, looked at the hero, wild-eyed.

"The medics aren't listening to me! Please, tell someone! We can't- We can't stay here. It could happen again." His voice was too loud for the medics to work over, and one began rushing to calm him down. "Didn't any of you hear it? Right before the hill started crumbling, something blew up!"

---

^{5:57 AM.
September 20th, 2029.
Hills beyond North Brigold}

As the operation continued, the life-detecting coins seemed to trend towards locations further and further up the hill, with about half of them floating past the farthest house-ruins of the suburbs and beginning to travel up towards the highway, seeking the heartbeats of drivers still alive beneath the earth.

It would be a few moments more before the coins would locate those signs of life, however, as they still trailed a ways behind the hero who was making his way up the decimated slope. With the distance Terraformer had travelled on his floating cube of soil, all the heroes and civilians in the suburb at the bottom of the hill looked like nothing but small beads of colour, milling about. Even the cries for help could hardly reach him.

On the other hand, he could faintly make out the honking of car horns. To Jareth's left and right, a couple hundred feet away, the highway was packed with cars who had been forced to stop as the landslide covered the road before them. This was Jareth's only clue that he was floating over the highway at that moment--the road beneath his cube was completely obscured by debris, looking no different from the rest of the hill.

The source of the disaster appeared to be roughly where Wiseman had projected. It was near the peak of the hill that overlooked the highway and the suburb. Whether there was any visible risk of another collapse was difficult to say. There was a broken pipe jutting out of the upturned, spraying filthy water that soaked into the soil. It was conceivable, then, that the soaking of the ground could destabilize it, given enough time, and cause even more damage. The pipe had quite clearly been torn open as a result of trees falling with the landslide, however. It was not the cause of the incident.

To Jareth's eyes, so experienced with his power, something may have appeared slightly unnatural about the damage to the earth near the source. The trail of damage grew narrower the further he followed it up the hill, as if it was a great cone of destruction that had blossomed from a single, tiny spot. Indeed, there was a clearing just above the peak of the destruction: a lovely patch of grass that appeared to have suffered no damage at all.

There, at the source of all the damage, a tent was pitched. It was open, empty, its canvas flap blowing slightly in the breeze. Just outside the tent's entrance sat three items: a pair of binoculars, an empty Thermos, and a map of the local highways.

Someone had been there.

---

---

hills beyond North Brigold

Jareth followed the trail of destruction up the hill. He'd left the crowd of victims, heroes, and first responders far behind. Off to the sides there were cars, their route cut off by the landslide. Wiseman gave him an update, and Jareth acknowledged it. "I'm gonna do what I can to stabilize things," he said.

As he travelled to the coordinates Wiseman had given him, Jareth noted a pipe spewing dirty water that would need to be dealt with to prevent further disaster. He relayed its location to Amuné, trusting her to tell the first responders about it. For the time being, all he could do was compact the ground underneath it, so the water would take longer to cause another collapse. But the water pipe had been torn open by the landslide -- it wasn't the cause.

The trail of damage narrowed as he followed it up the hill, which was rather odd. Yes, landslides did gather power as they went, but normally they didn't start so small. And in the clearing just beyond the source of destruction was a tent and a few items. Jareth immediately contacted Alisa. "Alisa, let the others know. This was not a natural disaster. Someone caused it, though whether deliberately or accidentally I'm not sure. They don't seem to be around right now, so I'm going to investigate what they left behind."

The first thing he checked was the tent, to see if anyone was inside. But whoever had stayed there was long gone. Next Jareth looked at the map, to see if there were plans drawn on it, or places marked. Those would indicate possible locations, as well as tell if this was a premediated act. He looked around as well for footprints, but there didn't seem to be any. The grass in the clearing was too thick for him to tell where the culprit had stepped.

---

---

North Brigold

Amuné did what she could to help the rescue teams and the paramedics, though it felt like precious little. Her powers would warn her if there was to be another collapse, she was pretty sure, since she would be in its path. One of the first things she'd tried was touching the dirt of the landslide, but she'd Seen nothing of interest. Since Joseph had the life-seeking coins leading rescuers to victims, there wasn't much more she could do to help in terms of finding people. She relayed Jareth's message about the water pipe, as well as its coordinates, to one of the firemen present, who said they'd take care of getting that line shut off until it could be repaired.

The next alert Jareth sent was a surprise. Who the hell would do something like this? Amuné could only hope it had been an accident. Combine that with the one youth who claimed there had been an explosion, and it sounded like someone with powers had caused the mess. She went over to a police officer and relayed these details. She didn't bother telling Jareth to bring her something back to use for scrying -- he knew the drill as well as she did.