Issue #1
Part 2
The team appeared back at STARCROSS HQ, on the platform of the Device. Alarms were sounding and people were running around everywhere. The team was pulled into the briefing room by Dr. Jamison and General Alexander, who had them report on what had happened and who Shadowhawk was. Then they told the team that the creature had appeared on the platform and had flown up through the ceiling before anyone could react. The Project personnel were analyzing data from some ultra-secret satellites to see if they could determine where the creature had gone. After a few hours, it was discovered that a heat trace was picked up by one of the satellites. The trace began at STARCROSS HQ and ended in Alaska, near the HAARP facility. Team 451 was instructed to teleport to that area, and to locate the creature. Since Shadowhawk seemed to be able to sense the creatures, he went with the team. Arriving at the HAARP facility in Alaska, everything looked normal but Shadowhawk sensed the creature's presence. Team 451 made contact with the scientists who ran the installation and the squad of Alaska National Guardsmen who were there providing security during the current experiment. The team tried to persuade the scientist in charge, Director Kelltey, to stop his experiment but he would not without being shown some very good evidence of why he should. With his permission, the team split into two groups to see if they could find the creature.
Mystic stopped him just in time and called him down. Then, as she looked over the tank, she noticed a green box with a red blinking light on it attached to the underside of the tank. A bomb! The heroes approached it cautiously. As they peered underneath the tank they heard the safeties being turned off on the Guardsmens' M16s, and a stern voice said "Don't move." Things looked bad. Xeran asked "Why? Does it have a motion sensor detonator?" After a brief pause the answer from the Guardsman came back as affirmative, the device was likely a very sensitive one. He urged the heroes to not move and to turn off their powers so that the energy fluctuations did not set off the bomb. Reluctantly, Mystic and Xeran turned off their forcefields... One of the Guardsmen slowly came closer. He told Xeran to crawl under the bomb very, very slowly and Xeran complied. The Guardsman then slowly pointed his M16 at the bomb and said "Now, if any of you so much as move I will fire my gun and set off the bomb." Things had looked bad before, but this was much worse! The startled heroes froze. Xeran asked the Guardsman why he would do such a thing, to which the Guardsman replied "to stop you from interfering with my master's plans." Damn, things really were bad! Here the heroes were, under a huge tank of acid with a bomb on it, with their defenses lowered... They had willingly walked into a deadly trap. Mystic saw only one way out. Summoning all of her concentration, she fired a powerful blast of mental energy at the Guardsman who was pointing his gun at the bomb. To her great relief, he fell over with a thud without firing. But his companions immediately responded with automatic M16 fire at the heroes. The bullets bounced off of Victory but Mystic, her defenses down, was critically injured and fell unconscious, bleeding badly from her wounds. Xeran and Victory quickly clobbered the two Guardsman and gave medical attention to Mystic. Their teammates below heard the shooting and rushed to the rooftop where the others told them what had happened. As Xeran neutrilized the bomb by absorbing it, the facility's antennas began to hum loudly, and the sky above them began to turn pink. The heroes rushed downstairs to the control room and found the scientists working feverishly on their computers as strange, alien-looking ideograms rapidly scrolled by on their monitors! This looked very bad. As Thunderbird attacked the antenna field outside, the other heroes decided to put a stop to whatever was going on in the control room. Victory used her wind powers to sweep the contents of the room, including the scientists and all the computers, into a powerful whirlwind. After a minute, she let everything down in the room and the heroes questioned the bruised scientists, after which they started to tie them up outside. Some of the heroes went back to searching the second floor. Once again, things turned bad quickly.
A chaotic fight ensued. "Dr. Bruckheim" was knocked backwards by Shadowhawk and Xeran. When Xeran stopped to examine one of the scientists, a black liquid-like shadow leapt from Dr. Bruckheim and into Xeran, who immediately began fighting Shadowhawk. This led to some confusion as other heroes showed up to join the fray! Eventually the shadow was forced from Xeran and SkyAngel trapped it with her holy sword. With an unnaturally echoing screech, the shadow dissipated. The team examined the scientists and Guardsmen, who had now returned to normal and had no recollection of what had happened. The HAARP facility was a mess but the heroes had prevented the acid tank/bomb from detonating and no lives were lost. They reported what had happened to the STARCROSS HQ and were told to return immediately. Upon their return, they were told that they were being sent back to Shadowhawk's world, where the situation was once again looking very serious. The remaining members of Team Blue were picking up a lot of movement on their sensors, and it looked like they were in danger of being overrun. There was also another problem: Shadowhawk had said that there were nine other Devices on his world, all powered by the same massive power source he had been guarding. They might pose a very serious threat to Earth if these shadow creatures were to remain in control of them. Something had to be done, and fast....
451 arrived again on Shadowhawk's world. They joined up with the battered Recon team, who explained that their sensors showed that thousands of people might be approaching the area. To make matters worse, there was a disturbing groaning sound in the distance which was getting louder all the time. The Recon team had been ordered to destroy the stone Device at the starport, but they had been unable to damage it. It seemed that the power supply also fed a forcefield which flowed through the Device, making it invulnerable to their weapons. Victory tried to knock a piece out of it with her mace but was unsuccessful. They decided to send Thunderbird and Shadowhawk out to investigate. They soon found enormous crowds of what seemed to be shadow-controlled bodies approaching. They appeared to be heading toward the power source, and they would reach it in mere minutes. Destroying the power source seemed to be the only option, and the team leapt into action. Flying quickly to the bunker, SkyAngel, Victory, Thunderbird and Mystic stayed above to try and slow down the hordes of creatures while Xeran and Shadowhawk would try to destroy the power supply. Lt. Gabriel would stay behind at the stone Device while the rest of his team teleported back to base. Victory and Thunderbird used their powers but only had a little effect on the mass of creatures steadily approaching. Worse yet, the groans from the horde were getting louder, threatening to cut off Mystic's powers which would leave her helpless. She flew back to the starport, where her powers gave out just as she was landing and caused her to fall the last 3 meters. She went inside and joined Lt. Gabriel. Down below in the bunker, Xeran and Shadowhawk were joined by Thunderbird as they tried to determine how to destroy the power supply, preferably without it taking them with it as the power supply was essentially an enormous fusion reaction contained in a magnetic bottle. They found a way to damage the bottle's power feeds, which would destabilize the bottle in a short amount of time but hopefully not too short... They had SkyAngel and Victory return to the starport to prepare for a hasty exit offworld. The creatures were closing in. Xeran and Thunderbird destroyed the control relays and a powerful shockwave was released. They were thrown off their feet and all around the city damaged buildings collapsed. Back at the starport the others had positioned themselves at the best place for a hasty exit once they sent a beacon recall code. This was at the spot where they arrived, next to an outside wall of the main starport building. When the shockwave hit they were thrown to the ground and the damaged building collapsed in several places. Large pieces of the wall fell on the waiting STARCROSS personnel. Lt. Gabriel was injured slightly and Mystic was seriously injured as she had lost her ability to use her defensive field. What was worse, is that the recall beacon was smashed flat. It was unlikely that their personal communicators would work reliably and quickly through the eddies and currents of the dimensions, so their only hope was that the stone Device inside the starport was still functioning. Otherwise, they'd be trapped here when the horde of creatures reached them or when the power source exploded, whichever came first... Victory hurled aside some rubble and uncovered the stone room, where the Device appeared to be functioning still. The others hurried in as the shadow-possessed zombies started entering the building. SkyAngel held them off as Xeran, Shadowhawk and Thunderbird arrived at top speed. Entering the stone room, Xeran once again set the controls for Earth. As he did so a powerful green energy field appeared from SkyAngel's sword, which held the creatures at bay, but just barely. Everyone started to teleport through the Device, until only SkyAngel, Xeran and Thunderbird remained. Xeran wanted to remain behind to change the settings after the others were through, so that neither the blast from the power plant or any of the creatures would follow through the open gate. Thunderbird, the team leader, was not prepared to let him stay behind so she used her Thunderbird effect to pull him into the Device and he was gone. A huge rumble could now be heard in the distance. The power source was about to explode. Now SkyAngel and Thunderbird argued. SkyAngel agreed with Xeran, that someone must stay behind and change the settings. SkyAngel was the lone survivor of her race and was determined to let no harm come to her adopted people on Earth. Thunderbird grabber her with her powers but SkyAngel countered by shrinking her energy field. It passed through her and surrounded Thunderbird, pulling her toward the device even as she struggled against it. As the creatures now closed in, SkyAngel prepared to change the settings and just before Thunderbird disappeared, SkyAngel shouted "Remember my people!" and threw her sword to Thunderbird who was teleported away... Back at STARCROSS HQ, things were in a panic. As Thunderbird arrived she shouted for everyone to prepare for the blast wave, in case SkyAngel was unable to change the settings in time. Everyone braced themselves behind what cover they had and waited. And waited. Nothing happened.
The team was led to the briefing room to be debriefed. Thunderbird was mad with rage that her friend SkyAngel had been lost while Thuderbird was in charge of the team. She smashed furniture in the briefing room with SkyAngel's sword while most of the others tried to calm her down. Outside in the control room, Dr. Jamison and Shadowhawk developed a plan to quickly send a probe back to Shadowhawk's world. Slapping on what ad-hoc shielding was available, the probe was sent through a flash-opening of the Device. The signals it returned were difficult to read and garbled, and shortly stopped altogether. Examining the data sent back from the probe, the technicians determined that it had arrived on Shadowhawk's world after the fusion bast, in a cloud of debris and intense radiation. The probe telemetry further showed that when it arrived it fell for nearly a mile before impacting a hard surface and being destroyed. The starport was now a radioactive crater a mile deep. Returning to the team with the confirmation of the worst, Dr. Jamison brought them back to Jamison Mansion for examination and some counseling. Some wept at the loss of SkyAngel, others were angry and frustrated at what had happened. Eventually Thunderbird (still clinging to SkyAngel's sword), Mystic, Shadowhawk and Victory had an informal wake down by the small lake on Dr. Jamison's property. Victory had them build a Viking style funeral boat in SkyAngel's memory. The team was miserable, but they all felt closer to each other now, more like family and that helped considerably. Shadowhawk was welcomed as part of the team. Xeran finally confessed that he had been withholding some of his background from the team, which he now shared with them. He was still the black sheep of the group, but he had made a small step towards correcting that. STARCROSS 451's first mission was over, but it would never be forgotten. |
One team consisted of Mystic, Victory and Xeran, who went up to the rooftop storage area. There they found the water tank, a lot of storage drums and three of the Guardsmen. Mystic examined the drums and determined that they were mostly empty. She realized that the contents could be mixed together to form a deadly solution of Hydrofluoric Cyanide. But the only thing big enough to hold such a large quantity would be the water tank... The one that Xeran had just climbed up and was beginning to open the hatch to....
An explosion knocked Thunderbird out of the air and she fell to the ground unconscious. All of the scientists fell over suddenly, except for Dr. Bruckheim. She turned towards Shadowhawk and beams of black energy leapt from her hands!
