• [ASH] REPOST: ASH #119 - City of Night Prelude (1/2)

    From Dave Van Domelen@21:1/5 to All on Mon Oct 11 17:30:48 2021
    [The cover shows a city hall flying a blue and red striped flag with a single white star. The scene is dissolving from the lower left, with only blackness in that corner. In the upper right is the copy, "A Multiverse DIES!"]

    .|. COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED presents ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES #119 --X------------------------------------------------------------------------
    '|` /|(`| | City of Night Prologue: Heropolis Delenda Est
    /-|.)|-| copyright 2012 by Dave Van Domelen ___________________________________________________________________________

    ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES ROLL CALL

    CODENAME REAL NAME POWERS ASSIGNMENT -------- --------- ------ ---------- Solar Max Jonathan Zachary Spacetime Control AMERICA
    "JakZak" Taylor
    Meteor Sarah Grant-Taylor Superspeed AMERICA Poniente Esmeralda Colina Wind Mage AMERICA
    Scorch Scott Handleman Pyrokinetic CANADA Centurion Salvatore Napier Strength, Regeneration MEXICO
    Fury Arin Kelsey Concussion Blasts MEXICO
    Contact Aaron Zander Psi, Mind-over-Body DIPLOMATIC Breaker Christina Li Telekinesis DIPLOMATIC Essay Sara Ana Henderson Gadgeteer VENUS
    Peregryn Howard Henderson Jr. Elemental Mage VENUS
    Beacon George Sylvester Living Light VENUS
    Geode Unknown Living Crystal VENUS Lightfoot Tom Dodson Velocity Control TRANSIT ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    [August 31, 2012 - Everywhere, Another Earth]

    While his first and last physical appearance had been over a generation ago, everyone recognized the face of the ravager of realities, a godlike
    entity who had nearly devoured the world in his quest for infinite power, before being trapped in a shadowy pocket dimension. After all, very few
    still alive had met Hitler, but most people would recognize him if he
    appeared as a giant vision in the skies.
    The world caught its breath for a moment. If he had escaped his prison, it could well mean the end of everything, especially with the world still reeling from crises that included an interdimensional invasion, the
    resurgence of an ancient god of death, and the demise of the world's foremost hero.
    No one was expecting what happened next, nor did anyone think things
    could possibly be made worse than they already seemed.
    "I am sorry," the mad god said, casting his gaze downward. "I have failed, and because of that, everything that is will cease to be."
    A billion voices cried out in disbelief. The ravager heard them all,
    and replied with infinite sorrow. "Yes, it was an end I sought once,
    although I had intended reality to end as part of me. But I did not
    realize... I did not KNOW. Once I was forced by my imprisonment to spend
    long decades in contemplation, I discovered that I had doomed all that is
    when I first absorbed my alternate self and his entire world. It was like a pinprick in a balloon, a pinprick I foolishly enlarged with every passing conquest. From my prison I saw what I had done, and worked great magics to stanch the bleeding wound. It would take centuries to make the repairs permanent, and then perhaps an eternity to find a new path to the power I sought."
    Then a pause, embarrassed.
    "I did not expect a mortal to take advantage of my inattention to steal away the majority of my remaining power. It was only for a fleeting instant
    as I reckon such things, but it was an instant too much. All of the reflections of this primal reality have started to collapse, the ripples in
    the fabric of unreality are calming. One by one the reflections will be stilled, and when they are all gone, the world will...stop.
    "Make such peace as you can. There is no escape, there is no heaven or hell you will be consigned to. Future, past and present will all cease at once. It will simply end. And now I will spend my remaining days tending to the few worshippers I have remaining in my prison."

    * * * *

    [November 30, 2012 - near Cumberland, Rhode Island, Another Earth]

    "The last portal has shut down," a lab-coated scientist looked up from
    his terminal. To his left, a Chinese sorceror covered in arcanely glowing tattoos carefully placed the last strokes on a scroll, using ink formed in
    part from the blood of heroes. To his right, a shaman wearing the skin of a defeated foe chanted to gods who no longer existed, but still had power.
    "We're all alone now, all of the other worlds have winked out...or have
    become utterly inaccessible, which is about the same thing, as far as we're concerned."
    The mood in the Smith farmhouse was somber. Most of the cities had
    fallen to chaos as people gave in to despair and ran rampant, settling old scores or seeking to gain as much mindless pleasure as possible before the
    end. Two hundred or so had been granted sanctuary on the farm, protected by the monstrous owner of the property and a bizarre mix of his allies and
    former enemies.
    "This plan gonna work?" the farmer asked. His grandfatherly manner was
    at odds with his appearance, mutated by a mix of recreational and
    supersoldier drugs brewed up by his worthless grand-nephew in the now-ruined barn. Green skin, buldging muscles, small horns on his head, and an affinity for the earth that had only grown over time, all of these things marked him
    as being far from the retired farmer he'd been only a few years ago.
    "If it doesn't, we won't have long to beat ourselves up over it," a
    woman hovering near the ceiling smirked.
    "If it doesn't work, Miss Venturi," the scientist shrugged, "You and
    Mr. Smith will probably be consumed by the process and won't have to worry about seeing the end of the world."
    The sorceror looked up from his completed scroll. "The Qian-kun Gate will work. The troll's link to primal Earth and the woman's link to the Sky are more than sufficient to open the gate. The only question is whether it will lead anywhere."
    "It is important that it not," the shaman interjected. "All places will soon cease. Even the un-place of banishment where my gods sleep will be undone. We must reach beyond everywhere that is, can be, and even beyond
    what cannot be."
    "Even if it works, we'll probably only be able to save the people at the farm," the scientist warned. "And most of the simulations I've run say we'll just be shoving everyone into a cosmic garbage disposal anyway."
    "Better a tiny chance than no chance, better a handful than none, Doctor Clancy," Venturi shrugged.
    "Eyyyyup," Smith agreed.
    "All is in readiness," the sorceror rolled up his scroll and stood.
    "The sooner we begin, the better our chances of saving a few pathetic
    survivors before everything ceases to be."
    "Hey, no need to be so bitter about it, Hsiang," Venturi smiled. "You guys let everyone think you were bad guys for decades while you prepped to defeat the god of death, but we won that fight. At least a few people might remember what you did, and know you were good guys."
    Unspoken was the fact that Hsiang, the nameless shaman and Dr. Clancy would have to stay on the wrong side of the portal. It would require all of their efforts to keep it open; should even one divert his attention from the task it would likely collapse. There would be no salvation for the three of them. The two heroes would probably die as well, their entire beings
    consumed to become the gate, but there was maybe a one in three chance that they'd get spat out the far end once the gate collapsed.
    So IF it worked, and IF it went anywhere that people could survive, Jedediah Zebulon Smith and Sharon Venturi MIGHT still be alive to help the handful of other, less powerful superhumans protect the refugees from
    whatever lay on the other side.
    "Could be worse," Sharon smirked. "Could be raining."
    "Rain might actually be helpful," Hsiang walked out into the chilly November afternoon. "But it would more likely snow today...."

    * * * *

    [December 24, 2026 - Chicago, Illinois Sector]

    "Look, I'm just saying, it doesn't pay to make holiday plans around you guys," Darran shrugged. "In '22 you caught the Template Killer on Christmas Eve. In '23 there was Kasca's attack here, plus the CSV debuted a few days after Christmas. '24 was amazingly quiet on Christmas, but now we know Doublecross was setting up his Paris Mirror about that time. And last year," he looked over to where Nancy Balzer was scolding her adopted son, whose face was smeared with frosting from the double handful of Christmas cookies he'd crammed into it, "well, it was pretty busy too."
    "It's still important we try," JakZak countered the DSHA analyst.
    "Really, it's hard to point at any time of year as being reliably quiet for
    us. And on a team with as big a mix of faiths and non-faiths as we have," he glanced from Esmeralda to Arin to Lightfoot and back to Darren, "there's not
    a lot of holidays we can really all have in common. We need to feel like normal people sometimes, and not just soldiers constantly at war. And if
    that means offering up a softball pitch to Murphy by holding a Christmas
    party, so be it."
    As if summoned by the attention, Esmeralda picked up her glass of punch and headed over to JakZak and Darran. "So, my first Christmas with the
    famous Academy of Super-Heroes. What disaster will befall us this year?"
    "SEE? SEE?" Darran pointed at the young mage. "It's a Thing. Soon
    it'll be a cliche. Now we're going to get a horde of vampire Santas coming down the chimney tonight, or a floating island full of superintelligent hamsters, or super plant bombs, or the second coming or TYMYTHY TWYSTYD!"
    Esmeralda chuckled. "Ah, for the days when holiday stress just meant having to deal with family. But in all seriousness, the Solstice is a very important time, mystically. Even if the gods have largely turned their gaze away from us, there's so much symbolic magic around this time of year that it always makes me nervous. Moreso this year."
    "Because of the company?" JakZak arched an eyebrow.
    "Partially," Esmeralda admitted. "But also...it feels like something is coming. Like a god, but not. And I'm not certain it's even a bad thing, but there's so much mystic 'chaff' up this time of year it's hard to tell. Especially since I'm still growing accustomed to my newly expanded
    portfolio."
    JakZak nodded. While it was great to have another elemental mage around on Earth again to replace the exiled Peregryn, no one was completely happy
    with the fact that as Poniente, Esmeralda served a semi-divine wind spirit
    out of Lakota myth. Eya existed in that uncertain zone between mortal and divine, much like the spirits ruling China these days did, but what if the
    true gods who once associated with him were drawn back to Earth by his activity? The attention of the gods had nearly destroyed the world a generation ago, after all...even "good guy" ones like Wakinyan was supposed
    to be.
    "Merry Christmas," Darran hoisted his mug of mulled cider. "Hope you survive the experience."

    * * * *

    [December 26, 2026 - Cumberland, Rhode Island Sector]

    "So, Cory, place still like you remember it?"
    "Hm? Eh, you know what they say, you can't go home again. I guess it hasn't changed much, but I sure have," he leaned back in the park bench. It was unseasonably warm, so they were having a green Christmas despite earlier predictions of a bad winter. The weathermen blamed it on the Project Winterlight thing. On average it was returning things more or less to
    normal, but weather was always chaotic, and some places were still too cold
    and others too warm. Covering up the Sun for a while and then compensating
    by detonating something or other in orbit might make all the numbers add up
    to normal, but....
    "Can you believe they're trying to merge the sectors again?" his friend rolled his eyes towards the heavens.
    "Is that your subtle way of saying I should use my celebrity status to rally people against it?" Cory smirked. "I had a couple hits back in '18
    when jazz was popular for a few months, I'm not exactly an A-lister."
    "Well, you *have* played for governors and senators, you have at least a little access."
    "Sure, but...what the hell is that?" Cory stumbled to his feet, pointing at several glowing lines that appeared on Diamond Hill Road, hovering in mid-air. Three long horizontal lines on top, two columns of three shorter lines below them.
    People started staggering out of the glowing symbol, haggard and looking like they'd been walking for days. Some still wore heavy coats which they
    now started to shed, others had tied the coats around their waists or simply abandoned any heavier outfits they might have once worn.
    Many were falling to the ground and kissing it, and only the general weariness of the crowd seemed to be keeping them from whooping with joy.
    Cory fumbled with his phone and pressed the panic button, sending automated messages to the local police. Then he realized this might be a little beyond their jurisdiction. "I don't suppose you know the contact info for the local DSHA office?" Yep, definitely seemed more a job for the Department of Super-Human Affairs.
    There were now at least a hundred people, maybe two hundred, milling around in the park, weary and confused. It was hard to estimate the crowd size, though, because it seemed to Cory like they shared maybe a dozen or so faces among all of them. Was this some family reunion that got dumped
    through a glowy portal?
    The last few people to emerge stumbled as if forcibly propelled...and moments later the lines in the air flared brightly and there was a
    thunderclap that momentarily stunned everyone, Cory included.
    When his vision cleared, he saw a hulking green man with a white beard down on one knee, and a woman in blue and red aviator leathers and a faceless metal helmet with eyeslits hovered over the green man. Literally hovered,
    like a meter or two above the ground.
    "I think the DSHA already got called," Cory's friend pointed at a trio
    of approaching helicopters.

    A few minutes later, the government agents had cordoned off the park, determined Cory and his friend were locals, and segregated them from the newcomers.
    "The gate looked like this," Cory sketched the lines on his phone
    screen.
    "A hexagram," the DSHA agent frowned. "That mystic support can't get
    here soon enough," he muttered to himself.
    "You got here awfully quickly yourself. Were you expecting this?"
    Cory's friend asked.
    "Not this specifically. As you might have heard, ASH has a new mage Earth-side, and she had a feeling something would happen in this part of the sector, so we were on high...but quiet...alert. She's in Providence, and should be here..."
    The agent was interrupted by a disturbance from inside the main cordon. The flying woman was arguing with a group of agents led by one of the
    Marshals, and was gesturing at them as if she expected it to have some
    effect. Surprised that nothing happened, she was quickly subdued by the Marshal's shock baton.
    "I'm afraid you're going to have to leave now," the agent turned back to Cory and his friend. "We're sending you to medical quarantine, there's no
    way of knowing what might have come through the portal with them...if it's
    any consolation, I'm going to have to go through quarantine as well. We weren't expecting to need full bio gear," he frowned. "Don't worry about
    your holidays being ruined, though. If you're clean, we should have you cleared through in a few hours. We've got some paranormal medicos at the
    site in Providence."
    "I was in Manhattan in '98," Cory shrugged. "I've been through
    worse...."

    * * * *

    [December 26, 2026 - Pawtucket, Rhode Island Sector]

    "The good news is, in purely mundane and physical terms, the worst of it is exhaustion. Leaving aside a few conditions I'm assured were pre-
    existing," the DSHA medic gestured with her compad. "On the other hand, they seem to be suffering from some significant memory issues."
    "We all are, Doctor Garrett," the large green man sighed. "Can't even remember the name of my idiot grand-nephew. But I *can* remember Sharon
    here, or even Hsiang, who I barely know and who got left behind." Even his accent seemed muted, as if he was only vaguely aware he'd spent eighty years
    in rural New England.
    "The trauma psychs are pretty sure this is a magic thing," Dr. Garrett added. "Because it doesn't follow the usual patterns of traumatic memory loss."
    Poniente exchanged a look with the mystic portrait of Peregryn that allowed the exiled mage instantaneous communication from Venus, then nodded. "Names have power in magic, they are a large part of defining reality. If,
    as you've told us, your reality has ceased to be...then all of the names have as well. You retain your own names, but cities, organizations, relatives...
    if the name doesn't belong to you, you have lost it. Jedediah, if you search your memories, you might be able to tell if your grand-nephew is a Smith or not, but if not, you won't know his family name either."
    "That would explain how I know Hsiang is part of a group, remember fighting hordes of his comrades, but I can't recall what the group is
    CALLED," Sharon shook her head. "But...I do remember he's Chinese. How do I remember China, remember Rhode Island, but not remember, not remember...the city?"
    The portrait spoke next. "The principle of sympathy. Our world has a China, a Rhode Island. But it does not have the city you cannot remember.
    So you lost that name, but latched onto identical names here."
    "Why don't I know the local equivalent? You've said we're near a coastal city called Providence, which is unfamiliar to me, but if we've acclimated,
    why don't I think of Providence as being the city I know?" Sharon asked. "Or one of the other cities around here? The population density on the coast is too high for there NOT to be a city in the right spot, even if it's a small one."
    Poniente shrugged, choosing to leave aside the point about population density. No need to tell the refugees that they'd come to an Earth with
    barely a third the population of the one they'd left. "Nature abhors violations of the walls between realities, and seeks to repair damage. But scars do not always heal cleanly, or quickly. To be honest, I don't even
    know why you have any powers, the source of your abilities is not the native magic, what scientists call Violation Physics."
    Sharon barked a bitter laugh. "Yeah, I guess I can still hover, and I'm kinda tough and strong, but it's a major step down from the godlike powers
    I'd gotten used to. Jed and I had been mainlining the power of creation lately, which was how we could be used to power the gate that brought us
    here."
    "That answers it, then," Peregryn's portrait replied. "You must retain
    a tiny portion of that power, seeds of your old reality linked to your
    spirits. The other superhumans among the refugees...they lost their powers?"
    The medic consulted her compad. "That's the strange thing. While none
    of them trip any of the Tesla Index tests, they do still have powers, sometimes. The powers come and go."
    "I reckon they come when Miss Venturi or me 're nearby?" Jed asked. "I mean, it'd make sense. If we're all that's left of the wellspring of power from our home, then being near us might let some of the others use their
    powers too."
    "Worth checking out," Dr. Garrett nodded, adding a note to her compad. "Speaking of names, do either of you have codenames? I noticed a few of the supers in your group went by them...a couple couldn't even remember having
    real names."
    Sharon shook her head. "I don't know how it is here, but there were thousands of registered superheroes and villains in the city and the isles.
    And a long history of being that crowded, so no matter how rough things got
    we kept to the registry. No point spending all our time fighting over the
    same handful of good names. So when I came to the hero game late, I decided
    my given name was good enough. Even kind of described my powers. Human rocket, that sort of thing."
    "Kinda sorta in my case," the ogre shrugged. "I registered as Ol' Jed, since that's what people were callin' me. I suppose I could also have gone
    as J.Z...."
    "That might cause some confusion around here," Poniente smirked. "We
    had a problem like that in the Twentieth Century, but the ranks of
    superhumans were thinned rather aggressively a generation ago. Codenames are largely a matter of marketing for the few of us now, and there are very few
    who use them to protect a secret identity."
    "2026," Sharon shook her head. "And here I thought it only FELT like
    we'd been walking for fourteen years."
    Dr. Garrett chuckled. "No, the medical evidence agrees with the timekeeping devices carried by your people. It was a three day subjective journey."
    "Our reality has been shielded until recently by a powerful barrier against interdimensional travel," Peregryn's portrait explained. "Most
    likely, your gateway latched onto the closest spot where the walls between realities had weakened enough to allow entry. The year 2012 was nearly in
    the middle of the interdicted era."
    "I'm too old to learn an entire new history," Jed sighed.

    * * * *

    [December 28, 2026 - Pawtucket, Rhode Island Sector]

    "So, should I be worried at how by-the-book this is going?" DSHA Refugee Management Officer Keiko Takashi asked as she gestured down the hotel
    hallway. "Clean medically, human out to six decimal places...although kinda weird how so many of them look alike, maybe they had cloning on their Earth...but nothing has come up that's really outside what we covered in training."
    "Hey, the book is based on a LOT of weirdness that went down in the TwenCen," RMO Clive Jackson shrugged. "The PITA of our forebears is the SOP
    of our enlightened generation. I'm just glad that the first major modern interdimensional incursion is refugees without something nipping at their heels. I mean, we've had a few nasties come through, like TerraStar, but no invading armies."
    This was, of course, when the screaming started.
    "I blame you," Clive picked up his shock baton and headed towards the sound. "Taunting Murphy like that."
    Other than a handful of the more serious medical cases, all of the
    normal human refugees had been moved into local hotels, shuffling the few "native" visitors out quickly and efficiently. Fortunately, it was a slow season for Pawtucket. The DSHA agents tasked with keeping an eye on them
    were half guard, half therapist, trained to deal with this sort of situation but never having faced it before.
    "We all died, I tell you!" the screaming now could be made out as
    words. "But R...the ravager lied, hell wasn't destroyed! We're IN IT!"

    * * * *

    [December 28, 2026 - Falcon Bay, Venus]

    Rosa was sleeping contentedly. Not that his daughter's normal noises
    and activity while awake would be enough to distract from Peregryn's use of
    the communication spell, but he had enough paternal instinct to feel better knowing she wouldn't require his attention.
    He focused. The self-portrait he had painted included his own tears, spittle and blood, among other components. This made it a particularly
    strong focus for a spell first invented in days when men thought Venus was
    the emanation of a goddess rather than a planet like Earth. The boost in
    range the focus granted him let him use the spell even when the two worlds
    were on opposite sides of the Sun, when technological means of communication had to be bounced off several satellites and had a time lag of a quarter of
    an hour.
    From one blink to another, the scene shifted. He now looked out into a room in a building on Earth, as if he were poking his face through a hole in the wall. The sights and sounds of his humble home on Venus were pushed
    aside in favor of the new, although a strong enough stimulus could shock him back to awareness of his true surroundings.
    "Peregryn's here, so we can get started," Solar Max nodded. Also
    present were Solar Max's wife Meteor, the young mage Poniente, the two most powerful of the interdimensional refugees, another refugee Peregryn did not recognize, and two DSHA officials. "Since we last talked and arranged to
    bring everyone closer together, there haven't been any more incidents, Peregryn, so your theory seems to be right."
    Peregryn nodded carefully, not wanting to move so far that he broke contact with the framed image. "Not only are Miss Venturi and Mister Smith
    the 'batteries' for the supernatural powers of the other refugees, they are
    in fact the only thing maintaining the reality of their fellows, powered or not. If anyone strays too far, they start to lose contact with their own reality. It manifests first as a mental dissociation, but in extreme cases could result in physical dissolution."
    "It gets worse," Poniente frowned.
    "We're running out of juice," Sharon sighed. "No real way to say how long, but it looks like we only bought people a few weeks. Once the last of our energy runs out, we'll all vanish."
    "Perhaps not," Peregryn countered.
    "You have an idea?" Solar Max arched an eyebrow. "Something you can figure out how to cast before anyone starts vanishing?"
    "If I had to start from first principles, I could not be certain of
    saving you all," Peregryn fixed first Sharon and then Jed with a gaze he
    hoped came across as reassuring and confident, but was filtered through his admittedly amateur skills as a painter. "I don't know how much you may have been told about my own situation, but my current exile from Earth has many similarities to your own plight. While I am far from being able to return to Earth myself, as part of my research I have investigated rituals to connect others to the spirit of our world...a precaution in case any of those repatriated found themselves affected by the shadow of my own exile."
    Solar Max nodded. "Short version: Montreal got sent to Venus by
    accident as a side effect of exiling someone else, but the surviving inhabitants seem to be able to return to Earth now that the planet's been terraformed. We were worried that the people we brought back might be rejected, but so far everyone seems fine."
    "Can't wait to hear the long version," the other refugee chuckled. "By the way, we haven't been introduced. I'm Technician First Class Henry
    Dawes. Since Dr. Clancy had to stay behind to make sure the gate stayed
    open, I'm the senior surviving member of the company that researched interdimensional travel. It's been a bit tough figuring things out without being able to remember most of the *names* of things, but as far as I can
    tell, we're pretty doomed, so hopefully your magic can succeed where our science and magic hit the wall."
    "Technician Dawes, I believe I can tap the remaining spark of your
    native reality's power and use it to bind you all to our reality. It might cost the superhumans among you their powers, or it might 'translate' your powers into something our universe understands. But it should link your spirits to this world and prevent your dissolution," Peregryn said.
    "Will our memories get rewritten to fit in as well?" Sharon frowned. "I think some of the survivors would rather die remembering what little we still can of our loved ones, than live as someone different."
    Poniente interjected. "No, I've studied that ritual as well, it would
    not replace your memories. Some more of the analogies should bind in place
    to compensate for missing names...for instance, when you think of your city
    of heroes and villains, you may well start thinking of it as Providence. If your world had an organization dedicated to researching telepathic abilities, you might map that onto MetaPsych. And so forth. But you will still know you're not from around here, and your personal memories will remain as intact as they are now. But whether you'll still be able to fly...I couldn't say."
    "Still, it would be best if you settle in parts of the country
    unfamiliar to you," Peregryn warned. "Living in Rhode Island and constantly being reminded that the details are incorrect would likely be...
    uncomfortable. In extremis, the Falcon Bay colony could provide a haven for any who find the not-quite-right Earth to be too much to bear."
    "Falcon Bay...what, is that on Venus?" Technician Dawes asked. When
    Solar Max nodded confirmation, his expression turned speculative. "I can
    think of several people who might actually prefer Venus regardless of whether Earth can feel like home. A lot of the survivors came from my company, you see, and we're into exploration in general. And the...the Chinese warriors
    and mystics in our group might be better off someplace without their local counterparts as competition. Not that I think they're going to return to
    being crimelord types, but you might not want them hanging about failing to find honest work."
    One of the DSHA officials shuddered. "No, I wouldn't like to see any of your people end up in the paragangs."
    "We're going to have to discuss this," Sharon held up a warning finger. "It sounds like an all-or-nothing spell, right? Even if it succeeds,
    there'll be no going back. And if it fails, we probably all die right away rather than in a few weeks. We didn't bring along any wimps, mind you, but everyone's been through a lot, and..."
    "And we don't want to rush the decision," Solar Max assured the woman. "We'll try to get a better idea of how long you have...nature is going to demand an answer even if we don't."

    * * * *

    [December 29, 2026 - Berlin, Germany]

    "So, my little mote, it seems I have run out of time to play with you," Lady Sable purred, holding a spark of darkness suspended between her hands.
    "I can feel them gathering the power of the others from your home reality, no doubt to cast a spell that will help fix them in place and save their lives. But it would also draw you in, and while you're not the sort of god we know here, you once were a god, yes? And there's no telling what would happen if you were thrown into that ritual. Other than the fact I would lose you, and your potential."
    She stood from her underground throne and guided the unglimmer towards a candle that burned blackly. "You were once a god of death, that much I can tell, even if you're not any kind of god I've ever encountered. But that
    puts your power outside the games played by my patroness. Absorbing you
    would give me power that even she cannot detect or counter, diminished as it might be.
    "Or it could kill me. Or Nyx could detect what I am doing and slay me
    so that she could take you herself."
    Lady Sable shrugged. "Life is risk, and so is death. You escaped
    several prisons in order to flee a dying world, but I'm afraid you've run out of lives. Or unlives."
    She held the mote over the candle and pushed it into the flame. It

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  • From Drew Nilium@21:1/5 to Dave Van Domelen on Mon Nov 1 03:35:15 2021
    On 10/11/21 1:30 PM, Dave Van Domelen wrote:

    Okay, gonna read all the way thru this and--

    [The cover shows a city hall flying a blue and red striped flag with a single white star. The scene is dissolving from the lower left, with only blackness in that corner. In the upper right is the copy, "A Multiverse DIES!"]

    oh no I remember what started this, I'm old X3;;;

    '|` /|(`| | City of Night Prologue: Heropolis Delenda Est

    But at least I can appreciate that title now

    /-|.)|-| copyright 2012 by Dave Van Domelen

    noooooooooo X3

    The world caught its breath for a moment. If he had escaped his prison,
    it could well mean the end of everything, especially with the world still reeling from crises that included an interdimensional invasion, the resurgence of an ancient god of death, and the demise of the world's foremost hero.
    No one was expecting what happened next, nor did anyone think things could possibly be made worse than they already seemed.
    "I am sorry," the mad god said, casting his gaze downward. "I have failed, and because of that, everything that is will cease to be."

    The pentient world-devourer is a great concept.

    Two hundred or so had been granted sanctuary on the farm, protected by
    the monstrous owner of the property and a bizarre mix of his allies and former enemies.

    I also enjoy the dancing around trademarks. X3

    "Look, I'm just saying, it doesn't pay to make holiday plans around you guys," Darran shrugged. "In '22 you caught the Template Killer on Christmas Eve. In '23 there was Kasca's attack here, plus the CSV debuted a few days after Christmas. '24 was amazingly quiet on Christmas, but now we know Doublecross was setting up his Paris Mirror about that time. And last year," he looked over to where Nancy Balzer was scolding her adopted son, whose face was smeared with frosting from the double handful of Christmas cookies he'd crammed into it, "well, it was pretty busy too."

    Shades of Doctor Who! o3o

    We need to feel like
    normal people sometimes, and not just soldiers constantly at war. And if that means offering up a softball pitch to Murphy by holding a Christmas party, so be it."

    Heck yeah. <3 <3 <3

    "SEE? SEE?" Darran pointed at the young mage. "It's a Thing. Soon it'll be a cliche. Now we're going to get a horde of vampire Santas coming down the chimney tonight, or a floating island full of superintelligent hamsters, or super plant bombs, or the second coming or TYMYTHY TWYSTYD!"

    yesssssss :D

    no one was completely happy
    with the fact that as Poniente, Esmeralda served a semi-divine wind spirit out of Lakota myth. Eya existed in that uncertain zone between mortal and divine, much like the spirits ruling China these days did, but what if the true gods who once associated with him were drawn back to Earth by his activity? The attention of the gods had nearly destroyed the world a generation ago, after all...even "good guy" ones like Wakinyan was supposed to be.

    Man. In retrospect, the basic concept of the Causality War is... really Western,
    huh. o3o

    "Merry Christmas," Darran hoisted his mug of mulled cider. "Hope you survive the experience."

    Love it. X3 <3

    The weathermen blamed it on the Project
    Winterlight thing. On average it was returning things more or less to normal, but weather was always chaotic, and some places were still too cold and others too warm. Covering up the Sun for a while and then compensating by detonating something or other in orbit might make all the numbers add up to normal, but....

    Yeah that's relatable. @-@ At least the Cataclysm interrupted the progress of global warming...

    People started staggering out of the glowing symbol, haggard and looking
    like they'd been walking for days. Some still wore heavy coats which they now started to shed, others had tied the coats around their waists or simply abandoned any heavier outfits they might have once worn.
    Many were falling to the ground and kissing it, and only the general weariness of the crowd seemed to be keeping them from whooping with joy.

    Good shit. <3

    The agent was interrupted by a disturbance from inside the main cordon. The flying woman was arguing with a group of agents led by one of the Marshals, and was gesturing at them as if she expected it to have some effect. Surprised that nothing happened, she was quickly subdued by the Marshal's shock baton.

    Oof. ^^;

    Poniente exchanged a look with the mystic portrait of Peregryn that allowed the exiled mage instantaneous communication from Venus, then nodded. "Names have power in magic, they are a large part of defining reality. If, as you've told us, your reality has ceased to be...then all of the names have as well.

    Also, the Iron Curtain of Trademark!

    Poniente shrugged, choosing to leave aside the point about population density. No need to tell the refugees that they'd come to an Earth with barely a third the population of the one they'd left.

    Well.

    Jed and I had been mainlining the power of creation
    lately, which was how we could be used to power the gate that brought us here."
    "That answers it, then," Peregryn's portrait replied. "You must retain a tiny portion of that power, seeds of your old reality linked to your spirits. The other superhumans among the refugees...they lost their powers?"
    The medic consulted her compad. "That's the strange thing. While none of them trip any of the Tesla Index tests, they do still have powers, sometimes. The powers come and go."
    "I reckon they come when Miss Venturi or me 're nearby?" Jed asked. "I mean, it'd make sense. If we're all that's left of the wellspring of power from our home, then being near us might let some of the others use their powers too."

    Nice and consistent, makes sense. <3

    "Our reality has been shielded until recently by a powerful barrier against interdimensional travel," Peregryn's portrait explained. "Most likely, your gateway latched onto the closest spot where the walls between realities had weakened enough to allow entry. The year 2012 was nearly in the middle of the interdicted era."

    That definitely makes sense. @.@v

    I mean, we've had a few nasties come through, like TerraStar, but no
    invading armies."
    This was, of course, when the screaming started.

    heeheehee

    "We all died, I tell you!" the screaming now could be made out as words. "But R...the ravager lied, hell wasn't destroyed! We're IN IT!"

    o.o

    "Not only are Miss Venturi and Mister Smith
    the 'batteries' for the supernatural powers of the other refugees, they are in fact the only thing maintaining the reality of their fellows, powered or not. If anyone strays too far, they start to lose contact with their own reality. It manifests first as a mental dissociation, but in extreme cases could result in physical dissolution."

    Oofda. D:

    "Technician Dawes, I believe I can tap the remaining spark of your native reality's power and use it to bind you all to our reality. It might cost the superhumans among you their powers, or it might 'translate' your powers into something our universe understands. But it should link your spirits to this world and prevent your dissolution," Peregryn said.

    Ahhhhh, very good.

    Some more of the analogies should bind in place
    to compensate for missing names...for instance, when you think of your city of heroes and villains,

    Eh? Ehhhhh? :D

    "You were once a god of death, that much I can
    tell, even if you're not any kind of god I've ever encountered. But that puts your power outside the games played by my patroness. Absorbing you would give me power that even she cannot detect or counter, diminished as it might be.

    Oh I love that sort of shit. :3 A crossover meaningfully bringing something new to the narrative long-term.

    "Ohhhhh yesssss," she whispered, holding the smoke in her lungs as long as she could and drawing in the essence of an alien god. It wasn't enough to put her on a par with even the greater servants of the gods, but it was quite impressive nonetheless.
    And to test it, there was a plan she'd been toying with for months, but never seemed to have the resources to enact.
    She had them now.

    DUN DUN DUNNNN!

    This is one of those arcs I've been sitting on for a
    LOOOONG time.

    And even longer now. o3o

    Of course,
    others are welcome to their own explanations in-story of how (or even if!) the world ends. A happier view would be that the reality goes merrily on and we simply lose our window on it, but for the purposes of my story...well, happy doesn't work as well.

    Yeah, uh, definitely not where I would have gone. X3 <3

    After all, in a world where all the superhumans are
    twenty-somethings, an octogenarian farmer from rural New England would offer a rather different point of view.

    Yesssss

    Because I expect to get some readers for this issue from the City of Heroes side, I tried to be a little more comprehensive in my exposition, at the expense of sounding a bit stilted in places. There's still loads of backstory I really couldn't fit in without it being totally awkward, but hopefully there's enough that anyone who hasn't read any previous ASH stories isn't totally at sea.

    It definitely helped with not having read it for a while. X3

    Darran, who still has no last name, first appeared in ASH #47. All of his speculative disasters are based on stores in ASH Holiday Special #1 (although the floating island is shamelessly ripped off from Narbonic).

    Heeheehee

    Hsiang, Doctor Clancey and
    Technician Dawes aren't imports of any specific City of Heroes characters, they're meant to be the sort of "named generic NPC" you see in repeatable content missions ("Get the Dragoon Balls and defeat Hsiang," or "Rescue Doctor Clancy from the Rikti," that sort of thing).

    Ahhhhh, makes sense

    The repeated references to everyone looking the same comes from the fact
    that most NPCs in City of Heroes draw from a pool of a couple of dozen
    faces. There's even a few cases of mission-granting contacts differing only by the color of their tie. This would seem perfectly normal to the natives, who would be able to tell each other apart based on subtle cues below the resolution of the game's graphics, but to a non-native it would be kinda creepy.

    Ahhhhh, okay - I was wondering if it was a side-effect of being separated from their world and running out of power.

    And in case anyone cares, Lady Sable's new toy is a recently defeated god of death from a pantheon that got itself banished, if you know what I mean.

    :3

    Drew "glad I remember most of the CoH stuff" Nilium

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