Duodecimarch Revolution (Warhammer x Metroid x Worm x Transformers Multicross Quest)

Freshly anointed as an Autobot Auxiliary you looked to your new commander. Jetfire gave you a thumbs up in return, mimicking Samus' gesture while you passed your chest thump and raised fist salute.

"Gotta explain what that means ta me some day kid. Thumbs up I get but..."

"Its sign for honour and respect in signed Grendyl."

"Grendyl?" Strongarm asked. "Like...the monster man in that poem?"

"He's from clan Grendakal, its the language name." Samus explained for you before you could snow the Autobots over in a three hundred page essay covering forty-six thousand years of history in the closest thing to brevity you managed when you wrote academically. Which was the start of more than a few critical commentaries from the teachers who gave you feedback on your writings for the Magnus Academy.

"Clan culture? What about yours?" Strongarm asked, looking down at Samus as she shook her head.

"Maedochaid, it's like...Irish just...very distantly descended." She said before looking over at Alice and Joseph, seeing Alice having a hand laid on her shoulder by Steel Paladin while Rundrasta offered a fist bump to Joseph and then a hug.

"Can we talk to them first? This all started with them...it's only fair to check on them you know?" She said. The way of a Kadeshi; A Ka-Sahmat Chozo Cult Warrior; strong with her as ever. The tenet of monitoring; those who were in her care needed to be watched over and well...what were the two of them if not in your care?

"Go on ahead mates, got some business to sort first. All kinds of calls up me exhaust port wantin' more minutes of me time. Won't be long though but well...you come when yer ready an' not a moment sooner. Clear?" He said, his jocular tone almost like one of your Uncles. Rollo, yes that's who he reminded you of. You felt a brief urge to check for your clan pendant...but perhaps later. It was probably still there.

"Alright, we won't be too long." You said as you urged Samus to follow you, taking a moment to use the blink pack and appear next to the Freedom Phalanx and Starsetters as they were busy with a frantic series of conversations with people they were beating the snot out of not a few minutes ago or checking on each other. Old friendships you only had glimpses of.

The oldest friendship you had, excluding the friends you either built or the few Alimbics who liked you...well she was right here, and this was...oh it was going to be your second anniversary of meeting. The present you had for her was back at...your dorm...you frowned and sighed. What were you going to do on such short notice? What we-

"Hey, Dawnchild right?" Positron clapped Samus on the shoulder, sizing her up and nodding.

"Man, hard to believe you're only fourteen under all of that right? Wow...did you make this?" He asked, getting a nod out of her.

"We made all of our armours ourselves. Not all of the upgrades though but...you know it's a hobby. When I was four I needed to show I understood the theo-" Positron raised a finger.

"Hold on, earth years?" He sounded genuinely alarmed at the idea of a four-year-old assembling power suits.

"We measure ages in earth years obviously. None of us would even be one in cosmic years." You said, making something in his mind come to a halt while he gave it a thought.

"Who raised you to put power armour together as a toddler?" You went quiet for a bit. Where to begin?

"After my homeworld was...attacked by the Confederacy, the Space Pirates, I was adopted by aliens, the Chozo. Wise, kind. They gave me their genes to live with them. Human and Chozo. I still well, look human, but inside I'm more complicated. Both and neither. I don't think I would have survived without them, my mamas and papas." She said, trying to contain a titanic tangent about how wonderful her adoptive family was. Her voice bottling raw enthusiasm beneath.

Positron knew better than to pry about the Space Pirates, figuring that her having to be adopted precluded the survival of her family.

You went a bit quiet again, and Samus once more spoke for you. "He was...we don't know who attacked his homeworld, but he was taken in by the Alimbics. Some who survived their extinction fifty thousand years ago in stasis. They were, well, most of them weren't that nice. But they did much the same for him. We're pretty similar in a lot of ways."

"Yin and Yang. Hatchling, Neophyte." You said, getting a nod of understanding out of Positron.

"Sole survivor, prophetic titles, raised by what are clearly aliens who can meld magic and technology together...among other things...Chosen ones." Positron said.

"Well...I can't really imagine what it's like to be orphaned like that. But, uh, Arne, Samus. I'm sympathetic you know. And well, you guys kicked ass. Especially after I got my hand broken." Joseph said, walking up and offering his hands out to the two of your for a shake, the two of you taking one hand from each while you kept an eye on his shadow offering a hug that pulled the two of you in slightly.

"Smooth Joe. Smooth." Rundrasta said, pulling off her helmet and shaking out white hair kept in twin-tails, arctic blue eyes studying the two of you as an elfish face with ice pale skin formed a thin-lipped smirk, pointed ears flat against her head and feathery wings shaking themselves out as the armour around them retracted. She was beautiful, entrancing in a way that you intrinsically knew was at least partly magical, though the compulsion effect didn't really take, for one, you were immune to it, for another even if you weren't you had the will and training to handle it, and for one last thing...she didn't turn it on at the moment. So she was just...very pretty, face just the right mix of roundness and angles with a button nose and pearly white teeth and your mind drifting to...you flushed and shook your head. Your heart fluttered briefly, and she adjusted the sunglasses on her face to cover her eyes again as she straightened herself.

"Raela!" Joe protested. "Could you not like...embarrass me in front of the hot space pe-" He stopped and then hid his face in his wizard hat in a gesture that you didn't really understand. It wasn't like this would make his faux-pas disappear. It just called more attention to his embarrassment, hot and burning. You almost cringed inside your suit for his sake.

"Aww well...thank you for the compliment." Samus said.

"Hey, you got any non-lethal weapons?" Alice asked, as you looked at the paralysed pistols attached to your shoulder. You kept plenty of spares at all times, they were easy to make, producing them was a good way to kill a few minutes. You conjured a spare and looked at it. Your free hand would be often busy with your left-arm implements, which would likely only grow; especially once you fitted your spare wrist gun onto the vambrace.

"Samus, paralyzer beam situation?" You said as she cottoned onto the same idea.

"Yes." She said, your own pistol having a more insectoid look to it than hers; this particular pistol of hers having an engineered suprawood finish to its grip. Yours was blue green, and you smirked a bit to see she had a few pink highlights on the one she made. She was picking up on more and more of how other girls in the federation acted.

You willed it to absorb itself into your arm cannons; pistol disappearing in a flash that retracted into the systems of the weapon; which shifted to accommodate the new upgrade and then shimmered before configuring themselves into the new mode, a test shot sending out a pulsating yellow-pink ovoid of energy before being cycled into your armour's list of stock beams.


"Ooooohhh..." Alice said with wide eyes, Winterpyre shrinking to their usual size and tilting his head curiously as he approached.

"Well, I'll be damned. If that's not something...you can do that with any tech?" Positron said, your red eyes turning towards him as you gave him a curt nod.

"Well, I'd love to put that to the test but...my scanners tell me you're an incarnate. Still new to it though so....When you're done I'm going to get you something to get started." He said, patting you on the back and backing off to give you some space.

"So, you two helped the rascals out huh?" Steel Paladin approached, his helmet coming off in a fade of light and...you paused dumbly and just stared for a moment as you did with Rundrasta. Red hair and emerald eyes brilliant in a way that normal mortals could scarcely hope to match and his skin flawless in a way you identified as him clearly belonging to a mystic race of beings. He made you feel flighty, you wanted to see more of him but, how would you even approach him? He just had that sort of...overwhelming presence that made you a bit weak in the knees like Rundrasta. No matter, time to focus, clear your mind of his influence. But another look at him...he wasn't...hrm, he wasn't from the same metaverse as the others, his signature wrong.


"I mean, we could have probably been fine in the city by ourselves...probably...maybe..." Alice said, pursuing her lips beneath her mask and folding her arms.

"Well, I believe you, but it's good to know someone's watching out for you." Tyrius said, your eyes noticing him giving a wink and smile to both Samus and yourself, getting her to wave dreamily and you to blush. Nymphs man...

"You would have probably brought your demons out to the public and caused an incident." You blurted out, unaware of how tactless the observation was until she stopped, put her hands on her hips, and then gave you a look that made you feel kind of shit about yourself. You muttered an apology,

"He's just playing around, don't worry." Samus said, elbowing you a bit in the side. You flinched slightly but made no noise, you did bring that about on yourself after rall.

"...Fair..." You said.

"Are you all going to be alright?" Samus asked, a nod coming from the two as Citadel approached, extending a hand to the pair to begin his debriefing.

"Say, you two." Penelope Yin pushed her way through the barriers of time and space with applied telekinesis until she had wrought a wormhole into being with a simple telekine push, stepping through with a click of heels and a nimbus of pink-purple psychic energy even that even by your standards was something with awesome power. Her short black hair bobbed a bit, energy gathered in her irises while your eyes couldn't help but notice she bared her midriff for reasons you weren't quite familiar with. It wasn't that you didn't mind the view it just...seemed unnecessary. Especially in this cold.

"If you're ever in the neighbourhood around Paragon, come seek me out. I sensed a lot of potential inside of you. And maybe our psionics work on different principles but well, Dream Doctor and I have been talking." She said, gesturing to a man with glowing eyes, a bowler hat, and one of the fanciest capes you've ever seen. You immediately recognised them for some sort of magic runic pattern. Ah, a sorcerer. You knew a few, non-progenitor ones even. But this man seemed to be someone who carried himself with the weight of a man who considered going between realities almost banal. Even to you, the casual dignity he walked around with was humbling.

"From what I understand, you are separated from those who would begin your training in the mystic arts at a later point. But I am afraid there won't be time to wait. We'll need to combine your stages of education. To be human, and to master the mystic potential in your blood. I will be keeping in touch with the Autobots, doing what I can to expand your knowledge of the craft." He said with a tip of his hat, his glowing eyes seeming to be far more ancient than his body's thirty something features suggested. Nobody really aged in your time but he was one of the few humans you had encountered from either of these timelines who truly gave you a sensation of eternity.

"How much experience do you have? We were supposed to be..." You started before Dream Doctor waved you off. You at first felt offended for being interrupted, but you knew he had something important to say and swallowed the short lived resentment. Just another thing you'd probably need to discuss with Samus or your A.I companions in private.

"Ancient masters of a species hundreds of millions of years old and individuals who had endured for longer than our kind. I know, You will find that through magic, I can know many things. But that I have also wandered through a great deal of time. I am as you suspect, much older than I appear. But please, know that I am eager to get started." He said, offering a bow that you returned, followed by Samus. To be in the presence of a master who was clearly generous to take so much out of his time to help you well...you had to respect that right?

"When are we going to start if we're as time-pressed as you say?" Samus asked.

"I'll do my best to squeeze more hours out of the day. I've already spoken to Jetfire to set up base with you. We can even start while you're sleeping." You hesitated for a moment, the idea of him poking into your dreams made you tense. You weren't big on sleeping for a number of reasons. One of them was the rarity of happy dreams whenever you weren't in a lucid trance. Night terrors were a frequent companion of yours, and if it weren't for Elmorni teaching you how to control your nightly dreams you probably would have avoided sleeping altogether. Even then...you usually only took naps when there wasn't anything else to do, you didn't really need to sleep so why take a third out of every day?

"Because you're the dream doctor, right?" Samus smiled. She on the other hand, she didn't really nap even if there wasn't anything better to do. Rarely did anything good come from sleep for her, and when she had down time and wasn't working on one project or the other or keeping busy with some training you usually found her busy with her various games when you poked her for a conversation. "I just...have...not the best dreams, sorry in advance." She said. That was putting it lightly, hers were worse than yours. She was much more...directly exposed to the violence of the death of her homeworld than you are. Without the comfort of her mother there until it was too late. Yours was a longer burning sort of pain. Your parents were there nearly every step of the way on Cylosis' last day until they...both of your parents died so you could live, but hers died to seemingly slay Ridley himself, yours perished just to let you get away from the golden Hydra.

"Well...if that's all for now we should check on everyone else. You can come along if you like? But uh..." You said, turning to Samus.

"Jetfire wanted us, let's not keep him waiting. Come on!" She said, offering her hand to you.

"We'll be off with the Autobots for a bit, stay safe." You said, waving goodbye and getting a wave in return as the two of you warped right back to the autobots, where Jetfire had gathered a procession before you.

The first thing you noticed was that the Transformers had brought in a few human auxiliaries all clad in what you recognised as Transforming exosuits.

Some of the human auxiliaries were already there, all clad in some form of exosuit. The first two were twins, short enough for them to...ahah, as you suspected, kids.

"I'm Oll-" The first to speak said until her brother interrupted by pushing her a bit farther back. She was a dark blue-haired girl with long straight hair and blue eyes after removing her helmet, her face seeming to suggest that she was about the same age as you were, hair drifting to about her shoulder blades. Her exosuit was designed like the armour of a transformer, her helm made in imitation of warpath but with her own touch, with tank tracks covering her pauldrons and a tank barrel covering one of her arms, she moved some hair away from her eye with a blow of air and looked annoyed at her sibling.

"I'm Galen Witwicky." He said, thumbing to himself, his own armour styled more like Jetfire's; with jet aircraft like wings emerging from it, nose guns mounted on the arms of his suit. Without his helm, his windswept blue hair reached down to about midway his neck, and his smirk was definitely something he was trying to charm you with. It was somewhat working.

"Dawnchild, this is Duskguard. We're partners! Bondsmates too." You were fully aware that this statement could be taken in more than one way, but wanting to see what they'd make of it.

"...Well that;'s kinda obvious." Olla Witwitcky said, offering a hand that you shook in return while the autobots milled around a bit, taking stock of the city. Bumblebee sat himself down close to you, offering you an imitation of one of your famed thumbs-ups. A clip of "friend, meet friend" coming from his radio.

"...He cute under that?" She asked, a nod coming from you and a smile beneath your helmet as she looked at her sibling and muttered "told you so."

"Well, you could also ask about me, if you like." You said.

"I'm not into other girls." She said flatly, making you scrunch your face up a bit. How did that...work...just being into, one gender? That seemed so limiting. Would she even be able to find herself attractive.

You switched language tracks to speak to Arne, going from English to the whistling, click and tone-shifting language of the Ka-Sahmat Chozo and leaving everyone else completely incapable of following your conversational tract.

"<Arne, how does that work?>" You asked.

"<Samus I don't know any more people like that than you. Our social circles aren't exactly extremely expansive.>"

"<I know it's just...that's strange and I don't understand how you could be happy being so limited.>"

"<I'm not really, well suited to answer that honestly. People like us tend to hang around other people like us generally?>" He shrugged and sighed before you looked back at Olla Witwicky while her brother gave you double finger pistols in a way that reminded you of Ian, which made you smile. Ian was nice boy you liked the company of. Hrm...you felt a bit sad at the realisation that he was so many realities away.

You had been working on so much adrenaline as of late you had barely even given all that much thought to how most of your friends besides Arne weren't here. Having him at least though, you reached a hand out to him and he squeezed it out of reflex, feeling like touching bare skin through the synaptic feedback of your gauntlets.

"So...is this the power armour club now?" Kid Win asked as Jetfire moved the procession to a more secluded spot and one autobot gave a thumbs up to the commander, snapping you out of your thoughts.

"Right...scrambler's up, should be private now." He said, your armour noting a surge of energy for a brief few moments before it normalised.

Hrm, the peanut gallery had been blinded temporarily, kept out of the scrambler field by...ah what a fascinating selectively permeable forcefield. The governing A.I deciding who could or wouldn't be let through was...yes very interesting.

"Mind if I breathe the air around here directly? I'd like to get a taste of the atmosphere around here." You said, Bumblebee giving a nod and a "You go girl!"

You pulled off your own helmet, with Arne following suit, shaking out your hair and letting your helm dissolve in your hands followed by your arm cannon and shoulder mounted back-up weapons; Alice, Joseph and some of Positron's group having moved to speak to the autobots after having debriefed the two newly minted incarnates.

You stopped for a moment, realising a number of eyes were on you. Chris, as your scan systems called him just kind of...stopped with his Jaw slacked.
"Guhhhh....h-hi...p-pretty I'm...hi...I'm...h...You look uh...blonde..." He said like he had a parade of frogs crawling down his throat.

"Are you alright Chris? You seem to have a sudden cessation of speech function." You said, using his name despite him never telling it to you getting him to snap out of his crimson cheeked stupor as he cleared his throat and tried to start from scratch.

"Right, thinker scanner. Well uh, hi Samus just uh. Trying to parse out all this tech. Weird day huh? And well, your boyfriend...or bondsmate well, uh. He looks great too. I'm not intruding or anything ri-" He stammered, his attempt at recovering his dignity falling apart as quickly as it had begun.

"It's an open relationship." Arne responded, looking towards you with a small smile on his face as you rested an elbow on one of his pauldrons and grinned.

"Oh...oh really? I've got a ch-...I mean...I'm glad you two trust each other enough for that. Uh, super happy for you. Abso-" He stopped when you gave him a quizzical look and calmed down.

"Nice to meet you two." He said, looking at your armour and tapping his chin.

"That is...really snazzy." He said.

"These two could even transform and fought better than nearly anyone else I've ever seen." Strongarm said.

"No kidding?" Arcee asked.

"From th' footage I've seen of these two, 'ohle team of wreckers couldn't do a job 'alf as good. Speaking of, that seems to be your best place; honestly. Small, fast, get in', out spick an' spam and bob's your uncle." You were unsure of who bob was or why he was suddenly related to you but you nodded and pretended to understand the metaphor from Jetfire.

"Hey, if you were the ones who tossed that Nictus my way, well; if you can hit like that I'd like to try giving you a test some day soon." Bulkhead said, the large, green and grey autobot stomping forward on stumpy legs.

"Easy there Bulkhead, you took a few hard knocks yourself. You're a fortress type, not invincible." Windblade said, urging him to show a bit of caution as he nodded and rolled his massive shoulders; sumo-wrestler like frame heavy set and powerful, no signs of the damage he had taken earlier apparent whatsoever.

"Ah I'll live." He said dismissively, pawing at the suggestion with an outstretched hand.

"Look, I'm not an autobot myself, but for what it's worth, you're one of the bravest bots I've ever met." Airazor said, her alt-mode drawing some curiosity from you, the body parts of a falcon attached to her slender, feminine frame.

"Honestly, the Maximals could be a flock of pigeons for all I care and I'd still want you by my side." Hot Shot said, the group discussing things like old friends.

"What's it like...being friends for millions and millions of years?" You said, unable to help yourself.

"Means you get to know how everyone else thinks. Humans are more surprising. Even when you live longer you still grow up so fast. You're going to be adults in what...four years? Primus, must feel like your childhood just flies right by." Windblade said, sighing as she looked at the two of you and shook her head.

"I remember when Galen and Olla were still in diapers." She said.

"Oh come on windblade, I'm not targetmastering for you if you're going to embarrass me in front of these two." Olla said, folding her arms.

"I can live with that." She said, a smirk on her face.

"Is this everyone?" You asked.

"Hardly, we're stretched thin as is, lot of us couldn't make it to the muster call. Too many other ops to handle." Arcee said, hand resting on her hip in a surprisingly human gesture.

"But if you want to know the important people here. Jetfire's our overall commander, Prime trusts him with his own spark. Don't let the unsophisticated way of talking fool you, he's got more than enough processing power to handle anything. Now there's also wheeljack who's sadly, too busy with his experiments to pay us a visit is our head of R&D. Brilliant but if something goes wrong, it goes really wrong." She said, demonstrating holographic profiles of both, with Wheeljack's distinctive rectangular fins and mouthplate giving his head an easily identified profile.

"Oh so...Tinker basically? Catastrophic consequences if something goes awry and all." Kid Win said.

"The term we prefer is sparkshifted, but...kind of comparable."

"How big of a problem are we talking anyway if...something goes wrong?" Arne asked.

"How attached are you to the Betelgeuse system?" She said nervously.

"...Wait what did you do?" You asked, concern immediately on your face.

"...It'll make sense in about six hundred terran solar cycles." She said with a wry smile.

Damn, they really did blow up the entire solar system by accident. At least it wasn't inhabited.

"Anyway, Bumblebee is our head of reconnaissance, when we need information; we call him. Great at computer slicing too. Windblade; top expert on anything weird and spooky. Bulkhead's the chief point man, hasn't met a hit he can't take yet. Skyburst is second in command here. Airrazor is our liaison with the Maximals and their contingent here. Red Alert back at the base is our chief biologist and medical officer. Warpath, whom you just saw; will be taking care of siege combat situations. The Witwicky family has been our local trouble for centuries, just...became a bit of a tradition for them to tag along, especially after they started developing telepathy and well...first case of humans with sparks we saw came from their line. Might be due to all the energon exposure or maybe Primus just smiled on them." She shrugged. Both were reasonable enough theories, you were wondering though if that process could be accelerated...hrm. Something to spend some nights analysising.

"It's totally the second thing." Olla said with a smirk.

"You don't know that." Arcee said with a roll of her optics. Curious, for a machine race they felt so...human.

"Most of our human partners usually become linkmasters or target masters, we give them exosuits able to meld with a transformer partner to give them a boost or fight and transform on their own. I imagine its the same process that lets you turn into a ball without crushing yourself." She said, looking at you square in the eyes.

"Though maybe, with your suit's ability to absorb powers and tech...we could just make a target master out of you with some spares. I dunno, what sort of altmodes are you into besides balls?" She asked. You gave it a bit of thought before snapping your fingers. "Amphibious submersible." You said, you loved the water, even if it slowed you down whenever you were lacking in hydromobility modules like the gravity boost.

"Aircraft, definitely." Arne said, taking a second to look at Galen's wings on his suit and reaching out a hand to feel them before being allowed to by the human, a small smirk forming on his face. Oh he was definitely interested in that technology. To be fair, so were you; long had you thought that transforming power suits able to fit into infantry spaces were something only the progenitors had figured out, given the...messy results of other attempts to replicate it unless through natural physiological abilities such as the Krikens or Vhozon managed. But here you were with a culture of comparable age and majesty.

It was such a shame they had spent so long in a war so pointless.

"Figured you for a flyboy. But hrm...why not both? Air, land, and sea." She offered, a nod being returned. Yeah that sounded really, really nice! If it would also let you traverse water without issue, so much the better.

"To conclude, Wrecker Ops are handled by Roadbuster, who's probably off somewhere comparing arsenals to Hound or something. Special Operations are headed by me when some subtlety is needed, Proxima is in charge of intelligence, security is handled by Pyro, and diplomacy should be handled by Crosscut but he's off with other negotiations. Sari Sumdac heads the Masters, so you'll probably end up working with her a lot. Below us, you've got the various teams. You've already met Strongarm and Hotshot from Team Bee. They all prefer civvie car alt-modes, lets them get around quickly and park anywhere without being noticed." She flashed a series of profiles, a heavily armoured autobot covered in too many guns, a six eyed and always alert transformer, someone who could have been mistaken for Optimus at a distance, a sophisticated looking gentleman whose countenance was at odds with his rather harsh sounding name, and a Indian girl with red hair and cyan blue eyes and cyborg lines on her face suggesting she wasn't entirely human...or perhaps human at all.

The description of Bumblebee as a master of stealth though could not go unchallenged given how quickly you noticed him.

"He parked in the middle of a snowstorm with no visible tracks like a car would leave." You pointed out.

"...Not noticed too often. But well, Bee's great with kids. Loves humans really. But well...he's still a protoform in his spark. I think you'll work great with him. But I dunno, maybe wrecker ops are more your thing? As Masters, you'll probably end up going between divisions a bunch." Arcee shrugged.

"Anyway, you two. On these planets, I try not to run too tight of a ship. Especially with kids." Jetfire said, intruding on the ongoing conversations.

"...How many?" You ask, folding your arms to make it clear that you weren't going to take a no for an answer.

"Eight Earths. Trackin' eight other universes that don't care quite as much about Earth. Metaverses...multiverses...bugger I dunno the gobbledeguk 'hind it...the other six...kinda in the dark won't lie. Eight earths though...All of 'em though, got 'umans and other life forms on the planet with shall we say, peculiar abilities. Supers, Monsters. I'll pass you on some files to mull over while yer busy."

Battery approached from behind while Jetfire was busy rambling on about something or the other, another of his old war stories before Bumblebee played a "Give it a break man" clip from yet another source you weren't really familiar with.

"Hey, Samus, Arne..." She stopped when she looked at Chris with his cheeks still thoroughly red. "Chris, jaw off the floor please." She said as he coughed slightly and looked away. "Anyway, I wanted you to meet the rest of the team while we're all still here. And while things are at least a little quiet." She said, gesturing to some of the wards who had managed to peel themselves away from a conversation with the starsetters and freedom phalanx.

"So, everyone's getting along at least? No...interdimensional war on the horizon?" You said, getting a nod out of her.

"Seems that way, the world or...all of them will keep turning, for at least a little while." She said as Assault sneaked up from behind her, clapping his hand on her shoulder and making her tense slightly as she looked at him and sighed.

"Please...don't sneak up on me like that." She said with a prolonged sigh.

"Clockblocker, come on, don't keep the party waiting." Assault said after a muttered apology.

Clockblocker, Dennis according to your scanners was apparently trying to chat up Mistral Slash, or Aiko as your zero point form scan visor identified the girl with auburn hair tied into a low pony-tail, Japanese facial characteristics and bright Hazel eyes as. Dennis was quite pleasing on the eyes, brilliant red hair, stark blue eyes, lithely built, teen band star good looks, two halves of his helmet in his hand while Numina's ghostly form offered to mend it with a spell, fusing it back together with an auroran light and a small smirk on her translucent lips.

"...Neat." He said before turning to you and giving you that finger pistols and wink gesture with a "What's shakin' babe?" before Battery harrumphed "Fourteen", causing him to mutter "Oh fuck" beneath his breath, seemingly unaware that you could hear him whispering just fine. You were...increasingly aware of less than desirable attention from people more interested in your body than your armour or skills. Of what Yramil meant what she told you that some people have issues with giving others space or taking no for an answer. Dennis seemed genuinely apologetic though and looked back at Aiko, patting her on the shoulder while Boltdancer gave her a thumbs up.

"Sorry, not trying to creep on freshmen. You look good though. Honest. But yeah, three year age gap. So uh...let's start over. I'm Dennis, Clockblocker and yes, it is a pun." He said, taking a look towards Arne who had by this point folded his arms and raised a brow.

"On what?" You asked.

"You stop time yes? But I don't see how that translates into any pun besides that." You continued. "But it's an interesting name! I like it! Much less plain than Dennis." You said with a grin as he let out a small chuckle and smirked, folding his arms and leaning against a wall.

"Seems fairly obvious, aren't you worried it gives your abilities away to anyone who hears about it?" Arne said, mind already shifting to tactical analysis mode.

"Hey, gotta brand you know?" He said with a shrug and a grin, Kid Win muttering "maybe there's such a thing as pushing a theme too far" under his breath in the distance. "Say, Sammy, Albinoman; what are two people from the year fifty thousand and fourteen doing with accents like yours? Sound like you came off the plane from Dublin and Reykjavic." He said, already changing conversational tracks.

"I'm not Albinistic." Arne said with a sigh.

"Huh, well, if you could take out that many nazis you can be whatever you like." He said, whistling to get the other team mates to follow up; bringing along their starsetter friends while the Protectorate and Freedom Phalanx discussed more adult stuff with Autobot mediation.

"But not Albinistic." Arne insisted with a straight, neutral face as Dennis let out a whistle through his teeth to try and pull the conversation in some other direction.

"Tough crowd huh?"

"I know it's a joke, it's just not funny." Arne said flatly before the awkward silence prompted you to corpse and let out a small laugh of your own.

"I'm...sorry, sorry. I just couldn't stop myself!" You said, Kid Win joining in briefly with wheezing laughs of his own.

"...Hey Vista come salvage my reputation, I'm intentionally funny right?" He said, looking down to a blonde girl in a green uniform who while in about the same age group as yourself, Arne, Kid Win, Nightcaster, Eudaimonica and a few others was...short...tiny even.

She looked at Arne as he sighed and gave a bit of a stretch to keep limber and immediately smiled, looking away the second he turned his eyes towards her and pretending to have never looked his way in the first place. She tilted her head at Galen and Olla though who were...arm wrestling...here and now? Seemed like a waste of time to you, but she seemed even more baffled by the rectangular consoles Eudaimonica and Nightcaster were using; having gathered up with some other starsetters in what seemed to be a major multiplayer match.

"Oh come on, cheap shot. Why did you turn on items?." One of them you weren't deeply familiar with groaned.

"Because they're fun? Come on, turn off tournament brain for five seconds Revolverlution." Another said.

"Oh screw you Streetbreak." Revolverlution said with disdain. Hrm...you should try that game out sometime. It seemed interesting if primitive. But Assault tapped you on the shoulder, or rather, was about to before you turned around to preempt the gesture, making him stumble slightly backwards in surprise.

"Hey, we were thinking, most of the usual gang activity would have gone underground after a gathering of capes this extreme, and they'll probably stick to laying low for a while." Assault said, recovering his balance.

"So I asked Vista if she could show you around town. Have some fun. Especially if you're going to be staying around for a while. You can even bring some friends, Kid Win's already volunteered for...obvious reasons. No adults besides some Autobots to drive you guys around. Up to you whether to do some patrols or just enjoy yourselves." He said, offering a grin. "So you know; you can go a bit wild." He finished.

Ooohhh...you gasped at the thought and steepled your fingers with excitement, mind already racing at the possibilities.


Actions:

What to do around town?

[]: Patrol Brockton (Minor stress gain but builds practice for combat teamwork and relations, will lead to plot thread quickly, likely to find tinkertech)
[]: Relax around Brockton (Major detress, resetting stress to zero, builds friendships and familiarity with Brockton, Might lead to plot thread, likely to find tinkertech.)
[]: Patrol Paragon City (Minor stress gain, builds practice for combat teamwork, solidifies relations, likely to find incarnate salvage, could lead to plot thread.)
[]: Relax around Paragon City (Major destress, resetting stress to zero, builds friendships and familiarity with Paragon, likely to find incarnate salvage, might lead to plot thread.)
[]: See the local autobot base (Moderate destress, take a look around at autobot facilities and other teammates, establish rapport between Earths and autobots. Wheeljack will probably have something for you. Salvage from Mission 1 will be immediately claimable.)
[]: See the PRT base (Moderate destress, take a look around at the Protectorate facilities, establish greater rapport with Protectorate. Tinkers might have something for you.)
[]: See the Freedom Corps Base (Moderate destress, take a look around Freedom Phalanx and Starsetter facilities, greater rapport with Primal Earth. Likely to find incarnate salvage.)
[]: Show everyone your ships (Introduction to Starship mechanics and abilities, moderate destress, can go on a space based joyride, likely to lead to plot thread. You have some stuff at the ships you can use straight away.)

(Pick four plus two autobot chaperones)

[]: Galen Witwicky
[]: Olla Witwicky
[]: Eudaimonica
[]: Nightcaster
[]: Rundrasta
[]: Steel Paladin
[]: Mistral Slash
[]: Clockblocker
[]: Write in

Autobot Chaperones

[]: Bumblebee (Can fit four)
[]: Strongarm (Can fit six)
[]: Arcee (Can fit two)
[]: Hot Shot (Can fit four)
[]: Bulkhead (Can fit the entire group)
[]: Write in

[X]: Show everyone your ships (Introduction to Starship mechanics and abilities, moderate destress, can go on a space based joyride, likely to lead to plot thread. You have some stuff at the ships you can use straight away.)

[X]: Eudaimonica
[X]: Olla Witwicky
[X]: Steel Paladin
[X]: Rundrasta

[X]: Bumblebee (Can fit four)
[X]: Arcee (Can fit two)





You took a look at Samus and then at the group around you. "The group we bring should probably have members from each reality we know. The witwicky sister would probably be a good start...uh...well, with the starsetters. Tyrius and Raelamiel seem authoritative so they'd probably give an interesting perspective you know?" You said, Samus turning her eyes towards you and smirking a bit.

"It's alright, you're not the only one who'd like to spend some time with them in a ship." She said which got the two of you to tint a bit on your cheeks.

"Guess I'm still a bit weak to supernatural beauty." You said with a lightly joking tone as the two of you shared a small laugh and you gave a small smooch to her lips, getting a deeper one in return before you two pulled away and she briefly adjusted her stance to bring herself more level to yourself.

"Puberty really isn't fair sometimes...look at you getting taller than me." She said with a little giggle as you two shared a short laugh.

"It does mean I can do this." You said, laying your chin atop her head after adjusting your footing to your tip toes, getting her to outright laugh and gently ease you away.

"You're such a silly boy you know? But silly is a lot of fun! It's nice to see you not take things seriously." She hummed as she looked at the group again herself.

"I think I want to go with bumblebee. He'd be easy for our ships to carry around. Hrm...Arcee I think would also be good, and if we're going to work with her, Olla would be pretty logical to take with us." She said as you took a look for one last member to come along with you.

"What about Alice?" You offered.

"Oooh! Yes! Absolutely!" She said with a wide grin on her face. She gestured for you to go get her, Steel Paladin, and Rundrasta while she spoke with the Autobots, your legs bringing you over to her swiftly, black boots clanking slightly on the road before you stopped before her, towering over her by a fairly considerable margin despite being the same age.

"Hey, Alice." You said to the redhead as she finished off her game with a grin on her face. Positively sunny disposition this one, even with the sort of company she preferred to keep.

"What's good Arne?" She asked.

"Well, Samus and I wanted to show some of you our ships. So we were thinking, would you, Tyrius, and Raelamiel be interested in coming along?" You asked, Nightcaster taking a moment to look up and making a small face. He had clearly grown attached to Alice's side over the past few hours, but he nodded and gave you a thumbs up anyway.

"You gonna be okay there Joe?" Alice asked.

"Course he is, he's got to show me the Smash Brothers of the future." Gallant said, planting his hand on Joseph's side as he flicked his attention backwards and nodded.

"Yeah gonna have a little tournament." He said.

"One of you guys better win or I'll have to kick all of your asses." Raelamiel said with mock venom in her voice.

"Come on, don't put that over their heads." Tyrius said with a pat to her head, your ships following a signal you gave to them, beckoning them to descend from the sky and towards the earth below with engines thrumming. They extended landing gears and came to a natural rest; her craft extending its struts and yours unfurling some wheels on the end of sturdy stilts. On the remote chance you ever needed to do a conventional take off and landing, the option was there.

"Whoa check out the ride there." Kid Win said, whistling sharply as he kicked up his hoverboard and stroked the side of the Dormach and eyed the Sleipnir through his visor.

"You built these yourselves?" He said, Samus giving him a nod and putting her hands on her hips proudly once she returned with the autobots who'd be coming.

"Obviously." You said as you noticed Vista approaching you from the side, clearing her throat as she brought herself to a standstill, eyes alternating between you and Tyrius.

You sensed that she was rather flushed with emotion, looking on you with interest and doing her best to maintain her composure while Kid Win snuck glances at Samus, Olla, Alice, and Raelamiel. She was pretty clearly infatuated, you could just feel that radiating off of her with the psychic potential in your mind. You had a pretty good idea of why her eyes were on you given that your helmet was off. She was trying to not make it obvious, and she was commendably good at it, but she probably hadn't reckoned with the fact that you could sense her emotions. You were rather used to it by now to be honest.

"Huh, haven't seen a starship like this...does it go faster than light?" Tyrius asked Samus as he looked at the Dormach.

"Mhrm. Top speed of Thirty-nine teraparsecs per hour if I really push the engine. I had faster designs but Old Bird said I should probably wait before playing around with better superluminal locomotion engines like that." She said, Rundrasta raising an eyebrow and tilting her head.

"...That could cross the entire fucking observable uni-" She started before Samus smiled.

"Basically instantly." She said, proud of what she had achieved while you let out a small laugh.

"So whose ship are we using?" Olla said, jogging up to you at a downright superhuman pace before skidding herself to a halt, the tanktracks at the bottom of her boots locking into place and an excited grin on her face as she stayed at a respectful distance from you.

"Samus' ship is probably better for that honestly. The Sleipnir's got a bit more cramped of a floor arrangement." You said as the ships opened up their hatches.

"Come on, there's a star system I want to check out." Samus offered while you jumped aboard with a casual spring of the legs, descending into the interior of the Dormach along with her while everyone else crawled in; bumblebee taking a moment to look at the ships and making some plaintive beeps and warbles as he sighed, focused, and then compacted his robot mode into something only two heads taller than a normal adult human. Size shifting it seemed, was a bit intensive on his energon supplies, and not something to be done casually; though it seemed Arcee was more adjusted to the strain of it, shifting more into what should be the proper size of something that turns into a motorcycle and finding her way inside.

The Dormach, like the Sleipnir, was quite remarkably bigger on the inside due to the same spacefolding technology that went into your missile technology as well as some dimensional conduits. Though the craft was somewhat larger than a fighter jet of the time on the outside, internally its space was . Enough to live pretty comfortably from inside. Which was good when very often the longest part of a mission would simply be waiting for an opportunity to arise to make a move. Your combat capabilities could shave down the time spent fighting, the engines eliminated most of the travel time, but nothing short of a time dilator could deal with the need for an opportunity to arise or to wait for a target to appear.

Its cockpit room was a cozy enough fit with a few chairs in the front, the number of personal effects inside being on the more minimalistic end. Generally stuff Samus could quickly evacuate in case of an emergency rather than anything that would be hard to get out safely. And nothing she couldn't bear losing such as any leftovers from her home on K-2L. At the back was a door to some personal quarters, lavatorial facilities, equipment halls that contained weapons grade supplies and a place to build or work on them, holochat room, training area, stasis-storage for captives, a rec room, closets to store utility gear, a hatch for lower level maintenance, and passageways into the heart of the ship to manage its core systems such as the central engines, synthetic consciousness mainframes, manufactorums, and other facilities and a few other places that would cover just about everything a girl like her could want.

The cockpit itself was rather spacious, a somewhat tear drop shaped facility, narrower towards the front with more space behind. It was wider than your own, since this was designed to be a gunship rather than a heavy strike fighter after all. Some traditional instrumentation was present mostly for the fun factor, but in any serious engagement she switched to neuro-control over her ship to make the ship's response times her response times. Something you did as well. And while the transparent metal cockpit was real, the nanocameras spread across the ship allowed her to see in all directions, granting her the situational awareness needed to come out on top in nearly any situation. A number of her drawing projects she had been idly working on over the past few months, most related to the story she was in the process of writing. An animated project involving high adventure and intrigue and discovery.

You fondly looked at her conception of a techno-fantasy cityscape and touched the inprogress drawing and then back to her. "Still in the worldbuilding phase?" You asked as she responded to you with an enthused nod and grin.

"Getting character concepts down too! Here's Elstra." She said, procuring an image of her protagonist, elfin eared, a sort of technosorceress from what you could see, wielding staff and cannon and in robed armour with brilliantly coloured purple hair and pink eyes.

"Nice work, she still going to be a part of the Order of Zentrasta?" You asked.

"Well obviously, it gets her motivation set in stone for the start of her adventures when sh-" Bumblebee squeezed in behind her and warbled again, taking a look around and making a low pitched sound of wonder after the ship had finished its decontamination protocols to remove anything he might have picked up.

"Oh, hey there Bumblebee!" She said as he tried to fit himself into one of the co-pilot chairs and expressing amazement when it altered its proportions to fit his sizeshifted body, swivelling around while Samus let out a deeply amused giggle at the sight.

Vista was next, waiting for the hard-light elevator to ferry her down rather than jumping, taking a moment to look around right up until the ship stopped her.

"Biological entity detected. Beginning decontamination." It said as the field in wrapped her in shimmered, surrounding her with a light as the restore station got to work, removing any impurities it could detect. The Synthetic Consciousness of the Dormach left anything it determined to be beneficial, but upon sensing the time bomb of her genetic coding; quickly went to work. Rebuilding and then reformatting her at the subatomic level to mend what it perceived as catastrophic genetic disease. A process it repeated for Chris and Alice, but curiously not for Olla, Raelamiel, or Tyrius; likely deeming them to be within what should be the norms for their species.

The process took less than the blink of an eye, and stopped to let the three stagger slightly as the rewiring had finished more quickly than their brains could process, Kid Win in particular grabbing at his head and shaking it as if trying to stop the world from spinning.


You looked with a bit of concern at the somewhat disoriented teens who had just come through. "Are you all going to be fine?" You asked, chewing a bit on your lips as they straightened themselves with a speed that they normally wouldn't have been able to manage, adjusting their stances and correcting their postures with newfound dexterity.

Vista was at once the most and least disorientated, she was prepared for what was inside due to her abilities, but being in a place of such altered and distorted space still gave her a good bit of confusion. She looked around and grabbed at the side of her head, shaking it slightly as she looked at those who had already made their way inside.

"Ugh, this Doctor Who ship is...how do you fit all this in here?" She said, noting that even the cockpit was larger from the inside than it was from the outside before her eyes looked at a nearby holoposter.

"That was...I could have sworn that poster was a different colour." She said, pointing at one of your Yrimoch holoposters, the superheroic adventures dancing through her foes in blindingly quick fashion as she sought to rescue treasures from would-be despoilers. You weren't exactly sure what she was referring to, it looked like it always did.

"Some of the reds were a different colour or something? That was more, normal red but now it's this, what sort of colour is that?" She said stumbling through some words before Tyrius looked at her and then at the poster, tapping his chin slightly before he came to a realisation.

"Infrared." He said, raising a finger and smiling.

"Huh?" Alice asked, flopping into one of the chairs and blinking, weaving a spell of her own in an attempt to make sense of what she was seeing. But it clicked in your brain quite fast, quite fast indeed.

"Oh, Alice, you know how we said that your gene code was full of deficiencies?" You said, getting a nod out of her. "I think the ship detected them and assumed you had brought in some sort of sickness to be cured with the restore station. I could undo them if you'd like?" You said, Alice taking a look at the gauntlet of her hand and seeing details she was never able to perceive before, then taking a look at Arne as he was busy looking at his reflection and giving himself a small smile before he noticed he was being looked at and waved back.

"Well...uh...hm...what do they do?" She asked, pausing.

"Most diseases won't be a problem, you won't really age past your prime, vastly enhanced physique, greater sensory capabilities, greater regeneration speed, memory retention, only needing a half-hour of sleep per day...a lot of things really." You said, getting a pause from Alice and then a mental calculation.

"Oh I can get in so much more shitposting every day!" She said with an eager grin

"Excuse us...the ship just...modified our gene code on entry?" Vista asked, clearly concerned. "There wasn't anything wrong with us...I didn't feel deficient even. I, that thing will do that to any friendly who enters?" She said, looking up at the restore pad and then back at you.

"I'm sorry, I can have the changes undone if you like. I wasn't well...sorry I should have been more prepared for guests." You said, frowning and feeling bad about yourself.

"Fuck like, wow. You basically have Panacea in here on demand. That's amazing. I just, can I get some notes on how it works, please?" Chris asked, looking at it like a puppy staring at a treat before you gestured to a computer terminal he could access, Missy shaking her head all the while.

"Just...maybe next time provide warning?" She asked with a sigh while Chris rubbed his hands and looked through the schematics with the interest of a pornographic video before he pulled his attention elsewhere, Raelamiel and Tyrius talking to themselves while Olla said some words to the Cybertronians in the back.

Meanwhile Chris, trying to not look stunned, just...examined every button he could once he had quickly scanned over the schematics and theory behind the restore station, examining every machine that might catch his interest and each and every one of your hobbies on display. Your entertainment suites, your artworks and manuscripts, though you pulled him away before he could read those too in-depth. They weren't ready! It wasn't proper for him to peek! Then of course, stuff like research logs, computer readouts...anything he could have a look at.

When you dragged him back he took a look back at you and breathed out huffily. "Wow and this is all just in the cockpit?! You built this? You...like...you just...put all this together and...wow how did you find the time...the parts...the know-how I just..." Vista brought up a hand.

"Breathe Chris." She cautioned as she patted him on the back, a dopey smile on his face as he pulled off his helmet to get a chance to just look at it all with his own eyes.

"Can I just...have a moment to talk to you at some point? I need to pick your brain for ideas. We could do so many things together. I mean, this whole thing looks like it was built to be modular. Every part interchangeable and all of it just so...absolutely out of this world. I can barely even think of how you put this together when you were..."

"Five." You said with a smile.

"Five...five years old and you...hah...is this your only one?" He asked, getting a shake of your head from you.

"I build a lot of these...it's a good way to pass the time. Plus I can never really decide how I want the ship to look or what sort of needs I want out of it. At this rate I'm going to end up filling the Hunter in no time." You said with a sigh.

"The hunter?" Olla asked as she eyed one of your orb-toys which darted away from her as she tried to grab at it, buzzing around her and ducking and weaving.

"My carrier ship, that took a bit longer to think up but it's my home away from home essentially. That one I put together five years ago." You said with a self satisfied smirk, placing your hands on your pale armoured hips.

"So you've got a battlestar up your sleeve?" Kid Win said, the reference flying so far over your head it may have impacted the moon and shot straight through, one of your eyebrows quirking.

"It's a show with killer...you probably never saw it." He said, gulping a bit and whistling through his teeth to avoid seeming awkward.

"Well, I think everyone is in here." You said as Raelamiel leaned on a wall and folded her arms.

"Hey, hopin' you've got enough bunks for us all if we're gonna go to space. Least enough for me and Tyr." She said with a finger pistol that made you flush while Arne stammered at the thought.

"Well...there's spare sleeping quarters if you need it, or cryosleep if you'd prefer. But I don't really make much use of them on account of not actually sleeping very muc-" You said before the Angel let out a melodious laugh.

"Kidding, kidding." She said as she gave the Faerie a ruffle to his hair while he poked her nose and made a "boop" sound.

Swallowing and standing straighter, you sat in your pilot's chair and let Arne sit besides you, letting the hatch close and your ship start to take off with the Sleipnir in pursuit. You sent out a quick message via the comms to the relevant authorities that you'd be taking a quick joyride and rapidly ascended out of the atmosphere.

The artificial gravity transition was so seamless not even you could notice it, and the Dormach quickly passed by the International Space Station with its crew of rather surprised looking Astronauts taking a moment to double take while they fixed up a solar panel.

"+...Houston...I want one of those.+" Your communications intercept said as you formed your helmet briefly to offer them a wave as you shot by the station, the holographic systems giving everyone gathered a crystal clear view of Earth.

Olla found it mundane enough to not peel away to look herself, Tyrius and Raelamiel had already seen it before. But Alice, Chris, and Missy piled onto the side to gaze down on the blue-green marble before, its speckles of white floating by its continents. A world that they had spent their entire life in a rather small slice of, even Alice only ever poking into other versions of it or its linked dimensions. But below it seemed tiny, its horizons so limited and the haze of its atmosphere a mere wisp before the endless black void. Even the burning glare of the sun was such a tiny portion of the sky.

"Paragon would be...huh where's the east coast of Rhode Island?" Alice said, looking down at northeastern America as the polar storm surrounded it, the ship's imaging systems dispelling the cloud cover like an illusion to let them see.

"Rhode Island doesn't have a natural east coast." Arne said, turning in his seat next to you as Vista and Missy agreed.

"Huh...little hole in the cloud around Brockton Bay, that your doing?" Kid Win asked, turning towards Tyrius who gave a small shrug.

"The Dawn needed to shine, what can I say?" he smirked.

Below, you could briefly see a major hurricane on the surface sweeping into the west coast of North America despite it not being hurricane season, and the enormous yellow lightning bolts that crashed through the clouds not looking remotely natural. With a brief slice into the planet's weather imaging systems you saw that the storm had formed very suddenly, far too quickly to be natural and certainly not in a place where a storm of its nature should have been born in. Its path was erratic, unpredictable.

But you briefly saw thermal imaging show something with three heads and vast wings at the centre paired with your distant sight giving you a sensation of unspeakable malice. That would explain why the Storm seemed to be steering itself towards population centres.


You knew how Arne would respond if he saw something like that, and you knew Arne was always quick to try and keep imagery that reminded you of...him...from you as well. You stopped the imaging system and pulled his attention away with a brief smooch to his lips, his eyes opening wider in surprise and his cheeks turning red as he seemed unsure of why this had happened, but happy that it had happened.

"Uh...thanks..." He said, blinking a bit and smiling.

You made a note though, if you had the equipment ready for it later on, you would investigate that storm whenever it appeared again. The thought of the destruction done to the cities it passed over made you sick, a quake in your stomach as you clenched your hand briefly on your armrest. To have the power to tear apart the sky only to use it to destroy. How utterly vile.

An Autobot Ark ship, fifty kilometres from end to end, lay nearby; observing the earth below in stealthed configuration out of the reach of its satellites and space stations, a silent sentinel that helped protect the planet from possible incursions. It was a large ship for a large people, its gleaming gold and orange hull invisible to human instruments but majestic to your own as Winterpyre spoke from Alice's tiara.

"I sense that the beings that provide Chris and Missy with their powers will not be able to offer them their abilities should we leave the boundaries of Earth. Please, allow me a moment to conduct these signals through my realm to extend their reach." He said; hellgreen magic writing itself into the sky and then fading into the background as a conduit was channelled through his frostflame hell.

"Now, we may proceed." he boomed as you looked at destinations. Where to?

Choice of Destination: (Of these, only the ark ship will be stayed at for more than two posts. The Ark Ship will also end the intermission and the relaxation phase if visited and you'll have to pick a mission.)

[]: Gliese 581 System: Star system that in your universe had habitable planets.
[]: Milky Way Central Black Hole: Supermassive black hole to impress the one planeters.
[]: Autobot Ark Ship: See what the autobots are doing in their primary base.
[]: Betelgeuse supernova remnants: Witness the beauty of a nebula while it's still hot.
[]: The Moon: Simple low gravity fun.
[]: Geminga: One of the nearest Pulsars to Earth.
[]: Planet IX: Impress the locals with the existence of an entire planet in their own solar system they don't know about.
[]: Write in

[X]: The Moon: Simple low gravity fun.

You looked at Luna, premier moon of Terra; or the Moon and Earth depending on who you asked. To you, it was Eah-Meb of course, but of your companions only one other spoke the language of your caretakers. It was something you'd only ever seen in pictures, and its undisturbed form was something you would never be able to see in your own reality. Unmarked by sprawling habitations or artificial atmospheres. This was Luna at her most pristine. An airless mass of craters, little gravity, a few leftover rovers and landers, some bleached white flags planted by various countries wanting to prove something, and some cold and barren resources left behind when this old rock split itself from Earth a few billion years ago.

It seemed like a lot of fun.

"I want to try the Moon. It'd be nice to have a look at it, while it's still unspoiled like this." You said, taking a look at the moon's surface through the long range scanners. About what you'd expect; there's some activity from a moon base but no parahumans are stationed there; just a few dozen people from an international program meant as a gesture of solidarity.

"It's a bit mundane don't you think? Maybe the central black hole would be, I dunno...more interesting?" Arne said, turning towards you with a small shrug to his shoulders.

"Let's try to not leave the solar system for the first go Arne...besides, at this stage in history going to the moon is something ra-"

"The moon?! God I didn't even bring a space-suit or...hey can you describe what low gravity is like, you've been on low gravity you've gotta know the sensation of it. How much do you need to adjust your gait to keep a proper movement pace? Is it nauseating or will my stomach be able to handle it? I really don't want to end up vomiting in my helme-" Chris started before Missy placed a single finger on his lips.

"Chris, breathe between sentences." She said as Arcee stepped to the edge of the cockpit, taking the seat to the other side of you, opposite to Arne.

"Well, we've got a base there if you'd like to see it. Helps keep tabs on this Earth outside of the range of most of the monitoring agencies." She said, offering a matronly smile to you and then looking back at Olla.

"I mean...it's okay as far as bases go." Olla sighed, running a hand through her blue hair.

One of Alice's demons popped out of the ether, its entry permitted by you and your ship security systems as the small impish goat skull faced demon giggled out a rapid "MOONMOONMOON!" before it was tackled by yet another one of the demons that followed, wrestling around as you had a laugh to yourself, joined by others while the demonlings squabbled over who would be the first to jump onto the moon.

"Okay, space suits I uh...can't breathe in space." Vista said with a frown.

"I can." Tyrius said, rather unhelpfully as Vista sneaked another look at him, flushed and looked away; a gesture you mimicked and felt more than a bit warm in the cheeks by when you noticed the two supernaturals waving back at you; winking and grinning. Arne was the last to repeat the gesture and tried to hide away his face.

"Well uh...I'm not...a fairy. So...well, still need help." She said with a huff.

"I could cast a spell for you to breathe. As an incarnate I think I won't need a suit though." Alice said, looking to Raelamiel for confirmation who gave her a thumbs up.

"Yeah, that's about right. Besides, how many spacesuits come in cult princess amirite?" She said, throwing up a hand that Tyrius smacked in response. Some variant on the ancient high five gesture as far as you could surmise.

Bumblebee chirped out his own input shortly afterwards, earning a nod out of Arne. "Right, extra assurance wouldn't hurt still." He said, Vista taking a look at him and receiving a bashful wave from the boy that made you smile a bit.

"So uh, Samus...what are these spacesuits like then?" Chris asked, your distant sight warning you of incoming rambling while he flicked his eyes towards you only to turn away when you looked back at him. You smiled, shrugged and then nodded and wired a neurocommand to your ship's systems that zeroed in on Vista and Kid Win.

For Chris, it was a process of directly integrating some spare Federation explorer suits you had collected in case your friends' armours ever needed replacing on the go into his own. Not really a heavy-duty combat model, but enough to get the job done if alone on some uncharted world. Fairly basic loadout of a disruptor sheathed mass driver gun, life-support systems, on board medical systems, wrist-mounted flamethrower and mini-rocket launcher, disruptor field bayonet on the arm-gun and the free hand, grapple tether, dash jets, physicality augmentation, shielding, self-regenerating armour plating, a paralyzer pistol and a cryogenic submachine gun, a loadout of grenades, and a visor suite for scanning, combat data, vehicle command, and low-light vision.

Basic stuff.

Thanks to the modularity of federation power armour and your ship's systems, integration into his suit should be seamless. Good thing too because a single basic power beam shot at anything approaching standard power would have left nothing so much as vapours to collect for his funeral. Now, even if his shields failed, he'd be able to take some hits. The explorer suit had adjusted itself to his colour preferences; his visor now being a full face system that could extend a shield like mouth guard if needed to protect his head. The top of the helmet retained his rounded style, while his smoothed pauldrons had gained some of the extensions common to federation power armour to add protection without sacrificing motion. Brilliant redhighlights were added at the fringes of important plates such as where the chestplate's primary sections met the abdominal segmentation or at the ends of the pauldrons. His right hand was covered in an arm-gun; golden in colour; with a deployable gripping stock, smooth and sleek; and thrusters on his back or boots could extend or retract as needed.

In terms of bulk, his armour had actually slimmed a bit, to allow for greater motion. and he took a time to take a look at himself as you moved your head away from what was largely a standard and routine moment before you sensed a world shaking explosion of emotion. "Whoa..." He said as flexed his fingers and let his mind get to work analysing what he was seeing up until he retracted his arm cannon and smirked at his now free hand. Vista's armour also incorporated her aesthetic preferences, but without incorporating her unpowered uniform. Two tone green and white as opposed to red, orange, and yellow. Even fitting in her skirt despite the computer's concerns about the practicality of so much dangling material; weaving it into a hard-light reinforced nanomesh mesh from the spare material it had with the extra federation explorer suits you had.

"...I feel like a power ranger." Vista said, looking at her hand as she withdrew the arm cannon while your ship approached the moon; having accelerated to realspace FTL and slowed into a carefully calculated orbit in the brief seconds they were distracted to the point that it seemed like you all had teleported; the moon looming large in the holographic displays while Earthrise dominated the other horizon, the sun's glare bright as ever.

"Alice, do you need a suit?" You asked before she shook her head.

"Maybe later, but I think my magic will be fine for now. Besides, I'm an Incarnate now. So...who needs oxygen right?" She said with a smile as you thought about it yourself. You could survive unprotected in a vacuum far longer than most. Your respiration needs were...strange as your physiology directly converted food into raw energy and drew in further ambient psychic and mystic power like most progenitors did; you still breathed out of reflex but you didn't really have to. Still, a vacuum would be painful, especially to your eyes and mouth unless you focused on your psychic aura to shield yourself, and even then that was inconvenient. But to be able to spacewalk unsuited without consequence...hrm. Best to test it later.

"Huh, it's not as luminescent up close." Vista said, looking down at the moon.

"The moon just reflects light, it doesn't emit it." Olla said, taking a look at the rock with a relatively unimpressed gaze.

"Hey, how can you be...bored of a moon landing?" Missy asked, seeing Olla's shrug and her straight faced expression.

"It's just a moon, not even a really interesting one." She said with a sigh and a shake of her head.

"Spoken like a true spacer." Alice rolled her eyes as she sighed and stared at the satellite below.

"Besides, I've been here before. Novelty wears off fast." She said.

"I think it's interesting. I've never seen it before, and even if I did; by my time it's covered in cities and atmosphere and just...completely unrecognisable as the old Moon." You responded, taking another gaze down and smiling in your newly conjured up helmet. "Maybe we'll find something new even?" You said, your computers analysing points of interest across the moon into a few destinations of import.

"Well, here's the Apollo 11 landing site." Arne said, tapping on the hologram of the lander's detached lower body near a bleached white flag stripped of colour by the unflinching gaze of the sun. He looked at the lander's lower body for a moment and shook his head. "How did they get people to agree to go on a death trap like that I'll never understand." He shuddered at the thought of trying to get to the moon on that craft via slow burning chemical rocket with a computer so primitive he struggled to wrap his head around how they fit even basic programs inside.

"You got to respect the amount of effort it took to even put people down there before tinkers were a thing. All for showboating too. Can't say I'd be like, huge on the idea of being stuck in a metal tube with two other guys for a week getting here and back though; eating meals out of a tube and drinking powdered orange juice mixed with squeeze water." Chris said, leaning in slightly into the Hologram before Arne raised a finger to indicate that he was getting inside of his personal space. "Sorry." Chris muttered.

"It's okay. I'm just...not comfortable with people looming over me." He said.

"Hrm...human moon base looks dope. Like, it looks like a shit place to live, but it looks dope." Raelamiel said as she examined the international Moon base and the astronauts who had gathered around it, huddled in the depths of a crater on the terminator point of the Moon, free from the burning gaze of Earth's star. It was a connected series of tubes and prefabbed modules, much of which were assembled on site. A landing strip was present for spaceplanes to land there when needed, with a pad for more conventional rockets.

"Looks like a Campus set up. Maybe...three hundred and fourteen personnel total?" You said, estimating based on a quick glance at the base and the people milling around on the surface. You saw an Astronaut and a Cosmonaut passing the time with a game of rock paper scissors while they waited for some machine to charge on the surface, the Cosmonaut throwing their hands into the air when they had been bested and kicking a rock idly in a way that got you to smirk with a contained laugh.

"About right. Haven't read too much about it since it's not really parahuman business. They mostly just do low gravity research there. Civvie stuff. After Scion went...partying apparently some people decided to set it up. Show everyone that we could get along. It's pretty neat even if not a lot happens there." Chris said with a shrug.

"We didn't even have moon bases in two thousand and eleven in our reality. America didn't even have manned rockets by that point." Arne said, clearly trying to make Chris feel a bit better about the technology of his era.

"...Wait...seriously?" Chris said, stunned.

"What did they us-"

"Eastern bloc rockets." Arne said as Chris put his hands on his temples.

"...Wow."

"Don't think we can drop in unannounced anyway." Vista said with a shrug.

"There's the autobot moonbase just over there too. Pyro's probably on monitoring duty." Arcee said, gesturing to a holographic representation of the cloaked autobot base, a sprawling city like complex with a large number of personnel milling about on the surface, working to expand it as reinforcements started to arrive while smaller ships not docked to the space elevator port connected to the base landed or took off all around it.. "It's one of our largest bases in the system, tons of Autobots and some Maximals there. Most of our Auxiliarymasters also live there too. It's probably why Olla isn't very impressed by the Moon. Gets mundane when you live there." She said, shrugging her wheel bearing shoulders as Olla nodded. One of many Autobot outposts.

"Honestly Sol's bodies are all kind of...not super interesting. Besides Earth you know. Earth has people. People are interesting. I can see a cryogeyser on a quintillion other planets." Olla said, a nod of sympathy coming from you. While you were fond of nature, lifeless worlds tended to bore you quickly. A volcano was a volcano was a volcano unless there was something going on, some culture's reactions to it, some fauna's adaptations to it, an ecosystem's life built around its cycles and ash clouds. When there was nothing but the Volcano well...it was just a volcano. And Luna, for its brief lived wonder in your eyes, didn't even have that.

"To be fair, we've got maybe...a fraction of one percent of the moon under Autobot outpost control? Probably other stuff on the rock we don't know about." Arcee said before Bumblebee beeped and whistled, throwing their hands in mock irritation.

"Yes Bee, I know you've explored around the Moon a bunch, but it's a decently big rock. Probably something you missed." Arcee said before Bumblebee sulked in offense and folded his arms and blurted out a complaint, laughter belting out of you and Arne followed by everyone else while Arcee touched her chestplate and gasped. "Bee I'm not trying to insult your skills, it's just a statement of fact. Come on, don't be such a protoform." She said with an exasperated sigh.

"We could do a quick sweep of the Moon, while we're here. Just make sure there's nothing dangerous. Or at least, nothing we missed. Or...nothing worth noting. Just...have a look around. Quick scan, in and out." Alice offered while the Demon in her tiara murmured his agreement.

"If there is anything worth taking note of on the Moon, a quick probe for anything that might be a threat to this Earth at least would hardly be a waste of time." Winterpyre crackled, the gem he inhabited glowing brightly as he spoke, twisting embers dancing inside of the Emerald.

You gave it a thought and focused. There was some manner of psychic signal on the moon, faint, perhaps Autobot, perhaps some other manner of friendly. But perhaps not. You were supposed to be off duty for a while and taking some time to relax after the hectic mission in Munich. But duty was duty. If there was something that needed doing, was it really right to just take time off? Especially when you were gifted with a body that did not need rest or succour. Most of your friends were fresh too, save for perhaps Alice, but...she had only been involved in part of that one mission.

"Samus, we were told to have some time to unwind. Please don't tell me we're going to look for the first sign of trouble." Arne said, frowning as he sensed your thoughts and flicking his red eyes towards you. So very Orthodox, at least compared to you. Flexible sure, but not quite the outright maverick you were. Still, it was often he who had to remind you to cool your thrusters once in a while, just as you often had to tell him it was okay to not be constantly worried about optimisation.

"We're not in peak form for a meeting engagement. Especially on an environment like the moon." Arne said, looking back towards Chris and Missy and then at you.

"Besides, it's an evasive signal. Better handled by more experienced psychics." He said, looking back down at Earth.

"But we're here now, aren't we Arne?" You said. "We can respond more quickly if there's anything to it. Get help later if there is something worth investigati-" You started before Arcee cut in.

"Samus, this is not a recon op. We're not looking for a fight." She said sternly but patiently.

"Bu-" You started before she shook her head.

"You're on R&R and you asked me to come along as your chaperone. You need to slow down." You let out a long sigh and put a hand on your cheek.

"Hey...it's the moon. We could just play around in low gravity for a bit. I've got some ball games we could try out." Tyrius said, conjuring up a sphere and spinning it on a finger and smirking. "It might not be a super efficient use of time but hey, what's the point of life without a little dicking around am I right?" Tyrius made an easy smile that contrasted to Raelamiel's devious smirk felt all the more radiant. Gods and Spirits...you diverted your eyes from the two of them. They were a whole year your senior. Was it really appropriate?

"Besides, from what I've seen of you all. Some time off to get to know each other would do just fine." He said, placing his plated hands on equally plated hips, butterfly wings lazily fluttering behind him with radiant sparkles like starlight under the night sky. It was...hard to disagree with either of them. They weren't working their supernatural charm, it's just that their smiles just made you feel like everything would be alright and this would be a good decision. Hnngh. You looked to Arne and saw him similarly nervous, squeezing a bit at his hand as he gulped.

"Well...that sounds fine...how much time would it really uh, pass? Besides, we're kind of mismatched in sports." Arne said, scratching at the back of his head.

"Hey, the top tiers can hold back a bit. It'll be good." Raelamiel said while Vista gave it some thought and muttered something about why she had to be surrounded by hot people.

"Well, I think we're stumbling onto the issue that the moon's not exactly, fun. It's just a low gravity ball of dust and rock. I was up for checking the planet out but well. I guess if you guys want to wrestle around in low Gs, be my guess." Olla said with a voice of resignation, folding her arms and looking at the surface of the moon and shaking her head.

"Yeah...and we're kind of out of communication range of home. What if my parents or the PRT call me? And uh, well, the moon is super not...life friendly. I'm not big on radiation." Vista added.

"Oh, don't worry, your armour can handle the communications with Earth easily! And your armour should screen out the cosmic radiation without any trouble. It'd be perfectly safe." You said, patting her on the shoulder to reassure her that this was all perfectly safe, getting a nod out of her.

"Well...sure...I'm just. Not sure on this whole armour or gene-mod thing." She said with a sigh.

"If it's all the same, I'm fine with just a short moonwalk and going back home. Maybe take a picture so I can say I was there." She said, looking down at the surface of the world below.

A lot of choices lay on your head, and when you looked to Bumblebee for his opinion he just gave an exaggerated shrug.

"Really?" You asked as he buzzed a bit.

"We're not arguing...just going through options." Arne said before Bee's radio crackled in with "Sounds like arguing", getting a harder look out of Arne and then a look to you. "Does it sound like we're arguing?" He asked, doubt starting to creep on his face while you rapped your fingers on your armrest.

"It's just...spirited debate. That's all." You said.

"Arguing." Bee clipped while you rolled your eyes as fast as possible.

"Well...there is another choice...I am picking up some Progenitor relics here. We'll probably need to pass a test to claim their prize though, just judging by the type of signature I'm getting." Arne said, clearing his throat and taking a look at the data schematics and narrowing his distant sight a bit onto the signal, your attention flicking over in a hurry yourself.

"Uh...well...I'm also looking at some weird technosignals on the Moon too...pretty deep...never seen anything quite like it." Chris said, looking at a few brief energy spikes.

"No prolonged combat ops. Anything more than a quick guardian test, and I am pulling us back." Arcee said, folding her arms. You sighed a bit...you kind of. Okay no, you really liked fighting. It felt so unfair to be restricted and to have to just...sit around. Fighting was fun for your friends right?


Choices

[]: Visit the Human Moonbase (Just a quick socialisation experience, most of the Astronauts and Cosmonauts are scientists and will mostly talk about research stuff with you. They're also quite busy and live a pretty regimented schedule so you won't get to speak with them for long.)
[]: Visit the Autobot Moonbase (Get introduced to more Autobots in person, get a chance to use some of the crafting system and claim some free salvage and free upgrades early.)
[]: Visit the Technological Signal (Potential plot thread, possible combat encounter, possible automatic mission start, Arcee will strongly disapprove, Bumblebee will disapprove, Arne will disapprove; will cause stress gain.)
[]: Follow the psychic signal (Potential plot thread, high likelihood of combat encounter, potential automatic mission start. Arcee will strongly disapprove, Bumblebee will strongly disapprove, Arne will disapprove; likely reprimand from Autobot command; will cause significant stress gain.)
[]: Just play some games on the Moon (Moderate increase to destress, increased social bonds with current team.)
[]: Visit the Progenitor Signal (Guaranteed Relic guardian boss fight. Moderately adds to destress, will acquire Progenitor relics after defeating relic guardian.)
[]: Head Home (Return to Brockton Bay. Specify whether you want to do a patrol, just visit the town in your civvies, visit the PRT base, chat up the Phalanx etc)
[]: Do a recon sweep, then head home. (Update on possible threats and resources on the Moon. Then specify what you want to do when you return.)
[]: Write in