8624/Scour From Existence

Scour From Existence
Date of Scene:	09 November 2021
Location:	The Mojave Desert / ????
Synopsis:	The Justice League discovered that what appeared to be a suburban nightmare hidden beyond the distortion in the Mojave crater was actually a hidden AIM facility transformed in the wake of a one-man raid by a mysterious, Scrabble-faced assailant. The team confronted the modified Adaptoid unit maintaining the environment and destroyed it, clearing the way to rescue the scientists trapped within.
Cast of Characters:	Thaal Sinestro, Diana Prince, Hal Jordan, Cassie Sandsmark, M'gann M'orzz

---

Thaal Sinestro has posed:
The Watchtower's systems classified the event as potentially threatening to one or more major population centers within an indeterminate timeframe. One moment, there were shrubs, fauna, cacti, stubborn flowers; the next, a crater leaking traces of exotic energy into the environment. In the white-hot instant between them, that same strange force split the world with the fury of an ineffable deity plucking a speck of blight from the face of its divine order.

Investigations were in order and alerts were dispatched accordingly, with members chosen via a combination of duty rotations, talentsets, and willingness/ability to pick up the proverbial phone, leading a roster of --

        * WONDER WOMAN (Special Talents: Durability; Diplomacy; Martial Expertise; Perfect Balance In Heels)

        * MISS MARTIAN (Special Talents: Telepathy; Metamorphic Biology; Martian Strength; Sitcom Expertise)

        * HAL JORDAN (Special Talents: Energy Constructs; Oan Supercomputer; Test Piloting; Space Cop)

         * THAAL SINESTRO (Special Talents: Energy Constructs; Oan Supercomputer; Anthropologist; Dodging Unnecessary Social Interactions)

-- to the edge of the crater following a Javelin ride. Within seconds of disembarking, Sinestro's ring shimmers and his eyes cut expectantly towards Hal.

"Your ring senses it, doesn't it?"

The distortion beyond the crater's rim, invisibly twisting time and space in on themselves until they formed a rigid barrier between the rest of the world and whatever's beyond it--

-- or fear and hopelessness, distant yet distinct, leaking into the world via astral channels--

-- or screams as clear as bells beyond the horizon. Screams, and prayers, and **violence**, raw and wrenching--

Power rings being what they are, options abounded; others had their own extranormal means to rely upon, of course.

"**Something** has broken the laws of physics beyond reckoning, here; **anything** attempting to cross the threshold would be reduced to atoms scattering in the wind," the alien Lantern verbalized aloud. Even as he said it, he aimed his left fist towards the rim, eyes narrowed in concentration.

After all: between the princess who embodies the power of truth and love, the Martian megamind, and two Oan power rings, creating a stable bridge through impossibly hostile terrain ought to be child's play-- and it **was**, bringing them from the shattered expanse of the Mojave through the blinding white curtain just beyond the rim.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

"I do not believe that these..."

Sinestro hestitates for a beat before going with, "... /creatures/ are particularly human," eyes flicking between one... two... three...

... six...

... twelve, easily, figures furiously pedaling shiny, metallic bikes around a cul-de-sac. It's probably got something to do with the fact that - despite adolescent bodies in a range of sizes and shapes - every one of them has a block of screaming, hot metal attached to their necks in lieu of heads. And it doesn't help, certainly, that when the League first encounted this gang of punks after... ...

...

... some stretch of time exploring street, after street, after monotonous **street** of pristine, white-fenced suburbia, they were chasing a woman in a yellow and black jumpsuit, firing wild and blind with machine gun rounds, plasma beams, micro-missiles...

"If that **helps**," the alien Lantern appends while scooping two of the punks in an enormous green hand that closes into a tight fist.

Currently, the woman is hiding behind a fence, peeking out periodically to see which way the tide is going-- and bolting for fresh cover whenever a stray salvo happens to force her out into the open.

Seconds later, smoke and metal slivers begin raining from that emerald fist.

Diana Prince has posed:
Upon arriving in the Mohave, Diana sweeps her eyes over the crater that scars the landscape, then traces her gaze along the horizon. Her long dark hair flowing around her shoulders in the dry heated air. She has sword and shield mounted on her back, with lasso at her hip, her armor gleaming in what light is present.

She hears Sinestro's words, and follows after him, also hearing the gunfire and noise from the dozen or so enemies chasing someone.

"This is a rather unsettling situation." The Princess says over the team coms as her half-wrapped hands reach for her sword, and lass respectively.

With her chosen armament, Diana sweeps down toward some of the enemies, and lashes out with her golden glowing lasso to grab the first one she comes upon, hoping to ensnare them and fling them across the ground to let the Earth pummel them in to submission before her lasso will swing through the air to prepare for another attack!

Hal Jordan has posed:
Despite his time as a Green Lantern, the extensive patrols he has made of Sector 2814 -- his sector of space -- and despite the time spent on Oa, the heart of the galaxy itself, Hal Jordan still simply loves the idea of being out in space itself. He still loves soaring amongst planets, hurtling through the void at speeds that defy imagination. It's like piloting a plane, except he's the plane. It is why he happens to be on the Watchtower when the alarm comes in. And it's why he chooses to flank the Javelin as it soars back down towards that glinting blue orb in the sky that he calls home. Look, call him a control freak, or blame his love of flying but he is not going to sit in any craft that he's not flying.

Of course they have no sooner set down then his ring goes ballistic, feeding him all sorts of information about the local anomalies -- not pleased at all and very much insistent that he should not be either. "It does. I take it that none of this is all that great," he says in that typical understated fashion. Not precisely making light of the seriousness of the problem confronting them. But not quite demonstrating the concern for which the presently deserves either.

Fortunately those power rings are pretty great equalizers to the vast majority of situations. The Oans might make some pretty dubious decisions from time to time, but given a race a few billion years and they can certainly throw together some absolutely fabulous tools, that much is for certain. Between the two Lanterns, the Martian and a virtual demi god, well, even horribly disruptive anomalies aren't likely to keep them where they need to go.

Even if where they need to go is... rather confusing. Emerging from the chaos, Hal's gaze darts about those streets and towards the figures on the strange metallic bikes. "That does not look pleasant," he says, likely referring to the fact that those same figures seem to have had their heads replaced by blocks of screaming metal. "Don't put me down for that," he adds, hand coming up as a shimmering band of green leaps from his clenched fist, stringing itself between two light staunchions on either side of one of those same streets, just in time to clothsline a pair of those riders, ripping them off those bikes rather violently.

"Two down," the Green Lantern comments, his gaze attracted by the sudden motion and throwing a protective dome of green towards the fleeing woman as those stray blasts rip apart her scant cover.

It's possible that Hal is humming the Mighty Mouse theme to himself.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Let's not forget last and definitely least....

* WONDER GIRL (Special Talents: Almost everything Diana can do, she can do worse! Popular on instagram.)

Cassie has been out working with her mentor fairly often of late, expanding her training beyond the realm of basic sidekickery to... intermediate sidekickery, or whatever one would call these Justice League outings. Are the threats bigger, the villains badder? Last time, it was some kind of huge magic ocean worm, so, as size goes, yeah, pretty large. This time, however, the superlative involved would likely invoke the strangeness of the situation. Because, as she so eloquently puts it:

"Wow, this is some next level crazy bullshit. Did we walk through a portal into some goddamn art exhibit? I think I saw these guys at the MoMA."

Yeah, really, Cassie's got nothing for any of this. She waves at one of the bike-kids, to see if there's any kind of reaction, and doesn't otherwise leap into action until after Diana has, following suit: if one lasso is good, two is... well, twice as many lassos. And when you've got that much rope, everything starts looking like a target for temporary bondage.

However, what catches her eye more is the one that's not like the other, hiding behind the fence. "Hey. Psst. Yeah you. You... you wanna tell us what's going on here?"

M'gann M'orzz has posed:
The Javelin ride is rather enjoyable for the most part, Miss Martian entertains herself looking at the window at the landscape blurring by that her Martian vision is actually able to process in great detail and marveling at the differences between Earth ships and Martian living bio-vessels.

When they near the barrier though there is a brief episode of her sinking to her knees, clutching the sides of her head as the raw assault of unbidden emotions bleeds through into her telepathy before she is able to erect a stronger barrier. Whatever is down there, it is enough to leave her briefly shaken though still she forges ahead using a combination of telepathic shielding and telekinesis to help secure the tunnel through the barrier.

"What are they?" She wonders aloud as they close in upon the strange block headed teenager aliens in the clearing. "This is like something out of a horror movie or maybe an 80's Halloween special."

Thaal Sinestro has posed:
Despite a total lack of apparent sensory organs, a couple of bike teens do swivel their heads towards Cassie's waving. And then - entirely in line with said organs having been replaced with an M134 Minigun and an M82 .50 cal rifle, respectively - they unleash a torrent of hot lead upon the younger Amazon, threatening her with a deadly pop quiz in Bullets and Bracelets!

Fortunately, there are two mystical lassos for the task of wrangling these unruly teenagers. With the brutal efficiency of a nigh-demigoddess, Wonder Woman snares gun-headed teenager after gun-headed teenager and reduces them to mangled heaps of metal and sparks, with Wonder Girl on hand to bind stragglers-- at least, when she isn't busy playing B&B, that is. Or talking to hiding women--

"Christ--!"

Jumpy hiding women. After a sharp start, the brunette braces against the emerald dome around her -- presses for a second, brows knitting in obvious curiosity -- then exhales through her teeth. "I-- look, one minute, everything was normal-- we were working. The next, this-- this fucking, this psycho..."

Smoke curls off of a portion of that Oan energy dome, courtesy of one girl's flamethrower. Another boy's crackling coil tests its resilience with waves of arcing electricity until it abruptly wrenches towards Flamethrower Girl, mid-priming another burst, courtesy of an emerald wrench from Sinestro's ring.

"... with-- hh. Hhggh-- haah, fuck, oh fuck, you're gonna think was dosing," the woman stammers through rattling chuckles. Her jaw clenches and unclenches rapidly; her gaze still flicks outwards every few seconds, checking for signs of impending doom.

Fortunately for her, the addition of the Justice League and their near-immediate whittling of the bike gang's forces has shifted their adolescent threat matrices away the screaming, terrified adult to the heroic quintet, buying her a little breathing room. With Miss Martian covering the group's flank as they engage the enemy, several of the remaining bike teens swivel their heads - a plasma cannon, an RPG-7, and another M134 - and then their bikes towards her, weapons blazing as they race to cut her off from joining the battle in full.

"... but one minute, I'm working," the woman repeats. "The next, this fucking psycho with letters -- like, Scrabble tiles -- where his eyes should be, he GRABS me, throws me against a wall; I go out. Next thing I know, I'm in a fucking, in a retro diner, being woken up by bells and gunfire in the distance, and then..."

The woman gestures broadly at the unfolding carnage.

Diana Prince has posed:
Another biker cube head is thrown in to the wild side of the Mohave, as Diana pulls back on the golden lasso, bringing it back to her body where it twirls around herself. Another of the crazed bikemen tries to run her down from behind, his tires sending dirt up in to the air as he races at her headlong!

Diana leaps up in to the air, spreading her legs wide as she lets the biker race right underneath her. She lowers her lasso down to wrap it around his neck, and pull him from the bike, as she comes back down to Earth to plant her armored boots on to the ground once more! The bike goes driving off wildly, as Wonder Woman just rips the crazy rider down to the ground, kneeling down beside him on her right knee. She stares down at his 'face' and then just slams her fist against it to attempt to knock this one out too.

Diana stands up then and begins to run toward where Cassie and this woman are, she hears the last of what the lady exclaims and comes to a halted stop to sweep her eyes around for what this woman just described, or whom.
"Are there others?" Diana asks. "Lead us to others in danger, if you can." The Princess urges.

Hal Jordan has posed:
It is not exactly effortless, holding that green glowing dome intact when it is under assault by fire and lightning. At the same time his force shields handle cosmic radiation and solar flares so it's not like that formidable will that Hal Jordan boasts is pressed to his limits. Still, having it put to a stop by his fellow Green Lantern is enough that he offers a nod to the alien before furrowing his brow, listening to the frightened woman's near-babble, trying to sort out just what's happening here.

"Scrabble letters for eyes? That sounds pretty disturbing," he says with a nod of his head. "This is why I like my rogue's gallery better. I mean, Hammond just has a really big head and some mental powers. You can't really get more self evident then a villain named Black Hand. None of tham have letter tiles for eyes," he muses oh so helpfully, though even while doing this he does reshape that half-dome around their bystander source of information, that green glow shrinking in on her until it surrounds her more like a glowing green bodysuit of armor.

"You're be safe in that. If you can just point the way like she asked," Hal says, jerking his head in the direction of Wonder Womanm his attention already starting to turn back to the strange, cycle-riding threats, a glowing freight train suddenly manifesting from his ring, careening down the street to scatter the oncoming rush from one of those groups.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Cassie, indeed, falls back on that well-established mainstay of the Wonder brand: under a hail of gunfire, her arms snap up into a defensive posture and then subsequently blur into a rapid sequence of motions that surpasses 'simple' (it is not simple!) Amazon training and continues on into the realm of the superhuman. The individual impacts are only really obvious via the multitude of sparks and flashes where metal meets... well, more indestructible metal, but it seems like she's getting it done. Diana probably does it more gracefully (and with less swearing) but... what are you gonna do?! More, she doesn't just sit there taking fire. The pure volume of something like a minigun would be very challenging, and so she keeps moving, racing ahead of that hail of fire as much as she can, fending off what she can't, and taking more purposeful opportunity to block the larger caliber shots.

The fact that they're shooting at her means she's also not shy about shooting back. Well, technically, it's still them doing the shooting, and she's just returning the favor. Stop hitting yourself! This is not always the most accurate, but it creates a bit of a suppressive counter-fire, at the very least, while she tries to get some breathing room from under all that eye-gun fire, before finally getting one in the lasso and promptly swinging it around at it's friend. They both get an electrical zot at the end, for good measure!

(Its her one special thing! Some day, she and Diana will fight something that's weak to lightning, and she will TOTALLY WIN THE DAY!)

All of this does kind of interrupt her conversational efforts, though as soon as she's out from under the worst of it, she casts a quick look to verify Diana's position, before all of them are finally able to group up a little, closer to the dome.

"OK none of what you said makes any more sense than the rest of this," she admits, "but that's OK. We're the good guys. We'll- well, at least we'll mess up these weird blockhead nerds and then we can figure out what the hell all of this is, yeah?"

After saying this, she scans around again, only to note a few of them going for Miss Martian with what look like much more serious weaponry. "Oh shit! MM, on your right!"

M'gann M'orzz has posed:
Fire is NOT okay! Miss Martian recoils away from the attacks by the flame thrower as it bathes swaths of the green lantern energy shield in fire. "Can someone deal with that? Preeetty please? Cassie can we trade?!" She calls out to her fellow outsider. "I'm much better with bullets than," She gestures broadly at the fire and the plasma weapons. "all of that!"

That is of course when Cassie's well timed warning reaches her. With telepathy in barrier mode blocked out the horrible horrible emotional feedback of this place, she is far more easily snuck up on right now than she otherwise might be. "Okay! Okay! I got this!" The RPG-7 is stopped with a wave of her hand and a barrage of telekinetic force. Even the Mini-gun isn't too much of an issue as her body phases through the onslaught. It's that's plasma rifle though. It's not just fire it's shooting, it's SUPER fire and even with all of her defenses still manages to vaporize a chunk of her shoulder. "Ow ow ow! Not cool!" She screams before locking glowing eyes on the weapon and swooping down to fire a blast of superheated red Martian laser vision at it.

Thaal Sinestro has posed:
Just as a total lack of eyes didn't prevent them from reacting to being waved at, the total lack of a face does nothing to prevent one of the bicyclists from slumping into unconsciousness after Wonder Woman's fist smashes through the barrel of his .50 cal.

"That's..."

The jumpsuited woman glances from Diana to the cul-de-sac, to the street feeding it after the Princess addresses her. Every house ringing the cul-de-sac and lining the street has a single story, a perfectly manicured lawn, a car in the driveway; some have tire swings hanging from the tall, full trees in their lawns, others have basketball hoops and backboards fastened above their garages, and others still have great, white satellite dishes fixed to their roofs. Every curtain's drawn; every door, shut. The homes are all silent, but sometimes silhouettes shift within.

Sometimes, the silhouettes are human.

Sometimes, the silhouettes seem on the verge of slipping long, slender protrusions through the curtains before snapping out of sight.

Those dishes, those hoops, those trees, those cars -- even the perfectly spaced and painted white picket fences ringing each home cast shadows that stretch and twist across asphault, wrenching from the emerald light of Hal and Sinestro's auras now and again. Before the League happened across the woman and her pursuers, they spent a spell trekking through antiseptic suburban perfection set beneath endless twilight on a loop, but as the last of the Gunhead Gang falls, a perceptive eye might notice that the way they came now leads -- eventually -- towards an intersection in the distance.

"... ... ... ... gonna be complicated..." the woman murmurs, having opted to take full advantage of her suddenly rising odds of survival to grab a phone from her belt and start swiping. "... oh." One more beat, then she squints up at Diana.

"I have a signal," she exhales, bemused-- and then it's right back to swiping. "I don't know what any of this is," she continues. "I don't know where we are, but the network's still running, so figure that out-- anyway."

The woman clears her throat.

A train rumbles through the cul-de-sac, bearing towards Miss Martian's attackers, practically flattening one of them after her head's captured in Miss Martian's telekinetic grasp, and sending Minigun Head into one of those trees. Martian vision meets the third, melting a red-hot line from the crown of his energy cell down through his neck and sternum, leaving him slagged and smoking on the ground. Add in the bikers struck down by their own heavy weapons fire courtesy of Wonder Girl's bullets, and the cul-de-sac is silent, save for figuring out what the hell all of this and how to deal with it.

"I don't have a map, but but we actually have an app for this: it negotiates the physical distance between the user's device and a major node across spatial anomalies, just in case... ... just in case. The only ones responding right now are the data racks and the security room... which means that anyone else who's still alive right now is already in, or headed towards one of those places, so: take your pick." Between the conspicuous pause amidst her explanation and the way she tenses ever so slightly before wrapping it all up with a choice for Wonder Woman and the League, it's clear enough that she's not wholly comfortable with her position here, but--

"Also," she quietly adds without quite meeting the princess' gaze a beat later, "it's Kyra; thank you for saving my ass from those little monsters."

Not so uncomfortable as to snap at helping hands.

"If this place's systems are somehow intact through all of this," Sinestro notes, "then mine and Jordan's rings ought to be capable of gathering data about what transpired here. We will likely need physical access, however; trying to make sense of whatever passes for an information network here would waste precious time."

Thaal Sinestro has posed:
The prospect earns a flinch from Kyra, but she doesn't back down from the offer: wherever the League wants to go hunting for her coworkers first, she's willing to lead.

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana starts to move in a perimeter around the woman, as she watches over it all. Her eyes go back to where Cassie and M&M are, observing their condition, but as the woman's story starts to unfold, Diana takes her eyes off of them and returns them to her. She nods once at the thank you. "It is what we do." She replies quietly before she looks up to the well manicured homes, an eerie Nuclear Testing Site rolling through the Princess' body as she eyes the houses.

Her stare returns to the woman then when the choices are laid out, and it leaves Diana looking up to Hal. "Split up?" She asks the man. "Take one of the locations, and I will go after the other." She says, glancing to Cassie again.

"We should make haste though, no time to waste, for whatever all of this is..."

Hal Jordan has posed:
"You had contingency plans for this sort of thing?" Hal asks, eyes narrowed just a little behind that mask. Clearly there is a lot going on here that they don't know about yet and while he might not have the obsessive need to know everything about everyone and everything that some Leaguers suffer from, it's hard for even him to give this situation a pass.

Still, now is probably not the time for an interrogation. There are certainly more pressing matters to attend to in this moment and the military man in Hal certainly can prioritize. "Under the circumstances that is probably for the best. Provided he's willing Sinestro should probably go with you," he says thoughtfully. Not that Diana likely needs the help on a threat basis, but a power ring is so much more then just an incredibly powerful weapon.

Earth's Green Lantern does glance over towards Miss MArtian consideringly. "It would help a lot if you can do J'onn's trick and keep us in telepathic contact. There might be signal interference on our JLA band and while the rings will probably let the two groups stay in contact that telepathic link he does would just be better," he asserts.

Finally he turns towards Kyra, lifting his ring. "Don't worry, I'm just going to scan your device. My collegue," he begins, gesturing towards Sinestro, "Is quite correct in that your device will make things easier, but this will give the ring some time to start figuring out a bypass. Since only one of the groups is going to take you along with them," he says with a reassuring smile. "So. Shall we make it interesting? The team that doesn't fix this first has monitor duty next week?" he suggests. "Oh, and I call dibs on Security."

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
The fighting has come to a close, and so Cassie's attention has turned fully to their only clue in all of this, this woman. She has a question. Well, it's part observation, part disbelief, with an implied request for elaboration:

"Holup. You have an app for THIS?" And Cassie emphasizes that THIS refers to 'bullshit bonkers reality suburban wasteland that we are currently inhabiting,' indicated by a sweeping gesture of her hand.

"Like, this specific situation. Being trapped in a weirdo alternate dimension full of weapon toting blockhead suburbanites? I feel like, somehow, we skipped over something here. Who or what or where do you work that this is a frequent enough occurence that you have developed an app for it. Or..." She looks around, back behind her and between the others, a bit of a 'tell me I am not the crazy one, right?' expression on her face, gesturing vaguely for support. Hal seems on the same page, though! "Did I miss something here? Tell me I missed something here. Also."

And now Cassie takes out HER phone, because if they're working... well, maybe she can get some cool pictures?

"I mean, like, if you're some kind of secret government whatever and your place was doing experiments that went wrong and caused this, it's cool, you can tell us, we're not gonna be mad. You'd be surprised how much that kinda thing happens. But I feel like there is a part of the story we're missing here."

And then finally, to Diana: "Wait, isn't that the thing the teenagers always say in the movie before they all get hacked to pieces?" She sighs, but has no input. She's junior. She goes where she's told!

M'gann M'orzz has posed:
M'gann blinks at the sudden arrival of the green train. "Let it not be said there is never an MTA train when you need one." She turns smiling back at the Lantern.

The damage to M'gann's shoulder thankfully doesn't last long. Martian regeneration being what it is, the tissue bubbles and burbles and seems to reform a perfectly working shoulder, uniform and all after a few minutes. Though she does still rub it like someone punched her there really hard.

"Yes, yeah, I can try and do that." There is a bit of hesitancy, after that horrible psychic interference earlier it is an open question whether she can network them all while keeping it out or if she'll just open them all up to the brutal psychic horrors of the place. Focusing, she begins to reach her mind out to the assembled members of the Justice League, though not their native guide, not yet, attempting to link them all in a telepathic network as requested.

"Cassie has a point." M'gann agrees floating down next to her friend. "I don't even have an App for this and I'm from /Mars/."

Thaal Sinestro has posed:
"Not THIS, specifically," Kyra protests after an exasperated sigh, "not--"

Standing, she gives another broad handwave.

"Who the hell could possibly plan for this? But this KIND of thing...?" Her eyes cut towards Hal for a moment before returning to Cassie as she confirms: "We do a lot of work on the bleeding edge of known physics; sometimes, things break, and shit gets weird. Not 'Rockwell In A K-Hole' weird, but pretty weird. It's -- actually -- pretty interesting on the back-end, because it required a whole new--"

Kyra's eyes cut back to Hal-- right towards the ring, this time, lingering for just a second before making it up to his eyes. She doesn't just not offer her phone, her initial instinct is to draw it a couple inches closer to herself, at the prospect of scanning it. Cassie's phone is as good as dead here: no cell signals, and the only networks in range are locked down tight-- which probably has something to do with the necessity of playing ball and her wariness, both. Cassie even gives Kyra an out as the woman's eyes bounce from Lantern to Amazon, but--

"I'minAIM," tumbles out instead of the expected confession.

"I'm in AIM, this is an AIM facility-- I don't know WHO Tile Eyes, Comb Mouth-- whoever that psycho is, WHAT his deal was," Kyra hastily explains, "and, I will add, we weren't DOING any crimes... but you should probably know NOW."

Before they find out for themselves.

"Just get my friends out of here," she quietly adds, offering the phone out for emerald scans as her eyes shift from the League's. "Get ME out of here; this placing fucking sucks."

And SO:

With AIM scientist KYRA leading the way and/or in custody, WONDER WOMAN, WONDER GIRL, and THAAL SINESTRO managed to walk and/or fly through the streets with surprising ease, given... everything. Within a few seemingly endless blocks, cracked perfection gives way to the sleepy streets of a nice, clean, safe city somewhere, anywhere in America. Thanks to the APP, they're able to negotiate a series of turns and cuts down roads and through alleys, leading them -- eventually -- to the news desk of a big, squat building with an enormous red '3' fixed to the roof.

The good news: there ARE survivors in the building, clustered and hiding in the news room; a couple even have shiny, chrome science guns at the ready, and - unlike Kyra - most are wearing the glass-paneled helmets that give people in their particular field their distinctive profiles.

MEANWHILE:

Thanks to the data from Kyra's phone, HAL JORDAN and MISS MARTIAN are...

... well.

Even with a clone of an authenticated device, this is a complicated operation: the network's designed to redirect unwanted users into honeypots meant to fool intruders into thinking that they've hit paydirt, and the traps run several layers deep. As the ring works on decrypting Kyra's data, it trips through several of these holes, threatening to lead the space cop and the alien on a wild chase through the city each time before it alerts its wielder to the problem.

Miss Martian finds smoother astral currents to direct, now that they're on this side of the distortion. Those negative emotions are still out there, courtesy of trapped and terrified scientists; they aren't compressed into an oppressive knot here, though, allowing her to maintain communications with ease. Better still: functional telepathy provides an opportunity to coordinate with and perhaps even accelerate Hal's navigation efforts, giving them two fronts on which to navigate these streets.

Which is a boon--

Thaal Sinestro has posed:
BACK AT THE NEWS ROOM:

The bad news: Every screen in the room is tuned to a middle-aged man with a dark goatee, reddish hair, and glasses. This would not be bad news, if not for the fact that he's in midway through a pitch:

"... told wonders in the world to come. In the new world, you'll never want for anything; certainly not something so petty, so soft, so fragile as a face. Give your face to me..."

NAVIGATING THE WEIRD-ASS STREETS:

"... and be released from the torment of static existence."

-- because a middle-aged man with a dark goatee, reddish hair, and glasses stands on a stage in the town square, making a pitch to a camera. This would not be an issue worthy of a White Martian and a Green Lantern's attention, if not for the writhing bundle of fleshing snaking from a slit in the back of his olive green suit all the way up into the sky-- and beyond.

Weird fact: even in person, his voice sounds like it's being filtered through electrical distortion and layered with itself, producing a static echo.

NEWS ROOM:

"Curious: YOU don't belong here."

Recognition's promptly followed by static. One by one, the screens then begin tuning to scenes of tragedy -- war, riots, violent police crackdowns, impoverished souls suffering en masse -- from across the world, while the whole room rumbles. Ceiling tiles fall away to reveal more screens, more pain; the floor crumbles, leaving screens underfoot; walls drop away, and through it all, the room's geometry warps and buckles, that vast array of screens gradually coalescing until it has formed a dense knot of wires, glass, and metal shaped vaguely like a tree, if tree limbs were tipped with a vast array of sharp weapons, sparking wires, and screens projecting waves of coalesced, weaponized gloom through their environment.

If trees' constituent wires bunched and flexed like muscle-- if they wrapped themselves into fists to through dozens of punches at the Women of Wonder and their Space Cop companion, forcing the latter to immediately adopt a defensive posture behind an emerald disk. After a couple seconds of pummeling, green domes begin manifesting around pockets of the room to try and spread cover to as many of the scientists as he can manage without losing focus.

THEM STREETS:

As he cants his head through that moment of curious recognition, the speaker's suit bursts open, unleashing a veritable thicket of fleshy protrustions from the infinitely writhing depths of his being eager to seize and crush Hal. Collectively, they're strong enough to test the Lantern's will -- and the integrity of his force field -- if they're able to get ahold of him, and their knotted surfaces are surprisingly durable-- if not impervious, especially before the greatest weapon in the universe.

Miss Martian has heat to contend with on the other hand, rapidly building somewhere beneath endless coils-- licking beyond them in blistering tongues. Threatening to leap free and consume her-- or, perhaps worse, seize her and pull her into a forever union. Leaking through writhing gaps, snaking along every limb, every thread of his suit; across the stage and the grass surrounding it; through the air, setting fire to every molecule...

Even for one of her people, Miss Martian is a telepath with few peers, and the thing in the olive suit -- whatever it is -- means to challenge her superiority with an alpha strike aimed directly at her fear centers.

Hal Jordan has posed:
Oh Kyra. This could have been the start of a beautiful friendship. If only you weren't an evil scientist. Ah well.

"See? Nothing good ever comes from science," Hal murmurs though the corners of his lips twitch upward ever so slightly. It shouldn't come as a surprise that this is all A.I.M.'s doing. This sort of thing seems right up their alley. In some ways it is even reassuring that this isn't some alien or extra-dimensional invasion or the like. That could get really messy -- not that it isn't of course. And in fairness Hal probably shouldn't underestimate the mess that humans can get up to. This is a fairly good example of that.

With their parting, Hal does make the ring form a glowing green version of Kyra's phone, complete with that special App. Is it necessary? Probably not. But who wants to go through life just doing what's necessary. Despite the extra expediture of energy however it doesn't seem to give any additional functionality and the Green Lantern furrows his brow and occasionally smakes the phone construct on the side as the ring still seems to have some issues making the data flow as quickly as would be nice. And everyone knows hitting electronic devices make them work better. Even conjured ones. "This way. I think," he offers up to Miss Martian.

The glowing green phone does do one other thing, the flashing display showing the energy charge left in his ring instead of just mentally letting him know. And he has burned through quite a bit. Still, he glances thoughtfully towards his companion before a faint green glow surrounds her. "Just in case," he says quietly.

Which is probably a good thing, because the effort of scanning Kyra's phone finally pays off. In an extremely disturbing way. Coming upon the man with that fleshy appendage trailing off into the eternal sky Hal makes a face. "I don't suppose you can, you know," he says to his green companion, making a gesture. "Just sorta put him to sleep or something?"

Maybe she can, maybe she can't. Maybe the 'man' heard him, or maybe the defensive reaction is just instinctive. Either way, Hal suddenly has a whole lot more to worry about as a tsunami of fleshy appendages shoots out towards him. "Ugh, tentacles again. What the hell is up with that?" he gripes as he launches forward, trying to race out range.

Power levels at thirty one percent, the cell phone screen flashes before the Green Lantern dismisses it to conserve power. He races onwards even as he feels that heat begin to assualt his Martian companion, sapping away more energy as he tries to keep those shields in place.

Then the first of those tentacles manages to snare his foot. Power levels at twenty-eight percent, the ring mentally reports to him. Furrowing his brow again, Hal focuses on bolstering those shields, focuses on trying to pull free. But more and more of those appendages begin to wrap around him, his progress slowed to a crawl.

Power levels at sixteen percent, the little alarm chimes inside his head. The green glow around him flickers, the sight of him being obscured as more and more of those grotesque tentacles pile ontop of that wavering force field.

Lifting one hand with some difficulty as that wriggling, writhing mass seeks to bury him, Hal grits his teeth as a narrow beam of energy lances out, seeking to slice through that fleshy appendage connecting the figure and the infinite sky above.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"Oh, those guys. The kinda HIVE-looking dudes, except, not, right? Weird how many villains are into bees. Isn't that weird? It's weird, I think. Bee cosplay. But yeah, they're totally badguys right? So are you a badguy?" Rude, Cassie! But also, fair. "Or were you just, like, tricked into servitude by that giant-head doofus. Not yours," she quickly asides to Hal, "the other one. ROBLOX? No that's a game. MORLOCKS? Uh. Well whatever. I totally electrocuted him once." It's true! Cassie may be young, but she has lived a life of many adventures! And one of these involved pulling a huge metal doodad down on MODOK's head and then giving him a jolt of the old lasso-taser.

Anyway. As she's blabbering, Cassie is finger jabbing at her phone with annoyance. Lame.

"So yeah, not cool!" She removes her finger from her phone screen, and wags it at Kyra instead. "But I totally get your outfit, now! You don't seriously have a bee fetish, right? It's just, like, the company uniform?" Focus. "But yeah, obviously we'll help you. Because WE don't work for a sinister corporation of evil scientists. We're good guys. And you should really look into other career options by the way."

Aside from this moralizing advice, however, Cassie is content to travel the strange suburban wasteland with their new traveling companion.

Later, at the news room:

"See? Bee fetishes." And laser guns, or whatever. And those are the people they're SAVING.

The 'worse' follows, and the world goes all weird and bend-y / off kilter, but at least on that account, well, Cassie flies as well as anyone. So she just kind of floats in the middle as the space goes all askew, lifting away from the viewscreens under foot. As for the giant, uh, electro-tree? Well, really, Wonder Girl is not a subtle fighter, when it all boils down to it. Her options are limited. And most of them are different varieties of smashing. So that's what she does, or at least, attempts, flying forward with a Themysciran war cry... only to be caught amidst the sudden storm of eletric-punching, swerving and dodging multiple blows before one finally connects, sending her careening back to smash through one of the screens, disrupting whatever image of woe and causing an explosion of electric sparks.

See? She smashed something!

For a few moments, she seems out of the fight, yet soon re-emerges, bearing a variety of slashes and cuts, to both her rather mundane costume and the flesh beneath. And beyond that, she looks mad.

See, this is one of those few Wonder-differences: peace and love? Not Cassie's thing so much. In the back of her head, a voice actually laughs at the images on the screen, even as she slowly, deliberately coils the lasso around her fist and forearm.

There's a single last glance to Diana, and in it, perhaps a brief unspoken moment of Themysciran battle-planning that will set their paired course... And then Cassie launches from her landing place, blitzing at full speed. As she flies, there's a peel of thunder in the backround, audible across whatever strange boundries they may have crossed, and the lasso alights with living lightning. The fists come for her, but she's ready, blocking one with an armored offhand, glass shattering against Themysciran steel and then striking at the next with her makeshift gauntlet. One after another, she batters through them, smashing through glass and wire, a lightshow of electric sparks marking her passage toward the center of the thing, where she aims one last punch.

M'gann M'orzz has posed:
Fire and the Martian Mind, it is a primal connection that stretches back to the deepest depths of racial memory when Green and White were split from The Burning for the threat they might one day pose to the cosmos. That creeping dread, the rising fear, the heat licking at seemingly every cell, every atom of her Martian being, M'gann screams falling to the ground. It is a primal guttural thing as the terror takes her.

And yet as the psychic attack probes deeper, as this entity's psionic alpha strike reaches for her core, it touches something. It touches something buried deep, a side of herself M'gann normally keeps locked away for it too terrifies, terrifies her more even than fire.

M'gann's eyes blaze a brilliant crimson as the psionic attack stirs the long surpressed darker side of her White Martian mind, the ugly side of her that she never wants anyone to see. Under this onslaught, completely overwhelmed, she comes face to face with herself.

Deep within the innermost recesses of her being, a conversation plays out:

<<Always the goody goody M'gann, now look at you burn.>>

<<Go away, I don't need you.>>

<<Oh, I think you do. It's obvious you're losing. You're going to burn.>>

<<No!>>

<<Come on, let me help.>>

<<I'd rather...>>

<<You'd rather what? Die? Let all your friends perish, too? Come on M'gann, just a little.>>

There is an internal scream as the burning fear continues to consume her.

<<Last chance.>>

<<Fine!>>

M'gann's eyes flare ever brighter crimson, almost like fire themselves, as psychic energy erupts from her and goes flooding down the link, as she rises into the air once more to hover menacingly over the Tentacle Salesman. It isn't the happy peaceful friendly emotions that those who know her are used to, it is Anger, Rage, and a Desire for Violence as the scream turns to one of aggression with her full White Martian mind behind it trying to push through the fire and turn the tables on the Tentacle Salesman.

"All of this FEAR! I think it would look better in you!" The raw visceral emotion is gathered, channeled, and flung back at the source, amplified by the full unrestrained power of her incredible Martian mind. "I wonder, do you fear THE BURNING?!"

'Thaal Sinestro has posed:
THEN:

"Hey, WE didn't do this, the animal that stormed in here did--"

Before her protests at Hal run too far, Kyra's beset by an inquisitive salvo from Cassie, prompting a soft groan and huff. "I-- hh--"

"-- yes; yyyes? No-- No! No, absolutely-- no. No. No! His name is MODOK..."

... and Cassie got to hear all about why he's the worst thing that ever happened to disruptive anti-establishment scientific research/profiteering. Surprisingly or not, a lot of it has to do with patents, and MODOK's belief in enforcing them internally by way of death ray.

NOW:

With Cassie locked onto punching her way into the television monster's heart, Sinestro focuses all of his attention on defense. It may look like kneeling on the ground with his head bowed and tears creeping down his cheeks, but the ring on his left hand's blazing and weapon after weapon's bouncing from the flickering green shells around he and the scientists. This, perhaps, is simply what peak ring performance looks like.

With each blow, the Amazon works her way ever deeper into the tangled mess of wires and glass, showering her in sparks-- and with every blow, the construct flails at Cassie with limbs that lose more and more of their will to fight until one final bolt of lightning meets divine musculature. The resultant explosion sprays the newsroom with shrapnel and electricity for the Princess and the alien Lantern to intercept.

As for the human Lantern, he has managed to slip a pencil beam of Oan energy through the coiling limbs threatening to crush him, should they manage to crush the field around him. Sheer determination sears past dense, ash-coloured musculature, lashing at the olive monstrosity's skybound cord like an emerald whip. It meets resistance, flaring brightly for a beat before its intensity steadies against the tentacle in a clash of willpower versus...

Versus...

Versus a mind suddenly confronted with a terrible reality, occupying an undulating quandary of a body. All of this FEAR, gathered from an artificial city presently peopled by very real science ~criminals, rendered into its raw elemental form by the terrible dynamo of a Martian mind unleashed without ancestral fetters-- wielded by a woman who tries so, so hard to be so, so good giving her shadow a taste of daylight. In an instant, the monster knows fear -- not theirs, but his.

Its.

What was a devilish, confident grin is now frozen in a shocked circle. In the seconds that follow, Hal's beam pushes -- slowly, but steadily -- through the tether until it snaps, flopping madly all the way through its fall.

"Critical error," it intones, its voice now fully digitized-- for, despite the lie it's cloaked itself in so thoroughly as to fashion skin for itself...

"Syzzz-- *krk*-- lure. Probe-- *krzz*-- locate a dock-- *kzz*-- within acceptable range. Probe-- *krrrzz*-- tting... down..."

... it's nothing more than AIM Adaptoid tech, uplifted well beyond its origins. Sparks fly from the umbilical cable as its hits the ground, fully divested of its organic coat; ditto the cables sloughing from Hal's body, running all the way into the deep green humanoid chassis of the unit itself.

Thaal Sinestro has posed:
As the Adaptoid's organic shell crumbles into pixelated dust, the streets warp underfoot for several seconds before beginning to settle-- into ruined metal and tortured desert, some of which is spotted with blood. The metal intersects impossibly with the earth in numerous places.

Similarly, the news room and the corpse of the television creature give way to toppled server racks, shattered monitors... and a lights still flickering with life, here and there.

Leading the scientists to safety is as simple as flying, now. Figuring out what to do with them, on the other hand, might take a little more care.