Chapter 25 – New Game Plus
Dr. Kevin Parker sent out a message he had been hoping to since the whole 23-5-82 started: all clear. This could only be transmitted once exhaustive verifications took place that the 0-23-5 was indeed gone. To wit: No trace of it or its components could be found, the AURORA was closed, all space-warp transit tech had been powered down, and those responsible for sending this threat packing had been brought in.
How this came to be was a story unto itself.
"This is Rogue Two. Commander Raynor, do you copy?"
Rogue Squadron, crack StingRay pilots, whipped low over the Sahara Desert in search of any Heroes or SHARD personnel. Ordinarily they would have kept to closed channels, but given the circumstances as part of Desert Contingency they were authorized to broadcast openly.
"Queen Sylvanas, do you copy? This is Rogue Two!"
Dunes sped by.
"Captain Martin, do you copy?"
"We stand as one, united in victory!" came a static-filled burst from Hierarch Artanis.
"Nice of you to drop in" added Raynor. "Looks like our original ride got trashed."
Original ride? We're the first reinforcements that were sent!
As Rogue Two touched down, the pilot could see what Raynor spoke of: the smoking ruins of another StingRay atop Hammerstorm's rear turret.
"We…uh…didn't send that" he clarified.
"Then who did?" demanded Nova.
Only after the Heroes, all forty-seven of them, had been loaded into transports did it begin to dawn on SHARD exactly where that StingRay had come from.
"The unauthorized launch…"
They'd been so busy they'd literally ignored a breach of protocol as one of their ships sped away. "Deal with it or ignore it" said Parker. Compared to a rampaging 0-23-5, it was quite small potatoes and nobody would be punished, especially after it became clear that this "stolen" ship brought much-needed reinforcement to the battle in the desert.
Sirella Martin and survivors from her ship were loaded onto the next wave as W117 suits with cutters and saws tore into the collapsed hulk of Hammerstorm.
"No one gets left behind!"
They also retrieved the chest, as pristine as the day it had been taken into custody.
Parker then signed his most controversial order as base commander.
"I, Dr. Kevin Parker, do confer up on all personnel who served with distinction aboard Iron Chancellor at the Battle of the Sahara and made the ultimate sacrifice a full posthumous pardon within the extent of my authority. This applies to all violations of AEON and SHARD protocols, but not the laws of the outsider world over which we have no influence."
For this admittance of non-omnipotence, the "outsider world" quietly shelved charges against predecessor SPEAR and its agents (since many of them would have faced the federal death penalty it would have been pointless anyway). It accepted a restitution package that would take care of those who lost family at Anaheim "for life" with the understanding that doing so waived all future claims on the largest act of terrorism on US soil since 9/11.
The "reversed" were a medical curiosity that unfortunately bore no fruit for the moment. If what was inferred (that they'd been "flipped" in a four-dimensional direction) was true, they'd have to go back to the fourth dimension to "unflip." Given what just happened, there was considerable resistance toward the idea of opening another portal, though putting these people on permanent intravenous diets didn't sound too good either.
With a major threat neutralized, the Heroes found themselves once again "out of work" so to speak. Some of them had pre-existing engagements they returned to after the battle, such as Jaina's diplomacy or Li Li's outreach. The former became the Special Liaison between AEON and the United Nations. The latter worked as an instructor at the newly-founded Advancement Academies, a network of research-oriented schools that sought to pull the outside world in by exposing it to Functional Supernatural Phenomena in a safe, controlled environment.
Malfurion, Tyrande, and Lunara set themselves up as guardians of unspoiled natural areas. It had to be explained to the dryad afterward that while poaching was frowned-upon, it generally bore more fruit to bring said poachers in alive.
"This man's body has been flooded with so many poisons and toxins I don't even know where to begin" read an autopsy report of an unfortunate poacher caught by Lunara on her first patrol.
She had proudly led a combined group of AEON and local authorities to a pile of deceased intruders.
"They will think again before they trespass" she'd declared with great relish, only to receive aforementioned lecture. Part of the reason for all the curiosity was a spate of rumors that the Butcher demon lived under the protection of fellow Heroes far from human settlements…
Tyrande and Malfurion were thankfully less violent, though that did not stop the former from setting her owl on those who did not belong before they were rooted by the latter's vines. Still alive, of course.
Continuing the trend of "Heroic consequences," some of Sarah Kerrigan's experiments went missing. She convinced Zagara and Abathur that their new purpose was to hunt these errant zerg down, which they did after some prodding. National Geographic even wrote a begrudgingly-approving editorial regarding this action. Kerrigan herself began work on creatures that would live in hospitals, and although they were not perfect progress was made eradicating hospital-borne infections and toward better disposal of biohazardous waste.
Even AEON found itself somewhat vexed by Rosa Morales' equipment. It would take years of painstaking research (with more than one breakthrough coming from "outsider" researchers at the Advancement Academies), but a working prototype would eventually be crafted.
Sonya and Johanna worked with militaries integrating women into their combat units. Any snide comments were dealt with in a manner that made even hardened drill sergeants wince—but those responsible never opened their mouths in such ways again, and were often reported to have improved attitudes overall. Bama "Hammer" Kowalski sometimes tagged along, though her "thoroughly preposterous, impractical" vehicle never got out of the prototyping stage with outsider militaries despite its demonstrated utility.
Not all Heroes walked the same "serious" career path. Months after the Sahara dust-up, Jaina took a break from her usual to bring snow to a city denied such by shifting climates. This irritated Sylvanas, who had become a minor fashion icon and was going to be walking a runway in said city until Jaina's blizzard cancelled the whole thing.
"I suppose I'll just do archery today instead" she'd huffed. Though her skill surpassed almost all (Tyrande might argue the point), her undead-ness meant she had to learn a few things about regular, non-Heroic living beings who could not just ignore misfired arrows or snapped bowstrings to the face before she could effectively teach them.
In a case of the weird crossing with the wild, Li-Ming avoided trouble by the skin of her teeth, being assigned an outsider celebrity mentor with a checkered past and thus experience dealing with "real life." Her powers made her the "only REAL Wizard" (much to the chagrin of Harry Potter fans), putting her in great demand for everything from parties to demolitions ("Do not become a liability, Nephalem!") That in her world she'd been scorned but now found herself the center of attention was not helpful for a teenager who already had ego issues.
"To quote another character, who hasn't been made real as far as I know" said her mentor, "don't get cocky!"
The newly-incorporated Red Devils Demolition saw Diablo team up with Gazlowe, as the latter's attempt to work with computers failed spectacularly (though thankfully for the students, not explosively so). His protests aside, the goblin was better at destroying things than fixing them.
Whether there would even be a BlizzCon 2017 remained a matter of open debate as 2016 was called off out of respect for the savagery that descended upon the world in 2015. However, cosplayers did their thing whether there were cons on or not, and BlizzCon hardly represented the only entry in this category. Rumor had it that Nova Terra discreetly threw contents by entering herself, though nobody was ever able to prove it.
Blizzard Entertainment did have to hire a good number of employees after "the incident," and invited this wave of newcomers to a dinner to meet most of the Heroes. A few had scheduling conflicts, and Valla was nowhere to be found despite an unveiling of a life-size statue in her honor, replacing Nova's ("Lame!") in the main entryway. The characters were scattered among many tables. One addition to the art team couldn't quite place why, but these Heroes had been part of their dreams for the longest time, as if they'd met before…
A/N: I did not include an "end" story for a Hero if I couldn't think of something fun and original to this universe that I felt fit their character. Plus, there were 48 Heroes when this story's plot was finalized (Cho'Gall counts as one and the cast "froze" as of Li-Ming)…