oneredneckgoddess: She was ten when that happened, but between the heritages of being half-thanagarian, and the powers from the ring, she's much stronger than she should be. And I made a small mistake in that. Lantern was supposed to be dead then. Alfred has more of his mother in him, though he's still really smart. Aisha is twenty nine. Ace and Rebecca are twenty-five. Alfred and Songbird are twenty-eight, and so is Annia, and J'nol is the oldest, at fifty.
The surface of the water was smooth as Ace slid across it. He wasn't moving nearly as fast as he could, which was nearly supersonic. Well past if he used magic to fuel his flight. As it was, he wanted no wake. The water over head didn't bother him, because he could dry out without challenge. The water below was a bit thick for his taste, though he could give himself gills, he didn't want to try it, not this close to an enemy fortress. Landing on the false island was impossible. The walls extended to the very edge of it's steel structure, an sentinels patrolled it. Ace smiled. This was almost too easy. Body temperature was easy enough to hide, and his image? No problem. Simple light bending. The rays passed around him without interruption, though the slight distortion was dead give away to a thinking being. As the robots weren't, he sailed past them, and dropped into the middle of the courtyard. A hundred men stood in the middle of the courtyard, all held in some manner by a sentinel. Ace recognized the man they had captured earlier that day, still held by the same sentinel. He moved weakly in the robot's arms, still moaning in pain. Ace slid through the mass of robots, and through the open archway. Inside the building, were not cells as he had expected, but instead slots in the wall. One seemed to be repairing a broken leg on a young woman. She was wearing no clothes, and was connected to several tubes to take care of her needs, as well as wearing a helmet. Ace didn't need to guess the use of that helmet.
This place wasn't so much a prison, as it was a reprogramming facility. Ace slipped further down the hallways, counting the numbers of slots. It was as he landed at the end of one row, that he discovered something that anywhere, and anywhen else in time or space would have been interesting. Bending light? It didn't work on infrared beams. The entire facility lit up like a roman candle, lights blaring. Dimly as he stumbled for the door, Ace could hear people shouting. As he came into the front courtyard, the closest dozen sentinels turned towards him, raising gun arms. Gunfire pinged over his head, as he dove for the ground, leaving his after image, and heat signature behind him. The sentinels burst into full fire, cutting apart the human guards approaching the doorway. A command rang out, and the robots swung around, gunfire pinging off of each other, and ripping through the now dying prisoners, and some of it catching Ace along the right arm. He swore as blood poured from the wounds. The robot's spun around taking aim on his voice. Still swearing, Ace exploded upwards in a fast decaying trajectory, that carried him just past the wall, and into ocean, where the bullets bounced off, except for a few that caught his left leg. Gills sprouted from his neck, and he raced along under water. He could feel the launch of the robotic sharks, and saw the searchlights over head. One thing to do.
The air lit up with lightning as he broke from the water. Explosions burst from the two sentinels hit by the electrical energy. Ace poured magic out behind him, leaving a long trail which the sentinels picked up as if it were blood to hunting hounds. With a burst of energy Ace lit the energy into flames, annihilating the last of the robots, as he reached shore. As he did so, the two sharks from the water burst into the air, and began to come after him, flying along without losing stride. Ace swore again, something he suddenly found himself doing a lot of, and unleashed jets of flame behind him. The sharks dodged side to side to avoid the blasts. Ace pulled up racing skywards, pushing past Mach, then cut around, and reversed direction. He knew he was going to pay for it later, but a little pain was worth his life. He slammed downwards, so fast that he broke Mach 2, and the sharks impacted his shockwave in mid turn, shattered in a single fatal blow.
Shuddering in pain, Ace turned and headed back to the penthouse.
Annia and Rebecca had a slightly less trying ordeal, as they slipped onto a roof near the Death Knight facility. It was well guarded, both by men and machines and neither of them was really in a mood to pick a fight with the security.
"I can maintain this only for about ten minutes, but you shouldn't have a problem with that, should you?" Rebecca smiled. Annia nodded.
"No big deal." Annia replied. "I have to ask you a question, and I know you aren't going to like it."
"What?" Rebecca asked, figuring that she wanted to know why she had voted against Aisha. She didn't expect Annia to pull the knife from the backpack she was still wearing.
"Why are you using this?" Annia asked, holding it out of Rebecca's reach. Rebecca lunged for it, but Annia was as could be expected, too fast.
"Give it back, it's mine!" Rebecca shouted, lunging again. Annia twisted around, pulling Rebecca over onto her back. In the next instant Annia was on her best friends chest, a knee holding the other down, and the knife at the others throat.
"Answer my question." Annia hissed.
"Get off of me." Rebecca snarled. She started to move, but the first touch of the knife blade froze her. "What does it matter to you?"
"I grew up with you. I want to know." Annia replied utterly calm.
"Because it's my fault." Rebecca replied. Annia said nothing, waiting for elaboration. "I'm the reason my father is dead. I didn't stay out of it when I told. I tried to help. He... he was distracted by me, and he died." Tears were forming in Rebecca's eyes. "I don't deserve to be along. I'm just going to mess up again. I should have used that on myself long ago." There was anger and despair in her eyes and voice, and Annia sighed in disgust. The knife vanished as she threw it away. It wouldn't stop inside the atmosphere. She came to her feet, and pulled Rebecca up.
"Quit bawling. We have a job to do. We all feel bad about our parents, but there is nothing to do except what we were told to do to save them. Hurting yourself won't restore them, and neither will feeling sorry for yourself. I accepted that long ago. Now make with your magic, and let's do it." Rebecca nodded, swallowing hard. Annia noted a tingly feeling across herself as she was engulfed in the magic. "Am I still here?"
"I don't know, I can still see you because I cast the magic." Rebecca replied. "You won't know until you get in there." She sighed.
"Then away I go." Annia grinned, and vanished.
"I don't believe she did that." Rebecca choked, rubbing her throat. "She really pushes my buttons."
Annia moved down the side of the building, shaking her head mentally. Rebecca hadn't gotten over the death of her father. Annia found that a bit odd, since she'd known her mother more, but it wasn't her place to start that fight. She hadn't told anyone before, and she had no intention of doing so now. It would only cause dissention, but she had been watching Rebecca for a long time now, and after the destruction of the tower, she was worried about her. She had acted now, because they were alone, and she could deal with it without involving the others. She felt bad about doing it that way, but because Rebecca was invincible to anything but Kryptonite, or magic, she couldn't easily replace that knife. Accelerating into the compound was not a challenge, as this late at night, only the robots could detect her, and they were blinded by Rebecca's powers, at least, Annia fervently hoped so. As she ripped past a pair of them guarding the entrance, she wasn't shot, or cut down by the wicked scythes they Death Knights carried, so she figured the answer was a yes. Inside she found, that she was not alone, though she was the only living person within the walls. A great stack of bodies lay to the right side of the room, while to the left a dozen sentinel's walked back and forth from a massive furnace, transporting bodies back and forth. Disgusted, Annia broke through the room, keeping an eye on her watch. She had another three minutes, before she was going to head back. Deeper in side, she discovered where the energy generated by the furnace was going.
Before her stood a rack of five hundred Death Knights, standing in recharging ports, as the borg on the old Star Trek show she had seen on TV. Fate had left a few copies lying around his tower. She shuddered at the comparison, realizing just how close it was. She was about to look at her watch, when she saw IT. There wasn't any mistaking the long silver scar across the otherwise dark metal of the Death Knights form. This was the one. Songbird had described the damage to her one time and she remembered it. She swallowed. She turned to run away, and found herself face to face with a sentinel. It was the only one she had seen outside the furnace room, and a glance under it's left shoulder showed they were all there. She swallowed as it raised it's arm, and she knew it had seen her.
It was quick, but it wasn't quite fast enough to take her down, as the fist smashed downwards, she zipped back, and then charged, leaping up, and kicking off it's head, accelerating through a hail of gunfire through the furnace room, as she raced into the courtyard. Two scythes came for her as she bulleted out of the facility. She leapt into the air, and passed cleanly between them, rolling and coming to her feet at full speed. Gun fire echoed behind her as she ripped free of the facility, and up a building nearby. Laying unconscious on top of building was Rebecca, a smooth bump on the back of her head the only evidence of tampering, it didn't make sense though. There was only one access, and Rebecca's back had been to it. It would have taken a high explosive charge to move her from before it, and even then, it would have required massive force, or... magic. Annia zipped away from the balcony with Rebecca as the energy blast lashed down from above them, annihilating two full floors behind her.
"You will never defeat the Lord Akati!" It was a being that had not been seen in over thirty years. Ellie swung silently through the night air, sweeping her right arm up into the air. The roof of the Death Knight command center swung open wide, and the full fleet of Knights rose into the air. "Sweep the city, and find those who would fight the will of our master!" She swung back around as the Knights swept out over the city, heading for the residential quarters first. Ellie smiled grimly. "Soon, there will be blood in the air."