Futuristic Arcadia: Heroes World Brave

[DarKnight36]

"So this is a regular problem for them then," Sasha said, making a point to punch every energy orb so it exploded. He dusted his hands off. "I guess that explains the extra security." Sasha held up Akiko's lantern. "Recognize this?"

 

[obscured_light]

Mist looked at the lantern in confusion before a woman's voice boomed from hidden speakers in the room.

"One of subject Shinigami Zero's lanterns. Unknown and needing to be tested," Aase said, examining the feed of Sasha closely. "If you hand it over to the subject in front of you, you can leave. If not, Shinigami and your friends will face higher levels of experimentation."

Aase paused, wondering how many times she had something similar in that in the year alone.

"But of course, you'll resist," she added, sounding kind of tired. "What do I expect from you guys? Oh! I know. You'll mourn subject Shinigami Zero, you'll be pissed off your friends are monsters, and none of you will have learned your lesson. Bravo. You wanna cause more property destruction, leave, or wait until one of the higher ups gets there? We could chat."

 

[DarKnight36]

Sasha laughed. "Let me give you another option. You let me and my friends walk out now and I'll be happy to come back another time for that chat."

Sasha looked directly at one of the security cameras. "You might be able to detain Shinigami because you created her. But you will not be able to do the same for me."

"And in case you think I'm bluffing," Sasha smiled, "run the name Koschei. I'm sure I'll come up."

 

[PiePillager]

Sakinder didn't reply to Akiko and instead ran toward the sounds of the explosion to get a closer look. Observing the situation, he waited for Akiko before saying, "It's Mist," with a shrug. "How capable are your friends? If one of them can't defeat the likes of her, then well..."

***
Who were they, the five mysterious "children" of the man who was once the biggest crime boss in Melbourne, Fenghuang Lin? It wasn't public knowledge of just how they came to be known as his kids, or more accurately, his enforcers, but the biggest rumor, the one with the most traction, states he scoured the entirety of the Asian continent to find them. It had taken him years, they were not all gathered at once.

Lo-Muna was the first of his kids, having raised her since she was a child. A master of the tù zi yě shòu quán, the Beast Stylew Rabbit-fist, she was able to enhance her abilities to be like that unto an animal to the point that she was able to take on certain attributes. Experts in the craft had stated with further training she would reach the level of a sage.

Yamato was the second, orphaned in the forests of rural Japan. Residents had claimed a tengu child had been breaking into convenience stores at night to steal food. Lin had found him at thirteen, sullen as ever, ready to fight for his life with his sole possession, a sword that was his only memory of the past. It's true his skin was crimson-tinged and that he sported ashen wings but was he truly what the locals stated? Lin had his doubts. Yamato was skilled with a blade and master of telekinesis, by expelling his chi to manipulate the outside world.

The third child and second master of the beast arts was Kai, another thief, who stole for amusement rather than survival. Often, plaguing rich farmers in Malaysia, he was as much a master of projectile weapons as he was an expert acrobat. Able to tap into his chi to gain the attributes of monkey by chanelling the Beast Arts through monkey kung fu, Lin quickly took him in and used his talents for far more high-stakes crimes, as well as teach a rare lesson on how to enhance his abilities...by channeling his chi through handguns.

The fourth was Ken, found as a young adult in the snowy mountains of Northern Japan, having lived a harsh life in the mountains with his grandparents, who had taught him a martial art called Tiger Kenpo before they had passed away. Though kind-hearted, he was able to tap into whatever anger and rage he had garnered while living alone in such severe conditions to take on the presence of an oni to enable his further survival. Lin took him in and offered him a home and job.

And last was Suna, found living in Hong Kong only a few years ago. He was heavily wounded after a gang-related incident and when he had recovered, he found his expenses were paid by none other than Lin, himself. Lin offered him money and a true home. Although it looked promising at first, Suna quickly felt that there was nothing of substance in Lin's offer and simply stayed because of his "siblings", though if you asked him, he wouldn't admit it. He seems to have an innate mastery of chi that harnesses the power of shadows.

But why? Why would Lin do such a thing? It was true that they were all prodigies in the usage of chi, but there were many others hidden away in the crevices of the Earth with such potential. However, mastery of their abilities was never something Lin sought. He gave them money, a roof over their heads, and a set of rules. He kept them busy, plenty busy with tasks, perhaps distractions even, that kept them preoccupied with other tasks instead of honing their martial prowess.

It was strange to think of why? Why Lin had these five as bodyguards yet deny them from accessing their true potential? Even when his rivalry with the Zhao Brothers and their mysterious benefactor grew more violent, he practically forbade them to pursue any further conditioning of their chi abilities. Perhaps, he thought they were good as is, but it was clear to many they could've done so much more were they given the ability to do so. Or if they had wanted to...

For a long while now, most of the children had begun to feel distant from Lin, and his criminal ways. but knowing no other life. Disillusionment crept in along with the feeling that Lin had been hiding something from all of them. The truth, perhaps, was only a plane ride away. Lin's private Jet has already been prepared for them. Nurses were at the ready to assist Lin into the small aircraft. His pilot wasn't paid to ask questions although he couldn't help but wonder what good bringing a seemingly comatose man to the Gobi Desert would do.

But he wasn't paid to ask questions. The children of Lin solemnly climbed into the jet, sitting abroad in silence, unaware of what destiny would have in store for them...

 

[druidquest]

"R-right," Lynne agreed, beginning to look around the room for anywhere Arthur Dandy's body might have been hidden away. The doctor said he was part of the experiment, right? So he should be in here somewhere, they just had to find him and pull him out of whatever contraption they shoved him into, right?

"I'll ma-a-a-ark you do-ow-own as a Mister-ter-ter John Doe." Doctor Zaheer's voice crackled back out of the darkness, as though shoving itself through several layers of interference but growing in signal strength as she went, despite the distortion. Henry didn't hesitate to whip around and shoot the new speaker with his weird gun. A crackling sigh through the darkness broke through a moment later. "Beginning preliminary observations on the efficacy of merging Alpheum's soulcraft record on the binding of supranatural entities detailed from recovered documents for purposes of security and threat management. Now changing Polterguard One to an active state using predetermined trigger phrase. Go-"

Doctor Zaheer was cut off as Henry shot the speaker. again. Lynne shared a look with him, beginning to back toward the entrance hall before another speaker started to crackle into existence.

"Goetia."

A roll of velvet shot at Henry's back like a bullet, Lynne shoving him out of the way at the last second before jumping back to avoid one aimed for her. All around them the fabric covering the room was shifting and churning, the pile on the operating table pulsing and unraveling as it all pulled away from the center of the room and started to climb up the walls, gathering at a point in the middle of the ceiling where it seemed to vanish into the darkness. It left the room slick and dark with that strange ooze, to the point the walls and floor didn't seem to have any measurable distance in visibility from when they were coated in fabric.

Then the middle of the ceiling... bulged. Slightly, but just enough to notice, as a dark cylindrical mass started to lover itself from the darkness. Lynne stared at it as it took shape, the pattern recognition in her brain drawing one comparison and one alone.

It looked like a body bag.

A line jagged line slashed itself diagonally across the upper half of the mass, from hip to forehead, before slowly opening to reveal rows of sharp, predatory teeth. A long, thick tongue slithered out of the formed maw, long enough to float just above where the thing's feet would be. And made entirely of multiple wrapped layers of velvet.

"Go... Gooo...... ti-ti-ti-" it choked out, weak and stuttering.

"Henry, can you get that-" Lynne started to ask about the door before being cut off by that velvet tongue lancing itself across the space. She jumped one way, then rolled the other as it launched itself at the pair over and over.

"G-gooooo...... ti-ti a-a-a..."

 

[obscured_light]

"Yeah, no," Aase said, looking away from the group chat on her phone. "I don't need to."

The name was familiar though Aase was reluctant to admit why. Her fascination with certain aspects of the world was strange to most and the name Koschei was entangled in some of the research she dabbled in. But the trouble that would arise if she let this demon walk out was pretty close to the territory of being fired. Or in Alpheum's case, killed.

"Listen buddy, it's you or me," Aase said with some irritation. "Leave the lantern and you can go see your friends. We both win and neither of us die."

~*~*

"Any of them are capable," Akiko said without hesitation as she slowly caught up. "It's more of a question of how much damage they'll be doing along the way."

 

[PiePillager]

"Not sure what I..." Henry mentioned inbetween rounds of dodging the creature's lashing tongue. "...Was expecting out of..."

"This mission...." he sighed in relief as he managed to roll out into the hallway. "But it certainly wasn't this..." he breathed heavily, setting his blaster to stun mode and firing several blasts at the lashing tongue of the beast. "Lynne, I'm...I'm gonna try and stun him. I don't know if there's any chance this can be reversed, but we have to try. And if not..." he nodded at her apologetically. "Well, we can do what we can!" he stated, firing another volley of stun blasts.

 

[DarKnight36]

"Sorry, this is a bit important," Sasha said, jiggling the lantern. He shrugged. "Well, looks like our negotiations are at a standstill." Holding the lantern up, Sasha took a deep breath and blew into it. The lantern flared, hot salt and fire blasting out of it towards Mist.

At the same instant, Sasha vanished, seemingly into thin air.

 

[druidquest]

Lynne ducked and dodged tongue lashings, finding herself almost fully on the opposite side of the creature from Henry. She bit her lip, watching the creature as it lashed out at them, the way its strange velvet tongue whipped around the room with astonishing speed and strength. It flinched every time Henry shot it, but Lynne couldn't tell if it was actually doing anything. And looking at the thing hovering in the center of the room, she couldn't say if there was even anything of Arthur Dandy left in there. Anything that could be brought back.

...But they had to hope, right?

"Mr. Dandy!" Lynne shouted, dropping under its whipping tongue into a sprinter's starting pose. The tongue lashed upward, making to come down on her like a hammer. She rolled out of the way, then pushed herself off the floor and jumped over it as it swiped after her. She retook her pose as she hit the ground, eyes flashing ahead toward her target, blazing with determination. Maybe if she could reach it...

"Mr. Dandy!" she yelled over the creature's gibbering, dashing forward toward the oil-black form. "My name is- Lynne Aster- I came in re- regards to-" she ducked, dodged, and lunged around the assailing tongue, never giving up her attempt to approach the shadowy mass it pulled itself from. "-regards to the- the matter we dis- -scussed prior!" She got close! Almost there! "I! Have! An! Appoint-"

The tongue slammed hard into her side, her fingers just centimeters from the creature's body. Lynne was sent flying across the room, crashing into the opposite wall before falling to the floor.

"G-Go goooo..."

Lynne held one hand to her side, feeling for anything broken as she pulled her feet back under her. She felt fine, but she was so close!! If she could just try one more time-

"GOETIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!"

The creature screamed, making Lynne's ears ring out in pain. The walls and floor pulled away, falling away like set pieces from a stage and leaving her and Henry tumbling in pitch darkness, the creature hanging ever above them. All around her, Lynne saw more cuts slicing through the blackness, opening into more of those crooked mouths full of jagged teeth and lashing tongues. The mouths varied in size and distance, stretching as far as her eyes could see, and far below them was the largest of all, big enough to swallow entire buildings whole. The furniture and equipment of the ward hung in the space around them, and Lynne threw her hand out to a clipboard, finding it a stable enough surface to keep her from plummeting into the maw below.

"Henry!!" she cried out, looking to see where he was. This... this was not at all what she had expected from this job. She was used to things going sideways at times, but this? She trusted Henry was an experienced man, but what could his gun do against this, regardless of how advanced it seemed to be?

Lynne grit her teeth, trying to fit both feet on top of the clipboard. "Henry!!" she called out again, spotting him a ways away. What was she doing? Hadn't Henry trusted her thus far? Hadn't he and his friends put themselves at risk, trying their hardest to do what they could in the face of what they thought was wrong?

She clicked her tongue at herself, putting her arms out to balance herself as she stood up on her tiny platform. "Henry!!" she called out one more time. "Do you trust me?!" she asked. Of course he had been, this whole time. But that wasn't really what she was asking.

 

[Wing06]

Bonson's body slumped forward, blood pooling on the table around his head. Klaus shot Liz a look and sighed. He hadn't expected the uninvited guest to kill Bonson, but Klaus wrestled with the idea the world was probably better off without him. Still, Klaus felt his heart rate spike as the door beside him swung open as officers filled the room, weapons drawn. The hooded assailant didn't make a sound as they pulled the hammer back on their pistol, aiming this time for Klaus's head. The hammer fell as Klaus threw up his arm, activating his nanotech suit in time to take the shot.

"You can't run forever, Midnight." The assassin quipped as a time portal enveloped them. The wall where they'd stood was now riddled with bullet holes, shots taken too late by the responding officers.

"You two, down!" A detective shouted, pointing his sidearm at Klaus, then Liz. "NOW!" He commanded.

-----

Liz and Klus slowed their sprint to a jog, turning down a welcoming alleyway lined with boutiques and cafes overlooking the river. "Sorry, Liz," Klaus began, "It was never my intention to involve you in this, but I needed to conduct an experiment, and sadly you and Bonson, however misguided he was, were caught up in it." In frustration, he ran a hand through his hair and kicked at the ground. He hated not being in the know, and now he had more questions than answers.

"We should meet the others; I need to clear my head."



----------

Yamato sat silently in his seat. He didn't ask questions; if the family were going to Mongolia to help Lin, he would do whatever was asked of him.

 

[PiePillager]

Henry didn't like his fights to be in enclosed spaces such as the cramped hallways in this wing of the lab, and it didn't help that now it was all encompassed by a shadowy void. In the midst of dodging for his life against the lashing tongue and maw of the creature that was once Arthur Dandy, he was forced to moved further and further back outside of the room he and Lynne had initially found him in. This proved to be an issue as while inanimate objects seemed to stay in place in the face of the void, he and Lynne were not so lucky. Eventually, he found a pencil and grabbed onto it as if it were a life raft and as the only thing preventing him from being drawn towards the many maws that had sprouted up all over the place, it was essentially just that. Even so, he kept his blaster at the ready, though it seemed impossible to tell if it had any effect at all. It certainly didn't stun the creature. It seemed like an eternity, of trying to peer through the darkness to determine the creature's weakness when Lynne called out.

Did he trust her? He had no reason not to thus far, but in this instance, he could only assume she had a plan in mind. "Yeah, what's up?" he asked, perhaps too optimistically for their current predicament. "Got an idea?"

 

[obscured_light]

Mist looked up at the camera and Aase's voice came through, "Search and alert. You know the deal"

Aase sighed as she leaned back in her chair. She watched as Mist reverted and left the room before reaching over to grab her mouse. A few clicks and she could now replay the clip of Sasha blowing on the lantern, wondering which board member would be curious about this one.

"Man, they never make it easy huh," she muttered as she started clicking through the feeds.

 

[druidquest]

"Not really!" Lynne admitted with a sheepish grin, adjusting her feet and almost falling off her tiny platform. The void they were in was pitch dark, with no clear boundaries save the leering mouths all around them. Lynne was surprised and grateful she could even see Henry through the blackness. She could see him squinting into the murk, trying to spot some weakness to aim for. She reached one hand up toward her face, taking hold of her large, round glasses and pulling them away from her face, letting them sit suspended in Polterguard One's strange void. "But we'd have more luck with some light, yeah?"

It was faint. Silver, glimmering moonlight, filling her eyes before cascading down her hair from the front of her scalp, painting her hair the color of moon dust as it billowed out around her, in flat defiance of the planet's gravity. Her clothes shifted, fading or perhaps folding on itself, replaced by formfitting dusk gray armor and fluttering, ethereal ribbons floating in the dark. HEr boot-clad stepped away from the clipboard she'd stood on, but rather than falling, she rose, ascending upward while raising one hand wrapped in a fingerless glove.

Lynne hung in the dark, glowing like the moon, illuminating the thrashing tongues and gnashing teeth of the demon trying to swallow them, bound by some evil Alpheum ritual to the soul that had been Arthur Dandy. The mouths started to shriek as one, those close enough whipping their tongues at her to try and muffle the light radiating off her. Lynne lashed her hand out, releasing the energy she'd been gathering to swat the tongues away.

She flew left, right, then down, evading Polterguard One's attacks like a sea lion dancing through water. Two came at her from opposite directions and she threw her arms out, catching them both, her muscles flexing to hold them back from her. "Henry!" she called out, flying back and letting the tongues crash against each other when a third tried to spear her between them only to ram into its brethren. "Do you see anything promising yet?!"

 

[PiePillager]

"Whoa, what?!" Henry exclaimed as the moonlight coated Lynne, transforming her from what appeared to be a minor-mannered researcher into a fellow warrior of justice! He had a sense that there was something more to her, but he couldn't pinpoint what. There were some questions he'd wanted to ask but they'd have to wait for later. Right now, he had to try and pinpoint some sort of weakness.

"Hold on, I think I've got something....don't think he likes it too much considering how quickly he made a beeline for you..." Henry stated, firing off a stray blast from his stun gun to briefly illuminate another section of the room. Smiling to himself, he continued, "If you can make another flash similar to that, I think I know of a way to amplify it! Then maybe we can weaken him enough to put him out of commission!"

***
"Your friend's gone..." Sakinder noted. "Unless you have some way of contacting, him there's no point in guessing where he went. You should get out of here while you can..." he activated his belt and went into his Spino-SAW-Rus form once more. "Luckily, we can take the express way out." He stated, pointing towards a nearby wall, expecting Akiko to follow, and phasing through it before floating to the ground outside the facility.

 

[druidquest]

"Another flash?" Lynne mused to herself, evading another heavy tonguing. She spun hard, slamming her leg into one that got too close and knocking it away from her. A smirk came to her lips, an idea coming to mind. "You got it!" she shouted, flipping around and launching herself down toward the giant mouth.

The mouths filling the void shot their velvet tongues at her like missiles, trying to spear her or grab her. Lynne spun one way and another as she dived down, using centrifugal force to blast the assaulting tendrils away from her before reaching her target. Down, down, down into the bottom of the void, playing ever so slightly out of reach of the largest mouth serving as Polterguard One's floor.

Lynne pulled down one lower eyelid with her middle finger, sticking her tongue out at the screeching hellfissure before turning back around to face the distant figure at the top. She took a deep breath, drawing her arms back and puffing out her chest, before opening her mouth as wide as she could, sharp wolf-like teeth flashing behind her lips. Light drained from around her, her hair and eyes growing dim, before a shining beam of concentrated moonlight blasted out of her mouth.

 

[PiePillager]

"Alright, let's light him up!" Henry rushed over to the area he illuminated previously, clinging on to any object in sight before grabbing a silver tray. Nearly invisible in the darkness, he held it up near the beam of moonlight where the tray would begin to reflect the light all around the room.

 

[druidquest]

The beam hit the tray, held in place by Henry's tight grip to keep it from being launched skyward. The light of the beam scattered through the space, illuminating Polterguard One's Goetian Void and forcing the mouths to shrink and recede as it cut through their gloom. Slowly the walls began to return, Lynne finding herself laying with her back on the floor. Polterguard One hung ever in the air, just below the ceiling, but now it looked... faint, thin, its shadowy mass seeming as though it had been washed out by a heavy rain and now several holes gouged their way into its form, allowing one to see straight through.

Lynne and Henry saw, flickering and weak, occasional glimpses of an ill-fitting peach-brown suit within the murk, and deeper within that, solid and ever present, some kind of strange core floating where the creature's heart would be.

The calm that fell upon them seemed to be fleeting; even as the light from Lynne's beam began to fade, the shadows of Polterguard One were already seeping back through the corners of the room, the creature's body beginning to grow darker and refill the holes by inches.

 

[PiePillager]

"Man, this better work..." Henry muttered to himself, raising his blaster and quickly aiming it at one of the openings amidst the darkness, right at the glowing core. His blaster shined with a blue light as it fired one concentrated stun blast at the glowing core within the creature.

 

[druidquest]

Instantly the creeping shadows froze in their place, the glowing core flickering like a dying lightbulb in reaction to the blast from Henry's rifle. Polterguard One's tongue made stiff, jolting movements like a poorly animated storyboard, a low creaking moan grinding out of that sharp, crooked mouth. Everything reached a silent, tense stillness, floating on the edge of a knife.

A splitting, agonizing scream of horrifying pain and suffering shattered through the room. The thick layers of shadows comprising Polterguard One's body exploded outward, seizing and thrashing in all manner of shapes and directions like ball lightning reaching out for any grounding point it could find. Lynne flew to Henry's side, grabbing the fallen operating table and using it to shield them both from Polterguard One's dying gasps before the dark body of the creature folded in on itself, disappearing as if sucked out of existence itself.

The room went quiet, the core hanging in the air for one last, lingering moment, before it hit the ground with a resolute thud, dark and dead.

The light faded from Lynne's hair as she returned to how she was just moments before. She peeked tentatively around the edge of the table, eyes falling on the translucent shade standing at the center of the room.

"...Mr. Dandy?"

He was a plain, unremarkable man, mid 40s, with thin hair that had fled from his scalp at a much earlier age. His peach-brown suit, bought at discount from a chain clothing store, did little to hide his thin, slumping form, or long knotty fingers. His dull brown eyes stared ahead in a daze, occasionally flickering left or right as though trying to remember what he was doing here. The only flamboyance about him was his tie, checkered with the tiny symbol of some old, mostly forgotten hero, and the bright blue laces tying his dark brown loafers. He was a plain, unremarkable man.

Lynne rose to her feet, stepping gently away from the table and approaching the faded ghost of the man she'd been looking for. "Mr. Dandy?" she asked again, taking delicate steps toward him. "My name is Lynne Aster, we had an appointment?"

 

[PiePillager]

Henry closed his eyes with a sigh. He wasn't sure what condition the man was in or even if he was still alive, but perhaps there was a chance he could be saved. But at the moment, he didn't think the wreckage of this lab would make the best room for Lynne to hold her appointment in. Not while Alpheum now knew of their presence.

"I think we need to get out of here," Henry noted. "They know we're intruders now. So, one of us can take him somehow and we can find a way out of here..." He put a hand to his chin. "Though they are on high alert...I don't see there being much choice but to take the stairs. Although..."

He took off his hazmat helmet and placed his finger on a device in his ear. "Cobalt, you and Alchemist finish up your side of things? If so, I'm gonna need a lift for three."

 

[obscured_light]

Akiko grunted and saw the gray lantern pop out, flashing briefly as though suggesting she do the same. She looked out in the direction they had been going as her stomach churned in nervousness. The belt felt so heavy on her waist. Lips pressed together into a thin line, Akiko reached out and grabbed Gray's lantern. A long, slow exhale. Then, her belt made the familiar jingle and she felt little sparks on her skin. She phased through and followed Sakinder before the belt spat out the lantern, making for a rough landing that cause her to hiss in pain. Luckily she wasn't that far from the ground.

"I guess the cooldown's longer now," Akiko grumbled as she sat up, staring up at Sakinder. "I'm guessing I gotta do that again to finish the mission?"

 

[Wing06]

Klaus cursed under his breath, ducking into another alleyway as a patrol car with its sirens on sped by. Deep down, Klaus knew the car wasn't hunting for him, but watching someone have their brains splatted onto an interrogation table to eliminate any witnesses before having the gun aimed at him had left him jumpy and paranoid. He hoped Liz had safely made it back to the airfield, but Klaus knew the legendary heroine was more than capable of protecting herself.

"Cobalt, you and Alchemist finish up your side of things? If so, I'm gonna need a lift for three." Henry's voice grabbed the Time-traveler's attention, snapping his thoughts back to the mission. Whatever was hunting, Klaus would have to wait. After all, it seemed they had all the time in the world to settle the score.

"I'll be there in five," He quipped, his nano suit covering his body as he lept into the darkening sky filling with lights from the surrounding skyscrapers.

 

[PiePillager]

Sakinder sighed and gave Akiko a shrug. "Out of energy already? Guess it can't be helped. Good thing for you, we're already outside. Just gotta loop around to the entrance. They'll be less likely to pull off anything there," he continued, returning to his human form. "You still able to run too?"

***
"Lynne, we've got a way out!" Henry relayed back to the moonlight heroine. "Just need to hurry..." Henry noted, making his way back to the elevator. Opening the doors, held the button to keep the elevator on this floor as he went to test some thing out, pressing a random button for the upper floor.

"ADMINISTRATOR OVERRIDE" a booming voice from the elevator's speakers blared.

"That's about what I thought..." Henry noted. "Lynne!" he called back down the hallway as he blasted open a panel on the elevator. "Is there any way to bring him over with us? I'm gonna have to hotwire this thing!"

 

[druidquest]

"Eh?!" Bring him with? How was she even supposed to touch him like this? She cast her eyes around the ward, looking for anything that might help, but all that was here were a bunch of generic hospital props and-

Well. Maybe? Lynne crouched next to the dead core, picking it up gingerly with four fingers. Mr. Dandy was clearly a ghost, right? He shouldn't really be present here, right? Though Lynne didn't really know how ghosts worked, to be honest. But this thing was holding him in place or something like that, right? Or... tying him to that... other thing... but it looked like it was out of power or whatever now, right? So she could probably... Well, there was no way it would actually work, but-

Lynne turned back toward the flickering shade of Arthur Dandy. It looked somehow thinner than it had a moment ago. That probably wasn't a great sign.

"I don't know if this'll actually work," she said, holding the core out toward him like it might explode. "But we don't really have a lot of options, here, right?"

Her hair glowed as she reverted back to her powered form, the light faintly filling the operating room. Lynne shut her eyes, concentrating hard on the core in her hand as she channeled energy into her fingertips. She seriously doubted this would work like she wanted, but nothing ventured, right?

Delicately, slowly, Lynne opened one eye, fingers tense in case she needed to throw the core against a wall of something, but instead she found it glowing a weak, pale silver. She blinked once, chuckling nervously, then offered it to Mr. Dandy. He didn't respond, still staring blankly, but when the core got close enough he was suddenly sucked inside, making Lynne fumble with the core in shock. She caught it on her sixth attempt, preventing it from hitting the floor.

"I-" she dropped her powered state, stuffing the core into the pocket of her coat as she ran back out to the hall. "I think I got it, maybe!" she announced, joining Henry over by the elevator. She could hear footsteps running towards them in the distance.

 

[obscured_light]

"Painfully but I can manage," Akiko grumbled as she picked herself up from the ground and brushed herself off. "Let's go will you? You're slow."