March 27th, 2024 – Wednesday: 2:30 AM, Jake’s House

Granny2Good stood there stunned as Geist and Black Phantom close in to check on her. Alice tried to get Black Phantom’s help and then Miss Amazing’s help to draw out the Beast personality. Frustrated at both ends she ended up following Black Phantom, whom was trailing Caedechron into the the trap door leading to the lower rooms below the garage.

Granny2Good heard the call over the comm units to Shorty #5 and when it registered what he had said about her brother she sped over and demanded he take it back. Gryphon attempted to use his free arm to hug her as well telling her it would be alright. She used her speed and strength to get up and out of his reach. Rushing over to the Geist she whispered something to him only Alice overheard, “They have already moved on but I cannot. I will call you when I can setup the wake, it should be a few weeks.”

Before Alice could utter, “Granny sama?” Granny2Good disappears from view into the rural district of Diego Verde landscape. Alice then joined the group down the ladder in the lab/basement. It had been stripped of everything that could have been called advanced. As they investigated Black Phantom had not seen enough evidence to make him comfortable that the security system had been disabled.

In the garage above Arcadia was rebuking Gryphon for deciding anything for her. A few seconds after she addressed Miss Amazing she seemed to come to some sort of a realization. Gryphon tried to tell her she was free when she declared herself SAVIOR’s prisoner. She was about to continue rebuking Gryphon when Giest mentioned that she could come with him and he would provide her quarters within Spirit Enterprises. The incredulous look on her face at the masked man giving her direction made Gryphon realized this was a version of his sister Adeline in front of him.

She declared she’d go wherever Miss Amazing went and stay with her. Which prompted Gryphon asking Miss Amazing if she wanted to be a big sister? When she gave him a side long glance saying she might be a bit old for that. Gryphon smirked and said, “Perhaps, you want to be a mother instead?”

She was about to give him a piece of her mind and when she made eye contact he smiled and her anger melted away. ‘God, he’s so charming,’ she thought to herself. The most she could muster was a wry smirk. When they left Gryphon noted the security system didn’t fire on them. Turning his attention to the argument brewing in the lab/basement that was seeking the same goal. Everyone involved just had such different ways of approaching a problem it appeared foreign to each of them from Gryphon’s view. He called down that Arcadia left with Geist and Miss Amazing, but the laser canons didn’t come out! This finally made some headway and everyone came back up. All of Jake’s technology had been removed and cleared out.

Gryphon saw Caedechron using his tech ability to have hover jets fly Snake Person up into the garage and then they went outside to double check the physical security armaments were gone. An incoming comm unit call from Calvary sent things into hot motion for the group. Apparently The Iron Brigade, Valkyries, and Genesys’ sponsored team of genetically modified mutants called Dynosaurs were all fighting groups of 10-12 feet tall spherical robots terrorizing the city!

Upon hearing that Gryphon sighed and was starting to figure out how to get back when he ran into the Beast shaped shifted to look like Carl but the Beast was still the dominant personality. He made a plea to Gryphon about going to Indbur Enterprises to remove Thanatos. Gryphon is an enhanced version of Garrick and he has always thought of the whole being more important than any one person. While tensions were high on all sides for a variety of valid reasons (teammate had died, the general public was in danger, another teammate had run off, one teammate may be becoming assimilated in a fashion similar to the Star Trek enemy known as the Borg, you know it was a Wednesday). Gryphon decided he would handle the robots first instead of going with The Beast to Indbur Enterprises. The Beast, understandably, given how the last few hours had gone felt he had just been given low priority. Frankly, at that moment, he wasn’t wrong and he expressed his displeasure at being relegated so quickly. He morphed back into the Beast with its new rock-like skin and ran off towards the city.

Gryphon tried yelling out the city was more important than all of them, but realized that Beast would probably see that as only more marginalization. Gryphon made a note to work on crisis management for future missions and an apology for making Beast feel unimportant. As Black Phantom got on his back they took off, most of them never seeing the sweet jet that was now Snake Person’s ride. Caedechron felt Beast would need support and went with him while Gryphon tried to get someone on scene!

The night was falling apart to Gryphon. Less than an hour ago they stopped a galactic takeover by the Atorian Empire. Now, they lost one team member in the field and another to understandable grief. Yet another team member was infected by a decision from a fragment of his own psyche. That team member and their newest member had gone off to try and prevent it from taking over the world. Gryphon was worried when the infected team mate alluded to the possibility of his Optimus A.I. being infected and never had Gryphon hoped that was paranoia more than now. All this capped off by a 20 robot rampage in 4 parts of the city with nearly all the sponsored teams still remaining in Century Station trying to handle things, but only managing to covering three of the rampaging areas. After agreeing with Caedechron for checking him on a potentially bad call they agreed to tackle the last group, in Xenophan, and call the two headed to Inbur if they needed it.

Zeau was trying to read up on some topics that interested him until Gryphon called him out for help. Seeing Covenant was transforming to go help, the educator turned his super powers upon Covenant. Grabbing him and flying off with his cargo in tow. Having missed his incoming Rocket Taxi. The driver, a man by the name of Dopinder, mouthed to him through the window as they crossed paths that Covenant was still getting billed for the ride! Covenant made the least amount of money of everyone he had known on the team. He just saw a portion of it disappear in his mind as he made out Dopinder’s message.

---

Cutting over to the Xenophan sub-district in Midtown or Center City depending on whom you ask. There was a Tecate Beer commercial being shot in one of the plazas with the stadiums in the skyline behind the location. Being able to only get the permit at night after the events being hosted at the stadiums were let out they began to set up the shoot. In the shoot were Tecate Beer’s most celebrated spokespeople: Victor Valenzuela and his faithful friend Hank, the mutant horse. In the middle of shooting the nightlife scene the robots began there attack. Both Hank, dressed in a tailored white suit and Victor in his jockey outfit did what most celebrities would not do. They began clearing the immediate area of innocent bystanders and their crew!

Since 9 PM on the 26th they’d been on the permitted, scheduled, set area because of the nighttime shoot and now, almost 3 AM on the 27th, all hell had broken loose! Both realized the rolling balls of doom had designators on them: M9, M8, M6, and so forth. Then Victor had a brilliant idea and told Hank, “Rubber Band!” Hank was excited and gave him the hoof up and a wink! Victor transformed into a rubber man and stretched out between to lamp posts as Hank ran into his rubber body or makeshift slingshot! As the heroes of S.A.V.I.O.R were arriving to they saw a mutant horse in that aforementioned white suit fly through the air! From some kind of huge rubber band into what forensics would later identify as the M9 spherical robot!

Then the rubber band changed back into a “Rubber” Man? Black Phantom pointed over Gryphon’s shoulder at a water tower so he might snipe the robots. After dropping him off he saw flames at one building entrance and barely made out cries for help. He tilted his sword, Ashmadiel, and performed the same feat he used to save Granny2Good once before. Spinning up to 300 mph he caused the flames and the air to push up and away. Thanks to his near immunity to fire the damage he took was not even worth mentioning. Zeau and Covenant’s approach did not go unnoticed as one of the robots retracted their limbs as it began to roll towards them. Zeau made a dodge from a triple blast of lasers on the end of it’s extended claw hand. While trying to move both he and Covenant, Zeau was unable to pull his passenger out of the way in time. With that the robot extended its insect like legs and pursued its quarry.

The M9 designated robot grabbed the mutant Horse-Man and threw him back at his rubberized friend! The Rubber-Man started to chant, “REBOTA! REBOTA! REBOTA!” He turned into a trampoline like structure! Horse-Man bounced (Rebota in Spanish) off of the Rubber-Man and aiming for the spherical robot once more he punched it again knocking it back with his powerful hooves on his arms. That suit was amazing showing only minor tears from this kind of activity! They made a very effective pair!

Black Phantom got a surprise as the one designated M8 retracted everything and rolled over to the building that had the water tower he was dropped off at. When its legs deployed, they did so with such force that it launched the 10 ft. sphere onto the roof! The one that had gone after Zeau and Covenant tried to fire again but the blast went so wide one might wonder if the targeting computer had been switched off to hunt Womp rats in a T-16 home simulator. Trivia Note: Womp rats are not much bigger than two meters. As the other arms began to target where Covenant was being held aloft. He pushed against Zeau to release him and as he fell two stories or roughly thirty feet. Covenant saw the laser pass right through where he was! Rolling as he hit the pavement he was able to shrug off some of the damage and avoid breaking anything.

Zeau had enough of this thing and extend his hand, using his power, dragging the robot against its will to underneath him as he began to head off in search of another robot to smash with this one. While this was happening Gryphon was quickly on his way to 300 mph and the fire was beginning to loose and follow the direction of the air. The people inside started to see the exit begin to clear! Nearby as the M9 robot was beginning to back away from the Hank, the mutant Horse-Man, it began to fire at him and the mutant Horse-Man began to twist and move back toward his friend and former jockey, Victor.

Meanwhile, Black Phantom, had his own surprise for the M6 sphere of impending doom as he dove from the tower it was ripping apart. He stuck a 3-point landing on top of the robot from an amazing back flip, then he jumped one more time. Only he was a little bit lighter on the leap from the robot as he planted a highly adhesive grenade to its top before departing! BOOM! Black Phantom barely escapes the deadly range of his own grenade reaching the edge of the building as the robot continue to shred the tower he was originally at. The remaining portion of the water tower is knocked off the roof and crashes on the sidewalk below! The robot almost went over as well but had a round shape that the low roof wall border held fast enough to keep it on the roof! Black Phantom barely avoids getting blasted off by the shock wave to the sidewalk on the other side!

Back over in the commercial shoot area where all of this is happening within scant seconds and much of it is simultaneous in nature. Victor, the Rubber-Man, sees a robot across the greens and intersection taking aim at him, possibly Hank. Trying to slingshot himself closer to screw up the aim he makes his arm stretch that whole distance to grab onto the robotic, tentacle arm! Along the way he tried to grab the Horse-Man, but his friend was recovering from dodging the laser fire and Victor shot right on by.

By this time Gryphon has put out the fire and is flying inside to the voice and manages to call out to the group as he scoops them up, “I’m Gryphon from S.A.V.I.O.R.!” Once outside he points in a direction he doesn’t see robots in and yells for them to run in that direction. Now that he is looking the way Victor flung himself he can see the devastated building across the street! Nearly half of the building is either broken rubble or on fire! Hank, the mutant Horse-Man, noticed what Gryphon did and called out to his friend, “Hey Victor, looks like other supers are here why don’t we leave it to them?”

Covenant, looked at his gun and wondered if this didn’t call for something bigger. Superhero/villain insurance was a thing smart people did if you drove a car in a city where some people could use them like shot puts! Covenant walked over and pulled the door open on a locked car, got in, hot-wired it and turned it so it was facing the M8 robot Zeau was dragging. He cackled out loud as he put the seatbelt on, “Safety, first!” Slamming the peddle to the floor he set his ride to ramming speed! On his way to total M8, which had tried shooting out grapples to two buildings to prevent being pulled by Zeau any further. He saw Zeau in the air, Zeau’s body made a hurling motion which cause the translucent blue force energy from his hands to the M8 robot to pull, HARD! The grapples broke free and it was sent hurling through the air and into M6 which had been dazed by Black Phantom’s grenade. M6 gouged the roof and wall as it was sent over the side like a ball in a game of pool going to a hole. Now M8 was in its place, and visibly damaged as well!

The M10 robot that had turned itself into a wrecking ball with its grappling hook much earlier. It rolls out of the rubble and fires all five of the tentacle arms with three lasers each at the Horse-Man, Hank! The Horse-Man attempted to dodge but was not able to get out of the way. During these seconds Covenant, driving at ramming speed sees his target take away in a super powered game of pool by Zeau. He banks a turn at the intersection next to Zeau. In a manner similar to the race scenes out of the movie Tokyo Drift he is able to get the car under control after the turn and sees the robot tangling with Victor and hears MC Hammer’s ‘Can’t Touch This’ playing somewhere as the car windows are down. Black Phantom runs over to the new dazed robot on the roof and he begins to unload on this new spherical machination of doom, designated M8, to no noticeable effect. Zeau managed to catch his breath from the extreme use of his power and called out, “Call Guinness, we’ve got the world’s largest Newton’s Cradle!”

As the robot that the Rubber-Man had grabbed onto was trying back away and fire three of the tentacle arms at the Rubber-Man while he tried to entangle its legs and trip him up. Both were successful and without his rubber body, Victor might have been incinerated! Hank gets grabbed by the leg from the one he is trying to engage. As Gryphon heard the science joke and saw that use of Zeau’s power he was inspired. He flew across the street over and across Covenant in the car speeding down the road. Covenant continues to see one of the Robots knocked down previously from Hank. He banks the car into the grass and hitting a bench manages to launches the car up and into it! The seat belt saved Covenant from any serious injuries.

Hank, the mutant Horse-Man, with an angry “NAY” he begins to punch the robot. While he left a number of dents he was forced to block a few arms coming around to fire at him. As he did that a pair of arms bent around from the other side and shot him!

Both Gryphon and Zeau take there respective robots and swing them at each other as Gryphon yells out, “Thanks for this great idea!” With a thunderous BOOM the two spheres collide and Zeau’s is broken and shattered across the street and cars that were abandoned on the roadsides. A random stranger, emboldened, one might say a little dizzy from seeing the heroes in action drives her car toward a scare pedestrian. She spins it and catches him with the door she flung open using her dash controls! A little bruised but grateful someone saved him, they drive off into the night toward safety and maybe a first date?

Victor, the Rubber-Man, teaches his captured robot patience as it tries to break the entangle and learns it can’t. Gryphon takes his stunned, busted, robot and swings it at the one of the roof screaming, “FOUR!” Both are destroyed and the only remaining ones are the one Victor has entangled and the one Hank has been occupying. That folks as roughly 15 seconds from the heroes entering the fray. The other teams had been at this longer and the Iron Brigade seems to have cause almost as much damage as the robots they were fighting! Black Phantom has a premonition leaps off the building. He rolls and breaks out into the one near Hank and Covenant. Yelling he cries out, “MUTHA F**KA MOVE! THEY’RE GOING TO EXPLODE! RUN DAMMIT!”

Gryphon, trusting his partner’s insight flies up to it as Zeau behind him is flying to the one Victor has grappled. Gryphon grabs one of its tentacle arms and seeing B.P., Covenant, the Horse-Man, and faces staring out from the buildings not destroy he calls out loudly over comms and so everyone within earshot can hear, “This is what we signed up to do!” Gryphon could imagine how Granny2Good would be pissed if she heard that line as he lifts the robot up and away!

KABOOM! Yes, to those present it felt earth shattering!

The shock wave cracked and burst every window in the area all around! The explosion was so bright it like a brief moment of daylight lighting the sky! Then a second one went off and people saw that when Victor released his robot. Zeau grabbed it with his power and flung it up in the air away from everyone and himself. Soon, as night returned from the afterglow of the explosions. Tweets, Facebook live videos, text messages, and camera began looking in the direction of the hero that had charged into the danger and risked his life to save three heroes and everyone still left in nearby buildings. In a seeming last stand against the robot madness people saw pieces of his armor fall from the sky vanishing into golden mist! Following the trail up soon every saw him without the helmet clearly dazed. All of his armor except for a shining, golden piece on his right arm was gone! The zoom on many cell phone camera showed he was burned, ash covered, and bleeding! Zeau flew over and used his power to take Gryphon away! Many onlookers began to use the phrase and hashtag #Deathless and #GryphonSAVIOR next to mentions of #SAVIOR. Cavalry, watching all this go down over remote cameras from SAVIOR’s base, was too shocked to even speak!

As the team began to clear out so firefighters and EMS could begin their work supported by police. Black Phantom made sure to give Hank the Spirit Enterprises business card so they could reach out if they wanted to join. SAVIOR left the scene, returning to their base and leaving the cleanup to emergency services and the press statements to Victor and Hank.

---

Meanwhile, The Beast and Caedechron arrived at Indbur Enterprises only to discover the building had been attacked. The building had large holes leading into it as if it had been broken into by someone or some ones with high strength. Various curious insects were also discovered around the perimeter and inside the building, and Caedechron collected a few. Entering the building, the two followed the trail of destruction through the halls to the office of Anthony Indbur, who was laying unconscious on the floor. He seemed in stable enough condition for the moment but would clearly require medical services soon.

In Anthony’s high-tech office was a 3D display looping through visualizations of the Black Box software. There was a command waiting to be executed which indicated it would “purge” the Black Box. The Beast reached out to push the button. There was a moment of hesitation, of resistance to this motion. As quick as he felt it though, it went away. Whatever strength the Thanatos personality had mustered in its current state wasn’t enough to stop The Beast. He pressed the button.

With emergency services called an on their way, the two investigated the building further and found a busted open secret entrance to a fortified sub-level. Down there they discovered a large room with a smashed incubation/ specimen tube which could have easily held a human-sized figure. But whatever was in that tube was gone. The unmistakable smell of formaldehyde had filled the room due to the fluid which had spilled all over the floor.

There were signs that a massive battle occurred in this room. The results of the battle littered the floor in several pieces – Anthony Indbur’s former assistant, Melissa Fabricius, had been torn apart. Her now obviously robotic pieces were scattered all around the room.

Emergency services finally arrived shortly thereafter to bring Anthony to the hospital, take the two heroes’ statements, and begin investigation of the scene.

---