Superhero life? Super-Sized troubles!

By the time the pilot was confident enough to fly the modified Osprey, we were already flying over Canada. Bypassing the relatively crowded airspace of Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City, we crossed over New Brunswick and entered Quebec proper. The verdant green of one of the wildest forested lands in the world spread beneath us, occasionally interrupted by the dark gleam of many lakes and the white of snow and ice. Soon enough we slipped through and away from the more populated areas and into the true wilderness of the North before turning to fly over Hudson Bay.

In a curious interaction between my basic forcefields, the enchantment intended as a sound nullifier, the collision invulnerability and the basic properties of the Osprey's alloys, the plane had turned out all but invisible to radar detection. Even its own sensor systems had been somewhat reduced in range and accuracy, the radar waves' wavelength distorted by the side effects of the enchantments' interactions. It was something for me to look into in the future, but for now we had to fly far from established passenger plane routes as a precaution against accidents. My Force Awareness remained better than any radar ever built but the pilot was not feeling confident enough to fly on my directions through crowded airspace. Since he'd been more than accommodating to everything else I decided not to press him. It wouldn't cost much time in any case; Canada was far less crowded than most countries.

A few minutes later we passed by Mansel island and Southampton island, leaving Hudson Bay behind and entering the Northwestern Passages. From there we crossed over Baffin Island, second largest of the arctic landmasses and almost as large as Texas. We got pretty close to the coastal town of Arctic Bay then turned northwest. Devon Island was only minutes away so we cut the engines and began our descent and deceleration. While the modified Osprey had hit a good two thirds of the space shuttles' re-entry speeds there was neither a bow wave nor sheath of superheated air to worry about as physics and forces were warped by magic, but we still needed to slow down before we could land.

The Osprey could have handled the couple gravities worth of deceleration even before its enhancement but fortunately for everyone onboard but Yours Truly, all but the mildest deceleration was handled by the prototype inertia dampener. The forcefield applying to the Osprey's interior was not really an inertia dampener because inertia was a manifestation of mass and not something that separately existed and could be adjusted by my powers. How the field actually worked was by spreading out acceleration forces evenly across the occupants bodies and equipment instead of them applying on just the points of contact between the occupants and their seats or any other surfaces. There was a bit of leak-through because its precision was not perfect and there was an upper limit to the total force it could handle, but for a crew of thirty anything below a hundred gravities should be fine.

Devon Island appeared over the horizon, a stretch of barren wasteland over a hundred miles wide, the left half covered in ice, the right a field of reddish-brown broken rock so very similar to the fields of Mars. Or at least it should have been. The closer we got, the clearer the slight haze over the whole island became to see. It was less like smoke or mist and more like the light had grown a few shades dimmer. Since the near-polar illumination had not been exactly strong to begin with, the haze made a bigger difference than it would have in a southern land. And unless my senses were malfunctioning, the atmospheric disturbance had grown much stronger in the half-hour since the kids burned that field of mutated growth.

We turned away from the glaciers and the single centuries-old abandoned settlement in the East and flew towards the Haughton impact crater. About thirty million years before, a meteor a good mile in diameter had struck there, creating a crater fourteen miles in diameter. It was a relatively shallow and worn depression compared to most other large craters in the world and in any other place would have eventually formed a lake. But Devon Island was so devoid of water sources and annual rainfall that the crater was mostly a barren basin of jagged rocks with a bit of ice at the bottom. Or at least it should have been.

Mutters, exclamations and calls for cameras were heard from the cabin as the reporters saw their first large-scale supernatural phenomenon. The light steadily dimmed the closer we got to the crater until by the time we were above the landing site the area was well into twilight. The crater itself was a lake of thick black mist with a green and purple aurora, the obvious source of the darkness, but worst of all was the sky because the stars were moving in an eerie, almost hypnotic undulation.

Whatever the source of the strange phenomena was, the kids' recent actions seemed to have woken it up.

xxxx

The actual landing site was just a cleared rocky plateau devoid of life, soil, or even dust. A good half-mile from the research station itself, it was still covered by the visibly outlined dome of my powers as they kept the alien dark smoke at bay. Whatever the light-absorbing substance was, it crept out of the crater and formed a thin layer over the ground like the fake smoke of B-movie special effects. It should have been cheesy and fake but was really ominous and for anyone who had lived through the Invasion like I had the atmosphere seemed downright malevolent.

The Osprey went through the force dome unimpeded just as planned then landed with barely a thump. We got off quickly, the reporters excited at more evidence of the supernatural they could film, the soldiers nervous. As for me, I was more than a little angry. Whatever the CIA had been doing in this place, they had managed to induce the same warped environment that had plagued my home town during the Invasion. The mist had not spread out enough to cut visibility anywhere beyond the crater itself but it was already scrambling communication signals and presumably satellite observation since the General had no useful information to give us. The total lack of earlier warning signs except for the signal loss meant that someone or something was actively covering their tracks and had been at it for a week, only dropping concealment when several people with strong powers had come to investigate.

"Hey there, Boss," Gabby greeted me, the other two following just behind him. "Things have started to look really spooky, eh?"

"Yes," I tersely agreed, fists clenching. For a moment I considered abandoning this whole dog and pony show, leaving the kids and the even more fragile mortals under the force dome then venturing out at super-speed and slaughtering all the monsters that were certainly breeding in that crater.

...no. The kids needed the experience and wielded a lot more power than I had in the early days of the invasion. They needed to see how dealing with a thinking mind behind the darkness was entirely different than battling mindless monsters and the reporters needed to show the world that the darkness existed and that heroes fought against it. If what all the signs pointed towards was here we'd be killing several Stympalian Chickens with one blow.

"Come here you three," I ordered and for the first time in all our days of training they all did so without a word - not even Cindy threw one of her usual snide remarks. "Put these on." I opened my hand to reveal three simple metal bands gleaming under the alien illumination.

"Teach! This is so very forward," Cindy mocked but it fell flat, the joke chocked by the unnatural mist that filled the many square miles of crater just beyond. The kids examined my gifts in silence for a few moments before Gabby and Cindy put them on. Mark on the other hand still looked at his own ring with suspicion.

"What does it do?" he demanded with his usual scowl.

"It makes it so I can find you with my powers far more easily than normal. It binds you up in some protections so that you won't die horribly at the first ambush. It can bring you to safety in emergencies." Well, not exactly, but I doubted they'd agree to wear them if they knew everything the rings could do and how.

"Neat!" Cindy chirped, momentarily forgetting the gloomy atmosphere or that they were here to search for the crew of an entire research base who had gone missing. Before she could add anything else, I interrupted.

"What they don't do is make you invincible." Because you always had to make that clear with teenagers; most of them already thought they were invincible even without magical artifacts that helped ensure their safety. "They are for emergencies and they can't save you from everything, so you'll have to rely on your own abilities just like you did earlier."

"Ew, will there be more tentacles?" Gabby asked, a glowing sword taking shape by his side. Maybe he'd dismissed his earlier weapons to conserve stamina or whatever resource his powers used, but hopefully he'd learn he needed to be armed at all times.

"Who can say?" Certainly not the super with advanced senses that could see through barriers. "You stick together, remain vigilant and rely on each other and you should survive." And if something unexpected happened, I'd intervene. "Are you ready?"

They said yes, of course. Everybody always does the first time.

xxxx

"This is so spooky, guys," Gabby muttered as they approached the research station. He was already so sweaty even his palms were slick, and it had nothing to do with the environment. The two magic broad swords floating by his side hummed ominously in reflection of his mood and the much shorter blade in Cindy's hands gleamed as eerily as the strange mist at their feet.

"It's not spooky, it makes total sense," Mark countered. "Whoever is running things here noticed we took out his sentries so they are applying electromagnetic warfare to deny us visibility and communications, area denial to make navigation slow or impossible and psychological warfare to impact morale." He muttered some more about tactical jargon that Gabby could make neither head nor tails of, then picked up a rock and threw it. It sailed in a high and wobbling arc through the gloom, disappearing into the crater over a mile away. "Did you notice?"

"Notice what, Soldier Boy?" Cindy shot back with her new favorite nickname for the black boy. "Your throw was a bit wimpy, that was all there was to it."

"I wasn't trying to throw as far as I could have, you insufferable-" Mark visibly controlled himself, teeth clenching in anger. Then he spoke once more with the tone one used on five year olds. "I was trying to measure visibility in the gloom. A mere five hundred feet is going to seriously mess my ranged options, not to mention the wobble."

"What wobble?" the brunette demanded.

"The way the rock's trajectory wavered, I saw it too," Gabby added then looked up. "It's just like the sky that seems to be... um... undulating? Really has me worried..." he fiddled with his magic, a sword shifting between styles and sizes by the second but not fully taking shape. He didn't have an idea how to counter this phenomenon, after all. "But Mark, what do you mean five hundred feet? We saw the rock going into the crater and that's way further than that."

"That can't be right!"

"There's nothing wrong with the sky."

Both Mark and Cindy spoke over each other then exchanged looks both with Gabby and themselves. All three of them looked rather confused, though Mark was the angriest about it while Cindy didn't seem to much care.

"You go first, Gabe," Mark ordered and Gabby could see Cindy bristle at Mark's taking charge. "What did you mean you saw the rock land? I threw it far enough that it vanished in the mist."

"Isn't it obvious? We're all seeing different things," their more aggravating teammate said before Gabby could answer Mark's question. "All I'm getting is a bit of gloom but both of you are a bit confused about directions and Soldier Boy is seeing a lot more mist than the rest of us are."

"We're on a mission, this is no time for jokes," Mark shot back angrily.

"You don't believe it because it's me saying it." The girl smiled. "I can already see this mission going swimmingly, guys."

"That's because you're an untrustworthy bitch, Barnes," the black boy hissed and rose a couple of feet off the ground. Gabby would bet anything that he'd just slotted the most destructive attacks his power could give him and was ready to throw down at the thinnest excuse, not that he could win against Cindy.

"No, what I am is independent, which your rules-worshipping ass hates," she was happy to explain. "Doesn't mean I'm lying, and I can prove it."

That's how they found themselves throwing rocks at a distant boulder and soon enough Cindy was proven right. Both Gabby and Mark's throws went invariably off-target, their inability to correctly judge direction and distance at range confirmed. Cindy on the other hand got a perfect throw each and every time she tried.

"This is bullshit," Mark said after a minute, throwing the last rock he'd picked up to the ground in disgust. "OK, our senses are being messed with but apparently, little Miss Perfect is immune."

"Don't worry, Soldier Boy, I won't get us lost." She winked. "All you have to do is trust me." Then she skipped ahead, hopping from rock to rock in a zing-zagging path.

The two boys groaned. This was going to be a very long night.

xxxx

"What are they doing?" That was the big question among the reporters who were filming everything the kids had been doing for the past ten minutes with telephoto lenses. Unlike fallible human eyes or other sensors, the cameras seemed to cut through both the strange wobbling of the world and most of the mist, though the gloom was still there.

Night vision was also non-functional, but in a rare showing of preparedness and common sense most of the TV crews had brought gear with as little electronics and digital features as possible. The issues with modern sensor technology and magic was apparently well-known in some cycles ever since the Florida invasion. The few idiots that had scoffed at such "rumors" were now angrily twiddling their thumbs as all their gear was useless.

"They are testing the sensory distortion," I decided to be more accommodating and explain. "Like us, the three of them are affected by the magic concealing the area but have abilities that might be able to see through it." As at least one of them had discovered, though it was odd that it had been Cindy. Then again, she might only be pretending to be unaffected and instead be using some trick of her multiple existence to filter out the interference.

"So that's what that rock throwing was about," Madam Colvin said, not taking her eyes from her telephoto lens. I was more surprised to hear the old woman had been married twice with than learn she was both divorced and widowed during the pre-battle banter. Apparently, she had been trekking across battlefields since right after college, a bazillion years before I was born, and was famous in some cycles for surviving an assassination attempt by the Syrian government. No wonder she'd been more prepared than all her juniors, she'd had long experience with hairy situations.

"Look, they reached the research station," one of the younger men called out, referring to the stubby cylindrical habitat near the crater's rim that had once housed the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station. Painted white and made of polymers and light alloys, the building was less than fifty feet across and not much taller. It was topped by a roof dome, surrounded by a few solar panel arrays and smaller outbuildings, with a tiny hangar housing the three tractor-like wheeled transports that were the entirety of the station's fleet. Not that any other vehicle type would have lasted for long in the environment; even mountain bikes would have been ruined after a few dozen miles.

"Doesn't seem to be anyone there, though," someone else noted and they were right. Still, the kids searched the station and its surroundings meticulously and thoroughly, finding nothing of interest other than the vehicles.

According to General Rinaker's files, the building was supposed to have been evacuated of its normal crew of scientists just after the Invasion of Florida, with a joint task force between the CIA and the Canadian government replacing them in researching... well, the files didn't actually say. Most of the pages were full of black lines, redacted to hell by government stooges caring more about secrecy and security than common sense. From the lake of ominous fog extending in a fourteen-mile-wide disc just beyond the facility, I suspected that whatever the CIA had been doing here they had done it inside the crater rather than the station itself. Call it an educated guess.

The kids must have had a similar idea because once they completed their search of the place, they slowly advanced towards the crater's rim. Cameras clicked and whirred as Gabby conjured more of his swords and Mark took the rear and hovered twenty feet in the air. The visual distortions had to be playing havoc with his abilities if he only barely rose above the ground. Cindy didn't do anything obvious to prepare but the closer the group closed towards the rim, the more she flickered until the girl's image in cameras appeared as if seen through a broken mirror.

"Odd visuals," Madam Colvin commented from my side. "That's the girl's power, I take it?" She nodded to herself, not needing an answer for something that simple. "What does it do?"

"It's complicated," I said and got an eyebrow raised in challenge from the older woman. She reminded me of the General a bit, and I wasn't sure it was a good thing. In any case, she was far from the only one waiting for a real answer to that question so I decided to throw the press another bone while mostly keeping Cindy's real power a secret. After all, the dumbest thing Superman ever did was give a detailed explanation of his powers, on record, to Lois Lane. "She can be at many places and do several things at once."

"Oh, like Shadow Clones," one of the younger reporters muttered under his breath, but I at least heard him clearly and gave him a wink. He blushed tomato red and I smiled. In that much at least I agreed with my more rambunctious student; messing with people could be fun - as long as you didn't take it too far.

Seeing my willingness to dispense information the press sent more questions my way but they were too late. Time was up, and what I'd been waiting for since we encountered those flowers finally happened.

"What the fuck are those things!" a guy who'd kept his eyes on the action instead of trying to ask questions cried and everyone focused their attention to what he'd seen. Most of them blanched. One guy who had brought a more powerful telescope-sized viewer, got a good clear view at what came out of the mist and nearly lost his launch.

The monsters had finally arrived.

xxxx

Mark had been expecting the ambush for some time. He'd slotted the best vehicles he could get for both maneuverability and firepower in the alien terrain, did all he could to minimize interference with his senses and ranged powers and kept an eye on the crater rim.

For basic firepower without losing maneuverability he mimicked the General Atomics MQ-25 Avenger, one of the better unmanned drones in service that could be armed with the AGM-114 Hellfire missile, 200 lb bombs and 2000 lb bombs for a varied arsenal. In addition to the above advantages it also had a very advanced sensor system, including a composite optical camera that was less affected by the distortions.

For horsepower, basic durability, artillery fire and handling the terrain, he mimicked the XM1202 Mounted Combat System, the still experimental replacement to the M1 Abrams tank. Then he had made a break from his usual military-oriented copying and mimicked the abilities of the latest model flight suit from Gravity Industries. The sheer maneuverability it allowed him on air compared to even the most agile aircraft was worth its abysmal capabilities in all other categories and as Mark did not need to worry about fuel, its limited flight time was not an issue.

None of that prepared him for the grotesque, mutilated corpses jumping out of the mist from behind the team. All of them were men in ruined military uniforms, deep gashes exposing internal organs, melted faces that had partially sloughed off to reveal the skulls underneath... and the same mutated plants they had met before literally growing out of their wounds. They looked like people who'd died in a jungle full of man-eating plants and now their plant-ridden corpses roamed in search of more victims.

Disgusting as they were horrific, it was not their appearances that disturbed Mark so but the sheer improbability of sneaking up to them, even with the warping of senses and the alien environment. He might be heavily affected by the enemy magic but Gabby could see through any fog that wasn't part of the dense lake forming over the crater and Barnes proved to be entirely unaffected... so how had the enemy snuck up on them through ground they had already thoroughly searched?

Unfortunately, he was not given time to come up with a working theory; the plant zombies all extended familiar tendrils to capture them. Unlike the previous fight however, all of them were now prepared for such a tactic. Gabby's blades fended off the attack by themselves, clashing with tendrils and making the alien growth writhe and sizzle on contact even as the Hispanic boy created more of his magic weapons to cover multiple angles. The shrew proved untouchable, as usual, then retaliated not with a storm of stabbings but with a thrown rock. A single rock, that was, thrown in countless different ways by her countless instances, flickering copies of the rock thrown with superhuman strength persisting only long enough to slam on the dozen closest zombies like a literal avalanche while the girl kept the original rock at hand for further split-second duplication.

Mark himself was already flying so he just increased his distance from the ground then shot back with the firepower of the AGM-114 Hellfire combined with the rapid fire rate of the twenty-millimeter autocannon from the Mounted Combat System. He grimaced as the vast majority of his shots veered off-course, but he'd already taken that into account and aimed for the zombie reinforcements coming up from the surrounding areas in large groups. There it didn't matter if he missed the main target because even if his fire spread out in a fifty-foot circle, the explosions still covered the whole group with their collective areas of effect.

"Use heavier ordnance!" came Barnes' voice through the cacophony of battle, her trick of speaking with thousands of voices at once allowing her to be heard even over the explosions.

"What?!" he tried to shout back but it was futile - or so he thought because the girl rolled her eyes at that annoying manner of hers, clearly noticing his confusion despite all the interference.

"They're still getting up after you blast them!" she explained and when he looked back at the blast sites he found out that he was right. Singed and only lightly wounded zombies were using the dust and smoke produced by his attacks to scurry off under cover then reinforce other groups in their attacks. Scowling at being deceived by zombies and that antitank missiles were proving insufficient, he searched for something that would work that wouldn't also risk blowing the rest of his team into the giant, mist-covered crater.

It was ridiculous. Yes, he was not getting direct hits, but he had not expected mere plants and corpses to stand up to even that much firepower. Something was wrong here, different than the attackers they'd faced in the previous fight. Was this the monster evolution Wennefer had taught them about? Had their killing the field of flowers earlier made these monsters stronger despite over thirty miles of separation? How?

Gabby was having more luck than him, the entirely black great sword rotating around him in tight circles scything any zombie getting close to pieces. Another blade that shone a sickly green stabbed into zombies and caused them to literally melt, dissolving them to greenish goo. It took a second or two for each blow to completely destroy each plant zombie but it was more effective than his own attempts at least. Curiously, the white-hot blade he had started with was having problems even wounding the enemy, barely singing shallow cuts into their bodies. It could deal with the grasping tendrils well enough, but was proving as woefully insufficient against the corpses themselves as Mark's own explosives. Hmm...

Barnes's flickering had grown entirely beyond any of her prior showings, completely filling a half-circle at Gabby's back with short-lived copies of herself. Countless of them threw rocks at the slowly growing horde while an equal number held the line with that large magical machete Gabby had given the girl. Now she was returning the favor, keeping his rear clean of enemies while he focused on deploying his more powerful weapons. Mark would give the bitch that much; she had proven dependable every time the chips were down. But how could they possibly trust her after what she had done to them for months?

...no. Better to keep his head in the fight. But Gabby's magical blades and their varying efficiency had given him an idea. For some reason the enemy was tougher than they should be... but not universally tough. Thrown rocks seemed to work disproportionately well compared to his explosions and Gabby's fiery sword was almost useless compared... to whatever mechanism the other two were using. If the enemy's defense worked better against conventional attacks then he needed to become unconventional.

He dropped the MQ-25 Avenger as well as the XM1202 Mounted Combat System. For all that they were very powerful in combination, they were strictly conventional in both their methods and their weapons. For a few moments he felt naked and vulnerable, the majority of his power gone with only a measly flight suit and his baseline abilities to fight with. But the enemies did not know that, for his power had no visuals except for when he was actively firing. He had a little time until they noticed, time to be unconventional, time to use something that wasn't exactly a weapon.

He mimicked the Boeing Airborne Laser and wobbled as he had to adjust to the different abilities it provided. Combining its flight with that of the flight suit allowed him to retain the aerial agility and hovering capabilities while giving him a better flying speed. The converted airliner was basically useless for anything else except mass... and its oxygen-iodine chemical laser, a beam weapon that could sustain fire for up to twelve seconds at a time, had an enormous range, zero flight time, could partially correct for atmospheric disturbance and was really accurate.

His second free slot he reached not for some military vehicle or experimental craft but for a simple industrial tool; the largest plasma cutter ever built. Its cutting beam was five times hotter than the surface of the sun and could slice through two hundred millimeter thick steel plating like a hot knife through butter. It was not a weapon but it was an energy projector and that was enough for his power to let him combine it with the airborne laser. The better range of the two, the better firing time, the better energy density and temperature, and the better beam width. He still felt naked with so little in the way of protection against enemy attacks, but now the enemies would feel the same against his... and unlike them he could fly.

A beam brighter than a thunderbolt tore through the mist, banished the gloom like the noonday sun, and burned everything it was pointed at. Mark swept it through the battlefield, causing alien plant growth to explode at its mere touch, super-tough zombies to be reduced to ashes and blackened bone, rocks to boil and the ground to turn to molten glass in its wake. He methodically hunted down every zombie group within a thousand feet, prioritizing not those attacking his teammates - they would handle themselves - but those at the fringes of visibility or any attempting to flee. Once those were obliterated and a ring of molten rock had surrounded the area he worked his way inwards.

The zombies - or maybe whoever was in control of them - turned frantic. Instead of trying to flee or slowly ground down their resistance in a battle of attrition, they charged as one towards Gabby and the girl. Mark scoffed; this was just a repetition of the flowerbed's tidal assault and this time they were ready for it. The zombies might be stronger, more dangerous and a hell of a lot tougher than the plants individually, but they could not bury them in the same way those flowers could have. Gabby just made a powerful enough sword, handed it over to their teammate and she went to town as was her usual wont. Tendrils were hacked apart by flickering instances, swarms were casually annihilated in melee and those that refused to get close were perforated by dozens, hundreds of temporary copies of the magic weapon. The stragglers were incinerated a minute or two later by Mark's beam.

"That... that wasn't so hard," Gabby gasped, hands on knees as he gasped through his adrenaline crash. "Maybe we could- HEY!" he shouted as the girl whacked him in the back of the head. "What was that for?" Typical, really.

"That was just a skirmish, a test," the brunette said and stomped her foot like a five year old. "Don't jinx things when we've only just started."

"I concur," Mark was forced to admit. It wasn't that she didn't have a brain; she just chose not to engage it.

"But, but there can't be any more of them, can there?" the sword-wielder complained. "I mean, we killed hundreds of these things - over a thousand. Re-killed? Whatever, the point is that the research station could only have so many people. Even with whatever teams the spooks sent that had to be all of them or close enough as makes no difference." He shrugged. "Even if there are more they shouldn't be in groups even close to the one we already beat so we basically won."

"True, except for one tiny little detail, minuscule really." She pointed first at the few blackened remains of their foes, then all around them. "If these were most of the bad guys, who or what brought on the mist and the dark and the swirly stars? Because they must have had a ginormous amount of power to do all that and I seriously doubt any zombie or even large group of zombies could possibly manage it."

The three of them looked out at the ominous, fourteen-mile-wide lake of alien mist and prepared for the worst to come.