B-Team: The Dawson Sphere

Metaphysical / Paranormal event

Cryogen has invited the members of the B-team to witness the unveiling of her newest invention; The Starshine Device. Unfortunately, the few members that show up soon find themselves faced with disaster and trapped in a time loop. Can the heroes find a way to break the cycle of tragedy and save a friend in peril?

Day 1   It's a beautiful, sunny day in Bathala City. The skies are clear and the birds are chirping, and we find three of the local heroes going about their normal Monday mornings. Rue is patrolling the streets of the Railyard, keeping an eye out for trouble and making friends with a lonely stray cat that crossed their path. They meet up with their friend Arthur Chapman in his shop and briefly discuss the release of Roger Williams, a local killer who'd been in prison for upwards of a decade. Mercy has just finished his computing for seniors class at the local old folks home, and Warp is sat, alone in his hideout, brooding over a cat collar recently bereft of its owner. An unopened bottle of cheap vodka sits on the counter nearby, tempting the recovering alcoholic towards the easy path to oblivion, because surely nothing at all is better than the pain and guilt in his heart.   The B-team has an appointment to make. They've been sent an invitation to the unveiling of Cryogen's newest invention; The Starshine Device, a revolution in clean energy that she hopes will render Vigilant Tower independent of the Bathala City power grid. Each member of the team makes their way independently, with Frank arriving in his Century agent persona rather than as Warp.   The team members arrive at various points and begin mingling among the familiar members of the gathered presses and agencies, noting the three scientist in lab coats making the rounds, a man in a sweater vest, an old man in a bow tie, and a woman with a red ring in her hair. Fairly soon they are greeted by the Vigilant Tower intern and new friend of the team, Kelly Dawson who offers to take them upstairs a little early and allow them to get pick of the seats for the presentation. The team follow her into the elevator to the 32nd floor wherein Mercy receives a text message; "Come meet me up in the training room for a quick one-on-one, soon as you can! Brainiac Xx"   With no obvious reason to distrust the message, Mercy makes his way up to the 33rd floor and is surprised to see, not Brainiac, but Combat, the enigmatic villain here to fight the vampire and wielding a sword imbued with silver. Mercy engages the villain and is able to quickly get the upper hand, knocking Combat down and calling his team mates up to help deal with him.   Kelly tries to tell Rue and Warp that they'll likely miss the beginning of the presentation but they're not convinced and ask her to pass on their apologies. Once upstairs, the pair are brought up to speed on the situation and Warp quickly uses his powers to "apple-strudel" together some restraints. However, their victory is short-lived as a loud explosion is heard from below, followed by a general feeling of faintness that washes over the group. Rue is only able to take a brief look through the floor before they black out and they see the device burst open, scorch marks over the floors, and Kelly lying on the ground, with a hole through her chest.   Day 1 (again)   It's a beautiful, sunny day in Bathala City. The skies are clear and the birds are chirping, and we find three of the local heroes jolting into awareness as they return to their positions from before. The three are quick to phone one another and realise that they all remember having lived this day before. They agree to head straight to the tower and have a word with Cryogen, time travel being her wheelhouse after all. Mercy arrives first, able to fly there quickly and bypass any traffic. He tells the other two to take care of Combat while he heads upstairs.   When he gets upstairs, he sees Kelly alive and well, and struggling to unfold some chairs for the presentation in a couple of hours. He helps her out and makes his way behind the large curtain that hid the Starshine device from prying eyes. Working around the back he finds Cryogen, the man in the sweater vest, old man in the bow tie, and the woman with the green ring in her hair, as well as Blaze, who seems to just be hanging out while her sister works and makes a point to introduce herself to the vampire. After a fairly terse conversation, Cryogen agrees to speak with him and the two make their way into her office.   He's able to tell her a little, but unfortunately Rue hadn't had a chance to tell him about what she saw, and while they were talking, it appears as though Blaze went for a wander and found herself up on floor 33. Warp and Rue arrive to the training room in time to see Blaze handily defeating Combat, taking a moment to admire the young hero's form before an overzealous attack suddenly immolates the villain's head. Blaze is taken aback in horror at what she's done, dropping her trademark hammer and running away crying that she thought his armour was fireproof. The two remaining heroes prepare to deal with the situation, but before they get a chance...   Day 1 (again again)   It's a beautiful, sunny day in Bathala City. The skies are clear and the birds are chirping, and we find three of the local heroes immediately making their way to the tower to try this again. This time, they elect for Mercy to take on Combat, given his proven ability to beat the villain, while the other two go and speak with Cryogen.   Not wanting to necessarily repeat a fight he's already won, Mercy attempts to talk Combat down, saying that they've fought already and he lost. Combat asks if that's true, then what did he use? Mercy told him the silvered blade, but much to his dismay, in stead of surrendering, Combat simply decided to use a different strategy. Coming at Mercy with a shock baton and tazer, he still proved to be less than a match for the vampire who decided to restore some of his own strength through the villain's blood, not knowing that he'd prepared for such an eventuality.   As Mercy choked on the garlic-infused collar that Combat had been wearing in preparation for fighting a vampire, the other two heroes made their way to Cryogen, with Rue noticing first of all that a certain scientist's hair ring was now a different colour, having started red it was now blue. No time to investigate however as before they got a chance to say much, Blaze had come over to introduce herself to the heroes and they felt a familiar faintness wash over them.   Day 1 (again again again… Fourth time, for those counting.) It's a beautiful, sunny day in Bathala City. The skies are clear and the birds are chirping, and we find three of the local heroes getting progressively more annoyed at the time loop. They charge towards the tower, the ability to practically predict the traffic making travel a lot quicker and allowing them to arrive at more-or-less the same time. They make their way to the lab and quickly address Cryogen, with Blaze taking the opportunity to introduce herself to Warp again and...   Day 1 (Fifth loop)   It's a beautiful, sunny day in Bathala City. The skies are clear and the birds are chirping, and we find three of the local heroes finally putting a few of the pieces together. They realise that every time Warp has met Blaze, the time loop restarts, and so they decide to send Rue and Mercy to see them while Warp takes on Combat. They go, Blaze comes over to meet Mercy and Rue, and...   Day 1 (Sixth loop)   It's a beautiful, sunny day in Bathala City. The skies are clear and the birds are chirping, and we find three of the local heroes realising that it's both Rue and Warp that cannot meet Blaze today. They decide to quickly go and take care of Combat, while Mercy simply tells Cryogen that there's something wrong with her machine.   The fight goes well and Combat quickly finds himself apple-strudeled again, with the two heroes having to duck down to avoid Blaze taking another wander through the building. They then carry the unconscious villain down to the infirmary where he's strapped to a table while they figure out what to do with him. Meanwhile, Mercy is able to convince Cryogen that her machine could potentially explode, prompting her to lock down the floor and send her staff downstairs prematurely while she investigates. She's quickly able to find that a component she refers to as the "power throttling coupling" is disconnected, a fact she says could lead to the explosion they mentioned earlier.   Enraged, Cryogen storms into the lift promptly followed by Mercy, as she deduces that the man in charge of the coupling must be the one responsible for the sabotage. The two find themselves downstairs pretty quickly and the Vigil member quickly takes Dr Archer's lapels in hand and threatens to lock him in a chronal stasis if he doesn't tell her what he was thinking.   Things seem to be coming together for the heroes, but before they know what's happening Kelly is gunned down in the middle of the foyer and someone still in the lab activates the Starshine device, with Rue unable to see who they are before...   Day 1 (Seventh loop)   It's a beautiful, sunny day in Bathala City. The skies are clear and the birds are chirping, and we find three of the local heroes more confused than ever as they thought they'd figured out the problem. They decide that, given the nature of these loops, it may be prudent to see how events play out without their direct intervention. They decide to head towards the tower at their prearranged time, and are about to be led upstairs when a window suddenly, and without obvious reason, shatters, spraying shards of glass all around and injuring the woman with the multicoloured ring in her hair. She clutches at her wounds as she makes her way to the elevator and very subtly motions for the heroes to join her, piquing their interest and enticing them inside.   The scientist introduces herself as Doctor Moira Kloto, pushing the button in the elevator for the 33rd floor, decidedly not the infirmary. With a flick of the wrist, her injuries are healed and she takes a step back to regard the heroes. She quickly explains that she's one of a small group of extremely ancient superhumans that have powers far beyond those of normal heroes and villains. She goes on to say that back in ancient times she was known as Clotho, one of the fates, with her purview being beginnings. She confesses that it was her that placed the heroes in this loop, hoping that they'd be able to save Kelly from a death decided for her by Atropos, Clotho's older sister and an avatar of death. Unfortunately for them though, the shattered glass was a warning, and it would appear that Atropos has worked out what is going on and isn't happy. Before vanishing into nothingness, Clotho tells the team that they need to make sure Kelly makes it to midnight, and that they only have one chance left.   As the doors to the laboratory open, they are met by Kelly herself, about to go down to meet them. She expresses her sympathy for Warp's recent bereavement (a conversation they've had several times at this point), and he decides to roll with it, telling her that it really means a lot for her to say that and that he could really use her support right now. The flimsy masquerade works and Kelly offers him a seat next to where she'll be recording the presentation, allowing him a good opportunity to keep an eye on her.   With Rue strategically staying back to avoid Blaze, Mercy heads over to Cryogen and tells her upfront about the power throttling coupling. She's suspicious of him at first, but quickly realises it's only Dr Archer that could've made the adjustment, storming into the elevator to go and confront him.   With the floor effectively theirs, the team is well positioned for the moment when The Chronaturge shows up and begins to tamper with the device, opening up a portal in the structure and pulling out a Chronasphere, a temporal artifact the likes of which and Cryogen have been feuding over for years. Before he's able to make his escape though, Rue uses her telekinesis to snatch the sphere away and makes a break for it, initiating combat as the villain uses his chronomancy to summon forth a T-rex from the annals of history.   Despite some early success with a one-two attack of vampire punch and a telekinetically thrown steel chair, the fight quickly turns against the heroes as, upon biting into Mercy, the T-rex undergoes a transformation sped up by its master's time manipulation, becoming a vampire as well. It quickly incapacitates Mercy and swallows him whole while the Chronaturge is able to temporarily turn Rue back to a mere infant. Warp, having created a tower shield for himself out of nearby materials, is barely able to endure the onslaught of wizard and dinosaur alike until Rue is able to return to her normal self and knock out the Chronaturge with a well-placed steel chair to the back of the head. Without the sustaining force of its master's magic, the T-rex quickly dissipates and returns to its natural time, possibly as the progenitor of all subsequent vampires, and the partially digested corpse of Mercy is dropped in a messy puddle on the floor.   Seething with rage at having seemingly lost a friend to this man, Rue angrily takes the Chronasphere and, upon her return to the lab, throws it aggressively into Cryogen's hands, asking her if it was 'worth it'. Naturally unimpressed by dramatic displays, Cryogen performs a quick scan of Mercy's corpse and reveals that, thanks to his vampiric nature, he'd be back alive again within half an hour. She thanks the team for their efforts and returns to her machine, hoping to have it ready to go ahead on schedule as Mercy is swept into another room to recover.   Just before the presentation is due to begin, Cryogen visits with the slowly regenerating vampire and he claims she owes him a new jacket. With a roll of her eyes, she gives him a small device that is capable of returning his clothes to how they were an hour prior, before leaving again. He soon emerges into the laboratory, having mostly recovered, and is immediately embraced by a deeply worried Kelly, much to his embarrassment. He has to brush her aside however, as he's spotted someone he recognises.   He stands, imposing, over the man disguised as a reporter, knowing him as the one that emptied a handgun into Kelly's back in the previous loop. The vampire has no problem scaring the man away, and Rue takes it upon themself to track him down and arrest him, finding out that he was Roger Williams, and was out for revenge since it was Kelly's father who'd put him in prison over a decade prior.   As a final order of business Mercy makes his way upstairs to confront Combat, but finds the training room empty, with the villain likely figuring he'd been found out. Finally, with the danger passed, Dr Archer and the Chronaturge imprisoned, and the day saved, the heroes sit down to watch Cryogen's presentation, deciding to play bodyguard for the rest of the day. It's naturally not long before Kelly suggests a few games of bowling.