B-Team: The Cryonic Odyssey - Part 1

Expedition

When confronted by two different versions of Cryogen at once, the gathered members of the B-team are ushered away, along with a tagalong from another reality, on a multiversal adventure on the hunt for the mysterious "Jumper".

It's a beautiful Friday afternoon in Bathala City and, following their display of competence during the events of The Dawson Sphere  , the B-team have found themselves being called back to the Vigilant Tower by The Vigil's resident tech genius Cryogen. When the team (except for Warp who is, at this time, tracking a vaguely mythological beast outside Dublin) gather at the tower's lab, they find themselves confronted by not one but two versions of Cryogen, the one they know, wearing her iconic white parka and wrist-mounted computer, and another in red, with a set of unusual mechanical rings adorning her costume.   Questions abound, but the pair are quickly able to explain the situation. The duplicate, electing to go by the name Cryonic for ease of reference, is from a parallel version of their reality where, as opposed to Cryogen's development of time-travel technology, she focused her efforts on travel through space and between universes, creating her portal rings. She doesn't go into any great detail about the differences between her world and theirs, but explains that she's been tracking some sort of extradimensional entity that she's named the "Jumper", which seems to be causing near-apocalyptic cataclysms in whichever universe it visits. Concerned about the integrity of her own and many other worlds, Cryonic decided to enlist the help of someone she knew she could trust; herself.   It was Cryonic's idea to bring the team on-board to help escort the pair of them while they follow the Jumper's path through worlds, taking readings and hopefully managing to find a way to trap and destroy it before it brings an apocalypse down on any more worlds. After a few more questions regarding the nature of multiversal travel, most of which go over the group's heads, they agree to act as interdimensional bodyguards of a sort, helping the Cryo's bring some machinery up to the roof.   On the tower's roof, they find another, far larger portal ring, with accompanying computers and monitors. Cryonic explains that the bigger device will act as their opening into the multiverse and an anchor that will allow them to travel between other universes with her smaller rings before returning to their home one. The team prepares for a universe-hopping adventure as the two Cryogens get the machine started, but before long, something seems to have gone awry.   The giant ring expands further and the space within slowly becomes opaque as the portal starts to open, but a surge of electricity can be heard and the device starts to bring something unintended through. The team is nearly knocked off of the roof as a torrent of sea water emerges through the portal, washing over them before it's quickly followed by a gigantic pirate ship with deep purple sails. Pagan is briefly mesmerised, her magical vision seeing an aura in colours that she'd never seen before as the ship passes overhead and begins to fly into the city.   A moment later, the ship is followed out of the portal by a shouting dwarf, looking like something out of a tolkein novel or game of D&D, as he cries for the ship to come back. Leaping into action, Mercy flies after the ship, hoping to find some way of keeping it from crashing into the buildings or worse, and the rest of the team begin to rapidfire questions at the dwarf. He quickly explains that his name is Kurthol Slagdam and that he's an adventurer from a world completely different to their own. He tells them that the ship is sentient and belongs to a friend of his, though it doesn't seem to like him very much and so, decided to dump him in the ocean and flee from him through the nearest random portal that happened to open before it.   Bringing Kurthol along with them as the expert on the ship, the team quickly move further into the city, using Cryonic's portals to hop from rooftop to rooftop, attempting to stop it before it hurts anyone. While Harmony begins to create barriers between it and the buildings, Mercy tries to jump behind the wheel, turning it in an attempt to gain some measure of control. The attempt falters however, and the ship utters a loud, almost whale-like, moan before tipping sharply upwards, seemingly preparing to perform some sort of loop.   Worried about the potential speed the ship may pick up on the downturn, Rue begins trying to slow the ship using their telekinesis, aided by Harmony placing a giant, floating marshmallow in the ship's path. The ship comes to a stop, but is still floating, now-upside-down, a few hundred feet above the city, with no permanent solution in sight. With this in mind, the team ask Cryonic to creat a pair of portals that they could use to get on board. She does so, and fairly soon Pagan and Kurthol have made their way into the ship's hold to join Mercy, the former attempting to speak with the ship, as one of the only people around who might be able to.   Emma finds out that the "Beautiful Rainbow Ship" as she's called it, is actually called The Sea Hag and feels disrespected by Kurthol. That she misses her Mistress Yulia and doesn't like to be treated like an object, much to the dwarf's indignance. Unfortunately, all Kurthol's subsequent gripes of "but you are an object!" get him, is a trio of gunpowder barrels to the chest that quickly knock him out of the hold and send him plummeting to the ground below. A frantic rescue is made, and Kurthol is brought safely down to the ground while the barrels of gunpowder are destroyed in midair.   Up inside the ship, Emma is able to calm the Sea Hag, and the ship eventually decides to make peace with Kurthol, slowly proceeding to fly back to the roof of Vigilant Tower, and take place alongside the structure. Emma explains to Kurthol that he'll need to treat the ship with a little more respect if he wants her to cooperate with him. He agrees, but unfortunately is told by the Cryo's that they can't send him back home just yet as the Jumper's energy signature is getting faint and they need to follow before it's too late. They ask if he'd be willing to accompany them on the mission and, seeing little other choice, he agrees, with Cryonic equipping him with a pair of her portal rings on his arms to give him more of a ranged combat option.   With the portal ring recalibrated, the machine springs to life once again and the team is whisked away to the first universe on their hunt. They're transported to an area in the outskirts of Bathala, and the Cryo's soon figure out that they need to make it back to the tower, as that's where Jumper exited this universe, allowing them to take the most accurate readings possible.   The city is deathly quiet, with absolutely no signs of animal life for miles around, even to those in the team with hyperacute senses and Cryogen with her enhanced scanning capabilities. The team soon decide to make their way towards the city in hopes of finding more answers deeper within, taking note of how the newspapers seemingly stop at January 3rd, 2025 but the city showing signs of rapid overgrowth considering the timeframe. It's as they reach the tower, and Cryogen regards the team that she realises what's going on.   To their horror, the team realise that all of them except Mercy and Kurthol have seemingly aged several years in the time that they'd been there, with many of the members who were usually in their twenties, now looking more like they're nearinig middle-age. Cryogen explains that it may have something to do with an experiment she was conducting at the start of the year to see if she could stop time. Apparently, while her own experiment was a success and she was able to temporarily pause time, in this universe, she was less successful, and may have trapped the world in a state of rapid time, meaning years passed in minutes and the whole world simply aged to death. With that chilling revalation hanging over their heads, the team make their way into the tower and up to the laboratory, allowing the Cryo's to begin their work, pushing aside an oddly familiar skeleton in a white parka.   While they work however, the hyperacute ears of Rue and Harmony pick up a distinct muttering from the rafters, "Hungry... so hungry..." and think they may be about to come face-to-face with an old enemy of theirs. Much to their surprise however, it's Mercy who decends from the ceiling, his form emaciated and his eyes crazed. He looks over the team with a dark edge to his gaze before taking a step forward, blocked by their own Mercy, who pulls out one of his supply of bloodpacks from his coat. He offers it to the other Mercy, who takes it and ravenously gorges himself, but it doesn't have the effect he'd hoped. In stead of placating his other self, it simply puts him into a frenzy of bloodlust, and he quickly attacks the group.   Mercy, always wary in case of his own fall to darkness, reveals a wooden stake that he'd had hidden away. Between that and a number of silver darts produced by Harmony, the ravenous Mercy quickly finds himself falling to pieces at the combined assault of the team. Eventually, Cryonic steps in, using one of her portal rings to shunt the voracious vampire into a pocket dimension, not wanting to hammer the final nail in the coffin of this universe and thinking they may still be able to rehabilitate him later.   With their data gathered, the Cryo's open up another portal, allowing the team to quickly leave the dead universe behind them. The portal drops them back into another quiet version of Bathala City, but this time it's not due to any sort of mass extinction event. The team looks around them and the city looks like it's undergone some significant upgrades, with cleaner streets, gleaming walkways and security cameras on every corner, but the only people on the streets for miles were a number of armed guards that were patrolling nearby.   Cryogen quickly gets to work, reversing the effects of the increased aging and searching the web for some information on this version of the city, but her face quickly falls as she reads a certain news article by Michelle Van Quinn, and recognises the timeline. She reveals to the team that this world is the one that she comes from, just almost a century earlier. She knows that at midnight tonight, a nuclear detonation levels the city and sets into motion a sequence of events that sparks World War III, rendering the whole world little more than a war-ravaged wasteland by the time she was born.   With that revalation, the team realise that they have little more than an hour to escape this world before the inevitable explosion, and the bad news doesn't end there. Cryonic reveals that the location that Jumper left this universe from is high inside the Schurk International HQ, and as they're discussing it, a pair of Schurk Enforcement agents begin to close in on their position. The various members of the team quickly hide, with Harmony electing to fiddle with the lock of a nearby door, hoping to ellicit sympathy from the agents and maybe get some information out of them.   The pair approach and call out to Harmony, wondering what she's doing out past curfew until she turns around and they quickly change their tune. They begin calling her "Ma'am" and referring to her as Agent Uranium, asking what she's doing out in the city alone. Not entirely sure what this means, but hoping to roll with it, Harmony quickly adopts the character of a stern pseudo-military leader and berates them for interfering with her work. The act works, and the two agents are quick to apologise to her, but she soon overplays her hand by asking for their badge numbers, which they don't have.   Assuming the jig is up, Harmony attacks the pair, but a nearby alarm sounds, bathing the area in light as a nearby speaker blares "UNAUTHORISED USE OF POWERS DETECTED." A fight breaks out, but even with their enhanced armament compared to the Century agents of the prime universe, the team make short work of the agents, spilling into a nearby alleyway as the lights follow them. An armoured transport vehicle quickly arrives on scene, but is hampered in its approach by Harmony placing a concrete bollard in its path, wounding the driver and forcing the agents inside to get out and engage the team from covering positions behind it.   The team have to wonder how Schurk International ever managed to capture any superhumans as they quickly incapacitate the gathered agents, but their question is quickly answered as Rue and Harmony sense a shape flying towards their position at incredible speed. As the last agent falls, the shape crashes down like a meteorite before them, cratering the floor and kicking up a cloud of dust in its wake. The team is then blasted with a beam of radioactive energy as they come face to face with Agent Uranium herself, this universe's version of Harmony.   To be continued...