| Juggernaut saves Crime Alley | |||||
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| What: Mysterious forces unleash construction nanos to renovate crime alley | |||||
Park Row, known locally as Crime Alley, is being looked at for another renovation attempt. Plans are made to tear down a local eyesore and put in a new building...but the eyesore in question is home to a good number of homeless persons who will be out of a relatively safe shelter if it is torn down.
Chris King is here with some friends from College, bringing food to the homeless. Some things, do not require a super hero.
This is precisely why there is a Channel 4 News Van parked outside the building in-question and April O'Neil (having recently been promoted to evening news reporter, what a treat!) has been standing across the street from the apartment complex and recording a story with her camera-man Vernon Fenwick.
April wasn't hard to spot, bright yellow jacket and the camera's bright white light shining on her... there were many people goofing around behind her at the chance to also be on live television.
That is...not the reason that Cain is here. He's passing through the area for his own reasons, and just decided to take a shortcut through Crime Alley. People don't tend to mess with him. He doesn't really look like an easy mark. And even if they DO decide to go after him, well...it's not like there's going to be many real threats to him. He's wearing civilian clothes, a leather jacket over a tee and jeans, boots on his feet. As simple as it gets.
There's a red drone in the sky buzzing around. It appears to be a Predator-style drone. It is simply circling around, as if exploring. It is relatively high in the sky.
A person enters the building carrying a paper bag. He is one of the residents, nobody much pays attention. He takes the bag into the basement and pushes a button on a strange cylindrical object he pulls out. A light on the object blinks and ports open on the side. Something grayish starts pouring out of the cylinder, and where it touches anything what it touches starts dissolving into more of the goo.
The man screams as part of it sprays onto him and his body starts to burn like it was sprayed by acid. the screams are loud enough to be heard by those on the street. Chris King jerks his head up and runs into the building.
April finishers her live television reporter, even with all the kids and young people acting like jackasses behind her back. She coiled up her microphone and handed it to Vernon as he started to put their equipment away. They were used to people acting like crazy loons whenever their camera's were rolling in a place like this... MOST of the time it didn't get out of hand, unless it was near a bar.
April glanced toward the location of the Juggernaut, but she didn't know anything about him or who he was, he was just... a sight to see, after all... quite huge.
"I can't imagine many people would challenge that guy to a fight." Vernon said, having noticed him too.
"I'll give ya ten bucks if you do." April said to her co-worker with a small smile. They were both yet-still unaware of any evil goo in the building they were reporting on.
"No thanks. I like my neck to be in the unbroken position." Vernon said back to the redheaded reporter then.
Minoke Zavia beeeeeeeps as the drone suddenly changes course, moving towards the building, skimming along the ground as it shimmers into red goo and shimmers into the rolling form of Minoke Zavia as she runs into the building. "What in the world..." she whispers softly as she feels the magic. She heads into the basement and STARES at what she sees. "Nanites?" she whispers faintly. "But they're not metal... what are they... oh NO!" she shrieks. "Impossible!" She can tell what's going on - the nanites are assimilating the bulding to replicate themselves.
To be fair, it IS a scream of pain in Crime Alley. So it's not that weird. But, it does cause Cain to stop and look around for the source of the sound, out of curiosity more than anything. He notes somebody rushing inside, and makes his way over towards the building, peering through to see if there's anything visible happening.
April sees a largish predator-type drone suddenly land and turn into a red woman and run into the building. Minoke hustles past Chris King, who is being a bit careful of the possibly unsafe stairs. She realizes the nanites are also eating the flesh and belongings of the screaming old man near the major nanite spill.
Chris King comes down the stairs and grunts, "Yuck, don't touch the blob!" He touches his left wrist and is surrounded by incandescent prismatic light...Minoke feels a flare of Chaos Magic as he is transformed into a person who looks almost satanic, with shiny black bat-wings and small horns on his head. He says, "I am Devilwing, and I am here to help."
Cain looks in at the point where the light is bright, he sees the Devilish person, the red girl, the man with something eating his arm, and the spreading goo on the floor.
Minoke Zavia frowns. "Damnit. What kind of naniates aren't made of metal? It's not fair! I can't do anyting about it..." She just stares helplessly. "I thought I understood nanotech..." She sighs softly as she extends her hand, which starts shimmering red. She focuses on the encroaching goo and moves closer - she can defend herself against similar consumption but doesn't want to push it as she tries to absorb the magic from them. "I've never felt magic like this - it's... so... powerful. So... strange... it's all over here..." She isn't sure if her efforts to de-magick the out of control nanoswarm is having any effect.
"I just put all the stuff away..." Vernon says as both he and April witness something going on inside the building. He growls and starts to unpack things again quickly getting the camera first, mics and lights weren't as important in a pinch.
April did watch that woman 'transform' out of a drone and run toward the building. She didn't wait for Vernon's news camera, instead she just grabbed her phone camera and rushed to get a good shot of the action. "What the hell is going on?" She muttered, looking to either of her sides and then rushing across the street to try to get a look inside.
That's a pretty strange sight. Cain stares at the odd bit of chaos a few moments, then his eyes focus on the growing glob of gray. "What's that shit?" He doesn't seem overly worried, which might seem odd even as big as he is. He steps closer to the mass, reaching out to poke it with a finger. Then something Minoke just said registers to him. "Wait, did you just say magic?" Of course, it's probably a bit too late for him to pull his hand back. But really! What's the worst that could happen?
Devilwing makes a quick decision, "Only one way to save his life, I need to cut the stuff off him before it spreads futher. I will need a tourniquet or something to cauterize the wound, I hope one of you can do that. He slashes out with a razor sharp wingtip, causing another scream from the older man.
Minoke's attempt to absorb the spell does not seem to be doing anything to effect the spread of the nano...she gets the feeling it is actually some kind of blueprint, telling the nano what final form to assume, as well as helping it assimilate materials faster.
April sees Devilwing cut the nano-blob off the old man and press his hands onto the right spot to slow the bleeding. He says, "I need something to tie this off, or a source of heat, or a sealant...something like that, or he is going to bleed to death."
Cain feels his fingertip start to burn, like it might if he had poked it into acid back when he was only human.
Minoke Zavia sighs as she puts her hand over the old man's arm, her hand shimmers, and she pulls back, leaving a dull red seal over it. "I don't know what to do... I can't counter-devour them... there's no metal..." She whimpers faintly as she tries to fire a blast of electricial energy at the gray goo, hoping it'd disrupt them. "Ummmm... don't touch the gray goo... it's nanites and they won't stop - they'll eat anything."
April tries to stay back and let the skilled ones do what they do best... but it seemed like they might be out of ideas? She kept recording with her phone until Vernon appeared beside her with his big news-shoulder-camera. She put her phone away then and took the red-wine-colored scarf off that was around her neck.
"You can use this to tear into whatever you need to stop the bleeding." She said, offering her scarf.
Dammit! That hurts! Cain jerks his hand back and stares at his finger with a hint of disbelief. The skin is gone from it, and the flesh looks frayed. He gives the hand a shake, blood splattering around, though the skin is already starting to grow back. Pretty quickly too. "Magical...what? Nannys?" Nanites weren't really around even in fiction back in his day.
Chris King has heard of nanites, so Devilwing knows of them, "This is not good, they will take in any materials they can to reproduce themselves, increasing at a geometrical rate. Unless they can be switched off or cut off from touching things, they will keep growing until they do whatever they were built to do." Not that he has any idea how to turn them off or what could contain them.
Minoke Zavia just stares. She sighs as she literally rips her finger off, watches as it changes into a roach-like thing, and then tosses it at the glob. She is going to try to assault the metal components of the nanites, hoping to take them apart. Meanwhile, she uses her Starkphone to call her mother.
Minoke Zavia whispers, "I called for someone who knows more about this than I do. My mother. She'll be here soon I hope." Seh watches her little shard try to eat the nanites' metal parts and hope it doesn't get eaten itself.
April gets a call on her phone and she curses softly then turns to Vernon. "Record it all.." She said to him in a serious tone and he nodded at her, in his professional-mode... which she 'mostly' trusted.
With that said the Reporter rushes up and out to take the call on her phone as it must've been quite an important ring to get her to leave this story!
It was a mostly quiet day for Minoke's 'Mother'. She had simply been at home doing some research and practicing her trade. Which trade? Exactly. It was mostly peaceful.
But all of that changed when the Minoke Phone attacked. When Gene got the call, she was in the middle of meditating. Quickly she was up on her feet. "Et Habitu!" Immediately violet smoke wrapped around her body only to leave her in a flowing violet dress and an elaborate white domino mask. Then she draws out her wand and waves it over herself, "Ianuae Magicae Ad Minoke!" Another cloud of violet smoke wraps around her body and poof she's gone.
A thick cloud of smoke appears leaving behind a female form in it's wake. "Hello." She can immediately sense the magic around the building in question and frowns. "I'm calling in some reinforcements." She waves her wand again, "Sola Hic Ianuae!"
Miles away, Sola would find herself wrapped in a violet cloud of magic.<re>
As Sola is teleported in, she chants an incantation in binary. <<Deploy armor: Entropy>> Her armor appears on her body as she materializes. "Situation report. I'm only partially up to speed. I was working on the new armor."
While waiting on some info, she starts to scan the area for technological anomalies. Unlike Minoke, whatever's causing problems doesn't have to be metal for her to attempt to do something about it.
Cain is eyeing the blob warily, and not standing as close as he was before. He's not scared exactly, but that stuff did hurt. "Huh. Magic....whatevers. Great." On the plus side, he doesn't have any real reason to stick his neck out here, so he doesn't have to stay any longer than he wants to. Smoke appears and he turns towards it, considering the woman that emerged. "Yeah? And who're you, lady?" Then another poof of smoke, and Sola is there. He squints slightly at the sight of her. "Hey. You look familiar."
Minoke's "roach" seems to be able to eat into the nanite goo, which does not seem to eat it in turn. It is slow going, as the amount of metal per volume is pretty small. Devilwing says "I will take this man to the hospital and return." Sola senses that this is some fairly advanced nanotechnology in the goo, but it seems oddly incomplete...as if something else was substituting for part of the systems. Genevieve senses that here is a strong chaos-magic transformation spell involved in this substance. The Goo is spreading fairly fast, it has more than doubled in size since Minoke entered.
Minoke Zavia just murmurs, "I'm glad you came - I dont' know what to do. These things are just BARELY metal... I'm trying to disable them by eating what metal they have with a small pieceo f myself but it's not doing much... I'm scared... I tried draining them but it didn't work either..." She sniffles as the roach has grown a bit as it keeps eating. "I didn't dare risk my whole body to the goo so I just flipped them the finger.
The woman in the mask simply smiles to Cain. In her deep cogney accent she speaks up. "Well Aren't you a towering fellow. I'm Magika and I'm here to help resolve this pesky problem." She smiles and then it hits her. Chaos magic. Ugh. Its nausiating to be honest. It doesn't have a set modus operandi. It makes it really hard to predict. At least in this case it's set on messing with the building.
Magika looks to her daughters and shakes her head, "Thats chaos magic. I am going to attempt a containment spell. After that I might be able to remove the rogue nanites. Either way, There are people in there and they need evacuated. Those things are manipulating the building and they could potentially bring the whole building down as altering the structural integrity is actually weakening it even temporarily."
With that the dark haired woman quickly looks at the building and points her wand toward it. That wand definitely has a lot of power coursing through it. It would be easy to sense by anyone who can feel magic. "Quod Continent!" Immediately violet magic begins wrapping around the goo.
As Magika works on the magical side, Sola's taking a closer look from the technological. "We've met," she says to Cain. "But right now we have bigger problems. These things... they feel incomplete somehow. Like they have incomplete systems, hardware, opcode. Magic could explain it. I could hack them, but I doubt it would do much good."
"Chaos magic. Uh-huh. That sounds....fun. Yeah. Can this stuff be stopped by punching it? No? I don't think there's much I'm gonna be accomplishing here then. Also, pretty sure I'm not gonna get paid either." Cain looks at the nanite swarm again. "It doesn't seem to be spreading very fast anyway. How dangerous could it be?" Yeah. Saying that has never lead to things turning worse before.
Genevieve figures that Minoke could not absorb the magic because it is pretty potent, and very dispersed. It seems the spell is contained in each individual nanite, like a core program. If she was a gambler (and if she knows about computers) she would bet that the core program is some kind of microglyph...a glyph etched at a molecular level. Sola would probably concur, it lacks the normal molecular programming core and has something else in place of it...a magic glyph instead of a program would make sense of what she is detecting. The Magic sensitives may realize that they are facing an "iceberg" situation, the goo they see is actually a fraction of what is under the surface. Cain might figure it out as the surface he is on collapses under his weight...
Minoke Zavia turns to stare at Cain. "These things could continue to spread, eating the whole planet and everything on it, unless we stop them. Could you remove everyone from the building, Mr. Juggernaut?" she asks. She looks frustrated and a bit scared that this unique combination of circumstances made her call for mommy. If only they were metal nanites like she is - she could eat them herself.
Magika winces as she can feel just how much magic she is using in an effort to contain this. She frowns. She's not a gambler and she doesn't know squat about computers. What she does know is tech. This many nanites must have a control point. A core. Its going to need dealt with.
Quickly she turns to Cain right as he goes down under ground. So much for the big man at least for now. "There is a lot more then you see here. This is huge. There is a core of some kind. I dunno where it is, I can't get a location on it but it's there." She stops for a moment and thinks.
Her gaze goes to her daughters. No matter what, this was going to get very dangerous. She sighs, "Sola, Ruby, Find the core. I'm going to get the people out of this building. It will need shut down. Usually there is something at the heart of a core. A gem or a rune or something like that. Remove it and it should shut down everything else." With that she look to the building and looks for an easy way in.
Cain grimaces. "Thanks for keeping that a secret." He shakes his head. "I guess I could, but it's kind of moot if you can't figure out how to stop that thi-" He pauses and glances around. "Did you guys hear something?" And....then the floor under him collapses. He curses loudly and graphically as he falls, landing in a much larger pond of the gray stuff and disappearing into it. The stuff bulges out a bit, a hand briefly emerges. Apparently he switched to his armor in there, since the the bands of metal can be seen around the fist. Though they're disappearing about as rapidly as his skin is. Which is to say, gone pretty fast. Then it's under the surface again, and the slime starts to bulge weirdly here and there as he tries to punch his way out. Which probably doesn't work very well. He's not thinking the most clearly at the moment. If he manages to get his hands on anything more solid in there, he'll probably grab it. And then probably squeeze.
Sola's eyes start glowing as her sensor array starts taking up most of her processing resources. "Working..." Cain falls, but she's so focused on trying to find some weakness of these things, or some kind of core, she can't act.
Genevieve concentrates on removing all people from the building who are not involved in the fight. Sola concentrates on finding the core. Minoke realizes there is an area of undissolved metal near the middle of the mass. Cain flounders about in the goo, blinded and in more pain than he has felt in years. He thinks his fingers bump something, but he is having trouble telling because of his nerve endings being eaten away... Devilwing arrives back at the building.
Magika quickly moves towards the front door. As soon as she gets near the gooey swarm she quickly speaks, "Repellere!" That should keep them away from her for now. Immediately she makes her way towards a fire alarm. pulling the lever, bells and lights go off letting people inside the building know there is a problem.
Then its the tedious task of going through floor by floor chasing people out. "This is not a false alarm. Get Out now. Your life depends on it!" She exclaims. She sighs as she repeats herself again and again. Finally she has had enough, "Audite Vocem Meam!" With those words everyone in the building can hear here. "This is not a false alarm. Vacate the building now. Your life depends on it."
If he did bump something, Cain tries to latch onto it. His fingers are pretty much bone at this point, though the rest of him is more thickly covered in meat, so it's taking longer. He also couldn't see even if he got out of the goo at the moment, because his eyes are one of the softer parts of his body. So is his tongue, and various other things. It's kind of funny that he can still grip with skeletal fingers. Even stranger that he can squeeze as hard as he can, the only thing he's really thinking or feeling besides pain at the moment is rage. And some hate. He really doesn't like whoever made this stuff.
Sola detects a complex object in the center of the mass, it has something like an antennae array, and something like a computer core, but it has no circuits she can detect, and no power source.
Genevieve finds out that the fire alarm does not work, so she enchants it into sounding anyway and warns everyone away from the building.
Cain thinks he must have something in his hands, as he can tell they are not closing completely. whatever it is, it must be pretty tough, it will take an effort to crush or break.
Minoke Zavia hmmmmms. "I sense something - they didn't bother me before, so I'm going down. There's an aluminum signature at the bottom." She simply shimmers, hardening her surface to maximum and drops down to the basement, hoping she'll not be noticed as she looks around for that aluminum signature.
As Soon as she senses the building is empty, Magika quickly teleports out of the building and back to the group. Quickly she focuses. She can sense Cain is still alive. Damn! Quickly she begins to focus, "Ianuae Eum!" Immediately that tell tale violet smoke would wrap around the Juggernaut, hopefully teleporting him back to the surface.
"Whats the Situation?" She asks Sola.
The thing doesn't immediately crush underneath his fingers. This makes Cain angrier. And while he's not the Hulk, with the whole angrier equals stronger thing, he does redouble his efforts. Wrapping both hands around the whatever it is and squeezing harder, also trying to twist and break it, the goo filling his lungs bubbling a little as he growls. Well...there's probably not much lung left at this point, but still.
And then he's suddenly out of the goo. He looks....not good. His helmet is half-melted away, and his head is little more than a skull. His armor is in scraps, and he doesn't really have any skin left. His muscles have depleted a bit, and it's amazing he's still alive let alone standing. He continues to try to break...whatever he has in his hands.
Sola groans. "I wish I had a cold gun," she replies. "There's nothing for me to hack, nothing to rewrite. They're not computers. Using my weapons may do more harm than good, and the limited magic I have won't affect nearly this much mass. Maybe if my plasma cannon shot freon or something..."
...Then she gets an idea. "Wait. What if I gave them the resources I need in order to take control of them? If I use my reconstruction spell on them and try to convert them to my own design, I can control them directly."
Cain is transported to outside the pool with the odd cylinder. Minoke amnd Sola sense the device they were seeking move with him...then the Goo suddenly rushes towards Cain...apparently called towards the device in his skeletal hands. The Juggernaut exerts his considerable strength and the cylinder breaks raggedly in half. The goo suddenly crystallizes into something akin to artificial sapphire...leaving Minoke buried inside.
Minoke Zavia suddenly realizes that the device was gone. And these false nanites were still not attacking her. And then... suddenly she finds herself entombed. She whimpers as she tries to shift to break free.
Cain shudders and drops the two halves of the device. Like when his finger was hurt earlier, you can actually see his flesh regrowing. It'll take a bit for it to finish entirely, but clearly he's not going to die. He can't really talk yet, or see. Or....hear very well for that matter. Pretty much all his sensory organs were dissolved. Luckily, enough of the pants of the armor remain that none of the girls are traumatized when other parts of him start regrowing. He's probably in a lot of pain though.
Suddenly there's nothing for Sola to sense, except a very scared Minoke. She flies downward towards where Minoke is entombed and starts to use her fists to try to break through the now solidified goo. She may not have Juggernaut-level strength, but her ceratanium bones and well-above-human strength is hopefully enough to allow her to pulverize some of it.
Magika quickly moves towards Cain. Is he horrible looking right now? Yes. Does his lack of flesh literally nausiate her? Absolutely. But he is one of the good guys right now and there is no way she will let these nanites use him as a chew toy again. Quickly she speaks, "Circumsistite Magicis Praesidiis Agri!" As soon as the words come out of her lips, A bubble of violet magic forms, blocking the two people off from the nanites.
Its about this point that she realizes that her daughter is currently stuck in a fake sapphire. Panic, worry, and rage all fill her from head to toe. "Stay here." She states to Cain as she walks right out of the bubble towards the mass of nanites. The wand that she's been using begins growing larger. It becomes a full length staff. She slams her staff on the ground, "Redipiscor!" Any nanites that might be near here will get blown back. "You crossed the line. Release her or I will banish every bit of you to the sun."
Minoke Zavia looks up at Sola. "Thanks," she states as she squirms, now fred as she raises up, climbing up. "Thanks for the save, Sola." She then calls up, "Thanks MOM!" She starts to climb up out of the basement, and then emerges from the building, brushing dust off of her shoulder. "So what is going on?"
The Artificial intelligence controlling the nanites is broken, the nanites have broken down into impure corundum. Genevieve obviously can get no response from them. Between Sola and Genevieve, and her own efforts, Minoke is quickly broken free. Cain, momentarily ignored by the women, is feeling incredible pain as his body regrows from the inside out, meaning all the nerve endings regrow before the skin over them does. Not sure what else he can do, Devilwing wraps his wings around Cain to protect him until he finishes healing.
Magika walks over and gives her daughters a hug. As she does, she lets the bubble around Juggernaut pop. "Way to give me a scare." Then she turns around toward the man in pain. "Et Sanitates Dolorem!"Quickly the pain that Juggernaut is feeling would subsdie and is healing would be even faster. "Thank you."
She looks to her daughters again. "Well, I think I am going to get back home. I was doing some important meditating and after this I could use some more."
Cain shudders again when the spell hits him, and the muscles on his fae twitch a little. It's him trying to blink, though his eyelids haven't grown back yet. Eyes either, but there's some signs of them developing towards the back. The muscles are largely repaired at this point, and skin is starting to form. He waits for his tongue to finish regrowing and lips to mostly regrow then says in a gargling voice, "God that sucked bad. Did the thing stop?"
Minoke Zavia gazes. "Yes, Mr. Juggernaut? You saved the day. I hope to see you when you're feeling better so I can chew on your hat some more." She smiles at her mother, then asks, "So - I couldn't help but notice that your magical aura is almost identical to those rogue nanites - got any explanation?" she asks the Devilwing.
Man, your skin and hair regrowing itches. Seeing blackness at first, then there's a vague gray blur that slowly clears with color eventually coming back. Then his eyes finish growing, and Cain looks down at himself. "Well, that's..." His voice is still gurgly, and he rests his hands on his knees, bending over and half hacking up, half throwing up a red mess onto the ground with an audible splat. "Christ that tastes awful. Ugh. That's great. But that'll teach me to stick my nose in when I'm not being paid." He straightens up, then looks at himself again. "Okay. I'm gonna go get some pants. It was fun being half-digested by a magic blob and all. See you...whatever your name is, robot girl." If she had told him before, it slipped his mind.
Devilwing frowns at Minoke thoughtfully, "That is odd, but not impossible. My powers came from one of three magic dials originally. I lost my dial long ago, but it may still be out there, or one of the other two. It is difficult to use either of the lesser dials, like mine was, for evil, but the master dial was more versatile...and there was a way to use even my dial wrongly." He remembers the time he dialed HORROR instead of HERO and shudders. Sola groans softly as Minoke works herself free. "That... hurt. Why?" she asks, reflecting on punching the sapphire stuff.
Minoke Zavia glances at Sola. "Welcome to the joys of becoming alive," she muses softly. "I'm just lucky that that stuff didn't have much of an appetite for me. I was expecting it to hurt like hell when I fell down..." She gently soothes Sola's hand. "Mom, do you have _any_ idea what he's talking about? Dials?" The elder mage (Only she is allowed to call herself that! And when you get to be 140+ you get to call yourself whatever you want too!) just shakes her head, "No, I've never heard of any dials or anything. I suppose I could do some research and see what I could find. Sounds like a form of tech though. Best place to go for that knowledge is to Stark but this is also magic and ugh, Yeesh. This is a pain isn't it."
The witch thinks a little more. "I am going to gamble that the dials are devices that grant power to a person."
Straightening up again and wiping his mouth, Cain walks towards the door out. "If you ever figure out who made that stuff, let me know. I want to bash his skull in." Yeah. Apparently he's going to hold a grudge about the whole thing.
Minoke Zavia snorts. "Stark Industries wouldn't know magic if you changed everyone in there into a Roomba," she mutters. "Nor does Reed Richards." She shrugs. "I tried asking him soon after we awoke if he could tell me more about myself and he refused to admit magic even existed..." She shrugs. "Oh, I'm Minoke Zavia," she tells Juggernaut. "That's my sister Sola, and my mother Genevieve Zavia."
Devilwing shrugs his great black wings, "I really do not know much about the dials, I only used one for a while. I suppose the wizard knew...he created my dial and the other lesser dial...but he no longer exists.
Glancing towards the three on his way out Cain says, "Uh-huh. Nice to meet you and all that." Then he's out the door. ....wait, did she say she's going to chew on his helmet?
Sola massages her knuckles as she returns to ground level. "Great, tell the world..." she says very softly to Minoke. "Some of us have codenames for a reason." Says the only one of the three without one...
Genevieve looks at her Daughter and shakes her head, "When we get home I am going to have you look up the definition of Secret and memorize it." She sights and quickly says a few words. A portal to their home opens up. "I am going home, its open for a minute if you want to follow." With that, she steps through the portal.
Devilwing adds, before Genevieve leaves, "Yes, when I had the dial, it would grant me the powers of a hero for an hour at a time, never less than an hour apart from the last change. My powers came back abruptly over a year after I lost the dial, but with no control over the time I change."
Minoke Zavia shrugs as she steps through. "Sorry, Mommy - I'm just not used to _you_ having a secret identity. I keep forgetting." She ends up at home.