[Issue] Go West

[Narrator]

Will's hand really is fascinating! It's like a glimpse into being perfectly in tune with himself. It almost forces his attention, it's so... big. Not physically, just in scope. On some level he recognizes his thoughts are kind of getting away from him. Swimming in a sensation that's just... pleasant. Like being drunk but without the impairments and only the comfy floaty calm of -- being high. The thought pierces through the haze and with it the fact that behind him his friends are fighting a giant stone monster.

A stone monster that has grabbed Sam with a hand erupting from the ground and is now sinking back into the earth, dragging the fledgling war goddess with it.

Meanwhile Ennio's water-saw is seeing some results, the swirling ring of water and grit gouging into the rock. At first the thing doesn't even seem to really take notice, until the stone-shredding water cuts deep enough and the attacked arm and some of the nearby ones begin to thrash, leaving Ennio little room to sit and forcing him to move until two arms manage to almost accidentally catch him in the crook between them, the hands swiftly grabbing each other to clamp down on the evasive little thing. His ribs are already not in great shape and he can feel the air being squeezed out of him when a loud crack suddenly gives him a little more room to breathe. The weakened arm has partially snapped and while he's still trapped the force is no longer crushing.

[Will Stanton]

Sam could handle that, right? I mean, a real X-Man wasn't going to get bogged down by something as simple as a giant hand, yeah?

...Yeah?

Sighing, Will tried to shake himself out of his stupor, and started stumbling back towards the fight.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Ennio struggled fruitlessly, flinging curses and trying to wriggle out until the pain was too great. He wasn't remotely as tough as his fishy brother. With a last blast of water, he begrudgingly decided to wait for an opportunity to escape.

[Samantha McManus]

Sam struggles against the hand's grip, putting on mass to try to break free.

But ultimately she can only be flesh, and the hand is, of course, stone.

[Narrator]

Filling out in mass at least does one thing for Sam, it makes the cavity enclosed in rock and stone a little larger when the hand drags her into the ground. The grinding of stone, Ennio's pained yelling, it all cuts off and she's plunged into oppressive darkness. At least her telepathic senses tell her she's not sinking any deeper for the moment, but that's also all she has right now. The monster's blindingly bright pin-prick at the end of a tunnel that, the more she stares at it feels like it's walls are taking on the rustling and texture of feathers, like a tunnel of birds. Ennio's mind too is beginning to look like a shimmering spark is flitting inside of it and then something flares, Will, mind dazed by the flow of light increasing around him. Their Sparks. Their powers. Nestled in their body and mind, tempered. And then the Beastie, aimless and threshing, no real body, no real mind, only a power somehow latched onto the world.


Up above Ennio is struggling against the arms pincering him, water slashing and lashing but lacking the proper focus to do too much damage, but in his squirming her does manage to dig his fingers into the gouge he cut. This shape is certainly not strong enough to tear a part rock and maybe Bruce would struggle to as well, but he spots Will clambering back up the crater and towards the monster.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Need to... get... stronger," Ennio growled through gritted teeth.

Bruce wouldn't be enough, so he urged his unpredictable powers to develop another persona. He could feel the theme developing: the elements. Earth, that's what would be strong. That's what would fit where his mind has been of late. So he thought hard, focusing on his father's heroic alter ego and how he felt about him. Not the resentment of being kept in the dark, but the strength he could draw from knowing it was in his blood to fight for what all that he thought was right and just. It was there. He just... had to... grab it.

[Samantha McManus]

More than one way to solve this...

She turns her focus towards the monster's bright light.

You... shouldn't be here. All the rest of you is gone. You need to move on.

[Will Stanton]

Will, still not targeted by the thing, and seeing Sam disappear under the earth, instead started staggering over in Ennio's general direction.

[Narrator]

Ennio tries to reach for whatever aspect of his power governs the creation of new forms, but it's not exactly something he knows how to consciously do. Digging for strength he can feel the familiar feeling of confident and even boastful Bruce, but it slips through his metaphorical fingers at a time he feels far from confident with stone grinding around him like a vice. He's vaguely aware of Will staggering towards him and then there's a sudden shift in the air.

Underneath the ground, in a sensory-deprivation chamber of sorts, Sam is pushing her mind towards the Spark of the monster. There's something about the notion she's trying to bring to bear that feels right, like there's something she's supposed to sever, close, shepherd, seal, preserve. The feeling is hard to put into proper words. Ravens taking flight from a battlefield. But this... thing is an aberration. Something that went wrong. It's clinging to reality with a force that belies the little spark, a well of power of impossible proportion. Power that's not attached to anyone. At least not anyone here?
As she the concept of hundreds of ravens manifest to descend on it she begins to grasp how parts of it all hang together. The Spark flares, twisting a gleam of energy into reality and out in the real world rock and stone conform, animating and striking out at the advancing Will. And in the flow she sees calculations of a sort, molecular structures and properties, ways to shape energy into the right patterns but carried by memories, impressions, thoughts, experiences. There's blurry flashes of people, often fighting but not always. The creature is drawing on memories somehow connected to the Spark. They wash around Sam's ravens and some of them swirl off towards... Tosh's mind, twitching and shaking, almost... grasping?

In the real world the creature rumbles to life again, arms elongating until it towers above Will and one of the arms striking out and impaling him through the shoulder and leaving his body again on the opposing hip. And after a brief pause the spear of stone bursts into spikes that radiate out from it, pin-cushioning Will from the inside.

And Ennio suddenly feels a rush of just raw emotions, anger at seeing Will skewered with an intensity that doesn't quite relate to him but slot into place anyway. Righteous anger and stubborn resilience form a shell around the insecurities of being trapped and not living up to his dad's heroics. And as his body warps itself into a new shape there's a loud crack as the damaged limb of the creature is snapped off.

[Will Stanton]

With a gasp of breath, and the faint sound of air whizzing out of his new, speedholed form, Will gave out a near-voiceless cry as he was well-and-goodly shishkabobbed.

Keeping his new hand free from the mess -- this seemed very important to him, for reasons he couldn't quite put into words at the moment -- Will let himself hang there for a moment, exploring the new topography of his form. There wasn't exactly room to slide, mind you, as he was punctured and skewered from multiple angles and directions. He could always go liquid and drip off, but that wouldn't be of much help to anyone, now would it?

So instead, Will ripped a page from Sam's book and started getting heavier, pounding on the mass. He squeezed tightly around the stone spikes that passed through his body, encasing them as tightly as he could in his own doughy mass, making it difficult for the thing to move. He sagged up and down the arm, hoping that his rapidly increasing size would throw the thing off balance.

He did not shift his one new hand. That seemed important.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Out of the resulting cloud of dust and debris emerged a hulk as tall as Bruce but wider and more hunched in posture, lifting the broken arm with two of its four massive, armored arms. He was, in fact, an enormous humanoid of living stone resembling both a knight in armor and a horned beetle without wings... or perhaps a crustacean with fewer limbs. Small, crystalline eyes glowed red with righteous fury as he stomped forward and swung the broken limb at the larger creature.

There's no fury like beating-your-enemy-with-their-own-arm fury.

[Samantha McManus]

I see your fight. I am here to witness you, but you must understand that your time on the battlefield wasn't this time.

She tries to surround the spark with her presence, with the flock.

These here are not your enemies. You fought well, but your time is done.

[Narrator]

Will being an unusually active shish-kabob forces the creature to put a lot of it's weight on the skewer to keep itself from being perpetually unbalanced. Something that isn't helped when the little water-critter it caught suddenly turns into a hulking insect that breaks off an arm and slams it through the tangle of limbs. Stone is rattled, chunks of both the creature's arms and Tosh's new weapon being send flying until Tosh manages to get enough room for a wide blow that hammers against the arm impaling Will. A crack forms along the limb, exacerbated by the weight of a 30 foot rock-monster resting on it and it snaps, sending creature, Tosh and skewered Will into an uncontrolled tumble down into the crater.

Meanwhile Sam, trying not to think about how much oxygen is in the little sealed cave of hers, is finding some purchase against the swirling Spark. This is right somehow, muscle memory without any muscles and she can feel the connection that links the Spark and it's seemingly endless well of power to reality. Unlike Will's and Tosh's that are dancing at the edge of her perception this one isn't even moored in anything, really and once she realizes she can just close off the connection rather than push against an immovable force it's almost too easy to cut the thread. It's simply a question of how. Cast what's leaking through back into whatever lies beyond, sever it and let it dissipate or lay claim to it...

[Will Stanton]

Will did, indeed, tumble uncontrollably into the crater, a partial result of his enlarged form being at least somewhat spherical.

Still had to protect that hand, though, so he didn't reach out to stop himself, just letting him bounce and bound down towards the center.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Entirely on instinct, Big Bad Beetle Brute pulled his limbs in close and protected himself by hardening into an unmoving crystalline statue.

[Samantha McManus]

Though somewhere in her head Sam realizes she should send this on to the beyond, she's also increasingly aware that she's entombed in stone and may not be able to shift her way out of this one. With the fight going on above, rock is getting moved around freely and it's not at all obvious where she got yanked.

So she reaches out with her mind and tries to take the power into herself. Letting go of it later is a problem for Future Sam, assuming she survives.

[Narrator]

Taking a hold of it the connection severs with a most satisfying tearing sound though for a moment she flounders, uncertain how to hold on to it. It flutters in the beak of one of her ravens and it just doesn't seem to want to get swallowed up. It's not aligned. Not... from the flickering piece comes a scrap of information. Knowledge she most certainly did not have, not to this extent. "...and while we can extrapolate from the associated genes what general shape a Mutation may take we have yet to deduce the exact mechanism through which --- the correct folding of the protein depends on a number of factors, some of which we've begun to unravel but others continue to elude us, including the way in which --- is where regular molecular biology tools reach their limits and we're forced to lean on Physics and even Psychology to begin explaining the overall matrix responsible for tapping into..."

It's a lecture of some kind, held often enough to leave a kind of residue behind in the fabric of the power itself. But more importantly, for a moment Sam knows how it all hangs together. The right mix of cells and DNA and proteins, often coupled with high levels of stress and adolescent hormones leading to an adaptation that taps into... into... something. The thought is gone and all that remains long enough is the right mix of biology she needs to shift into to grab this flicker and spend it. With one swift push the earth above her grows pliable and a tunnel twists open, bringing with it light and a much needed rush of air.

As well as the loud crash of a tangle of rocky limbs, Grey Goo (plus a sole hand) and a crystalline-shelled insect come to a destructive stop at the bottom of the crater. Dozens and dozens of stone arms dissolve and fall away around them in loud crashes of slate and bedrock no longer held together by anything.

[Will Stanton]

Will did not immediately make any effort to move or free himself from the no-longer animated stone spears that he was still pierced on, instead just breathing slowly and heavily as the dust settled around them.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Sir Beetleton burst from the rubble and looked around for his foe. Finding nothing but rubble, he posed heroically and announced in a voice like a landslide, "Huzzah! Justice is victorious!"

[Samantha McManus]

Sam crawls out of her hole, coughing.

"...is that what this is?"

[Toshiro Narumi]

"But of course Morrigan! The beast is defeated, is it not?"

[Will Stanton]

With a long, drawn-out sigh, Will finally sagged and dropped off the stone pillers, reforming cross-legged and looking at his hand.

[Samantha McManus]

"The thing had us on the ropes."

She looks over to Will.

"Are you alright?"

[Will Stanton]

There was a pause between response and answer.

"Hrm? Oh, Sam. Welcome back," he said, distractedly, as he stood up.

[Toshiro Narumi]

While brushing himself off, the unnamed Tosh persona paused.

"Well, this is new," he said, four crystal eyes narrowing as he tapped a stone forearm with a stone claw, "I'm a rock."

[Will Stanton]

"Neat," Will said, not turning his head to look at the new and improved Tosh.

Still looking at his hand, he stood up and walked in a daze past his two teammates, headed back for the edge of the crater and the plane.

[Samantha McManus]

"...okay, what the bloody hell happened to you two while I was in the hole?"

[Will Stanton]

"Whazzat? A hole? No, you're fine. Good work out there," Will said, distractedly poking at his hand as he walked away.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"I was fighting as Ennio. I got trapped and was about to get crushed when I felt a surge of strength and became a giant bug... golem... thing. I didn't know my powers would take the element thing so literally."

"More importantly... you sure you're okay Will?

[Will Stanton]

"Me? I'm super, thanks for asking," Will said, flexing his hand and trying to see if he couldn't get the strange material to extend down his arm. "Super-green and sparkly."

[Narrator]

The impeccable awareness and control over his shifting fades the further away from his hand he gets, stopping roughly at his elbow. He could probably extent the effect if he touched the strange chunk of organic-not-rock to other parts of himself. Or ate it.

[Will Stanton]

Will stopped for a moment, flexing his hand once again.

"We should...get a sample of this creature. For analysis. Back at the university," he said, turning around and heading back into the crater.

[Samantha McManus]

"I'm not sure they're going to let us, considering what I saw down there."

She looks to Madison.

"But I'm guessing you already know about that."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Whatever this unfortunate thing is, there's no way it belongs to them. If it belongs here at all," he said, deciding that was unjust.

[Madison West]

"Yeeeaah, I don't know what you're talking about." Madison says, side-eyeing Sam while keeping her attention mostly on Will. "But that pile of rubble is definitely property of West Industries."

[Will Stanton]

"And West Industries called us in to investigate," Will said, getting a little more clear in the head. "And we are in the process of investigating.

Unless you'd like the rock monster back?"

[Madison West]

"Take a sample if you have to, but it did not come from here, capiche?"

[Will Stanton]

"What, are you afraid about bad publicity? Are you responsible for this?

Do you have more somewhere?"

[Samantha McManus]

"This was artificial."

"Artificial, and not at all ancient."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"You're saying they did make this thing?" he said, making no promises to the corporate lackey.