[Sama in the MU] Part 16
Added 2025-03-30 04:09:59 +0000 UTCOkay, it was time for a long visit to the East Coast.
Jamie Madrox’s powers made it easy to leave behind a dupe to take over control of the Champions and keep my visible presence there. I could always teleport back if my real self was truly needed, but virtually all the stuff I was needed to do, like Nulling powers, or doing superheroics, could be done with just my default set. My dupes could also include one additional set of powers, that was the limit on my duping vs Madrox, and those of Mrs. Marvel easily covered most bases.
I was off to visit the Big Apple and the X-Men, and pick up a few items of interest along the way. The Champions knew I was going, as my dupes did not have the Master Marks, and there was no way they could not recognize that instantly, but I told them that there were some very important things that needed to be done on the East Coast, and given my ability to predict events, they agreed and let it slide.
My double could do everything the same, she just only had a single Mark, like the rest of them. Given that I had never truly displayed my full power, owning up to my power level wasn’t nearly as hard as it seemed.
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I had sent notification ahead, but my timing was interesting, as I arrived, the front of Avenger’s Mansion looked to have been ripped open, and it had obviously been invaded by something.
Huh.
“Hey, look who we got here! Go away, girl, this ain’t no place for you! Or maybe it is, if you wanna stick around... Haw haw!”
I slapped my forehead. Could I be so lucky? I turned around and faced the Wrecking Crew, coming up the sidewalk behind me.
Wrecker, Thunderball, Piledriver, and Bulldozer. I eyed the four of them and sighed. “Well, I suppose it was fated, right?” I said aloud, and lifted six inches off the ground.
The display stopped them in place, and their eyes narrowed as they stared at me. “You can fly?” the Wrecker spoke up, hands on his crowbar. “Who are you, lady? I’d get out of here if I were you!”
“They call me Sunstone. I was invited here for a visit. It seems I am interrupting something.”
“Don’t think we’re gonna pull our punches because you’re a girl!” snarled Piledriver, clutching his big fists and preparing to jump forwards.
Two beams of light punched through his shoulders, and his arms dropped like cut puppets. “Wut?” he asked in shock, staring at the holes pierced right through him.
“Gentlemen,” I said calmly, “you are not invulnerable to me. You will plant your faces on the ground, put your hands behind your heads, and sit there nicely, or I am going to drill a one-inch beam of coherent light at about twenty thousand PSI through your skulls, and you will just drop dead.”
I extended two fingers from each hand calmly, and glows lit up on each of them, centered directly on their foreheads. Their eyes all crossed as they froze, looking at them.
“I am going to shoot on five unless your faces are in the ground. One. Two. Three...”
They looked at the smoking holes in Piledriver’s shoulders, and slowly got down on their knees, tossing aside the wrecking ball and crowbar. Not saying another word, they knit their fingers behind their heads, and got down on their faces.
They could feel the faint pressure of the light beams on their heads as I drifted over. Thunderball screwed up his courage to turn his and look up as I picked up his ball and chain effortlessly. Chalice’s tip emerged unseen from my palm, and drove into the weighty thing, instantly sucking all of the magic out of it. Its power was related to the wrecking bar, so was rather ephemeral, but he gawked when his prized toy crumbled to shattered bits of iron.
I drifted over to the wrecking bar, and the Wrecker, who’d seen the fate of the ball and chain, got the courage to shout, “What, what are you gonna do?”
“I am aware that the source of your enhanced physical prowess is dependent upon access to this toy and the Asgardian magic imbued into it. Given how you are relentlessly and continually abusing that strength, I think it is best that this toy is removed from play, don’t you?” I replied calmly.
“No, wait, you can’t!” they all started to protest, and there was a crack, and a crinkle, and a sizzling sounds. The crowbar quietly hissed as it fell into dust and rust, and the magic empowering them broke as the force behind it was sucked away by Chalice, aided by my own massive ability to drain energy now. My hair stroked them, and Rogue’s power kicked in at the same time, sucking away the magic that empowered them permanently.
The Wrecking Crew all visibly shrank in size as the power upon them evaporated, sucked into the destroyed crowbar and out. They trembled on the ground there as I dusted off my hands.
My hair caressed the ground, and bands of shaped cement formed up, locking down the shrunken Crew and sealing them. “Don’t move. Someone will be along to send you to prison soon enough.”
They all shivered at the cold in my voice, as I turned and glided into the mansion itself, ripped open by tremendous force. I eyed the scars, doing some analysis.
Sand, scars by tri-partite mechanical claws, fluctuations in the local electrical field, and the smell of some hallucinogens.
The Sinister Six, or something? It appeared I was going to have to administer some corrective lessons to Dr. Octavius.
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“Hey, who are y..” There was a flash of light and heat, and the body of the Sandman flash-melted, cooled to a touch, and he was a glass statue, unable to move.
---
I stepped through the mists, looked the guy in the fishbowl helmet right in the eyes, and lifted my curled thumb and forefinger. He raised his hands, and there was a THWACK.
---
“Dr. Octavius.”
An arm came whipping for me before he even turned around. I caught it leisurely, and then began to compress it magnetically. My four-inch range wasn’t a problem, as it dragged the rest of the tentacle to me... and with it, Dr. Octavius.
“Wait, what, who are- arrgh!”
Suddenly my hands were on his tentacle support as he was haplessly dragged over to me, and steel was crushing and compressing with devastating speed. He screamed as the frames and motors of his tentacles were reduced to massively compressed lines of metal, virtually sucked together into a ball of metal the size of a softball. He screamed as the cybernetic connections were ripped out of his back, and as he was convulsing, I lifted the ball over his head, and dropped it.
There was a clunk, and then a crash. He hit the ground right next to the ball of metal that used to be his tentacles.
I studied Kraven and Vulture standing over there, staring at me in great uncertainty. “Raise your hand if you want a hole through your heads.” Their eyes crossed as the beams of light from my fingers centered on their foreheads, and when they dodged, tracked them perfectly. “I am going to count to five, and if your heads are not on the floor, your brains will be.” I kicked Octavius’ head aside in passing, drifting closer to them.
They slowly got down on the ground, not daring to protest.
There was a laugh as Electro jumped out behind me, crackling with lightning, and hit me with a great zapping discharge of power drawn from the major power lines of Avengers Mansion...
And it spiraled down into my navel as I fired two light beams and bashed Kraven and Vulture flat and unconscious against the floor. I turned around slowly as Electro continued his blasting, and he slowly stopped laughing and stared at me, floating there, sucking in his power, totally unharmed.
“Uh... can I surrender now?” he asked, as his eyes crossed on the light beam from my finger centered on his forehead.
“Sure.” There was a discharge, and his head was impressed into the wall behind him suddenly. He slowly fell out of it and onto the floor.
Two small figures came zipping through the door a few seconds later. “Janet, Dr. Pym,” I greeted them calmly.
“That voice... Dynamo?” the Wasp asked, shocked, as she came up to my face. Faintly tanned fair skin, golden hair, blue eyes... I definitely did not look like Dynamo.
“I did say I would be coming in disguise, didn’t I?” I told her calmly. “You can refer to me as Sunstone when I’m like this.”
“Wow, that, uh, won’t be too hard,” she agreed, as both of them resumed human size. “It’s a good thing you decided to stop by today.”
“If you could call the police. The Wrecking Crew is out front, all powered down, too.” I gestured absently. “You seem to be missing a few people.”
“They are out on private matters,” Hank Pym said, shaking his head. “They must have been watching the mansion, waiting for a chance to strike when our numbers are low.”
“Mmm.” I made no further combat about their security problems. “Probably not a good time to be sitting down with the team for that meeting the Captain always wanted to have.”
“Oh, oh God,” Janet sighed, slapping her head. “The East Coast really is rather lacking today...” She looked at the mess and sighed. “Okay, we’re probably going to have to go out to eat while they clean up the mess. Jarvis is going to nag us again...”
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The Avengers lineup was indeed extensive. Vision and the Scarlet Witch were still here, and her brother Quicksilver had stopped in. Hawkeye was present with Captain America, and Hank Pym, Yellowjacker, and his wife Janet, the Wasp, were naturally there. At the end of the table, regal Thor sat there looming, with Iron Man next to him in his red and gold power armor. Like Angel and Iceman, Hank McCoy had left the X-Men and was spending time here, brain-binging with Stark and Pym.
They were all wondering how I could be here and still on the West Coast, of course.
“You may have heard of Madrox, the Multiple Man? The ability is similar to his, each such duplicate is a divisor of power. The powers my current duplicate has back west I do not have now, such as the electrical powers. I am effectively using a different suite of powers, and am using a cosmic artifact called the Sunstone to supplement my current power set.”
“The Sunstone? Sounds mystical. What kind of powers are we talking?” Iron Man, Stark in his glorified power armor, instantly jumped on.
“Flight, enhanced strength, intangibility, generation of coherent and condensed light in various forms and types. The Sunstone has a fixed amount of energy it can put out, but no limit in duration. The energy can be allocated to the various abilities individually, or spread among them for a standard set. It is considerably different from my own standard kit, and thus a very effective disguise.”
“That energy absorption of Electro’s powers was impressive. Similar to Carol’s,” Captain America noticed, having watched the tapes and listened to the reports of Hank and Janet.
“There are some similarities. Carol’s powers have a high-end aspect we are working on back west.” Everyone blinked in surprise, as Carol was pretty much a definition of a powerhouse already. “Nothing definite. Practice makes perfect!”
“It seems everyone who goes out west gets an upgrade of some sort,” the blue-furred Dr. Hank McCoy spoke up, leaning back in his seat thoughtfully. “Should we all be thinking about vacations at the Champions Compound?”
I glanced around at them, and shrugged. “The atmosphere of your team is a bit different from mine. My people treat it as a full-time occupation, and civilian life is a side of it. I daresay for most of you, the Avengers is a nice club you go to, but your private lives are actually more important to you than the team. For the Champions, private careers are extensions of the team. We are there for each other all the time. If you don’t have independent wealth, you get an excellent salary and benefits with no strings attached. If you want to have a standard job, we can generally fix you up with your choice of careers.
“Plenty of ways to spend downtime. You can help with research, do charity work, give speeches in places, or just work in the gardens. Most of them train, research, work on equipment, or whatnot. There’s always things the team needs done.”
The Avengers looked at one another uncertainly. “It is true the membership here is a bit informal,” Iron Man indicated quickly. “That doesn’t mean we aren’t committed, Sunny.”
“I did not say that!” I snapped at him, and he flinched. “What you are committed to is heroing. The Avengers are an aspect of that. For the Champions, the team tends to be committed to what the team represents, and heroing is an aspect of the team. They are different focuses. If you want an analogy, you are like a baseball team, and we are closer to a military unit in lifestyle, albeit with a very different focus.” I inclined my head slightly. “The Captain is probably more devoted to the team then the rest of you, but he still has things the government requires of him, and they trump his obligations to the team. The closest thing the Champions have is Hercules’ obligation to his Pantheon... which he subverts whenever possible, as the Olympians are generally a very annoying bunch.”
“As annoying as Loki?” Hawkeye asked, shaking his head.
Thor was looming big and imposing at the end of the table, and only sighed at mention of his foster brother. “Ares, Pluto, and their lot aren’t trickster gods, they are outright mean and violent... and unlike Loki, members of the pantheon in good standing. So, yes, but annoying in different ways.” I flashed my eyes Thor’s way. “How is the douchebag, anyways?”
He glanced back at me. “He hath been... unusually quiet of late. Perhaps nursing a grudge.”
“Well, I hope it brings him back my way. I meant what I said. That bringing in winter and frost giant crap just because you were visiting was a total crock that we did not appreciate in the slightest.”
People were looking back and forth between us. “Oh, that midsummer snow you had a few months back?” Hank McCoy asked curiously. “That was Loki?”
“I was attending a medical conference as Donald Blake,” Thor admitted. “Loki did think it a fine time to demonstrate his power...” He glanced at me, and I just rolled my eyes. “Dynamo did deliver Loki to Heimdall upon the bridge Bifrost, stuffed into a very small box, with all his major bones broken.”
They all stared at me in disbelief. “And if I catch him pulling shit on the mortal plane again, he can take a one-way trip to visit his daughter and the Fates can argue with True Death about his broken Fate,” I went on, unperturbed. “The only reason he’s still alive is he’s Odin’s foster son. The Coast is basically Olympian territory, the same way New York is watched by Asgard because of Thor. Loki was effectively impinging on another pantheon’s territory, and divine irritation can reach incredible levels at such stuff.”
Thor nodded slow agreement. “Highfather Zeus need not be so forgiving of Loki’s machinations as my father is.”
“And Hercules definitely isn’t.” I waved to close the topic. “I admit I could have visited before now, but there were always things coming up. Natasha is always nagging me to share more of our files, but I have dire misgivings about SHIELD and the fact you back them up with them. I trust people far more easily then computers... which I can hack, let alone the thousands of hackers salivating at a chance to try themselves against your systems, and then the dozens of supergeniuses who can actually succeed.
“Now that I am here, what can I do for you?”
