#353 - MisJudgment Day – After a briefing by A.R.T., the team is called to the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan. John Smith teleports Ragnarr, Compass, Rune, Araneae, and Enigma to the site, where an assembled army fights a lone person. C.H.E.S.S. (including Entropy and other paranormals), National Guard troops, and agents of A.R.T. and Homeland Security fire on the Judge, who continues to advance on the evacuated General Assembly building. The Guardians join the assembled forces trying to stop the target, but the being, made up of Gorene nanotechnology in a human host, is merely slowed down. As he enters the structure, C.H.E.S.S. teleports the entire allied army to a nearby military base. The Judge explodes, heavily damaging the building. The government describes the blast to the public as an electrical problem. Majestic and Scion meet with President Obama, who assures them that the team will be kept in the loop in the future. The adventurers begin to realize that the four elements are involved with the various excavations: air in Japan, earth in Guatemala, water in Greece, and fire in Egypt. Araneae contacts Homeland Security and arranges to meet their analyst. He is surprised to discover it is Scotoma, who had amazingly intuited the attack on the U.N. The power grid of the Northwest and a large portion of the Southern U.S. crashes. The heroes use the Guardian Angel to meet up with an A.R.T. vessel in space, and Enigma, Ragnarr, and Rune go aboard. After demanding to see Jay Harris, they find their teammate cryogenically frozen. He is awakened, and tells them that he sent Battletron back in time to save Scotoma, who could then save all of mankind. He also explains that the Gorene threat is devastating, and he theorizes that left unchecked, the poles of the Earth will flip instantly, destroying all of civilization! Jay has been temporary transformed into a Gorene ‘Planetary Manager’, and an illusion makes him appear human. More than 15,000 years ago Gorene colonization protocols seeded Earth with nanobots. The nanites were shut down (until recently being unearthed) because there was no Planetary Manager. The Judge was the nanites from all four sites combined into a single entity. Jay adds the illusion of his Kubera armor, then accompanies Compass, Araneae, Enigma, Rune, Ragnarr, Scion, and Phase as the group teleports deep underground into a complex in the Republic of Mali in Western Africa. They battle their way past multiple nanobot elementals, and Jay shuts down the nanobots. He suddenly collapses and dies, but Phase miraculously resuscitates him. Araneae injects him with ReGenx, but it does not work. The team rushes him to the A.R.T. spacecraft, where he is stabilized by being put back into cryogenic sleep.
|