Part Five - The Beginning Of The End - Part One

After taking time to do other projects and make sure this one got done right...without further ado, the third arc begins:

NOVEMBER 26, 2007

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO

THE GARDEN OF THE GODS

Dozens of corpses are strewn across the field. Trevor lays motionless, lying on his stomach, with his back to the camera, and a bone-like protrusion is sticking out of his left shoulder. The bone looks broken off from its original source. There is silence for what feels like an eternity.

Then, Trevor gasps for air and wheezes, blood is pooling somewhere in his body. He reaches behind himself with his right hand and rips out the protrusion and tosses it aside. Trevor struggles to stand up and winces over to two bodies that are barely breathing. Trevor kneels between them and uses all his remaining strength to flip them over. One is Regan "Redo" McCairn and the other, Dixon "Nox" Cheung.

Trevor - "Nox…you got to…undo this from ever happening to me…"

Trevor looks around frantically at the dead.

Trevor - "Luna Yu. Mack Johnston. Lilia Chacon. Make them survive, too."

Nox struggles to concentrate then it works, Trevor is unwounded. Nox hacks out blood, then his head drops. Nox is dead. Trevor closes his eyes. Redo was watching what happened.

Trevor - "Reset us as far back as you can, McCairn. Farther than you’ve ever gone. Everyone’s lives depend on it."

Redo uses her time reversing power. Things start to go backwards like a video tape rewinding, then everything turns into a blur of images and sound. Then a white flash envelopes everything.

LATE SUMMER 2007

LYNEBORO, CONNECTICUT

MABLE'S DINER

Leona Mills sits down. Trevor scoots over. He doesn't take his eyes off her. Seal finishes his breakfast. Silence.

Leona - "Well, say it Trevor."

Trevor - "The Omelet Surprise is terrible."

Seal - "You want me to consolidate every faction into one and lead it?"

Leona - "It's more than that."

Trevor - "Tell Mable to lower the heat, next time."

Leona - "All we've ever done was protect each other. But now, all these little honeycombs are popping up and doing whatever they please. Too many. You know what that attracts? Bears. Big, hungry bears."

Trevor - "Bears named Sylar? Yeah, sure. Right away. No problem."

Leona - "The omelet isn't that bad."

Trevor - "But it doesn't mean you could try harder."

Leona - "You can do this. I know you can. You want to."

Trevor - "Don't worry. I'll put it on the to-do list, right under 'punch God in the face.'"

[Sin City - Marv]

Trevor looks away and finishes his food.

Leona - "Seal, you’ve been quiet. What do you think of all this?"

Seal - "Between the Carnival and other factions attacking us for resources…"

[Volume 5 and Heroes Survival Game - Phase Three]

Leona - "You can't. Now's not the time."

Seal - "I'm sorry, it's a great idea."

Leona - "Don't be. These things, they require timing, finesse, and a lot of luck."

Trevor - "Schemes. Do you forget that every time you come up with one, the price goes up? You're willing to sacrifice us like chess pieces but what about Rachel? Would you strap a bomb on her and parade her through Washington?"

[Partial quote from anonymous person and Volume 4 - Matt Parkman - Washington D.C.]

Leona - "Trevor, I'm disappointed. You always had a healthy disregard for the impossible…I'm on the clock. You boys come back again when you can."

[Larry Page]

Leona walks away like nothing happened and right as rain.

Seal - "She was convincing when I read her."

Trevor - "That only means she believes in the lie, too. Think hard about this, Seal. Doing great deeds requires…equal suffering."

[Plutarch]

Seal - "Take her point of view, Trevor. She's been around longer than us and…"

Trevor is worked up and cuts Seal off.

Trevor - "Point of view? Oh, the scarcest of resources. The quintessentially human solution to information overload! An intuitive process of reducing things to an essential, relevant, and manageable maximum…"

[Paul Saffo]

Everyone in Mable's Diner is staring at their booth. Trevor stops. He exhales.

Trevor - "Let's go. I hate Connecticut."

Seal - "Hm. Déjà vu. Feels like I heard you say that before."

[Implied reminder that the timeline is repeating itself thanks to Trevor and Nox]

They exit the Diner and find James.

Seal - "Are we going to do it? Help her?"

Trevor - "To her, this is one big game of survival. Let's go with the Big Stick Diplomacy for now."

[Heroes Survival Game and President Roosevelt’s foreign policy]

The trio teleports away.

UNDAUNTED - in Heroes title font - graces across the panel.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END - PART ONE: IT'S ALL RELATIVITY - in Heroes title font -

NOVEMBER 26, 2007

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO

THE GARDEN OF THE GODS

About half of Undaunted is gathered in the main field. Among them are Trevor Tanaka, Seal, Lilia Chacon, Mack Johnston, Luna Yu, Phillip DeParis, Clara Zhang, Dixon Cheung, and Regan McCairn.

Seal - "I want to thank everyone for coming today and checking in. A little goes a long way to say you're committed to this. Only so many people in the world get to have two families that love them, much less one. I don’t want to ramble so ummm…that's all. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!"

[Places this story during Volume 5 "Thanksgiving" and 9th Wonders! Forum - The good kind of rambling happens among Undaunted members]

The crowd happily murmurs and separate among the main field chatting. Lilia is with Seal, Johnston with Blue, Clara and Luna, Dixon with Redo, and Trevor, by himself as usual. The Heroes theme plays over the muted scene.

What is life?

It becomes apparent there are some here who don't belong.

A madness.

Their faces dissolve, revealing they are all the same man.

[Appearance Alteration, the power of evsdropr, one of them anyway]

What is life?

Trevor, Luna, Mack, and Lilia all notice.

An illusion.

The men, 36 in number, all grin evilly.

[9th wonders! - HERO - 3+6=9]

A shadow.

Bone protrusions, dozens of, erupt from each duplicate and impales everyone.

[Graphic Novel - Perrin Crocker's power]

A story.

Mack Johnston turns his body into electricity and avoids the spikes. DeParis isn't as lucky. Johnston is in shock as DeParis falls over, dead.

And the greater good is little enough.

Lilia Chacon grabs Seal and protects him.

[Chacon was created in HSG to protect Seal]

For all life is a dream.

[A quote from Pedro Calderon de la Bara]

Trevor lunges away but still gets impaled in his left leg. He lets out a scream of pain, then quickly breaks the bone off with the butt of his gun.

[In every timeline, Trevor gets impaled]

Luna pushes herself and Clara out of harm's way. Red lightning litters the area. Redo and Nox are impaled and die immediately.

Bodies stack up on the field. Trevor, Chacon, Seal, Johnston, Clara, and Luna eye out the 36 duplicates.

Trevor shouts an order to Clara. She runs to Chacon and Seal. The three teleport away as several bones barely misses them.

In slow motion, they march on the remaining three but the camera focuses on Luna. She stands tall and raises both hands in the air. Red lightning sparks and shoves the duplicates into the air and the frame speed slows down. The camera pans onto Johnston. He is still kneeling over DeParis and whispers something.

Sparkplug - "No."

He looks up at all the duplicates in mid-air, shifts his entire body into electricity, and surges through all of them violently as the camera frame speed goes to normal. Miniature explosions pop from each duplicate as Johnston passes through them. The duplicates all drop to the ground with huge, black scorch marks on their chests. One is still alive and feebly crawls away. A foot stomps down in front of him and blocks his escape path. It is Johnston. He arcs electricity and a screeching sound makes the duplicate scream in agony as blood trickles from his ears. A hand comes over Johnston's shoulder. It is Trevor.

[Johnston's power, listed on HSG, is Electric Mimicry. What he do with it is only limited by his own experience]

Trevor - "That's enough."

Trevor kneels down to the duplicate, who is panting irregularly.

Trevor - "I know you can't hear me but…what you did today was really, really stupid. We don’t like being bothered."

[Ghostbusters - Winston and The Undaunted mandate]

The duplicate spits out blood and gloats.

Duplicate - "Undaunted's…days…are…numbered…"

Trevor smiles, stands back up, and shoots him; twice in the head and twice in the chest. He sheathes the gun back in his holster.

Luna Yu - "Trevor, your leg."

Trevor - "I'll ask Karma to fix it later. Appearance Alteration. Limited to 24 hours. Tactile Organic Duplication. Spike Protrusion. No one faction alone has any of these three specials in combination."

Trevor rips the rest of the spike out of his leg. He tosses it then rips off part of his sleeve and ties a tight knot over the wound. James teleports in.

James - "Okay, who’s…first."

From James' point of view, the camera surveys the massacre. Then pans to Trevor.

Trevor - "Take us to the alpha site in Shawnee. Put out the word…this place is scrubbed."

[Alpha Site term taken from Stargate SG-1 and 9th Wonders - Two Garden of the Gods exist in the USA]

Luna Yu - "It's not over, is it?"

[In her HSG bio, Yu grew to be wary and skeptical of things]

Sparkplug - "This is just the beginning."

Trevor nods as they all teleport away.

TO BE CONTINUED...