August 21st

## A Final Call for Allies

Once again returned to Chicago, Hardback and Mot made an attempt to find Defender and apologize for recent events in the hope of gaining last-minute assistance against the Time Wizard. Unfortunately, most of the Champions were not to be found at their headquarters. Mentat made contact with Slab, who informed the group that he, Dr. Nano, and Audubon were working to quell the invaders on the south side of Chicago, and Defender, Witchcraft, and Sirocco had taken the north. But that had been some time ago, and the exhausted doctor did not know where his team leader might be found now.

The effort was not totally lost, however, as Audubon volunteered for the mission. Thinking that he might have some innate resistance to the Gorgon's powers, and with no luxury to turn away any sort of allies, the team agreed to take him on and the young shapeshifter joined the mission. They were further surprised at the sudden appearance of Iron Wolf at the Temeraire club, who volunteered his services as well. He made this offer even though his power armor (the source of most of his abilities) was completely shut down by the energy field; after accepting his help, however, Hardback solved the problem by engineering him a bug to dampen the field and allow his armor to function again. Perhaps most surprising of all, Perfidy chose that moment to declare her intent to end her feud with Hardback once and for all, and to show her sincerity, offered both of her deadly Saturnite sabers for the mission. She gave one to Iron Wolf and the other to Hardback, figuring that the weapons would be strong enough to damage or even destroy the Time Wizard's Chroniton Rod.

## Unexpected Communiques

While Nighthawk was finalizing the plan of attack, a two-wave approach that was designed to protect those most vulnerable to the ravages of time manipulation, the Time Wizard himself mentally contacted Mot with the aid of his resurrected minion, Old Mentat. The Time Wizard demanded that Mot convince his allies to hand over Omega Girl's remains, revealing that some power she possessed would enhance his own and allow him to "shift the Prime timeline." His goal with this would be to rewind time for entire universe, pushing it back to a time before the invasion began-- an invasion that was not only taking place on Earth, but was in fact a coordinated attack on the entire galaxy. The Time Wizard gave the heroes a choice: choose peaceful rule under the Time Wizard's thumb, or take their chances with an ever-escalating invasion. The Time Wizard demanded that they choose within a day, and then cut the connection.

But while that conversation was ongoing, a very different one was taking place between Mentat and his older self. While the Time Wizard was distracted, the psychic contacted Mentat to reveal that he had endured a harrowing journey through the afterlife. On his way to Hell, he passed by the billions of souls that were once the people of his own Earth; the Time Wizard had destroyed that time shard after retrieving Old Mentat, and every occupant of the dimension was instantly slain. Unable to find their way to the afterlife, having died in an alternate, artificial dimension, they were now trapped in Purgatory. While Old Mentat was struck with the enormity of the mass murder that the Time Wizard had committed, he was rescued from damnation by Spectre. She explained that she would be willing to guide the trapped souls out of purgatory, but she had a price: when the Time Wizard returned him to life, he must betray his old master and join the side of the heroes. Disillusioned with the Time Wizard's methods and wanted to help the lost souls, Old Mentat readily agreed to her terms.

He conveyed all of this information to Mentat via high-speed telepathy, and assured him that he would side with them when the time was right. He also gave a warning: the Time Wizard had spent some days in alternate dimensions, and had returned aged several decades and with a young man in tow. Old Mentat only got a glimpse of the Time Wizard's companion, and was not able to read his mind due to an impressive mental block provided by an implant similar to his own. But he knew that the Time Wizard called the young man a "living weapon" and was very pleased with him, so he must have some use.

Armed with all of this information, the plan began to take further shape. Cort volunteered a plan to try and distract the Time Wizard with a fake corpse, which John Wolf unsurprisingly was able to provide.

## The Assault Begins

The Time Wizard was tracked to his compound in the darkened city of Dubai. They had no difficulty finding him, as he was hosting a lavish party at one part of his villa that was well light with bonfires, lanterns, and candelabras. There were dozens of civilians occupying the building, along with the Time Wizard, Neutronium, and Old Mentat. Neither the Gorgon nor the Time Wizard's new minion were anywhere to be seen.

While Mot, Hardback, and Cort approached in the Octobot, the rest of the strike force stood waiting a mile to the east. The villains welcomed them into the casino portion of the resort, and Cort prepared to delay the Time Wizard further with a lengthy speech. Unfortunately for him, the Time Wizard instantly recognized that they had not brought him the remains of Omega Girl, and promptly froze Cort in a timeless pocket where he stood helpless.

At that, the attack began in earnest. While Hardback and Mot leapt into the fray, and Old Mentat aided them surreptitiously, the Alchemist opened a pair of portals onto the estate. The first portal opened very close to the battle, and the first wave (consisting of Hellion, Bugaboo, the Alchemist, and the Eid Prince) charged through. Further afield, the second portal provided a much more stealthy approach for the second wave (Nighthawk, Iron Wolf, Audubon, the Atlantean, and Mentat).

Their strategy proved effective. When the Time Wizard launched his deadly aging attack, it had little effect on the heroes (Mot was withered into an undead mummy, Hardback and Bugaboo advanced in their peculiar insectile life-stages, Hellion aged into in her apparent 50's, and the Eid and the Alchemist were totally unchanged). But the Time Wizard's guests did not fare so well: each was destroyed by the chroniton wave, crumbling into a drift of dust all accross the compound.

With the initial hurdle cleared, the heroes attacked *en masse*. Neutronium, a formidable villain in his own right, was nevertheless unable to withstand the sudden assault from all sides and was quickly neutralized. But the Time Wizard was far more resilient, and with his ability to regenerate any sort of attack he stood defiant against all the heroes as the battle was underway in earnest.

## Reinforcements

The heroes seemed to have the upper hand at first, but it wasn't long before the Time Wizard's stronger minions made their appearance. The Gorgon emerged from the ashes of the slain civilians, erupting into hideous life and charging a surprised Nighthawk. Meanwhile, the Time Wizard called for "the boy" to come protect him, and a young man smashed straight through a wall to challenge the heroes. He was recognized immediately as none other than the Plutonian, albeit a much younger version, appearing just as he had when he made his first appearance in 1979. This was the minion that the Time Wizard had taken such pains to procure, and the brain-washed young hero was eager to do his bidding.

The battle raged on as the heroes desperately tried to keep these super-menaces under control while they continued to deal killing blows to the Time Wizard (each wound instantly regenerated, though at a cost). The Gorgon began to replicate itself, but this was quickly contained by a combination of Mot's acid bombs and Hardback's "barrier bugs," a genetically-engineered construct that quickly built a chitinous web around the massive beast. The Plutonian managed to knock out Iron Wolf with ease and severely injured the Eid Prince, and he destroyed the Octobot by tearing it in half. But his relative inexperience made it difficult for him to keep pace with the more experienced heroes. The Time Wizard managed to slow Bugaboo to a crawl and freeze Mentat, but both Mentat and Cort were freed by the purging magic of the Alchemist.

Backed into a corner, the Time Wizard unleashed another deadly wave of aging energy on the heroes closest to him. Unfortunately, these heroes were vulnerable to the Time Wizard's attack, with the exception of Cort, who withered to a mummy much the same as Mot had. But Audubon and Nighthawk, caught in the blast, were slain instantly. The Atlantean was also struck, but managed to narrowly avoid death, instead aging into a weak old man unable to even lift his weapon.

## Turnabout

Mentat, in a gambit to control the mind of the Gorgon, dived into its subconscious. There, he found what was causing the beast such torment: Visage was preserved in the Gorgon's cells, and was sharing the Gorgon's mind and body in a semi-comatose state. Mentat awoke her consciousness, allowing her to emerge and take over a small portion of the Gorgon's biology. Visage immediately converted this area of the Gorgon's body into a solid mass of magnesium oxide. With a touch of Mot's acid, the magnesium immediately ignited, burning the Gorgon from within at temperatures far greater than those caused by the nuclear bomb that had originally killed it. With no ability to absorb new biomass to regenerate itself, the Gorgon was destroyed along with Visage, and in moments there was nothing left but a blackened crust on the ground.

The Time Wizard attempted to revert the damage, but this only caused the Gorgon's mass to ignite as quickly as it reformed. The chemical reaction was too strong to overcome, and he realized that it was beyond his power to save the Gorgon. Shortly thereafter, Cort disarmed him of the depleted Chroniton Rod, which Hardback then disabled with a strike from Perfidy's loaned saber. Seeing the battle quickly turning against him, the Time Wizard imbued the Plutonian with his remaining power and commanded him to kill "every living thing on the planet." He then disappeared, escaping by hurling himself forward in time.

The Plutonian despaired at being abandoned by his master, and was furious with the heroes. He seemed to believe that the current alien invasion represented an unstoppable threat, and the only way to stop the Earth's inevitable fate was to let the Time Wizard take them back to before the invasion ever occurred. As a result, he blamed the heroes for dooming humanity to extinction.

The Plutonian made quick work of the Eid Prince, crushing his stone body and slaying him immediately. But before he could do any more damage, the Contenders managed to talk him down and revealed details that made the Earth's situation seem less helpless. Despite being indoctrinated by the Time Wizard, the Plutonian's morals (although slightly askew) were strong enough to make him regret his violent actions. He paused his rampage and agreed to aid the heroes in the hopes that together they might find a way to stop the invasion.

The Plutonian departed, already hearing people who needed help elsewhere in the world, and the Alchemist resurrected the Eid Prince with his phoenix magic. Unfortunately, one type of death that is not reversible with such magic is death by old age; as a result, he was unable to resurrect those slain by the Time Wizard. In the end, Nighthawk, Audubon, and Visage (who selflessly sacrificed herself to end the threat of the Gorgon) were lost.

## Quote(s) of the Night

"So it's like, here today, *Dubai* tomorrow?" - Hardback

"Boooo" - Nick

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"Teleporting is stupid! And I hate the Time Wizard, and his dumb f\*\*\*\*\*\* face, and I'm sorry." - Mentat

"I'm right there with ya, buddy." - Hardback

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'We need your team, not you. You stay.' -Mot to Omega Girl

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"This is the perfect time to genocide the mutants." -Nick

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"I got the casket picked out and everything."-Hardback

"Its a Cocoon!" -Nick

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"Telling the bug 'You work against the Gorgon' isn't going to do it."-Nick

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(Actual Russian)-Mentat

(Russian sounding gibberish)-Old Mentat

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"The time has come for us to talk" -Time wizard

"Yes...Time"-Mot

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"Stay down! You are defeated! Consider yourself vanquished!"-Ide Prince