Atlas City

Shinigami watched as Wayland departed, feeling a sense of uneasiness swelling in her chest. She figured it was the ghosts who were more active after Wayland's warning but Shinigami had her own reservations about the others. Particularly Henry whose unusual soul she could see as he suggested heading to the funeral. He didn't get to finish what he was saying though for the ground opened up and swallowed them all.

~*~

There were whispers in her ear and a foul smell assaulting her nose. Shinigami laid for a few moments. Listening, she strained to hear what the whispers were saying but the voices of the other heroes drowned them out. Shinigami looked up and opened her eyes to darkness. There was movement and she could make the faint outlines of the others, including Sasha's hand as he helped her to her feet.

"Thank you," Shingami said to Sasha before he mentioned there were a few ways to go. Shinigami strained her eyes but could barely make the outlines of the tunnels before them. A lantern sprung forth in her hand with a bright and warm yellow glow. It didn't cast light very far but it could at least make it a bit easier to see for herself and the others.

"I suppose we could play paper, rock, scissors to see where to go," Akiko mused as she looked around. "Unless one of you has a way to sniff out the best route? Well, maybe not sniff out with this garbage heap but you know what I mean."

"At this point..." Henry stated pulling his phone out and sighing at the lack of bars on the display screen. It was charged up enough to give them another light, at least. "We might as well just pick a path and go. Who knows if any of these tunnels split off even further?" He looked behind them. "I figure we should try that one first. Just to see where it leads."

"... With the way these walls look you might be right." Devon replied. Henry's phone lighting up startled him for a moment as the burst of amplified light shone into his eyes. With his eyes slowly readjusting from the blinding light that flashed before him he looked down into the tunnel Henry was looking towards. "Sasha, since you seem to have an idea of what's in the air I'd suggest you take the rear, I'll go up front since I have a somewhat accurate atmospheric readout and an internal oxygen supply should I walk into some nasty gas pocket." He said before walking into the tunnel. "If I stop walking, you might want to take a few steps back." He said keeping an eye on the atmospheric readout from the corner of his eye while trying to look for any guidance on the walls.

"Fair enough," Sasha shrugged. "Worst comes to worst... I can always dig us out of here. But whatever that vortex was that transported us here, hmm well, I don't think we're under Atlas City."

"Well maybe we can see what is above us?" Shinigami said as she looked up into abyss. A pit formed in the bottom of her stomach and she swallowed nervously. Even Henry's obnoxious phone light didn't seem like it could pierce the veil of darkness above them. There was no chill however. The ghosts were restless but no more than usual. It wasn't spirits above at least.

Shinigami's eyes glowed beneath her helmet and she nervously rubbed her thumb on the lantern.

"I want to see if there even is above," Shinigami added before her body became translucent. Henry had seen this before when she had made the bus and them intangible. She flew up, into the darkness, her lantern lighting her.

Akiko flew upward into the dark abyss above her, finding no end in sight. No ceiling, no sky....but suddenly in the murkiness there was noise. Small, but noticeable. CRACK! Within the wall of darkness before her, jagged lines began to form across it's tenebrous surface, resembling cracked glass. Light suddenly shone through the cracks, but quickly vanished again as Akiko could hear something scraping, clawing, scratching to get out.

The "glass" then shattered, it's pieces falling to the floor as Akiko briefly got a glimpse of what lay outside the shadowy walls. It flashed from day to night, light to darkness, all in rapid succession, but before she could see anything further, perhaps luckily, a large figure overshadowed her vision, crawling through shattered shadow.

"KLIK..."

Akiko would see a large limb lash out at her to strike her down. Whether it did or not depended on Akiko's own quick thinking. The thing would not remain in the shadows for long however. The red flashing light emitting from it soon illuminated the room, for sparse moments at a time, in a crimson hue, revealing it's hideous visage.

It was reddish-brown in hue as far as they could tell as it jerkily descended the wall of darkness it emerged from, occasionally flapping translucent wings emerging from it's armored carapace. It moved at absurdly fast pace, covering much ground until it hit the junk covered ground with a Thud! From it's six legs it quickly stood on two, standing at around eight feet tall and revealing the flashing light was attached to one of it's wrists. Long antennae, mandible jaws the size of dinner plates and blank unblinking ebon eyes.

It was a roach. A massive one at that. It seemed to stare the group down before it for a moment, it's head occasionally twitching violently. "Residue of 2045. Make -KLIK- no sudden moves. Make -KLIK- no attempts to escape..." it raised two of it's middle arms, a firearm in each hand, like none they had ever seen before, like miniature chrome corvettes with glowing red radiator. "You have -KLIK- no rights here. You -KLIK- have nothing to live for -KLIK- except to serve. Your time is at an end. ALL time is at it's end.-KLIK-..."

Henry narrowed his eyes in disgruntled bewilderment than the massive talking roach, trying to process it's words as he was trying to figure out a way to reach his blaster without being caught.

Devon had only managed to make it a couple feet into the tunnel as Akiko made her attempt to see what there was above in that abyssal darkness. As if that was exactly the action it had been waiting for something came crashing down through the veil. A monstrously sized roach as it would seem... It almost made Devon wonder if he somehow got caught in some Japanese hidden camera kaijin show. But such questions would have to wait for another time, as the creature was clearly hostile and had some kind of sci-fi blasters aimed at them. He guessed from those radiators they were most likely some kind of energy weapon, which as long as they didn't have some physics defying impact to them he should be able to ignore them, but in a foreign environment with others to protect this didn't lend itself as a place to put that theory to the test.

Instead he hoped that the roach even in it's increased size had retained the same blurred eyesight of it's infestation sized brethren. He faded into his wraith form and quickly moved behind the roach appearing out of the thin air with his trained at the back of the roaches head, close enough no matter how fast or which direction the roach was to move it wouldn't be able to evade taking a shot straight at it's nervous system. "Don't move. Not a single muscle or I'll make sure there won't be any remains left to mop up." After taking a moment to breathe he continued. "Now you're going to tell us how we can get back home, or you and every single one of your friends is going to find out why you don't tell someone on borrowed time to give up their life or die resisting."

Shinigami had instinctively moved back when the hideous roach had swiped at her. However, she hadn't been fast enough as the tip of its limb passed through her. The thing was fast. It, however, seemed to have greater interest in the others and had scurried on down to the trash heap. Shinigami was just thankful she was intangible.

She had been worried for a second she had let something loose on them but seeing Devon's power put him right behind the disgusting insect eased her worries.

"Yeah, go ghost-squad-mate," Shinigami whispered to herself with a little fist pump. Quickly, she turned herself invisible however and started looking around. Where there was one roach, there might have been more. If she didn't find anything, she could provide invisible support. And see these guys in action more.

Sasha glanced behind them as Devon and Akiko encountered the oversized sci-fi bug in the fore. Where there was one cockroach... Sasha smiled and rolled his shoulders, stretching them out.

"Lost Gods...-KLIK-? No, no, no. This isn't right!" The roach began to rant to itself, panicked as Devon reformed behind it "I cannot fathom -KLIK- the unfathomable. But the return of the Lost Gods, no no...-KLIK-!"

The roach soon calmed itself and ceased his rants. "Wait...-KLIK-. BORROWED time, you say? There is no more -KLIK- time. We are at it's end. All paths lead here. None could escape -KLIK- it. None except the roaches. None may leave...-KLIK-...except the roaches. It was we who survived the -KLIK- culling of all life. The great Time Tunnels you -KLIK- stand in is our handiwork..."

A faint noise could be heard. A WHIRRING...

"The only borrowed time -KLIK- is your strand of time. It is -KLIK- marked m for death by the dark -KLIK- ever present masters!"

WHIRRR

"What, you mean the Beast?" Henry asked, raising am eyebrow, his own blaster now drawn and trained on the massive roach.

WHIRRR

"Ha...ha...so you have seen it, little Lost Gods. -KLIK-...you know there is no hope.The Earth...will -KLIK- be but a remnant. And it's sole rulers will -KLIK- be the roaches!" the roach cackled as the WHIRRING grew violently loud and the broach let out a shriek.

Everything seemed to stand still for a moment but Devon had suddenly been where he was standing previously, before he had moved to attack the massive insect. Instead of spending any further time speaking the roach shot at them from it's two weapons, whips of red energy swinging forth at Henry, Devon, and Sasha.

"Looks like some kinda hard light construct!" Henry shouted, attempting to move out of the way to avoid the projectiles. They...PROBABLY wouldn't kill if they hit any of them but he didn't want to take that chance. The roach did mention something about serving. Apparently it aimed to capture them all. A task it would find far more difficult than it assumed...

"Interesting exposition," Sasha said as the bug went all crazy and began whipping about. "I'm not one to believe much in the end of things, however." Sasha grabbed Henry, pulling him out of the way of the laser red vines.

"Cuba, eh? How lovely!" Liz handed Sheri a coconut with a straw poking out of the top. She then walked over to the speakers and turned the volume down, "Ah, but it's not all sunny in Hero Town. Will you be attending the funeral, Sharon?"

"We're talking about the uh... the politics of dancing," Cannonade laughed as they licked their fingers. No one else laughed. Cannonade glanced up at Jemma before taking another hit of their pipe. Jemma was the one person they trusted in this place other than Vicki. They saved their life. And, although Cannonade had no yet figured out their superpowers, they seemed rather genuine. "No, we're talking about how all this is shady as shit. Being shanghaied into this group... the fact that we aren't all signed." Cannonade loved being racist.