Gregory moved away from the man, and watched her tend to him. Gregory wondered if he should hide again, so that when those from the inside come out, they won't see him. As he looked around, he saw that it was probably too late for that, so he figured he might as well try to see what whe was doing here.

As she nears man, Gregory speaks to her. "I was looking for salvage in this place. I saw man sneaking and I went up to him. He got scared and drop ball. The ball explode." Ok, so he was lying to her, mostly. He couldn't tell her the truth, yet. She might be able to help until then. "I shield him from blast, but building collapse."

He cocks his head to the side and furows his brow. "What are you doing in this city? I hope you not coming for salvage, because I found this place first." He figure his story would sound innocent enough.

Doug sends back,

*James/Squid is coming your way and he's probably going to try to kill everyone involved. You should get out of there if you can.*

Propping the rifle on a bent knee to keep the aberrant nominally covered as she fumbled with the first aid in a pouch on her belt, Ashley nearly burst into laughter at the question it asked. Even so...she had to admit, it wasn't acting like the slave drivers in the city. There was a certain contempt that was missing; an unconscious assertion of superiority they exuded like body odor.

Jesus, a feral aberrant? A whole CITY of them right over the ridge, and she just happened to bump into a feral? That was why, as she sprayed antiseptic onto Charlie's bleeding scalp, she almost laughed.

Instead she asked, "So I'm supposed to believe that not only did you just save the guy who was trying to kill you, from the thing he was trying to kill you with, but you also had -no idea- that these ruins are crawling with your kind, and you're just here to salvage?"

Gregory listened to her innocently. He felt a little foolish that he had not thought that the man was trying to kill him. As she finsihed, he replied: "I know the city have abberrants. That's why I hidden. I don't want them to see me. Your friend came upon me while I hide." He paused, then feigning surprise. "Was he really trying to kill me?"

James gives an exasperated sigh, "Is that all you know how to do muscles? Fight with your fists?" He holds up a small palmtop computer, "Trust me, this building's automated defences and nova guards are more than enough to hold off the baselines. Honestly brother why you can become completely intangible and yet you persist in surrounding yourself with thugs. Come along, there is yet work to be done if you really do wish to prevent this disaster."

With that he turns and walks away from the edge of the balcony, his gait is odd to see as the tentacles of his regenerated leg do not seem to function in the same way his remaining human leg does. Above the muted chaos filtering in from outside you hear a bell ring once from up above you.

Hidden, huh? Hm.

"You don't throw grenades at anything you want to find in one piece when the dust settles," Ash tells Gregory. "Which makes me wonder what you were doing when he threw it."

Under his mask Doug gets an annoyed smile. He sends to Raider,

*Don't correct him please. He won't like it and we don't need him estimating me correctly. I'd rather be underestimated and dismissed by James than be taken seriously. In business this mistake leads to sucky trades.*

Doug will follow Raider who presumably will be following James.

Gregory looked a little exasperated. When the woman talked, he had to watch her lips to help him uderstand what whe was saying. Everything around them sounded muted. He wondered if she had a hard time hearing too. Just in case she missed it the first time, he repeated what happened.

"I was hiding, so abbies not see me." Most of what he was going to tell her was true. "He came into room I was searching. I scared him by accident." That was not exactly true. "He dropped the.. whatever you called it..'grenade'. He then ran. I saw him run and ran too. It sploded. Building collape on us."

He got the message from Doug and sent back. * There is a hurt person out here. I will get him away from Squiddy, so he safe.

Gregory walks toward the hurt man and says to the strange woman with a look of panic on his face. "I can hear the Abbies coming. They will hurt us if they find us. We must go to safety. I will help carry him." Gregory, along with his creation, reach down to pick up man. Each one takes an arm.

(OOC: Trickster activated)

Having let the rifle stray for a moment on its shoulder strap as she taped one of the big bandages from her aid kit over the gash in Charlie's head, Ashley has to fumble for a second as Gregory starts coming closer.

"Uh uh, that's far enough!" she says as she manages to cover Gregory again. "Too far. Back off. I've got him. You can...go scavenge somewhere else. Do whatever you do. I'll take care of him."

Gregory wondered if he should just grab the man and drag him to a safer place. He had been blown up and burned. What harm would a bullet do to him.

"Shoot me then. You can't hurt me. The abbies who live here are coming and they will kill us if they find us. I can hear them." He points to his ears, and then looks her in the eyes. "Do you want to die?"

Gregory reaches down and grabs the man anyways. He felt that it was his fault that the man was hurt, and he would see him safe. If his friends wanted to die, then they could stay there.

"Damnit!" Ash manages to get one shot off, then swings the butt of the rifle at Gregory, hard enough that something in it rattles and makes a metallic snapping noise. But not hard enough to actually HURT.

Unable to stop him from getting to Charlie, and unwilling to shoot this close to her friend, Ashley is reduced to swinging her rifle like a club, over and over again, ranting, "I am so SICK of you goddamned ABBerants just doing whatever the hell you WANT and SCREW everyone else! You're all the SAME!" Each shouted word was another flicker of force field, and another crunch of metal meeting it.

She throws the gun away and lunges at Gregory barehanded, pressing her hands against the flickering, impenetrable shield, grimacing and snarling in impotent, frustrated rage and fear...before finally recoiling several steps back and yanking herself away.

"If you hurt him," she warns...her voice sounds choked. "I will find some way to get you. I swear. You can't have that thing up all the time."

And with that, having no other option, she goes to try to help Gregory carry Charlie...doing her best to make sure moving him doesn't make things any worse.

He let her vent her anger on him. He understood she was worried for her friend, and as long as she wasn't hurting him, it was ok. As they carried the man, Gregory gave her a childish smile which hinted at innocence.

Gregory guides the woman to a location that Gregory believes is secure. As he nears the door, he blends with the surrounding scenery. Once he is camoflaged, he speaks to the woman.

"I watch for abbies. You take care of friend. If you need anything, I will be outside." He steps outside their hiding place and watches for strangers. A moment later he sticks his head inside the entrance. "Do you need a healer?"

"I need a new gun," Ash replies woodenly as she continues administering what medical aid she can to Charlie.

Then she looks up and takes her goggles off to wipe her eyes. Her face is that of a young woman, maybe early twenties, pretty, but unsmiling. Her eyes are a muddy green, just shy of hazel.

"No," she says then. "I'm all right."

Gregory laughed. She had to be joking about what she said because she was not harmed. Buzz once told him that it was called 'Sarkazem'. Still, he wanted to make sure that she understood him.

He gave her a big grin and a slight shake of the head. "I was not asking about a healer for you. It was for your friend."

Ashley stares at Gregory with a faint confused frown. Trying to figure out how his brain worked was giving her a headache. That, or the stress. She was still trying not to think about the failed attack, and how many people might not make it back.

But this one would, damnit. If she couldn't save everyone, she'd save at least one.

"No, he'll be all right, I think." She looks at Charlie and spies the little plastic bottle in the medkit. Aspirin. Taking the wounded soldier's pulse with one hand, she taps a couple of pills out of the bottle into the lid, then swallows them dry.

"Just blunt trauma," she goes on, as much to herself as to the aberrant. "From the fall and the rocks. No shrapnel. He lucked out."

He watched her eat some white tablets. In his travels he had heard of medicines from before the burn, and he wondered if that was what she was taking. It had writing on the front, but Gregory couldn't read what it said. His curiosity got the better of him.

"What you take those for?" Gregory whispers, as he points towards her bottle of pills. "You sick?"

He also sends to Doug concerning the injured man and the strange woman: * They in safe place. What happening there?

"It's just aspirin," Ash replies, grimacing at the bitter chalkiness of it. "For my headache."

She glances up at the aberrant. "What, they don't have aspirin where you're from?"

"Ass-pa-rin," Gregory drawled, as he enunciated each syllable. "I don't know what it is. I'm sure they have it where I live."

Gregory stared at her like she was dying. He then walked close to her and squatted. "Uhh..When did this head-ache start?"

"Look, just...go over there, all right?" Ash says, shying away. "I'm fine. He'll be fine. I don't go over health issues with strangers, let alone aberrants."

"I'm no aberrant." Gregory laughs as he backed away. "I'm Gregory."

"I had head-ache once too. I got powers and stuff from it."

Ashley shakes her head at 'Gregory,' with a bitter laugh. "All right -Gregory-. You're not an aberrant. What was I thinking? Because -everyone- can make Star Trek shields and turn invisible and form...squid things or whatever. Hell, I should have just done that!"

She grimaces again and takes a deep breath, calming herself. "Wake up. You are what you are. You've got a brain-eating ball in your head that gives you super powers and drives you slowly insane. Having a name doesn't change that."

Some of what she was saying he could understand. Other things, like star trek, were confusing to him. He had not been to the stars, so she must be imagining things. Squid creatures and force fields and invisibility were mostly true. But he was not an Aberrant! He was not going crazy!

"I'm not aberrant. Abbies are tentacles, teeth, and full of bloodlust. They eat people. I don't eat people, I am not crazy and I look like normal people- mostly." He paused trying to remember what Buzz and the rest had called themselves.

"I am a Nova" Gregory said finally, beaming with pride.

Ash feels an unexpected pang of...what, sympathy? Something like that. He really didn't seem to know.

"Every aberrant starts off a nova," she says to him matter of factly. "That's the problem. That's what happened before the war. At first, they seemed just like regular folks, but with super powers. They tried to do good things. But then, one by one, some faster than others, they all went bad. And just look around to see what happened because of that."

(OOC - Just to be clear, this is history as she's learned it, not necessarily a true representation of facts. :))

All Gregory can do is stare at her, his mouth agape. He didn't know about any of this, but he suspected that it might be true. At least some of it anyways. He had seen Doug start acting crazy, so that might be true. The world had burned. That was true. Yet, Gregory didn't feel himself going crazy, and he'd been a Nova for a couple of years.

"I don't know anything about what you are saying." He said finally, his mouth now closed. "I know a place where people an Nova work together to make a better life. We protect regular people from the Abbies, who try eat and slave then."

Ashley shakes her head and reaches down to take Charlie's pulse again...really, just edgy and not sure what to do with her hands.

"That's probably what this city was like ten years ago. All noble and philosophical and full of nova-human friendliness. See where it got them?"

Her voice tensed on the last sentence, having experienced all too much of 'where it had gotten them' in the past year.

The mixed sounds of gunfire and quantum energy quickly die down, replaced by screams of the wounded, both human and inhuman. You both realize that this location is most likely not going to stay safe much longer. After a few moments Ashley is sure that the her people were on the losing side of the battle, had they come out victorius they would immediately have placed high explosive on the doors of the Tower and tried to blast their way in.

Charlie stirs, "Wha - what happened?" His eyes are unfocused but quickly recover and then widen in terror as he sees Gregory. He begins to scramble backwards and grasp frantically for his sidearm.

*****

Inside Courier, Raider, and Anna head up the stairs to the balcony. Anna is forced to resume her normal size as the stairs groan in protest as soon as puts one foot even partially down upon them. Even so reduced she finds that her bulk makes the confines of the small elevator that much more cramped. James makes no comment but the exasperated roll of his eyes speaks volumes.

The doors slide shut and begin the car begins to rise, "So brother, why don't you tell me what you do know and I'll do my best to correct you and fill in the gaps that you no doubt have." James' voice drips with disdain and arrogance, despite the fact that he has already implicitly indicated his need of his brother's talents.

"Easy Charlie," Ash tells him sharply. "He's not with the city. He's feral." She takes a breath to let that sink in, then goes on.

"The mission's failed. We weren't in position yet when the fighting started. Called a fallback, then came out here to check your status. How are your legs? We're going to have to hoof it to the rendezvous point."

Charlie calms down slightly but continues to eye Gregory warily. "Yeah ... I mean yes sir, I think I'll be ok, just a nasty bump on the head."

Doug steps hard on his need to mention how Squidward's social problems hurt him, and even harder on his desire to reach over and pulp his head and remains silent.

(Rotated to everyone) *How are you doing?*

Anna feels uneasy and its clearly visible that she is nervous. Her bulk virtually fills the entire elevator and she needs to hunch in order to fit inside.

*I don't like confined places... I don't like buildings like this. I can't hear mothers nature voice here. I prefer being outside, but there is war and I'm scared of that.*

Gregory sees that the man has awaken and is talking. The man also seems to be scared of him. Gregory wanted him to know that he was sorry.

"Uhh..I'm sorry about earlier." He says to the man, doing his best to look innocent. "I didn't mean to scare you."

Ash shakes her head at Gregory's statement, but doesn't respond otherwise. She claps Charlie's shoulder and says, "Alright then, lets get moving."

Wish we had a radio. There's another check on my 'stuff I wish we had' list. Maybe I should just wish for a nuke and be done with it.

She thinks of Gregory then though, and her cheeks redden slightly. A nuke wouldn't just kill the Aberrants. And even she couldn't deny that nukes were involved in the burning of the world, even if who's nukes and how many and why were now lost...

Banishing her musings, Ashley gets to her feet and offers Charlie a hand up as well.

Gregory motions for mer to wait as he initiates his camoflage and sneaks out from their hiding place. He scans for aberrants with his eyes, and his hearing. He shudders at what could have happened if he had his super-hearing turned on when the grenade went off.

As soon as it is safe, he tells them to follow. He will take them to a safe place near the edge of the city.

He sends to the others: * We are moving to safer place. What is happeneing in there?

Once out of the shelter, Ash and Charlie seem to have ideas of their own...heading in another direction.

"This is goodbye, Gregory," Ashley says with distant formality. "Thanks for not killing us and all. Good luck on your sca...salvaging."

They start to walk away when Ash turns back and says, "Hey. Look, it's none of my business, but if you really care about the people in that...commune or whatever of yours, then you'll leave it. Go off where you won't hurt any of them when it finally happens."