Was that Ash? He wondered to himself, as he looked around at the blood and gore. Gregory has never seen someone turn into a Nova, and the experience was quite intense. As he began to think about it, a small smile came across his lips. She can't hate us anymore. Unless she want to hate herself.

Slowly and cautiously, he walked over to Ash to see how she was doing.

Still panicked Anna rushed forward to where Ash was laying kneeling protectively above her. Anna had grown to about 16 Feet in size and looked very much like a huge human-shaped tree that had grown around a prone body.

Carefully she reached out with one hand to touch Ashley's body sensing her overall condition and if she was hurt repairing the damage that had been done.

Ash appears to be unhurt, physically. She's definitely out cold though.

Anna looks down at Gregory and Doug and says warmly, "She is fine, only unconscious. We should get away from here. I don't think those were the only attackers."

Anna lifted Ashley up and held her gently in her arm as if she was holding a baby. Looking at Doug and Gregory she waited for their initiative to lead the way.

Doug looks around at the carnage and decides that Anna is right, it's time to leave.

He sends to Anna and Gregory, *Easy plan is I pick up both of you and fly off. You good with that?*

Ash isn't the only baseline rudely awakened by the attack, and the battle following it, it seems. Although the guards were killed, only a few of the sleeping wounded were. There are calls for help, frightened cries as other baselines start to come in, attracted from guard duties that the assassins didn't have to come through to reach their main target.

Gregory recognizes the young man who's first on the scene. It's the guy he'd scared into throwing his grenade. The guy Ashley came to find when they met.

His face is pale and shocked when he turns to see Doug and Anna and Gregory starting to leave with Ash in Anna's arms. A confusing babble of voices rise behind him as people try to all talk at once.

"What are you doing?!" the soldier, the boy demands in a breaking voice. "What happened?!"

Reacting to the sound, perhaps, Ash twists and shifts in Anna's grip, moaning incoherently and lifting her hands to her temples.

Anna realized only now that there were still survivors left. Ashley's eruption had her distracted so much that she assumed there were no survivors left. Looking to Doug and James she said, "I can't leave them... there are still wounded here and they need us. What means trust if we just take her with us, now that she is one of us?"

Anna turned around and watched Ashley making sure she was kept safe in her arm. Then she faced the boy, "How many wounded are there? I'm going to stay and help, like I promised."

Gregory sends back, noting that there are still others there. *What about the wounded? We can't just leave them. I can try to make big animal to carry them away.

He notices that the young man he saved was one of those wounded. Gregory breaks free of Dougs grasp and cautiously walks towards the man, trying to be as non-threatening as possible.

(To Anna & Gregory) *I don't mind staying. But these people may continue the fight and if they do everyone I toss a stone at will end up in pieces. That's what we're risking.*

Doug spreads his arms wide to attract attention, steps in front of Anna as best he can (two feet in the air) and says loudly,

"There was an attack. Ashley erupted."

Doug waits to see how people react to this.

At first his words seem to fall on deaf ears. One person, somebody who held witness to Ashley's transformation suddenly grasps what has happened and stands, "They did this! They have infected Ashley with the taint of evil and madness and now she is one of them! I saw her, she controlled strange powers unlike those any human could! How many others have you infected aberrant? Was this part of your plan? To appear to be healing us only to infect us with your disease?"

Ash groans and opens her eyes, wincing and holding her head.

"Oh my god," she whispers, "Whoever's shouting, knock it off..."

Then she seems to realize that she's draped over Anna's arms. And that Anna is huge. Her eyes widen in alarm.

"Guys, no one do anything stupid!" she calls. "She's not gonna hurt me."

She does her best to put certainty in her voice for the benefit of the men, but can't help looking a bit nervous.

Doug says evenly, but still loudly,

"If I could make people erupt I wouldn't stop with her, and she wasn't healed anyway. But if healing bothers you, just take a knife and kill everyone we helped."

A voice shouts back, "Why would she hurt you? You're one of them now, a filthy aberrant!" This voice is replied to with a chorus of agreement from some and simple disbelief and shock from others. Ashley and the others see the faces of these people slowly twist into fear and hatred, "You wont turn me into a monster!" one man shouts as another says aloud, "No good can ever come from aberrants!"

Meanwhile far above in Earth orbit Raider watched from the lone small window as the satellite spun drunkenly. He tapped into the computer system and activated the control thrusters. Slowly in controlled bursts the thrusters fired and the drunken wobbling became a slow spin and then finally a nearly imperceptible rotation as the last of the fuel was used up. Even if he was able to repair the missile and refuel it the station wouldn’t be able to control it’s positioning any further. As best he now had a tiny get away with no oxygen and cramped quarters, at worst it was a chunk of space junk that would eventually fall into the atmosphere and burn up on reentry.

With the satellite at least stabilized Raider accesses the communications and the networking systems and tries to reach out to other satellites within this defense network. He finds that there are more than a few active much to his surprise. Reaching out to contact them individually he finds that none have additional missiles and that fewer still are in a stabile orbit most having long ago been damaged or knocked irrevocably out of their position by other orbiting debris.

Exploring once more Raider finds other active satellites but without proper command codes he is unable to quickly access those systems to determine the type or status. In the orbital junkyard he can confirm only that there are active systems present but without much more time he cannot know what kind or what they are still capable of.

Doug nods and says,

"Fine then. Deal with the next attack yourselves and good luck healing the injured. Next time someone bleeds to death remember they didn't have to."

*Everyone ready to leave? We're close to a massacre here.*

(OOC I'll assume Anna puts Ash down when she wakes up :))

"Everybody shut up!" Charlie, the one Gregory recognizes, demands. "Most of you are alive right now because of her!" It's not clear if he means Anna or Ash in that, but he approaches Ash as Anna sets her down with unmistakable caution.

"Came as soon as we heard trouble." He looks around at the dead aberrants. "Looks like you handled it."

Ashley looked away. A wild urge to lie, to claim it was some trick, assailed her. She knew her duty though.

"Charlie...take them to West Point. You can't do anything more here. No ammo, no manpower. Anything else would just be mass suicide."

He didn't respond for a moment, then asked, "It's true?"

Ash nodded slowly. "I'm section ten," she replies quietly. "I'm not going back. You're in charge now. Get them out of here."

"What about the others, chief? The ones still...in there?"

Ash hesitated, then said, "I'll do what I can...while I can. Tell the Point what's going on out here. They need to know. Tell them about the comet too."

Charlie nodded, then asked delicately, "And you?"

"Me? Tell them I died in an attack." A bitter smile quirked her lips. "It's kind of even true."

Charlie raised his hand to his forehead in a salute. "Honor and duty," he said formally, his eyes a bit wet. Ash returned the salute, but didn't repeat the mantra. It wasn't hers anymore.

"Keep them safe, Charlie."

They turned away from each other at the same time. Ash coming back to the three novas, and Charlie going to get the situation in the recovery area under control. Despite Doug's words, it was unlikely anyone was going to try to fight. Only the men in Charlie's guard detachment had guns, and most of the ones complaining were in bed.

Ash walked past Anna, Doug and Gregory without saying a word, going outside into the sun and taking a deep breath.

Doug watches the situation settle and lowers his hands, then slowly drifts to the ground. He eyes Ash for a moment then offers,

"Congratulations I guess."

For a long moment Ash doesn't reply. Then she says without looking at Doug, "How long do I have? You three seem...more or less sane. What do I have to do...to stay that way?"

Doug replies,

"You'll stay a nova if you don't abuse your powers. Don't power max. Don't force recharges. When you've stressed your powers you're supposed to take a month or two off but almost no one does that."

"The killer part is you can get away with breaking those rules. Maybe you'll even need to. Once, twice, maybe a dozen times. Nothing will happen and you'll reach past the limits of your powers out of habit or lifestyle. Then you'll get your first aberration and you'll think it's natural progression or something else and not your fault."

"That's the secret. It's not something you can learn on your own, you have to be told or by the time you figure it out it's too late. Ideally you'd tell them..." Doug motions to the departing baselines, "...so it wouldn't be a secret."

Ash's face doesn't show any sign of understanding terms like 'power max' or 'recharge,' but she doesn't ask about them. It'll come in time, she supposes.

"I don't feel any different," she says tonelessly after a second's reflection. "Except my head's splitting and I think I'd be losing my breakfast if I'd had any."

Anna was still gradually growing seemingly out of a defensive reflex. As she sat Ash down she had reached over 20 Feet in height and was steadily gaining in size and most of all in mass.

Looking at the departing 'baselines' Anna wasn't sure what to do. She looked down at the others, especially at Ash and smiled expressing her insecurities.

"I promised to help...", there was conflict in Anna's voice and something like an urge to help rang with it.

Doug sighs in resigned amusement and says,

"Ash, some people erupt and right then and there they become monsters. Aberrants you call them. This didn't happen to you, you're past that point."

"Others erupt and they have a choice. Run wild with their powers or not. Problem is they never figure out the rules until after it's too late. Or maybe they grew up in this hell hole and they figure part of their job is to be a monster."

"Gregory and I come from a community where novas and baselines work together. There are hundreds of us. Anna is like you but she didn't find out the rules until just recently."

Finally seeming to come out of her daze, Ashley looks at Doug as she reaches up to touch her own cheek.

"No, I mean...I don't feel...like I did. The light's gone. I feel kind of...normal."

Movement catches her eye, and she spies Anna's hulking form not far away.

"Oh shit...what is she doing?!" Ash waves a hand frantically at Anna. "Stop!"

Anna looked confused at Ashley and flinched. "What?... I don't... I don't want to hurt anyone."

She carefully extended her arms in a defensive motion with open palms to the would be oppressors. "I wanted to help..."

Anna looked back at Ashley trying to understand what she wanted her to do.

"You're going to scare people," Ash replies, wincing and reaching up to push against her forehead with her thumb. "Stop...getting big like that. It looks like you're about to start stomping on people."

Anna stared at Ashley as if she didn't realize what was going on. Then she looked around and saw that she had alomst reached about 30 ft. She nodded quickly at Ashley and shrank almost instantly to her 'normal' size of about 8 1/2 feet.

"I'm sorry... I really am... please don't hurt anyone... please.", Anna was almost crying.

"God...I'm not going to hurt anyone!" Ash snaps. "You're just...look...let's just get some distance, all right? Lets just go."

She takes a step forward to do that, then gasps in pain and half doubles over.

"This ENDS right?" she asks Doug hoarsely.

Doug sent,

*Anna, relax. Seriously. You saved some lives and might have made some new friends here. But we'll let everyone calm down a bit first.* Verbally he continues, "She isn't going to be hurting people, she still thinks of them as her own. Maybe she always will."

Doug says to Ash,

"Head aches will last a few weeks at most. As for the rest... you'll deal with it. Maybe find out all Novas aren't monsters. Maybe even do something serious about the situation here."

"I didn't mean you.", said Anna at Ashley. "I am scared of them.", she nodded towards Charlie and the baselines.

Then she flashed Doug a brief look and answered half angrily, "What's this all worth if we keep fighting eachother? THAT is the real madness.", she would've continued with her outburst but instead backed off getting slowly some distance between herself and the baselines.

Anna's rapid growth had quieted the baselines and sent many backpedaling away in horror. As she shrunk down and the novas moved off people could be heard dropping derogotory remarks about Ashley and Anna and aberrants. Others were asking other people if they had grown any scales or tentacles since being healed by the "freak". Charlie did his best to calm the mob and move people toward productive action rather than fear mongering but he could do only so much.

The interplay between the baseline 'soldiers' and Ash was interesting. Gregory noticed how they had turned on someone whom they had admired and fought with. It was sad to see.

Gregory was also curious about this 'West Point' place, and was tempted to follow them and look at it. He figured he had better talk to the others first, before heading out on his own...again. He had caused enough trouble already.

He would wait until they were free of the city before he started asking Ash about 'West Point'.

Ash leans against a broken wall for a moment, until the wave of pain eases enough to let her think, and move. If she hears the soldiers she once commanded talking, she gives no sign of it.

"Where...?" she trails off, realizing she doesn't even know for sure if they want her around, or if she wants them.

"Scratch that. What happens now? I'm not eager to go and be a hermit if there's something else I can do...but I guess none of you have any reason to like or trust me. So, what's the plan from here?"

Doug says,

"Plan is same as before. We stop that rock from killing everyone. After that we try to bring some sanity to this pest hole. Short term you get some training on being a nova and we find out what you can do."

"I was going to offer this to you before but it'd be even more useful now. I'm a minimal telepath. I can't probe, broadcast thoughts, control, or detect thoughts, but I can set up a mental link between you and me and let us talk. It's a weak link, I can't force you to take it and I can't even force you to use it but we've found it's useful. I've set it up with the other novas, it lets us communicate secretly and coordinate our actions."

"The idea before was it'd let us compare notes about what you and I know about the various players here. This whole thing is a multi-factional set up with lots of players. Now it'd be even more useful because you need to know what a 'power-max' is."

Raider was not a happy camper. One missile sitting useless, and the station drifting without control to eventually spiral down into Earth's gravity well and be destroyed waisting all this beautiful tech. "Damn it!" He swore several more times then calmed down. First things first. He made sure to get a good log of the information he'd found on other active objects in orbit but hid the drive inside a console where no one would be able to find it or access it unless they knew where to look and tore the system apart that it was hiding in. Huray for ghost form!

The final missile would have to wait, he'd been working too many hours straight and needed rest. It was time to head back down to the planet and check up on the others and make sure Squiddy hadn't turned them into mindless zombies or something. Tomorrow would be time enough to dismantle the warhead and find someone to warp it to the comet.

When he was satisfied he expended some energy and shifted himself not only out of phase with everything like he did when he became a ghost, but ghosted between one place and another. When he blinked he was back in the hidden lair beneath the city, but it didn't look like Anna or any of the others had been there recently. *Doug, are you there? I'm back. I got the missiles launched, but there was a slight complication, I'll tell you all about it when we gather up. What's been happening down here?*