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Description
March 31, 2019; Bellwood

Ava opened her eyes. She sat up in her chair, feeling the dangling wires of the Animus headset trail behind her. She rubbed her head.

“Well that was… a bumpy ride,” she said.

Ruby came over to her, and pulled the machine off of her face. Ava blinked to readjust. She noticed her hands were shaking a little.

“You need a moment, Champ?” Ruby asked her.

“Nah I'm good,” Ava said. “Don't really think I could take a moment even if I wanted to. We got the location of the Apple?”

“Got Gwen running the math on that trajectory,” Chelsea said, pointing to their friends on the couch.

“Already got coordinates for it,” Gwen said, looking up from her laptop. “Had to crunch a few odd numbers. That rocket didn't seem to fall apart the same way it does in the history books I'm used to reading so it was a bit of compare and contrast with the numbers.”

“That tends to happen when we run these Animus sessions,” Catherine laughed. “Mostly accurate, except when our ancestors get mixed up in something that someone wants scrubbed out.”

“Sounds like bad fanfiction,” Kevin quipped as he grabbed his keys. “Come on, we'd better get that Apple fast before the bad guys do.”

He got no disagreement from his friends. Ava hopped out of her chair, and followed after Kevin with the rest of their group. They hurried to the garage, split off into two groups and piled into their cars. Ruby revved up her van, and Kevin made his car's engines roar. They set their courses, their headlights blinked onto the road outside, and the tires started spinning. They rushed out into the desert night, hoping they would be able to make it in time.

------------

March 31, 2019; Pacific Ocean

The eight of them stood on the edge of their rented boat, gazing down into the endless blue abyss.

“You're absolutely sure this is the place?” Ava asked.

Gwen nodded. “We should be right on top of it if I did the math right,” she said.

“Did you do the math right?” Ben joked.

“You wanna run the math on my math?” Gwen smirked. “Or do you wanna get down there and grab that Apple already?”

“Alright chill out.” Ben pulled back his sleeve and reached for his watch. He turned the dial, sorting through his array of holograms until he found the one he wanted. He smacked his palm down on the dial, and the night sky was suddenly filled with an intense green light. The others covered their eyes until the light faded away a few moments later. Ava got a look at what beast had taken her friend's place this time. The first descriptor that came to mind was “merman”, but that wasn't quite right. He was definitely more fish than man. His toothy jaws and beady eyes reminded Ava of an angler fish or one of those eels. From head to toe he was covered in scales, with green webbing between his fingers and hands. The watch dial's symbol glowed on his chest.

His gill slits breathed open, and he leapt up into the air, arching towards the water. His legs were wrapped together into a skin cocoon, and tail fins sprouted from the end just as he hit the surface and disappeared into the deep.

Minutes passed. The others sat on the deck of the boat, waiting. Ruby started up a card game with Kevin, while the others mostly sat on silence on their phones. Then suddenly Jess spotted a faint golden glow coming from under the waves. Her eyes widened, and she waved the others over, and they all watched as the glow got brighter, and brighter.

The water erupted as Ben surged up from the deep. He flipped onto the boat, landing back on his scaly legs and hitting the symbol on his chest. His green glow blinded his friends again for a moment before it died down, and left normal human Ben there, smiling. He held up the golden glowing sphere in his hands.

The Apple.

The others erupted into cheers.

“Yes!” Ava said, reaching for the orb.

“Wait a go, Tennyson!” Chelsea said.

“Just another day in the life of a hero,” Ben said, putting his hands on his hips.

Ava held the Apple in her palms, gazing into its ethereal glow. She could almost feel her great grandfather putting an approving hand on her shoulder. “We need to get this back to the hideout,” she said, receiving nods in return. Smiles on their faces for the first time since their last fight, the boat was revved back up, and the team bounced back across the Pacific waves, a course set straight back to Bellwood.

------------

April 1, 2019; Bellwood

“So what's the plan now?” Kevin asked as the team walked onto the parking lot of the hideout. “I mean yeah we've got the Apple, but Lucifer and Eon are still out there and they've still got the Hands too.”

“We'll track them down,” Ava said. “Knowing them, they probably know we have the Apple already. It's only a matter of time before they start closing in.”

“And that's when we'll strike,” Ruby said.

“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Ben agreed.

“We just gotta make sure we keep our eyes pe-”

Ava stopped walking. “Ruby?” she said, the sudden stop grabbing her worry. She turned around, and gasped. Her friends were frozen where they stood, unmoving from their positions. It was like they were frozen in time.

...oh no.

She suddenly heard a malicious crackling sound radiating throughout the air, and a fit of evil laughter to match. She got into a fighting position, looking frantically around for her foes.

“You gonna keep laughing like a coward or are you going to come let me kick your ass?” she called out.

There was a crackle behind her. A ball of purple lightning tore through the spacetime continuum. Just as she spun around to face it, Eon erupted forth from it and slammed her into a wall.

“Big talk from such a small human,” he said through his fishbowl of a helmet. He raised up his fist as if to punch her, and it sputtered into lightning.

“I'm 5’11”, Darth Dumbass,” Ava said. She grit her teeth and kicked upwards, kneeing Eon in the groin. He yelped in pain and reeled back, and Ava used the opportunity to roll out of the way and pull out her karambit. Eon scowled at her, his fists glowing more intense with his rage.

“Give me the Apple!” he demanded. “And I will consider giving you a painless death!”

“Only consider?”

He snarled and thrust a lightning blast her way. Ava quickly dodged, and turned to see the hole that the blast burned in a shipping container. She cast a glance over at her friends. They were all still frozen in time, oblivious.

“Looks like I'm going solo for a bit…” she said to herself.

She jumped out of the way of another blast, and then darted forwards with her blade in hand. She took a swing at Eon's jugular, and he bent back in response. He attempted to sucker punch her, and missed when she ducked out of the way. She then grabbed him and spun herself onto his back, putting him in a choke hold with her legs and swinging herself forwards to toss him across the pavement. Eon oofed and snarled, and tried firing a few more blasts her way. Ava was quick though, and she used the crates and scaffoldings to keep out of range.

“Stand still you little rat!” Eon fumed.

Another blast at Ava's feet. She jumped, and used her momentum to kick him in the face. He went sprawling to the ground, and a jolt of his power surged out into the air. It streaked across Ava's friends, and they started moving again much to her relief.

“-eeled. Woah what the hell?” Ruby gasped as she suddenly caught sight of what her girlfriend was caught up in.

“Eon!” Chelsea snarled.

Ava smiled. Her friends scattered to their fighting positions. The Assassins grabbed their guns and blades, Kevin absorbed an armor of concrete, Gwen spawned her mana orbs, and Ben slammed down on the dial of his watch. After a flash of green light, he reemerged as another alien, a massive scaly behemoth.

“Humungousaur!” he bellowed, and then he charged over to help.

Eon’s eyes glowed, and he suddenly proofed away from his spot on the floor just as a giant dinosaurian fist was about to come down on him. Another flash of purple appeared in the sky just a moment later, and Eon scowled down at the team with crackling fists.

“Why must people like you always meddle?” he growled.

“Meddling is kind of our special talent to be honest,” Catherine said.

“Give me the Apple or die!”

“What's wrong Eon?” Ava quipped. “Not so tough when the numbers are stacked against you? Guessing your ‘friend’ ditched you at the gas station?”

“You'd like that, wouldn't you, Arlie?” a new raspy voice suddenly said.

Ava froze, tensing. She prepared herself to spin around and launch a fist into Lucifer's face, but unfortunately she didn't get the chance. A flash of red shattered light spawned just inches behind her, and her greatest foe came rumbling out. He grinned and latched onto her cardigan, forcing his hands down her pocket and practically ripping the Apple out. Ava screamed and kicked in protest, but it wasn't enough. Lucifer bolted away from her, and hovered beside his companion. They both smiled down at the now terrified group. The Apple pulsed and glowed maliciously in the Devil's hand.

“No!” Ava yelled.

“I appreciate you doing all the work for us, Arlie!” he called down to her. “Really, I do.”

“I'm going to kill you you snake!”

“If you think you can survive round 2…”

He held the Apple higher, and as it pulsed, that familiar shattered glass shape of a portal to Hell appeared in the air. A hole gaped open in the fabric of reality, revealing the twisted void of shattered chunks of the universe beyond. At the maw of the portal floated the Hands of Armageddon. It's glyphs pulsed purple in unison with the Apple.

“...then come and try,” Lucifer finished. He brought the Apple up to the hands, pressing it against the center circle. The two artifacts clicked together, and they started pulsing and crackling in a violent display of energy. The Assassins and company jumped out of the way of the bolts that came streaking out of the portal, and watched in horror while their enemies’ cackling narrated the crack that jolted out from the main portal. It expanded into the sky, and across the ground, ripping the spacetime continuum in half. The team tried to run from the tear, but it caught up with them quickly, and they soon found themselves screaming and falling onto one of the platforms that had originally been the end of the journey that Ava and her friends had been on those three years ago.

They all groaned and pulled themselves painfully to their feet, and they looked up in horror at the two villains hovering with their device of practically unlimited power.

“Finally!” Eon laughed. “After all of these years! I can rule the multiverse! No one will be able to stop me! Not even you, Tennyson! All thanks to you, partner.” He turned towards Lucifer, who seemed unphased though he smiled. “Perhaps you can continue helping me with my errands once I become emperor of time itself.”

Lucifer gave Eon a look, and he leaned his arm on the Hands of Armageddon. “Yeah see about that: now that I know there's more universes out there to destroy, I think I'm gonna go ahead and cut you short now,” he said.

Eon froze. He looked with disbelieving eyes at his “partner”. “I… excuse me?” he asked.

“You made me laugh enough so I won't kill you right now, don't worry,” Lucifer told him, that smug smile still firmly plastered on his wrinkled face. “But now that I have all I need to keep going with my whole plot for ultimate destruction, I'm gonna go ahead and send you off.”

A bolt of energy snaked out of the Hands of Armageddon, and slammed into Eon. He winced in pain, and looked up bitterly at Lucifer. “You.. you can't do this! We had a deal!”

“I'm Satan, dumbass. I invented the double cross. Take notes when you're back to being a loser in your own dimension.”

“No! No!”

His screams echoed throughout the void as the light engulfed him, stretching him out like a medieval torture device. It glowed brighter and brighter, until finally the screaming was cut off in one big boom. The energy evaporated away, and Eon was gone without a trace aside from the echoes of his betrayed screams.

The team looked up in shock, and Lucifer simply smiled down at them with a grin. “Now, where were we?” he asked, drawing his sword.

“You won't get away with this!” Ava shouted. “We killed you here before and we'll send you to the same grave!”

Lucifer started laughing. “You know what? You're right, kid,” he said. “I didn't give myself full home field advantage last time.”

“Full?” Jess said nervously.

“You're in Hell, heroes. And don't forget: Hell has nine circles. I designed this dimension as the perfect torture chamber for all my prisoners. This void you're in is just the default skin: the first circle. Limbo. There's still eight more.”

The platform that the team was on started to shake, and the void around them followed suit. The shattered chunks of the platforms suddenly started moving fluidly together, taking shapes and donning new textures. The team found themselves standing on dirt ground, and they started feeling the noticeable pressure of a harsh breeze. The winds picked up, quickly and relentlessly. Soon they found it difficult to stand on their own two feet, and they went sprawling helplessly. They all dug in as hard as they could, struggling to look up at the arena that had formed around them due to how intense and cold the winds were. They managed to look up at Lucifer, getting into fighting poses as best they could. Their foe hovered above them, crackling sword in hand, and he beckoned them forward.

“Let's see what you've got this time, kid.”

Description
March 31, 2019; Bellwood

Ava opened her eyes. She sat up in her chair, feeling the dangling wires of the Animus headset trail behind her. She rubbed her head.

“Well that was… a bumpy ride,” she said.

Ruby came over to her, and pulled the machine off of her face. Ava blinked to readjust. She noticed her hands were shaking a little.

“You need a moment, Champ?” Ruby asked her.

“Nah I'm good,” Ava said. “Don't really think I could take a moment even if I wanted to. We got the location of the Apple?”

“Got Gwen running the math on that trajectory,” Chelsea said, pointing to their friends on the couch.

“Already got coordinates for it,” Gwen said, looking up from her laptop. “Had to crunch a few odd numbers. That rocket didn't seem to fall apart the same way it does in the history books I'm used to reading so it was a bit of compare and contrast with the numbers.”

“That tends to happen when we run these Animus sessions,” Catherine laughed. “Mostly accurate, except when our ancestors get mixed up in something that someone wants scrubbed out.”

“Sounds like bad fanfiction,” Kevin quipped as he grabbed his keys. “Come on, we'd better get that Apple fast before the bad guys do.”

He got no disagreement from his friends. Ava hopped out of her chair, and followed after Kevin with the rest of their group. They hurried to the garage, split off into two groups and piled into their cars. Ruby revved up her van, and Kevin made his car's engines roar. They set their courses, their headlights blinked onto the road outside, and the tires started spinning. They rushed out into the desert night, hoping they would be able to make it in time.

------------

March 31, 2019; Pacific Ocean

The eight of them stood on the edge of their rented boat, gazing down into the endless blue abyss.

“You're absolutely sure this is the place?” Ava asked.

Gwen nodded. “We should be right on top of it if I did the math right,” she said.

“Did you do the math right?” Ben joked.

“You wanna run the math on my math?” Gwen smirked. “Or do you wanna get down there and grab that Apple already?”

“Alright chill out.” Ben pulled back his sleeve and reached for his watch. He turned the dial, sorting through his array of holograms until he found the one he wanted. He smacked his palm down on the dial, and the night sky was suddenly filled with an intense green light. The others covered their eyes until the light faded away a few moments later. Ava got a look at what beast had taken her friend's place this time. The first descriptor that came to mind was “merman”, but that wasn't quite right. He was definitely more fish than man. His toothy jaws and beady eyes reminded Ava of an angler fish or one of those eels. From head to toe he was covered in scales, with green webbing between his fingers and hands. The watch dial's symbol glowed on his chest.

His gill slits breathed open, and he leapt up into the air, arching towards the water. His legs were wrapped together into a skin cocoon, and tail fins sprouted from the end just as he hit the surface and disappeared into the deep.

Minutes passed. The others sat on the deck of the boat, waiting. Ruby started up a card game with Kevin, while the others mostly sat on silence on their phones. Then suddenly Jess spotted a faint golden glow coming from under the waves. Her eyes widened, and she waved the others over, and they all watched as the glow got brighter, and brighter.

The water erupted as Ben surged up from the deep. He flipped onto the boat, landing back on his scaly legs and hitting the symbol on his chest. His green glow blinded his friends again for a moment before it died down, and left normal human Ben there, smiling. He held up the golden glowing sphere in his hands.

The Apple.

The others erupted into cheers.

“Yes!” Ava said, reaching for the orb.

“Wait a go, Tennyson!” Chelsea said.

“Just another day in the life of a hero,” Ben said, putting his hands on his hips.

Ava held the Apple in her palms, gazing into its ethereal glow. She could almost feel her great grandfather putting an approving hand on her shoulder. “We need to get this back to the hideout,” she said, receiving nods in return. Smiles on their faces for the first time since their last fight, the boat was revved back up, and the team bounced back across the Pacific waves, a course set straight back to Bellwood.

------------

April 1, 2019; Bellwood

“So what's the plan now?” Kevin asked as the team walked onto the parking lot of the hideout. “I mean yeah we've got the Apple, but Lucifer and Eon are still out there and they've still got the Hands too.”

“We'll track them down,” Ava said. “Knowing them, they probably know we have the Apple already. It's only a matter of time before they start closing in.”

“And that's when we'll strike,” Ruby said.

“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Ben agreed.

“We just gotta make sure we keep our eyes pe-”

Ava stopped walking. “Ruby?” she said, the sudden stop grabbing her worry. She turned around, and gasped. Her friends were frozen where they stood, unmoving from their positions. It was like they were frozen in time.

...oh no.

She suddenly heard a malicious crackling sound radiating throughout the air, and a fit of evil laughter to match. She got into a fighting position, looking frantically around for her foes.

“You gonna keep laughing like a coward or are you going to come let me kick your ass?” she called out.

There was a crackle behind her. A ball of purple lightning tore through the spacetime continuum. Just as she spun around to face it, Eon erupted forth from it and slammed her into a wall.

“Big talk from such a small human,” he said through his fishbowl of a helmet. He raised up his fist as if to punch her, and it sputtered into lightning.

“I'm 5’11”, Darth Dumbass,” Ava said. She grit her teeth and kicked upwards, kneeing Eon in the groin. He yelped in pain and reeled back, and Ava used the opportunity to roll out of the way and pull out her karambit. Eon scowled at her, his fists glowing more intense with his rage.

“Give me the Apple!” he demanded. “And I will consider giving you a painless death!”

“Only consider?”

He snarled and thrust a lightning blast her way. Ava quickly dodged, and turned to see the hole that the blast burned in a shipping container. She cast a glance over at her friends. They were all still frozen in time, oblivious.

“Looks like I'm going solo for a bit…” she said to herself.

She jumped out of the way of another blast, and then darted forwards with her blade in hand. She took a swing at Eon's jugular, and he bent back in response. He attempted to sucker punch her, and missed when she ducked out of the way. She then grabbed him and spun herself onto his back, putting him in a choke hold with her legs and swinging herself forwards to toss him across the pavement. Eon oofed and snarled, and tried firing a few more blasts her way. Ava was quick though, and she used the crates and scaffoldings to keep out of range.

“Stand still you little rat!” Eon fumed.

Another blast at Ava's feet. She jumped, and used her momentum to kick him in the face. He went sprawling to the ground, and a jolt of his power surged out into the air. It streaked across Ava's friends, and they started moving again much to her relief.

“-eeled. Woah what the hell?” Ruby gasped as she suddenly caught sight of what her girlfriend was caught up in.

“Eon!” Chelsea snarled.

Ava smiled. Her friends scattered to their fighting positions. The Assassins grabbed their guns and blades, Kevin absorbed an armor of concrete, Gwen spawned her mana orbs, and Ben slammed down on the dial of his watch. After a flash of green light, he reemerged as another alien, a massive scaly behemoth.

“Humungousaur!” he bellowed, and then he charged over to help.

Eon’s eyes glowed, and he suddenly proofed away from his spot on the floor just as a giant dinosaurian fist was about to come down on him. Another flash of purple appeared in the sky just a moment later, and Eon scowled down at the team with crackling fists.

“Why must people like you always meddle?” he growled.

“Meddling is kind of our special talent to be honest,” Catherine said.

“Give me the Apple or die!”

“What's wrong Eon?” Ava quipped. “Not so tough when the numbers are stacked against you? Guessing your ‘friend’ ditched you at the gas station?”

“You'd like that, wouldn't you, Arlie?” a new raspy voice suddenly said.

Ava froze, tensing. She prepared herself to spin around and launch a fist into Lucifer's face, but unfortunately she didn't get the chance. A flash of red shattered light spawned just inches behind her, and her greatest foe came rumbling out. He grinned and latched onto her cardigan, forcing his hands down her pocket and practically ripping the Apple out. Ava screamed and kicked in protest, but it wasn't enough. Lucifer bolted away from her, and hovered beside his companion. They both smiled down at the now terrified group. The Apple pulsed and glowed maliciously in the Devil's hand.

“No!” Ava yelled.

“I appreciate you doing all the work for us, Arlie!” he called down to her. “Really, I do.”

“I'm going to kill you you snake!”

“If you think you can survive round 2…”

He held the Apple higher, and as it pulsed, that familiar shattered glass shape of a portal to Hell appeared in the air. A hole gaped open in the fabric of reality, revealing the twisted void of shattered chunks of the universe beyond. At the maw of the portal floated the Hands of Armageddon. It's glyphs pulsed purple in unison with the Apple.

“...then come and try,” Lucifer finished. He brought the Apple up to the hands, pressing it against the center circle. The two artifacts clicked together, and they started pulsing and crackling in a violent display of energy. The Assassins and company jumped out of the way of the bolts that came streaking out of the portal, and watched in horror while their enemies’ cackling narrated the crack that jolted out from the main portal. It expanded into the sky, and across the ground, ripping the spacetime continuum in half. The team tried to run from the tear, but it caught up with them quickly, and they soon found themselves screaming and falling onto one of the platforms that had originally been the end of the journey that Ava and her friends had been on those three years ago.

They all groaned and pulled themselves painfully to their feet, and they looked up in horror at the two villains hovering with their device of practically unlimited power.

“Finally!” Eon laughed. “After all of these years! I can rule the multiverse! No one will be able to stop me! Not even you, Tennyson! All thanks to you, partner.” He turned towards Lucifer, who seemed unphased though he smiled. “Perhaps you can continue helping me with my errands once I become emperor of time itself.”

Lucifer gave Eon a look, and he leaned his arm on the Hands of Armageddon. “Yeah see about that: now that I know there's more universes out there to destroy, I think I'm gonna go ahead and cut you short now,” he said.

Eon froze. He looked with disbelieving eyes at his “partner”. “I… excuse me?” he asked.

“You made me laugh enough so I won't kill you right now, don't worry,” Lucifer told him, that smug smile still firmly plastered on his wrinkled face. “But now that I have all I need to keep going with my whole plot for ultimate destruction, I'm gonna go ahead and send you off.”

A bolt of energy snaked out of the Hands of Armageddon, and slammed into Eon. He winced in pain, and looked up bitterly at Lucifer. “You.. you can't do this! We had a deal!”

“I'm Satan, dumbass. I invented the double cross. Take notes when you're back to being a loser in your own dimension.”

“No! No!”

His screams echoed throughout the void as the light engulfed him, stretching him out like a medieval torture device. It glowed brighter and brighter, until finally the screaming was cut off in one big boom. The energy evaporated away, and Eon was gone without a trace aside from the echoes of his betrayed screams.

The team looked up in shock, and Lucifer simply smiled down at them with a grin. “Now, where were we?” he asked, drawing his sword.

“You won't get away with this!” Ava shouted. “We killed you here before and we'll send you to the same grave!”

Lucifer started laughing. “You know what? You're right, kid,” he said. “I didn't give myself full home field advantage last time.”

“Full?” Jess said nervously.

“You're in Hell, heroes. And don't forget: Hell has nine circles. I designed this dimension as the perfect torture chamber for all my prisoners. This void you're in is just the default skin: the first circle. Limbo. There's still eight more.”

The platform that the team was on started to shake, and the void around them followed suit. The shattered chunks of the platforms suddenly started moving fluidly together, taking shapes and donning new textures. The team found themselves standing on dirt ground, and they started feeling the noticeable pressure of a harsh breeze. The winds picked up, quickly and relentlessly. Soon they found it difficult to stand on their own two feet, and they went sprawling helplessly. They all dug in as hard as they could, struggling to look up at the arena that had formed around them due to how intense and cold the winds were. They managed to look up at Lucifer, getting into fighting poses as best they could. Their foe hovered above them, crackling sword in hand, and he beckoned them forward.

“Let's see what you've got this time, kid.”