Last time ... War in the skies over Halcyon! Shatterstar strikes at Concord, hurling him from the sky with her gravitonic accretion disk! (Concord falling ... ... Link zooming upwards, snagging him, "And I'm here to catch you.") The shipping fans go crazy! As does gravity! (Cars and pedestrians fly into the air.) Ghost Girl arrives, and summons Mercury! (Peering from shadows, interrupting Harry dancing in a PE class with a well-muscled girl) Cosmic swordplay rocks the city! (Concord blocks the starlight sword blast with a shield) (Concord, "Why are you doing this?!") Link rescues plummeting pedestrians and perilous passengers! (Link's cosmic tilt-a-whirl) Concord goes on the attack! But his powers don't work that way! (Powers don't work that way.) Jason Quill has the answers! (Jason in is flying disc, shouting in te the radio) And Link has the muscle (throws a car into the portal she's created, hurling her with an alarmed face into some other place) (Link, Concord, and Ghost Girl fall from the sky). And Mercury has the speed! (Harry does the air cushion thing, as Jason creates a nanobot cushion) A great victory for our heroes! Or -- (looking at Concord, staring at the sky, fists clenched) -- is it? But Concord isn't the only one who's worried ... (the robot head back at the school, eyes blinking Morse code, subtitles translating: "... Leo ... Leo ... Leo ... Leo, it's Pneuma ... something went wrong ...") Three Hours Earlier ... Mid-morning shot of the street where Ghostheart's hideout was at, in the abandoned dentist's office. Brownstones. Ghost Girl eyes it from a distance ... creeps in ... She trying to discern what's WRONG about the area, what Ghostheart might have done. She's untrained. So she does down to the basement, hoping to prove that she's the Good one in this equation, despite Ghostheart's accusations. And she passes through into the spiritual world. She perceives the space around where GH has been operating has _stained_ the area in some fashion. He hasn't been summoning spirits / ghosts. Weird metaphysical growths. Weird thing in the sky -- a vague sense of malevolence looking down into the city. She steps back out onto the street in the spirit world -- and there's that presence, swirling faces stepping in where people have passed by. It looks like it's searching ... faces, but more like a finger ... is it attracted to things she's touched? GG ... poke it with a stick? Try and absorb it? Or maybe just ... stir it with a stick? Pouring her energy into it to ... dilute it. ... And the effect seems to work. The clouds look a bit less menacing. It's will has been dispersed (though not dispelled). It's not what it wanted for nourishment. The Present ... Jason gets Concord to snap out of it and follow. GG, still looking in-color and fleshy, in the Quill flying disc. Otto arrives, as the disc returns to the Quill compound -- Otto pulls an unconscious Link out -- follows Jason to the medbay. Jason carries GG -- she feels like a Real Girl. Concord is insecure and hopeless/helpless. The authorities are showing up and cordoning off the crowds. Paramedics. Adam's dad is looking at him. He seems ... disappointed. Adam gets to the Quill compound first, looking like a kid in the corner, except he's not facing the corner. Jason tries to run diagnostics on GG. Link comes to -- can kind of sit up. Sees Jason/Harry and GG. Notes Adam is kind of off on his own. "If everyone lived, and we made it out of 5th period, good job, man." GG is dreaming -- could wake up. She is showing a normal pulse, etc. Numbers are weird -- low pulse, respiration slow. GG is dreaming of sitting on the back veranda garden. Flowers. Remembering it, and her family. Servant bringing a tray. She's in ghost form. ((Link hooks up the robot head to a power source.)) She has a little cry. It's sad. Clearest memory she's ever had. Mother calls her. "You're already late, don't dawdle. But walk, like a proper young lady!" World starts to lose focus. The clouds seem to have a face in them ... as the world fades to white. All of GG's readings flatline. Because the leads are not connected to her. She's a ghost again. Jason tries to explain the situation to her. "But how is everyone?" Leo shouts, "[Expletive deleted]." Jason goes over to him. It's Pneuma. "Someone's gonna die." Who did this? "This is a restored backup from just before I left this morning." Feels constrained by the hardware. "I don't I think I ... none of what happened after i restored from backup was because of any subroutines or protocols I'm aware of. Leo?" Leo explains. "Someone cloned my girlfriend, made her a quadriplegic and set things up so that I would kill her." "Wow. That's really fucked up." "So that's why I'm going to find this guy and kill him." She had been going off to talk with a Buddhist priest in Japan (while tracking down some Rossum financial data). (Piercing the Mask) Investigating being a created thing, free will, feelings about Leo, doing more direct things to figure out what Rossum is up to. Has never done anything on her own, and wanted to see she could. Also wanted to see if Leo would flip out. Jason keeps offering up robot bodies from the warehouse. Adam and GG. Adam is 20 thousand miles away. Shell shock . GG tries to talk him down. Comfort/support. Her explanation ("Bummer – malingerer, someone who deliberately lags behind to forage or steal on his own shrift") goes horribly wrong, which causes Adam to be very much not a happy a camper. Jason wires Pneuma into the holographic projector. Leo ... restrains himself from giving her a hug. but he grabs Jason, drags him over to Adam and Harry, and does a group hug. (except Pneuma and GG, who are intangible) Wrap-Up! Harry - Gets an advance for being sick. Jason - Growing into the image of a leader: +Mundane, -Freak Leo - Growing closer to team / Jason: +Mundane, -Superior GG - Growing closer to team / Jason: -insecure, influence by Jason Adam - Growing into his own image -Savior, +Mundane (very much not a superhero) Next Time! Pennsylvania! Or maybe Japan!
