Adventure Girl's head ached. It had plenty of company in that regard--her alabaster skin was peppered with bruises, she was nursing a deep cut on her right leg that she wouldn't have even imagined possible just a few days ago, and her left arm hung limp and useless at her side. She'd been trying to pop the dislocated shoulder back into place for almost twenty minutes, but everything she tried to brace herself against had simply crumbled under the pressure she brought to bear on it. It was the most impressive collection of injuries her nearly invulnerable body had sustained in her career as a superhero, but nothing matched the throbbing sensation of pressure in her brain.
The part of her that had once been Samantha Steele, pampered socialite and full-time wealthy hedonist, couldn't help reminding her that all she needed to do was give into that pressure and all her other aches and pains would go away. She could return to the Liberty Squad's satellite headquarters and take advantage of the full suite of advanced medical technology, or simply accept the boons of sorcerers and shamans alike who had joined in the new, entirely united superheroic community. All her problems would be over if she only gave up and stopped resisting. She wouldn't have to hide in a limestone cavern in the Philippines, praying her hastily arranged gap in the global surveillance system would hold long enough to recover her strength. It would all be so easy if she only ceased fighting.
But she knew. Adventure Girl knew what awaited the world if she gave in, if she let the telepathic tendrils of Professor Psyche into her brain and accepted the numbing cessation of her free will. She was the last hero left, now; everyone from the Rescuer to Doctor Phobos to Venus Ascendant to even the supposedly indomitable will of WildRose had fallen to Veena's machinations now. Even Captain Patriot, who should have been filled with inconceivable power by the threat Veena's plan posed to the freedom of the human race, surrendered as meekly as a kitten to her seductive melodies. Adventure Girl was the last line of defense between Earth and a thousand years of darkness.
It had never been this bad... but that didn't mean it was over. Adventure Girl tried once again to reset her dislocated shoulder. "come on come on come on SHIT!" she shouted, her voice rising from a whisper to a crescendo of frustration as another limestone pillar shattered against her indestructible skin. She didn't know how much longer she had left before they found her... but Samantha was certain she was running out of time.
Only moments later, it ran out. The roof of the cavern dented inward as though smashed by the hammer of a god, and Adventure Girl glanced up with her venture-vision to see a collection of her former allies and long-time enemies waiting for her on the other side of the solid rock. They'd sent all the heavy hitters this time--the Rescuer's implacable fists hammered at a cylinder of pure force created by Captain Tomorrow, distributing the impact widely enough to crack an entire section of limestone ceiling instead of merely punching into the rock. Beside him, Venus Ascendant waited, Girdle of Minerva at the ready to ensnare Adventure Girl in its unbreakable coils.
There were others there too, all waiting for their chance to finish what the Rescuer started. Beatdown, leader of the Freak Parade, stood side by side with the heroes he'd once sworn eternal enmity against with a beatific smile on his radiation-scarred face. Adventure Girl knew for a fact that he considered superheroes to be nothing more than tools of capitalist oppression, but there he was, eager to help them end the very concept of free will. The combined might of Veena and Professor Psyche was too much even for his twisted mind.
It might have been for Adventure Girl as well, if not for her encounter with Professor Psycho, the mirror-universe counterpart to the leader of the Utopians. Something about the conflict with the sinister telepath... along with a half-dozen other mind-controlling supervillains... had left a lingering resistance to even the most powerful mental influence. Veena's music failed against her as well; apparently it operated on the same magical wavelengths as Glamour's faerie magic, and Samantha could overcome it with sufficient motivation. Even mind control rays had a limited effect on her toughened brain, it seemed, thanks to her exposure to Doctor Darke's Mentalizer Cannon. That was why she eventually remembered--
Adventure Girl's train of thought broke off in sudden terror as she saw a small black dot appear over the Rescuer's shoulder. It grew bigger with every passing second, gaining clarity in her venture-vision as it fell faster and faster and faster toward the force cylinder. Within moments, Samantha could make out the outline of a massive humanoid figure covered in iridescent scales, plummeting to earth with its taloned hands outstretched and its spiked tail flowing behind it. She took in the wild gleam of devotion in its yellow eyes, the power in its rippling muscles, and she desperately flew as fast as she could away from the zone of impact as the Broot slammed full force into the cavern's ceiling.
The roof caved in with a thunderous roar, and Adventure Girl's pursuers poured through the hole with superhuman speed. Samantha knew there was no chance of losing them now; the Rescuer's power-vision could see through the limestone walls just as easily as her venture-vision, and her trick with the hacked teleporter bracelet wouldn't work again. Any one of her opponents would have been a challenging battle--together, they spelled her doom. She turned, her torn cape rippling in the breeze caused by the sudden opening. Her leg throbbed dully where the Muramasa blade had cut her, but her improvised bandage stopped the bleeding. Her left arm still hung limp.
This was the end, then. So be it. She'd go down fighting, at least. Samantha let out a roar of frustration and flew straight at her charging enemies... only to find that they had stopped. And so had everything else.
The massive waves caused by tons of tumbling limestone crashing into subterranean lakes hung frozen in mid-air. The streams of sand that trickled down at the edges of the jagged hole in the cavern's ceiling paused in their fall, ignoring gravity with insouciant disdain. Samantha's venture-vision traced individual particles of dust, unaffected by Brownian motion and suspended in perfect, impossible stillness in what should have been a swirling breeze. The world filled with a total silence that the young heroine had never experienced before, the silence of sound waves everywhere stopped mid-pulse.
