Chaos in the headquarters - go after Doc, keep her safe!

As you regain consciousness the first thing you process is that you've never been caught in an explosion before. They're a pretty common hazard for heroes and heroines, happening with alarming frequency. In genuine news footage of battles and dramatized re-enactments both, heroes get caught in them all the time. But, what you now realize they had always neglected to mention is that it is very, VERY painful. In fact, quite honestly, it is hard to imagine anything possibly being worse. It's like the feeling you get after you get your fingertip caught in a car door, except spread all over your entire body, inside and out. You try to move, but every contraction of your muscles brings a renewed shower of pain. You struggle to draw breath but can't - tasting nothing but blood. Is this the end? Dying alone under a pile of rubble because of the stupidest-dressed villain with the stupidest punny name you've ever seen?

Suddenly you feel another sharp piercing pain joining the throbbing ache all over your body as a foreign object penetrates your neck. And then somehow, things get WORSE - you feel seemingly a hundred, if not a thousand, red-hot lances of sensation everywhere in your body, from your hands all the way down to your toes.

"Kkkkkkkkkkkkk!" unexpectedly able to speak again you finish your earlier expletive. In fact, despite feeling even more agonized, you suddenly are able to breathe again, coughing up blood and taking a deep breath. Your chest no longer feels like jelly on the inside, just the outside. A heavy heap of scrap metal holding you down is pulled away and your eyes flick open, seeing Dr. Rainbow - miraculously unharmed except for her prismatic-striped magical girl outfit being heavily wrinkled - with a huge syringe stuck in your neck (you can just barely make out a label on the side: 'Bone healing juice'). She is remarkably serene. having a calm, intent look on her face, her eyes being a shade of deep navy blue that you've never seen before. As soon as you sputter, and she sees that you're still kicking and your many, many broken bones have begun to mend, she whirls around without a word and produces a giant bandage from her wand, which she lashes like a whip to slap on the back of an **** Snowflake laying amid the burning rubble - it looks like the cryokinetic was almost unharmed from the front when she rolled over, but a big piece of something sharp had gotten her in the back, probably the result of a ricochet.

La Petite Mort is laying completely motionless on the ground, her black dress nearly torn to shreds. At first you fear the worst - honestly, having a name that means '****' seems to be tempting fate - but you can hear she is breathing, very faintly. The fact that she's at full size means she probably didn't have time to defensively shrink herself, unless... you look back to the diligently-working Doctor.

Of course. Clever and quick-thinking, Morte was; she had focused on saving Dr. Rainbow from the blast instead of herself, knowing that healing was Rainbow's specialty. Unfortunately it looks like her manservant, Jean -Pierre, wasn't so lucky: you can see scattered limbs and pieces of him all over the wreckage. Hopefully his head in intact, somewhere, and he can be put back together. It seems he'd been at the epicenter of the blast. Painfully, you realize that if you had listened to Red Weather Balloon's suggestion of standing at the back of the photo, you wouldn't have taken the brunt of it, as you did. You don't see her anywhere.

Oddly, there is also another hero(?) who you don't recognize sitting in the rubble, groaning. He has a helmet stylized like an eagle's head, and he is a big, bulky guy even by League of Propriety standards, at least 250 pounds and all of it muscle by the looks of it. He is conscious, grabbing his knee (which is twisted out of shape), rocking back and forth rhythmically, alternating between loudly sucking air through his teeth and groaning "Ahhhhhh" in a pained voice.

Dr. Rainbow seems to be in a fugue-like state, scurrying around the ruined lab as fast as she can on her ungainly high heels, gathering up the dismembered parts of Jean-Pierre in between stopping back by Petite Mort to check her breathing and hold her eyelids open to shine a penlight in them. You decide not to interrupt her, and instead give Snowflake a hard poke to her backside. That causes her to yelp in surprise and stagger to her feet, glaring at you.

"Hey!" You say. "That was a bomb! That was Photobomber!"

A few awkward seconds of silence pass as she stares at you as if this were all your fault. The good news is that the searing pain of Dr. Rainbow's treatment is passing.

"Who is that guy??" You ask loudly, pointing to the beefy costumed man who so far as taken no notice of you. "How did he get in here?"

" Oh man... this is not my idea of an ideal first mission... Uh..." the costumed man notices your pointed inquiries. "When I heard the explosions start going off I got in front of some people who wouldn't be able to handle that kind of damage by throwing myself on a bomb I saw. The explosion threw me upwards and there must have been some kind of super-strong beams in the walls of this lab, because it made one of them bend the wrong way. Can you tell, uh... Miss Rainbow? Is that it? ...to give me some treatment too?"

Snowflake hops up on her feet with an acrobatic roll, looming over him. "EXCUSE ME?!? 'Miss' Rainbow? 'Miss'? You outdated shitlord! How can you go making assumptions like that? In addition to being a decorated superheroine in good standing, the female-identified person you are referring to is a fully licensed medical doctor, anesthesiologist, AND pharmacist! You're just... a big, toxic, hyper-macho caveman, aren't you? With your narrow, leering eyes and your slack jaw and your massive biceps and-"

You interrupt her before she can go any further. "ENOUGH! I AM THUNDERBIRD! Mistress of sound, the crescendo of catastrophe! And I trust Dr. Rainbow's judgement to asses whether you are in urgent need of treatment or n- HEY! DOC! Where the fuck are you going?!"

While you had been speaking, Dr. Rainbow as pulling on her stethoscope and holding it aloft along with her caduceus rod. She sweeps it back and forth and receives pings of various intensity in various directions. When she points it downwards, it makes an especially sharp and rapid noise like an alarm bell. With a flick of her wand she conjures up a massive whirring bonesaw which cuts a hole right through the cracked floor, which she immediately leaps down. Before you can get very far, the sudden shift causes some more rubble and debris to slide down from the scattered heaps and cover over the hole, leaving you no way to reach her.

"A-ahem. I knew she was doing that of course. Good job, Doc," you say weakly. "Clearly she is sensing that there are so many people with weak life signs that she doesn't have the time to stick around here and help us anymore since we're all in at least stable condition. Like most magical heroes, she runs out of energy eventually so she has to save it for who needs it the most." You think.

"Alright, new guy - whatever your name is. First of all, I have to say that coming in with a bird-themed costume and abilities is VERY crass, don't you know that you're, ahem, stealing the thunder of more veteran heroes doing a thing like that? Trying to steal their glory by association without having earned it? What is your hero name?"

"Uhhhh," the bulky man says, blinking. "H-hero... name?" he says the word 'hero' a bit oddly. "Oh. Ohhhhhh. Guh, uh, uh, it's Griffin...eagle. Griffineagle. That sounds about right, doesn't it?"

"No lamer than some of the ones I've heard recently... So you're a novice, huh? Well, since over half of my team is missing in action now," you begin, hands on your hips, "as the OFFICIAL leader of an entire team of heroines, I'm going to have to insist you follow my directions until we can restore some kind of order here."

You snap your fingers with your non-gauntleted hand which thanks to your powers produces a powerful sound with lots of reverb. "Snowflake! You're up. Griffineagle, please be aware that regardless of what the tits popping out of their costume would make you think, Snowflake's gender identity should not be presumed, and you should respect Snowflake's desire to be addressed with neutral pronouns like 'they' and 'them'. Snowflake, use that power of yours and make a movable cast for this guy's leg so he can walk."

Snowflake nods and claps, causing streamers of snow to surround the bird-guy's leg. He sighs with audible relief as the cold numbs the pain and gingerly climbs to his feet. It's quite awkward but, with her helping him, he's able to walk.

"Huh.. wow." Snowflake says. "I wouldn't have thought of doing that... well, I guess Mort was right even though she is a Eurocentric, hegemonic classist, I do still have some things to learn about doing this... this is a more dangerous place to be a hero than Georgetown..." She clears her throat. "But! Since I am being **** to expend my precious energy compensating for this 'Griffineagle' and his male fragility, and I took a serious injury to my back, I think I'm well within my rights to insist that he shoulder his share of the burden and carry me. Could I humbly suggest to our leader, Thunderbird - who uses female pronouns, by the way - that she should grab Petite Mort and get her out of here before we have to worry about this place collapsing?"

"Griffineagle" looks nervous and blushes greatly. "Wait did I hear... them... correctly? They want me to...?" Before he can object Snowflake strides up to him, turns around, and shoves her scantily-clad tan backside into the crook of his elbow. His hand instinctively tightens its grip, wrapping around her waist and squeezing her midsection as he holds her against him. He reflexively cringes as if expecting to be hit or chastized but instead, Snowflake leans into him, putting her chest up against his side and wrapping one of her hands around his broad shoulder. The bandage which Rainbow had put on her peels off of her back and flutters to the floor, indicated the healing magic has completed, but Griffineagle is too flustered to notice.

Even though he is having one arm occupied now along with a busted leg, the burly strange hero (who is giving you an odd vibe - you resolve to watch him closely) goes over to the door, which is blocked with debris, and begins wrenching it open. It seems he's one of those good old superheroes with the refreshingly uncomplicated power of pure strength, as he is able to drag it open with the sound of screeching metal.

As you carefully turn to improvise a stretcher for Mort out of a piece of sheet metal, tying her to it to keep her rigid so that you can drag her along without having to jostle her head or bend her back, you note that the massive machine she had been using to construct those marvelous contraceptive robotic drones is one of the machines that has been most thoroughly pulverized. You briefly consider going back to try and grab as many of the remaining ones as you can - having those had been an immense relief, since, as you suddenly recall, not a single person who's fucked you since you officially took up the name of Nightingale has bothered wearing a condom. But, time is growing short, and besides, even though your yellow one-piece leotard has (super-short) leg cuffs built in unlike most heroine leotards, it still doesn't have any pockets, nor did Green Streak or Mort or whoever designed it include a proper utility belt! You shake your head - priorities, Rikki, priorities. There could be people dying right now, buried under rubble and suffocating. It's time to get to rescuing.

Alas, it may not be that simple - as the three of you (who happen to be conscious) head out towards the commissary, you hear the sounds of fighting - guns going off. Not little pea-shooters like the small time crooks used, either - the echoing bass thumps of cannons. In the midst of the room is an enormous, hulking robot stylized to look like a rabbit, half-emerged from a hole in the floor. Its 'paws' have split open to reveal a cluster of heavy gun barrels which are shooting at something - you can't tell on account of the dust cloud. Looks like Photobomber either brought help or some other villain is capitalizing on the chaos. Just as you're turning to Snowflake and about to tell her an attack plan, you hear the rushing of wind... and a small funnel cloud descends from the ceiling, right into the massive armored robot. This makes it impossible for the machine to maintain its aim and it begins to spin wildly in place... while still shooting.

It is, quite frankly, a miracle that you, Snowflake, Griff and Mort survive the ensuing chaos as chunks are blown out of every wall. But a handsome dark-skinned man in a patriotic flag-themed costume is able to drop the chunk of debris he'd been using for a shield, leap many feet in a single bound, and deliver a flying haymaker that tears the robot's head clean off in a single blow.

"Oh damn! It's Spangle!" Griffineagle shouts. "I mean... hot damn! Spangle! Nice punch, my main man! You sure took out that Type IX Bunnyborg easily, that's no mean feat!"

Chuckling with good humor, the hero nods upwards. "Well... I had a little bit of help." Following his gaze you see Red Weather Balloon, floating in an updraft so that her skimpy skirt is fluttering wildly with her legs continually spread, looking down to everyone watching and blowing you all a kiss before gently descending towards the ground.

"Yeah, yeah, good job," you say, trying to push down feelings of jealousy. "This is clearly a large-scale attack, so quit gawping at W.B.'s enormous ass and get over here! La Petite Morte just very nearly suffered the, uh, 'grand mort' and needs somebody to get her to safety if this place is gonna get rebuilt. Balloon, Snowflake, new guy - we need to find a clear elevator shaft or stairway heading down, Dr. Rainbow may be powerful but she isn't exactly a natural at fighting and doesn't do well without backup."

"Leave her to me!" Spangle says, taking hold of Mort carefully. "Most of the members are heading to the evacuation point around the entrance and setting up a perimeter outside. And hey, fearless leader - " he addresses you. "Don't go seeking out glory yourself. We need to wait for Old Glory herself to show up, if you know what I mean! These are the Wonderland Warriors, they *will* kill you if you let your guard down."

"That's... a little harsh. I mean, it seems to me they're probably just here to do some usual **** and get to La Petite Mort's gadgets..." Griffineagle huffs. "Gadgets which... are completely wrecked and reduced to scrap metal now, along with her whole laboratory, making a raid like this totally pointless... Oh man, thooooose... those stupid, stupid bad guys. Bad luck for them, huh?"