"I'm a solider" he didn't so much as turn his head to face the helmeted agent
"So like I said - call me when you're ready to get serious"
And with that he left the room, looking for somewhere a bit quieter to get some much needed rest.

Iron Fist's expression gently invites the Beast to continue. He looks over briefly at Bishop as the X-Man leaves the room, understanding the warrior's position yet wishing he was more patient. Finally, they were getting some answers, and he was going to leave?

"So me, Spidey, Storm and her X-Men, and a handful of others... We disappeared, and that was all the bad guys needed? No offense to any of us, but I never thought we were the kind of big-timers that really held the world together."

He swallows, knowing by his hosts' body language that his next question is going to be deeply personal.

"Tell us what happened when the tower fell."

"Speak for yourself," Hank said quietly out of the corner of his mouth. Hank was a founding Avenger and the Earth's Scientist Supreme, as chosen by Eternity. But he didn't want to completely interrupt.

"It might not have been the number of heroes that peris -- uh, disappeared that day," the Beast says. "But possibly a combination. A few divinations said that it might have been just one hero in particular gone from that day and all days forward that made the difference."

"Not everyone got statues," the Anarchy Agent says, his helmet very likely pointed toward Bishop as the man exits the room. "Or remembered."

Back at the hallway Bishop enters the first room on his left, hoping to find it vacant, and quiet.

Venom looks back over at the group as Mac's face becomes visible, "Hey just between us.... do all the hero adventures include hot half-clothed women? Cause if it does you should have really told us that sooner."

The mask flows back up, "Ignore him his hormones are off-balanced because of the green slightly clad one. Get this adventure started Spider. All this talking is making us hungry and we need henchmen or minon to munch.""

Bishop makes his way to the hall and finds the first door past the room Wolfsbane has entered. The door opens easily.

Wolfsbane noted the arrival of Bishop in the hallway, as he passed by her.
He seemed intent, as she was, to investigate the doors and rooms off this hall.

With one last look back towards the machine room, she drifted off to where she could see past Bishop into whichever room he was opening.  After all, she intended to eyeball each of the rooms down the corridor.

As she moved off, she glanced back at the Logan-Terminator:  patting her leg and giving a small whistle, she casually said, "Here boy, heel".

Spider-Man's masked eyes narrow as he wags a finger at Venom.

"You should really be on a non-minion diet. If you're so hungry, There's an ocean of mole men out there just waiting to trample all over you."

Shrugging as he speaks, Spider-Man says to the green Beast, "I can only imagine how terrible everything must have been after we disappeared. I understand if it feels like there's no hope, but there has to be something we can use in this world to help us return and set things right. What's the situation with the villains now? Are they still around?"

He motions back to Venom with his thumb.

"Cookie Monster over here is raring to go on the eating villain's faces part."

Storm allowed herself to be led by the Dragon of the Moon. Her allies were asking all the right questions to slowly gain some understanding of the current status of the world. They still didn't have any sort of clear direction, but perhaps they would eventually get some more clarity.

Bishop stopped just before dropping into a void.  Beyond the door he opened there was nothing - nothing but the infinite vacuum of space.

"What the @!#$?"
He stood at the door, staring at the distant stars, before shaking his head and stepping back.
What he witnessed could very well be an illusion, but he wasn't going to take that chance.

Turning back toward the hall he nodded silently once he spotted Wolfsbane. He hadn't smiled since he left his own timeline (and not much before either), but her quip forced a genuine,  sardonic one to his lips.

"Watch it"  he motioned with his head toward the door at the left "That one leads outside"

The Dragon of the Moon leads Storm out of the room, across the stairs and down the hallway, nonchalantly passing the others there and toward the next available door.

In the time it takes Wolfsbane to casually blink, Logan has advanced to close the space between them, to land barely an arm's length from her, with claws popped and positioned just in front of her eyeballs. The sharpness of the skeleton's claws are so close that if she blinked again her eyelids would be sliced apart.

In reply to Spider-Man (msg # 242):

Venom crosses his arms, "Mole men are minions. And it is a condition of the hero contract. Venom eats a minion and villain learns lessons. Spiderman no do this and villains keep coming back with more minions. Therefore Venom better Spider."

With the Beast and Anarchy Agent facing the doorway of the room and being able to see out of it, they have a line of sight to the hallway and Wolfsbane and Logan's encounter. They both glance briefly, say nothing, then look back to the assembled heroes.

The Beast picks up where he left off. "After the incident at the Avengers Tower, it all went bad fast. The slice of New York where you reappeared -- that was one of the areas that could have been said to survive. No one knew what was just below the surface, waiting for its moment to break through -- literally and figuratively.”

“And if it couldn’t drag what was above back down then they were happy to destroy it,” the Anarchy Agent says, regaining his strict posture.

“You say it like there was only one.”

The Anarchy Agent shrugs then looks toward the window.

“Then the fighting. The worst of the worst tearing each other apart. I don’t know which was worse, that they were so eager to fight or that they were so hungry for being so vicious. Like whatever limits they ever had were allowed to be dismissed. I have never seen such hatred, and such joy in being free to be so savage and barbarous, in the eyes of an opponent. More than once. And lucky to have survived each time. So many others were not so lucky.” His eyes cast to the floor. “Not lucky at all.”

After a moment, the Beast looks back up. "As for why you are here, I really could not say. It wasn't our doing. Even Strange doesn't have that kind of power. I didn't see the instigating factor that brought you here so I'm as in the dark as Deadpool ever is."

"Fortes avanços na ciência!" Deadpool exclaims.

"Back off, before I melt you down!"
It wasn't an idle threat; as he looked on the metallic skeleton, his fists were already glowing bright with energy.

Wolfsbane held her ground, and as Bishop responded to SkelLogan's threat in kind, she simply tilted her head back a millimetre or so, and deliberately, slowly, blinked.

The metal skeleton does not react to Bishop's threat, staying silent and still. Whether Wolfsbane knows she was a millimetre from sudden evisceration, momentarily Logan moves again, slowly pulling back then coming to a stance at ease, never taking its eyes off the girl, still not acknowledging Bishop. The clicking comes from its throat again, this time lacking a rhythm, instead clicking out sounds with a cadence like speech. The arrhythmic clicking continues as the skeleton peers into Wolfsbane, then finally pulls away and turns, toward Bishop. The move is punctuated by a short series of clicking, then it jabs a finger at the imposing man with the glowing fists. It looks back at Wolfsbane once more then lumbers off down the darkened end of the hallway, away from the mutants and the assembled heroes.

Back in the meeting room, the Beast continues. "After the Avengers Tower fell, the war commenced and raged for, well, as long as we can remember. It never really ended, the fighting just died down. Even this long since it started, there are probably still some skirmishes out there, if they can find any ground still stable enough to stand upon.

"But if you're wondering about the particulars of the inception of the whole conflict, it's generally held that the crux of the conflict -- "

"NOOO!!!" cries a voice outside the room.

Bishop lowered his hands when the skeleton stepped back.  The clattering of the metallic teeth which passed for the creature speech was entirely incomprehensible to him.  Thinking about it again, maybe he would be doing the creature a favor by ending its miserable existence.

Shaking his head, he took a quick look at Wolfsbane to confirm she was, indeed, alright.
Once he did he was set on continuing their investigation when the sudden cry drew his attention

"- Never a dull moment"

It looked like he wasn't going to get his much needed rest after all.  With a heavy sigh he turned on his heels, heading in the direction of the disturbance.

Hank shrunk down and activated his wings, flying in the direction of the cry.

Spider-Man follows Hank Pym to find the source of the scream, making a leap in that direction. Although he was hoping to hear the rest of Beast’s explanation, he does not hesitate.

“We’re on our way!”

Spidey couldn’t help but wonder if this is why his Spider-Sense had been tingling since he’s arrived here.

Yellowjacket and Spider-Man are the first of the heroes to run outside of the room and into the hallway, but they don't get far when a huge, mechanical animation lumbers from the nearest door. A construct made of metal -- jagged sheets down to tiny pieces -- and wires and ratchets and construction tools and nuts n' bolts of all sizes and an acetylene torch, perhaps a torso made of exposed speakers and torn discs of tin, makes its way through the doorway, creeping toward the meeting room and around the stairs. Its immense structure is folded in half to duck below the height of the ceiling above, and it quickly fills the space with its body and slinking appendages spreading like tentacles, sliding past the mutants in the hall. A boxy, attached monitor leads the construct, with a human face appearing in a frame filled with static, zapping out then reappearing as another face, then out, then back again with a different face, in a random sequence.



A voice made of equally changing and altered voices, filtered through noise -- white and otherwise -- in irresolute, modulating volumes, screams forth: "NOOO!" It cries, its waling coming in broken pieces. "YOUx MUsxkkxsssST sszxzzzsssSTOP!"
This message was last edited by the GM at 11:11, Mon 03 Aug 2020.

"Stop what?" Hank asked, resuming full size. He was on guard for an attack, because he trusted robots about as far as he could throw them... at ant size. "What were we doing?"

Iron Fist follows the other heroes toward the source of the noise. He feels a faint hope flicker in his heart as he hears the mechanical sounds coming from the hall. Could that possibly be Machine Man? Maybe he and Shang-Chi survived the Moloid onslaught somehow and made it back to their location. Though that voice didn't sound like Machine Man...

Danny enters the room and is greeted by the sight of the strange, unrecognizable lifeform. He feels disappointed but nevertheless tries to appear friendly to the panicky robot.

"OK, so definitely not Machine Man," he thinks.

The construct that is very assuredly not Machine Man calls in the same, broken voice, often breaking through static: "IxxxzF WE HAVzEx xAxNxzY CHANCEz OxFzx GsffkETTING THzESxxE HzEROES" -- the face on its monitor switches to that of an old man with a beard and hair mostly gray, starting from the temples -- "xBAzCK TO xxxzxcTHEIxkbgR OWNcc xTfxcIME, THxEY" -- switching to a blonde woman's face -- "CAxxNNOTxx BE xTOLD ABcOxUT THEIcR FUxxxTccURE. kkIT COUxkxcLxD" -- to a younger kid -- "DIcSRUvPT THE WxxHkOLE SPAxkkkCE-TxxxIME" -- to a screen of static, with only suggetions of a face in it -- "COxxNTINUUMxx!"

While the other heroes have made their ways into the hall, the Beast and Anarchy Agent hang near the back. "Ladies and gentlemen," the Beast says. "I present to you the Fantastic ONE."

Venom begins to chuckle, "Its like they keep wheeling out more comedic relief for our first wacky adventure. Who could expect the amazing junk man would come into the room! We can see why Spider loves being a hero! Hot women and silly stuff all day."