Days went by

day 1

It has been a while since Fred used the area for his napping ground, a month later seedy land developers 'sold' the land to a group of beekeepers. They moved from Gothic to start life anew, their son purchased the land at a suspiciously cheap price. Their seller left after the contract was signed.

day 2

Nothing out of the ordinary, moving the tools and utilities to the large. They decided to take a moment to relax at a nearby town, everyone gave them the eye. Men, women and even the children steered clear of their table. All did, except for the waitress who took their order with minimal contact.

day 3

Some of the bees have been reported to act in erratic ways, growth is shown within the hives. This recent development was ignored by one of the junior workers, having had a smoke of pot earlier he couldn't trust his own eyes. Can't be caught on the job and he isn't the one to care about the long term issues. Just the wad inside the envelope.

day 4

The drones have gotten weaker while the workers have gotten more agile, displaying a streak of aggressiveness as they become harder to track with the eyes. Some of the workers got stung through their suits, the bees didn't die after that. Each sting felt like a gunshot from a 9mm.

day 5

Workers have reported sick, cause unknown but bee stings do not cause change in skin coloration or eyes to emit a faint glow. Six of them perished, four women and two men with smoke billowing outwards. Policemen are alerted and they are investigating the case, beekeepers are on high alert.

day 6

Cages are destroyed, discovery made in the morning. Beekeepers are having a downward spiral of chaos, firstly some of their members are slain and now their investments are being throughly vandalised. Shadows have emerged on the roads for morning to afternoon hours, vanishings began to rise.

day 7

News stations began to crowd at the ongoing events that have overtaken the once quiet town, they arrived in the afternoon and found out that the city had half of its remaining population hiding indoors behind improvised barricades. The Beekeepers who sent out the distress call are nowhere to be heard, presumably gone.

It began with the glow, then it continued with the mysterious series of crimes. Channel 8 news arrived on scene with their helicopter.

...

Heroes have been alerted that there has been a helicopter crash.

@enormity: Time Siphon was the first to arrive after the call went out. She arrived in her armor and made her first priority looking for the downed helicopter.

@timesiphon: A witness is still in shock as she saw a man trying to escape from the burning wreckage, she is too weak to do anything so she screamed for help. Abigail is out because she was one of the surviving member of the beekeepers.

@enormity:

Time Siphon moved quickly and put her hands on the helicopter. She focused and closed her eyes, steadily draining the temporal life from the helicopter until it blew away as a pile of dust to leave the people inside free from the wreckage. "Who here is still alive?" She asked the woman and the man trying to escape.

@timesiphon:

He ran out frantically for dear life, he didn't bother to check for injuries as he didn't want to spend another second inhaling smoke. Joe seems to have forgotten about his friends in the copter, his life over theirs. Jill is severely injured but she will live if she got medical assistance, while Geoff died in the crash. The man's face looks over his own body from outside of the helicopter.

Two people barely survived, and the beekeeper approached the heroine.

@enormity:

"Are you OK?" Time Siphon asked.

@timesiphon:

"No, not really but after seeing what you just did you may hold the key to ending all this." She said while panting for breath.

"I'll do what I can..." She said. "What precisely *is* going on?"

"Something took over and they made the bees turn into monsters", she takes a breath to stop hyperventilating "There is something in the fields that stimulated their mutation"

@enormity:

"I see..." Raeyn said. "Very well. I'll see what I can do to stop it."

@timesiphon:

"Follow me, I can lead you to their lair." she paused to take a drink from her waterbag "you can take a break here if you wanted to, some of the townfolk are still holding on"

@enormity:

"I'm fine." She said. "Let's go see if we can end this before it gets worse."

@timesiphon:

She took her new friend on foot, still remembering the way back through the routes. Hiding under the corn fields to avoid the might of the angry bees, those things can launch their stingers like missiles. She stopped by a scarecrow to point toward the Gigantic beehive that used to be the Beekeeper's facility.

"I can only take you up to here, but I have a bag with instructions for you. Read them when you are inside"

She took the bag and nodded. "Stay safe." She said. Time Siphon made her way swiftly to the bee hive, using her abilities to rapidly increase her movement speed.

Abigail immediately left after handing over the bag, within the bags are several items; several sheets of numbered paper with collected information about the bees; layout of their facilities ; notes about the spike of radiation gathered from a nearby radiologist; and a bottle of mineral water.

As the heroine gathered close to the hive a drone noticed her, rears its abdomen and fires off a stinger. There is only one at the area.

@enormity

With her speed already accelerated the Time Siphon was able to avoid the incoming stinger by dodging swiftly to the right. She didn't break her stride as she fired off a bolt of roiling plasma from her armor's palm weapon ports in the direction of the drone bee.

@timesiphon:

The Drone explodes into fire, which fell towards the corn fields. Everything around her was set ablaze but luckily the bees keep away from the smoke and began to scatter. In this hard time she is blessed that there will be less bees towards the hive.

@enormity:

Deciding to stick to the ground rather than take to the air she sprinted quickly towards the hive. Hopefully once inside she could do whatever it was going to take to bring the place down and end the bee threat. It was an odd situation really. But at least here I'm not likely to suddenly be overwhelmed by massive opposing forces more powerful than all the world's heroes put together.

@timesiphon: She made it inside, and unlike the singular drone outside there are about five workers on he first chamber. Size wise they are larger than the average minivan and those mandibles would make short work of human-sized torsos. They outnumber her and at this point physical confrontation would be best avoided. These bees only act to protect their home.

They haven.t noticed her yet.

@enormity:

Seeing as they had yet to spot her she moved into cover a bit more and leafed through the instructions she had been given.

@timesiphon:

The instructions warned her against the radiation, they told her where to go and that the place is lower down the chambers. So far she is just surrounded by dormant larvae.

@enormity:

Unconcerned about radiation because of her armor she made her way to the lower levels carefully.

@timesiphon: There isn't a queen bee but there are remnants of the original beekeeping team, some are partially alive while others have gone into the other world. One of them is seen eating the rest, driven insane by venom induced mutation.

(lets have fun here, this is a confrontation. Give the guy/girl a random superpower)

@enormity:

(I choose you energy projection man!)

Time Siphon was going to ignore the lunatic, at least that was the plan until her armored foot crushed something that made a lot of squealing sounds before it died.

@timesiphon:

"I killed them all, I killed my own sister, I tore out her heart"

Gorm was the second of the smoking mouths on the fifth day, he began to lash out with electro-tentacles. Each scraping around the inner walls to reach her, aim isn't one of its strong points but they do look painful.

@enormity:

"Big deal." Time Siphon said, not feeling charitable. "Let me know when you've killed so many people you can't remember their face even when you wear it." She watched the tentacles and stepped into the reach of one. She grabbed it roughly. "I'll just take your time." She said and began to drain his remaining life span through the tentacle.

@timesiphon:

He became dust five seconds after, his lifespan had already been compromised since two days ago. Feeding on his friends remains didn't help as it was only a placebo, yet the other corpses began to rise up toward her. It was only four against one but they seem to be more vibrant than him. Feeding on them must have contaminated them.

They too sprout electro-tentacles at her, at a slower pace but there are more dangers now.

@enormity:

"That's just cheating." Her palm armor was immune to the electrical charge to deal with her plasma weapons, but not the rest of her armor. She was hit several times, pain burned through her with each strike but the armor kept it from being debilitating. She finally broke free and began firing plasma balls at her targets in rapid succession.

@timesiphon:

The zombies keep attacking, with the best of their abilities as their bodies are wearing out. Four bodies whipping out in unison, their flames burning the brightest before they are snuffed. Some of them are shambling but they keep putting the pressure because that is all they can do, reasoning has been removed by the radioactive spores.

Two of them vanished upon contact with the plasma balls, the remainder keep on lashing.

@enormity:

Time Siphon moved quickly, increasing her speed again to try and evade tentacles and continue launching counter attacks. I really need a crowd control weapon for this armor. She mused, flinging plasma at her targets as swiftly as possible.

@timesiphon:

Two down and the door is in front of her, just taking a straight path would lead her to the bottom chambers where a special mound of soil can be found. It is extremely radioactive and will remain so for a tens of thousands of years, that is unless someone can remove it.

Time Siphon bolted for the door and made a bee-line (hehe) for the mound of soil. She kept an eye on the radiation readout on her HUD, but her armor could protect her from anything short of world ending levels of radiation.

@timesiphon:

Radiation levels are manageable for someone of her calibre this is just the residue from a burning giant that slept here many months ago, bees can be handled by other heroes but the mound will need to be taken care of by her.

@enormity: Once she arrived at the dirt mound Time Siphon studied it quietly. Just like with living things, she could see its remaining time if she focused on it. Thousands of years. That would restore me to levels I haven't felt since I arrived on Earth. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to grasp shards of memory dancing through her mind but they were elusive as always. Do I dare? Do I want to remember so much? What kind of person will I be with those memories? What person was I when I still had them? "I will live with whatever you give me, to put an end to the terror this town has been feeling." She decided and strode to the dirt, glad she still retained at least one memory, the knowledge to extract the years from non-living objects. Such feedings were much more difficult, but given the years something like a helicopter, for example, could have left, it could be rewarding. It was also dangerous, it took a great deal of concentration. Time Siphon knelt down at the dirt and put her hands on it, closing her eyes and focusing until at last she began to draw the temporal life from the radiation. She could have chosen the dirt, millions or perhaps billions of years would have been hers. But I don't want to remember everything. Sometimes, at night, she had images of a civilization burning in her nightmares. She was fairly certain those weren't nightmares.

@timesiphon:

Even if she didn't take care of all of it her efforts are enough, heroes have been alerted by the people and some of them are already on the way to contain the bees. Outside is a war of epic proportion between some fresh recruits and extremely angry bees. Kid Konquest got impaled through the stomach to Girl Golden's spine on the outskirts of the town. Boy Blaster removed three worker bees from the scene only to have his head chewed into brittle by a drone that swooped from behind, people are getting evacuated through armoured personnel vehicles. Dead heroes with functional heads become super-powered zombies, some are already exiting the town to reach another with some of their heightened transportation based powers. A teleporter had just appeared on a Youtube live broadcast, in Florida and she closed down a birthday party. Bees completely ignored the people and attacked the heroes head on, especially those that had been turned by radiation. They were pollinating and it was cut. Live feeds are replaced immediately by deployment of C-Z listers.

The girl helped by making sure that giant monsters would be less likely to manifest, but the soil would still turn the freshly dead into living dead. Her efforts will be key to rebuilding this community anew, after the bees are gone though. She may or may not be responsible for setting them out of their cage but the other heroes will deal with that.

Memories, floating shards, snapped into place as the last of the radiation died. The powers of a Time Siphon where once more at her disposal, the true powers, not just their echoes. So much was still out of reach, but enough of it was back. She walked out of the hive and saw the fighting going on in the town. "Everything rots!" She said firmly. "Everything ages!" She knelt down and put her hands on the ground. She closed her eyes, focusing intently and reaching out to all the zombies trying to hack away at the heroes. The heroes would need relief to fight the bees full on and zombies, like anything else, could age. It was difficult to pull off, taking time from the dead, but not impossible. With many of her powers restored and some of her shattered memory back, she knew how. Still not under attack, she could take the time and focus that made such efforts impossible during battle and began to draw the years away from the reanimated corpses, pulling them towards dust. She would give the heroes a fighting chance. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." She said as the process began.

@timesiphon:

As the radiation vanished her powers are back to their fullest, the lady is rearing into action with her words of power as she reached out and altered the battlefield.

She collapsed about seventy percent of them, not because that she was not enough but because those with transportation powers like that teleporter who is in Albuquerque eating MMA fighters are simply out of the area before she exited the hive. Mutation also happened at random, while some of them have neat powers like water control which is used to explode the blood of Gloria Giant that power did not protect the newly risen to the ravages of time.

Bees continue their onslaught and for every hero they kill, a new reanimate joins their ranks. Heroes though notice a change because of her actions and are pushing back the action. Supersonic Steve used his wind cutters to clip the wings off the bees as he dashed through the sky with his speedy shoes of super speed. Healers hidden in the homes worked full time to remove poisons and restore the fighters back into tip top shape.

@enormity:

Just walk away. That's what her instincts as a Time Siphon kept telling her. Walk away. She watched the battle for a few minutes, struggling with her instinct. Time Siphons were not a kind species and their first instinct was always towards their own survival. She could leave now, having fed on the helicopter, zombies and radiation and be in a better position than she had in centuries. Or she could try to be a better person.

Raeyn took a deep breath and then stood, walking to where the battle was joined. She had no intention of fighting herself, but she could do something else, now that she had extra temporal energy. She walked to the fallen body of Blaster Boy and touched his chest briefly, temporal energy flowed into his corpse and she stood and walked to another fallen hero that had yet to rise and repeated the process. She did this several times before deciding she had expended enough energy. The fallen heroes were literally given a new life, the gift of the Time Siphon some used to call it back on her home world. Normally when she killed by feeding, the information was stored in her body and used when she needed to regenerate from a fatal wound. For these lucky few however, their bodies were now undergoing a similar process. Their bodies would change but not their minds and more importantly, they would be alive again, it was a one time deal though.

@timesiphon:

The heroine bravely joined the fray as the heroes regained their resolve, a feeling in their gut that victory is within the grasp of possibility made them fight more valiantly. Streets became engulfed in light, speed and power overtake the roads as the constantly mutating bees returned their fight. Heroes rose from the dead, some of them without zombification yet the radiation lingered in others. A small minority which would not affect her efforts for this battle. She is their angel of victory and as time went on more bees landed on their backs as they became carcass.

At the end of the day everything became normal. Heroes expired after performing their duties and an epitaph is created in their park to remember all the fallen.

Raeyn deactivated her armor and stood quietly at the center of town, looking down at the little make shift memorial. The surviving heroes were still around but she tried to avoid them, feeling she had little in common with people who bravely risked their lives for the safety of others. She sighed softly. Sorry guys...I'm just a Time Siphon. She glanced at the heroes being celebrated by the towns people and turned to walk quietly out of town, hoping she wouldn't be noticed.

@timesiphon: (that was fun)

@enormity: Yep