After Darkseid fled with the ragtag group of villains, the heroes regrouped and got acquainted. Asit turned out Whirlwind had overlooked one of the villains when he'd gathered them all and loaded them into the Boomtube.

The unconscious Gorilla Grodd still lay prostrate from being knocked out by Hercules. Though they had lost Wolverine to the enemy, the enemy had lost a powerful member of their group.

After some hasty introductions it was agreed that they would all head to the facility which had prison cells that could contain someone as powerful as Gorilla Grodd.

The Flash gathered up the gorilla's unconscious carcass and sped ahead while Captain America radioed Gabe Jones what to expect.

Nightcrawler joined the Avengers and Spiderman in the quinjet. Swamp Thing travelled through the green.

Aquaman got into the Batplane with Batman and the two followed the quinjet to this facility the strangers spoke of.

Hawkman chose to fly under his own power behind the Batplane. By catching the draft from the plane and staying close, Hawkman would be able to keep up with the much faster Batplane.

Blastaar was wrestling with his thoughts. He couldn't quite make sense of why he abandoned all his plans just to accomodate this odd Earthwoman.

For some reason it seemed like the thing to do but he didn't understand why it was the thing to do. He was Blastaar! He was a leader. This was all very confusing.

Now she was taking the two of them to some moon that she was going on about that shouldn't even be there or some such nonsense. Why on Baluur should anyone care about some paltry moon when there were entire universes to conquer? For some reason though, he wasn't really bothered with it. If she wants to lark around on some rediculous moon, the universe wold always be there tomorrow. He shrugged and thought about how she might reward him if he pleased her.

Elektra watched as the surly Skrull flew off into space apparently. That kind of thing was for people like the F.F. and the Avengers to deal with. She needed to get to the bottom of what had happened to her and how she could reverse it.

She had an intricate plan to manipulate the Hand that would be disrupted if she didn't get back quickly and she had no idea where she was.

There was a city on the far side of this lake and that would be a good place to investigate her current situation. She set out to enter the city.

Super Skrull angrily flew off into space. In his present mood, he was more then a little surprised that he hadn't tried to alleviate his anger by slaughtering the foolish human that had appeared in front of him when he somehow found himself on Earth for some reason.

His sudden appearance on Earth was the true source of his anger and it was whoever had done this to him who he really wanted to vent it on, not some hapless mammal with petty concerns that apparently was a victim just like him.

He had flown off into space to connect with whatever Skrulls were monitoring Earth at the moment and get back to his true mission of destroying the Kree empire which had been his true passion ever since he'd been a little Skrull. There was nothing he hated more then the Kree, not even the Fantastic Four.

To his surprise, he was unable to locate the expected Skrll surveillance teams anywhere! This was an outrage! Earth may be a backwater planet but it was loaded with extremely dangerous metahuman activity as exemplified by the Fantastic Four. It needed constant monitoring. He was slightly relieved but concerned that he couldn't locate any Kree monitoring stations either.

It was possible they were cloaked from him but he doubted it. He had become very adept at locating Kree installations of late and he was fairly certain he could rout them wherever they tied to hide.

To his surprise, he practically stumbled on a Skrull Starship that seemed to be maintaining a wide orbit around the Earth. The orbit was almost listless, which concerned him as to the well being of the crew.

With his powers that imitated the Fantastic Four, he had little trouble gaining egress. As he searched the starship, he was astounded to learn that only a few Skrull LMDs manned the ship!

Searching the ship, he headed to the bridge and discovered a distress signal set to a special Skrull frequency that only Skrull would recognise.

Responding to the call, he learned that the Skrull Paibok, was lost on Earth in Midway City(?) and was in dire need of retrieval.

K'lrt thought he knew all the Earth cities but he'd never heard of one called Midway City. He zeroed in on the signal and prepared a shuttle to retrieve the only other true Skrull he'd been able to contact since his life had been disrupted.

A Shield helicarrier finally reached Midway City. (Another reached Central City at roughly the same time.)

Nick Fury wasted no time taking charge. He ordered Clay Quartermain, Laura Brown and Agent Beaulieu to stay at Midway City and help manage the defense of the city. He then commandeered a flivver and ordered two Shield agents to bring him back to the facility so that he could get a grip on the overall activity.

Also, he greatly looked forward to seeing Gabe Jones and Captain America.

Elektra had little problem slipping past the guards protecting the entrances to Midway City. They clearly weren't concerned with ninjas and she deftly slipped past them. She wondered why this city had resorted to martial law. Had some unexpected political uprising occurred while she wasn't paying attention? Was the U.S. no longer a free country?

She wondered why she couldn't remember ever hearing of Midway City.
She'd studied in America for a time. It was how she'd met Matt Murdock. She was certain she was familiar with all the important cities of America and this city certainly seemed like it would be an important city. This was disturbing.

She was left with a sense that she wasn't quite in control. She didn't like this feeling. She wanted to do something about it.

Suddenly, she sensed something. She barely dodged raking claws targeting her face.

A hiss brought her around and she found herself face to face with a vicious vampiress clearly intent on her destruction.

Her Sais and her Shurikens were metal but she wasn't defenseless.
Some of her shurikens were silver and she found them swiftly and delivered them to the vampiress deftly.

To her great relief, the vampiress hissed and fled in agony. She wasn't sure that would work. She'd equipped herself with them because she'd barely survived an encounter with a werewolf on a mission in Eastern Europe some years before. She never had another supernatural encounter until now.

She knew now, that she'd better get more soon.

The heroes converged on the facility. The Flash was there already, having turned in Gorilla Grodd for incarceration and currently enjoying refreshments offered by May Parker while he was being debriefed by Gabe Jones. Shortly after, he was joined by the Swamp Thing who was decidedly uncomfortable with the underground nature of the facility and who also seemed to be disturbing to the Shield agents that had begun to man the facility.

Next came the Quinjet and the Batplane. They landed in a hanger that opened inside the mountain. This was not difficult because both the quinjet and the Batplane were equipped with Harrier technology.

Hawkman flew in after, having coasted on the down draft created by the Bat plane most of the way.

Hawkman waited for Aquaman and Batman to disembark and then joined them to enter the facility to join the Flash and Swamp Thing in a briefing room. They mingled with the Avengers and Spiderman on their way to the briefing room though Batman remained aloof and refused to socialise.

As Nightmare feared, Aquaman began striking a great friendship with Hercules, even half suspecting the likeable oaf might even be legitimate.

Hawkman was more wary. He'd been enthralled by some strange leader of a very creepy race called Githyanki and he didn't like it. He was waiting to see if these new strangers were any kind of threat. he was worried about the fate of those Gotham City cops and those Metropolis Special Crimes Unit forces that had been left behind to be retrieved by some peculiar forces called Shield.

He was even more disconcerted when after a short briefing, it was recommended that everyone get some rest and the debrief would resume early the next morning.

The Flash hurried back to Central City, Aquaman retired to the nearby sea, and the Swamp Thing retired to the field outdoors but Hawkman and Batman wound up being over night guestswhich didn't suit Batman at all.

Nightcrawler learned that one of the teleporters was directed at the X-Men mansion and quickly used it to get a sense of home, promising that he would return for the summit and shortly surprised an elated Wolfsbane who thought she was going to be alone in the mansion for quite awhile.

She was further delighted and then concerned to learn that Wolverine was also around but needed to be rescued.

The X-Men as a force weren't too formidable with only Nightcrawler and herself.

Moondragon and Blastaar alighted on the moon. To Moondragon's surprise, there was a breathable atmosphere. This moon didn't seem big enough to maintain an a habitable atmosphere. Heather was suspicious.

She ordered Blastaar to lead the way and began exploring.

Link to the Xplosion Arc:
http://www.hcrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=345499