Tulpa had just woken up when his pager sounded from across the room. Standing in the warm daylight piercing through his apartment window, he held a bowl of cereal up to his lips, drinking the last of the milk. There was no urgency in his movement as he picked up the device, as he’d heard this noise before.

They’d been short-staffed ever since Ironbolt took off with Dupe and Fortitude to go pursue their damn conspiracy theory. Lately, it had just been he and Maximal at the station along with a few unpowered cops that Seraph brought in. Nice enough guys and, when armed with Seraph tech, they could just about make up for what was lost. At least as long as things stayed quiet, which they mostly did in Pensacola.

Hickory and his gang had been the biggest problem that South Alabama and the Florida panhandle faced. That power vacuum had yet to be refilled, thankfully. But it was only a matter of time.

“Somebody call in sick again?” Tulpa joked to himself. The last three times he had been paged in to fill someone’s shift, there’d been a particularly good concert in town. Those lazy contractors…

Standing half-dressed in the window, he froze when he read the message from Seraph. Just four little words.

“Report to Rift Gate,” he said, eyes going unfocused as he let the words process.

It was not a message he’d ever seen before, yet every Hero knew what it meant.

Maximal had been gone for several days now. He hadn’t said what he was doing, but word had reached the news. The Lich King had been beaten by an unknown team of insurgents… and some kind of sentient Kizmet that looked painfully familiar.

Tulpa had already figured it out, though. He knew what exactly was going on, and just thinking about it made his throat go dry.

“On my way,” he said to the device, per protocol. Immediately his icon lit up green, confirmed as active for duty. The clock was now ticking.

He was already down his stairs and dressed when he decided to belatedly check his phone for the news. While the engine cranked up, he scrolled quickly through Twitter looking for any mention of the ‘all hands on deck’ message.

He wasn’t surprised to see that every major Hero account he followed was reporting the same hashtag. ‘Ready for action’, they said. A common slogan to rally before a big event. In the past, it was usually reserved for Kizmet attacks.

Hastily, Tulpa put out the same message to his alter ego’s thousand followers and sped off. Straight for the nearest Rift Gate, an hour away.

By the time he arrived, all civilian traffic had been diverted to different roads already, leaving the highway eerily fully of Heroes and reserve soldiers. What people often forgot was that the vast majority of Powered individuals were not a part of the bread and circus of propagandized Hero work. They were more like National Guardsmen and had no secret identity at all.

The vast, six-lane highway which led directly into the Rift was now wholly reserved for military usage. With his mask put on, Tulpa flashed his badge at every checkpoint, growing closer to the ominous blue portal up ahead. Waiting to know more about whatever had summoned this growing army.

He hadn’t been able to gather much more information while he drove, cautiously speeding and checking his phone. He’d texted every contact he had and all he knew was this:

Seraph had deployed the emergency mobile Rift system somewhere in the far Russian North. That meant that a massive portal had been hastily opened using machines deployed from orbit. It was experimental and risky, but now that the Great Storm was down Tulpa could only surmise that they’d secured the area well enough to give it a try.

What’s worse were the implications.

They intended to send just about every Powered and trained American they could get their hands on straight through that gateway and into the jaws of whatever lay beyond.

Up ahead, all the cars were being signaled to park off the side or middle of the road. Some were even being driven into ditches to make room. And out of so many regular vehicles, people in both civilian clothes and fanciful outfits were being ushered on foot towards the portal.

It was surreal, Tulpa thought.

Once parked, he reluctantly left his keys in the passenger seat and moved to join the rest of the Heroes in standing beneath the hot Florida sun, waiting in queue.

Most of these people would be given guns, he knew, as most of them didn’t crack a Class Four. But in a mass-scale conflict like this, there would be Boosters and the even rarer Crowd Support Types present, and so every Power counted in the end.

He could think of no historical precedent for having this many Supers in one place. Seraph had been shying from large scale conflict since the last disastrous attempts on the Lich’s stronghold, before his time. It had all just been high casualty, small territorial struggles against the lesser Barons since then. Defense, not offense, really. Focused mostly in the Middle East and North Africa.

As he stood gawking, one of the Heroes managing the line singled Tulpa out. “You there, move up! You’ve been requested for an expedited deployment.”

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Tulpa didn’t know what that meant, but he obliged.

And so, he was led away from the pack. Not towards the Rift Gate itself, but into the administrative building which had been erected around it. As was the norm, these high traffic, major shipping areas had to have gas stations, office buildings, weigh stations, and so on.

Inside the beige entryway he was met by a mask he instantly recognized, leaning on the counter. At the man’s side were two spooks in black suits and somehow, Maximal himself.

The famous Hero, Strider, nodded to the Ward. “I heard you’re hot shit, is that right?”

“Sir.” He saluted. This was the military after all. “My sister is Egregore, sir.”

“Yeah, but what do you do?” Strider enquired.

“We don’t have a lot of time here,” Maximal griped. “Let’s just get him and go. You have better things to be doing, Strider, than vetting my Ward.”

“You put in the request to place him in a Class Two Legion, so I need to know that he’s legit. He hasn’t been officially tested,” the Hero shot back. “So I’ll repeat the question. What have you got, little man?”

Tulpa ruffled a little under the bombastic personality. These famous Heroes weren’t known for their humility and the last thing he was expecting right now was to be belittled by a minor celebrity. Still, he answered. “I generate a number of ghosts which I can divide or combine in strength. At their peak, they form a single controlled hologram which equals a Class Two in strength and durability.”

“And what about you? What's the limitation on that?”

“I can pilot it from the inside, sir. So the short range doesn't hold me back or make me vulnerable.”

Maximal clapped his hands together. “Good. Can we go now? I’m eager to get back.”

“Sure. Fine.” Strider didn’t even have to touch the Heroes present in order to use his Power on them. That was how good he was.

In just the blink of an eye, all of them were teleported.

Through a strange black abyss, there was a momentary delay where Tulpa didn’t feel like he was anywhere. Instead, he was outside all time and space, able briefly to see things that he shouldn’t. Abstract, multidimensional shapes that represented places and histories. Concepts, even. Things that approached a metaphysical existence, merely by temporal aggregate. But before he could get a grip on them or stare too long, reality came crashing back, and it did so with a vengeance.

Tulpa found himself snapping into a cold and unforgiving wasteland, surrounded by miserable crowds of people shuffling through a deserted city. The army was not even halfway done gathering, he knew, but already there were too many soldiers for him to see through or count. They lined the streets and gathered in the open area just beyond the city.

"Stay frosty, guys." Strider disappeared before another word could be said to him, clearly too busy to do more than dish out a little harassment with his time. That left just Maximal and Tulpa amongst the throngs of Heroes, the latter beginning to shiver violently.

“You mind if I Power up?” Tulpa asked.

Maximal just gestured to the crowd. “You might as well. Everyone around you is a Class Two, including many Support Types. You may be near the front here, but this was the best I could do for you. You’ll be a lot safer than most of us.”

Once Tulpa had shrouded himself in his ghostly construct, he was comfortably protected from the cold. “What about you, Maximal? Where will you be? And what the hell is going on?” His anxiety had only grown over the hours of his drive, and now it was reaching a peak.

A dark look came over the Maximal's eyes as he explained then, his voice suddenly lowering. “A briefing is about to go out over people’s phones and pagers, but I can go ahead and tell you what’s going on. Creep has come back with a bio-engineered army, and he’s attempting to side with the Iron Tyrant. We can’t let him shift the center of Power like that, so we’re making our stand here. It's short notice, but this is the real deal, son. This is war.”

“Who’s we?”

“Everyone we could possibly get our hands on, including about four hundred thousand from the People’s Republic of China and King Solomon’s domain.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tulpa murmured, trying not to attract attention from all the Heroes around.

“I’m sorry it came to this. Just remember… You did the right thing back on that beach.”

Tulpa couldn’t help but doubt that, seeing everything before him. He could only shake his mentor’s hand and thank him for the help and the protection. “I’ll do my best. Stay safe, sir.”

“I’m sure you will.” And with that, Maximal took to the sky, disappearing among the low, nighttime clouds.

This was not how I saw this day going when I was eating my cereal, Tulpa admitted to himself.

His first thought after Maximal left was to get out of the crowds and move to one of the nearby rooftops. He could do so with one mighty jump, landing two stories up on the nearby abandoned building. From there he had a much better view of the fight which was about to take place.

The scale of it all was dizzying. For the first time in his life, he laid eyes on the Great Technicist of Japan’s handiwork. Kowareta’s Mechanized fighters, the Hunters, which each stood a hundred feet or better over the battlefield. How they’d even gotten them here so fast was beyond Tulpa’s imagination. Usually, they were stationed to fight the unusual number of Kizmets which assaulted the island nation. Now they were dedicated to one cause, just like everyone else.

This really was everyone, he realized. That included fighters from the Baron Kings, like the God of War and the Golden Dragon from Smiler’s domain, and the Master of Many from the African King, Nemesis.

If he didn’t know better, he’d almost think Ironbolt had been right about Seraph. They’d mustered help from the Kings so quickly that it practically screamed of a hidden alliance. But then at the same time, Tulpa could see from where he stood the Chariot of Solomon, burning through the sky. Clearly, Ironbolt would be here as well, working hand in hand with Seraph, his supposed mortal enemy. This gave more credence to a different idea. One which actually sat worse on his stomach.

And that was simply that the threat they faced now was beyond any petty struggle for Power. It was beyond squabbles for dominance and who would control the world order. It was about the very existence of the human race.

All of us, Powered and unPowered alike, he thought, joined in a unified effort. Walter really did go fucking crazy...

Tulpa grimaced.

God's a cruel bastard to give such a loser so much power.

For years people had been theorizing about an event like this. A Kizmet which brought the entire world together, just as they could bring Heroes and Villains together in America, on rare occasion. If the threat loomed large enough.

On the Horizon, he could make out the vague shadows of walking beasts. They looked like Scarabs and they were surrounded by other long-legged and flying horrors. Strangely warped lifeforms that sent a shiver down the spine of every Hero present.

Absently, he heard his pager beep with the briefing from Seraph. Everyone was getting into position for the fight, distant roar of jets beginning to sound.

Without thinking, Tulpa’s fist clenched.

“It’s time we finish what we started,” he said. "Fix God's mistake."

So we kill the Goddamn Creep.