Bay Area Champions -- Part 5: Death to the Undead

Here's the fifth part of the short story that I wrote. There's a framing sequence that I left out, but this is technically the last bit of the story. Next time, I'll post the full story with the framing sequence 'bookends'.

Death to the Undead

What happened next is disputed by nearly every authority in the metahuman world. Somehow the ragtag team of second-stringers eluded capture by the Bone Corps, found an airfield where hundreds of necrotech-bombers were arrayed in groups, infiltrated the airfield and managed to detonate all the thermofusion bombs simultaneously, wiping out the fleet of bombers and the Bone Corps in a soul-searing inferno.

Alexandra Raven credits Krusader with some ability or knowledge that was instrumental to avoiding the Corpsemen and finding the assembled bombers. She also credits the late David Raphael Vega with the solution to the simultaneous detonation of the thermofusion bombs.

“He realized he could use his cybernetic nervous system to integrate with the necrotech, if his organic parts were killed first,” she said in her controversial deposition. “He asked me to wire him to the lead bomber’s detonation systems. He saved all of us, and the world.”

The other survivors are notoriously tight-lipped when asked about David Raphael Vega’s noble sacrifice. They are equally tight-lipped about how they managed to survive a thermofusion explosion hot enough to kickstart a star and return back home.

There is a popular theory that Jesse Burning Mountain could have used his abilities to burrow deep enough into the earth, allowing them to avoid the damage from the shockwave. It also posits that he and Killowatt would have been able to absorb the energy that would otherwise have disintegrated all of them. Wilder speculations involve a one-shot superdevice up Alexandra Raven’s sleeves, and a supernatural artifact in the possession of Krusader.

What is not up to debate is that the world of Boa has indeed been cleansed by fire, and the four survivors somehow did make it back to the San Francisco Bay Area through an extra-dimensional gate that opened up in a San Mateo County mall.