Days later...
The "rebellion" had won. Those villains of the Underworld who had escaped the mechanization of the Autocracy had joined with their hated foes, the heroes, and utilized the stolen Crystal of Ouroboros to travel through time and stop themselves, altering their own timeline. Only through the protection of Wild-Time did they manage to preserve their memories, while all those outside the field were "reset," as though the campaign into the past and future had never occurred. For now, thanks to the altered time stream, it never had.
The others believed that the Super Rikti was among those reset.
They were mistaken.
Assuming the disguise of Infernia and joining them with the intent to sabotage their assault, Ges'Talt realized too late that the tide could not be turned. The rebels would prevail, and there was nothing to be gained by revealing himself. With a grimace worn upon the fiery heroine's face, he maintained his deception and watched as the reality in which he commanded an army of mechanical Rikti collapsed around him.
As soon as the rebels had succeeded, "Infernia" excused herself, muttering something about margarita night at El Super Mexicano. Out of eyesight, her form shifted as Ges'Talt reassumed his mechanical form and returned to his ship, the small Rikti vessel he kept in a concealed location underground in the Rogue Isles. While the mechanized form granted him increased power, he knew that the others, particularly Madame Machina or Wrecks himself, would detect his altered state eventually.
Locking himself in the cramped medical bay on the ship, Ges'Talt retrieved a set of surgical instruments and injected himself with several doses of anesthetic.
The operation he was about to perform would have killed nearly anyone else, gutting his body of the machinery that had replaced most of his skin and internal organs and fusing him into his powered armor. But the shapeshifting abilities he had inherited from the Morphling could slowly, painfully, regenerate what was lost as he tore the robotic components from his flesh.
He would survive.
He would prevail.
And he would remember.
(( OOC: This story takes place the morning of August 3rd, 2012 - just before the Rikti Invasion weekend event. ))
Ges'Talt, the Super Rikti, slipped through the ranks of the Rikti restructurist warriors patrolling the ravaged ground the humans called the Rikti War Zone. His shapeshifting powers, stolen from the former Omega Team member known as the Morphling, allowed the Rikti supervillain to assume any shape he wished, and he now wore the flesh and armor of a Rikti Headman, unremarkable among the many similar soldiers guarding the site of their crashed mothership. He had spent the morning working his way through the many units that made up the restructurists' standing army, making his way to each of the eighteen pylons whose powerful defenses kept pesky heroes away from the downed spacecraft while the Rikti struggled to make repairs. At each, he surreptitiously opened a panel at its base, and wired a small, red-glowing device inside before re-sealing it.
He now approached the eighteenth and final pylon, using much the same ruse as the others, taking the form of a soldier scheduled to transfer to that particular unit. Unfortunately, this time, the Rikti he was impersonating was early, and the regiment of heavily armed headmen, mentalists, and drones turned their weapons on the newcomer.
Ges'Talt chuckled, the sound coming from his throat alien even to the other Rikti he faced. This operation had been too simple. No chance for the genetically modified warrior to demonstrate his combat prowess. Now that would change.
As the first of the headmen opened fire, the Super Rikti threw up his hands, generating a tangible shield of glowing, violet force. The potent psychic abilities copied from the hero Mister Mental were more than strong enough to deflect the energy blasts from the Rikti rifles, leaving the genetic terror unharmed as he morphed back into his true form. He looked much like a normal Rikti (at least from a human perspective), but he was smaller, slimmer. The robotification process he willingly underwent at the hands of Autosaurus Wrecks had further changed him, and motes of pixelated light radiated from his body, and dark green circuitry was visible just beneath his skin. His right hand sheathed itself in a layer of flowing magma (courtesy of the hero Infernia), and his left was wrapped in frigid ice crystals (from the former villain Glacia) as he dove into battle.
Moving quicker than the eye could follow, the villain leaped into the air, crashing down in the middle of his opponents and knocking them off their feet. As he landed, ice crystals as tall as a man shot out from the point of impact in a wide circle, trapping the Rikti soldiers in a frozen tomb. Holding out his hands, the Super Rikti pulled inwards and drew forth the lingering warmth from their bodies, gathering the heat in his right fist. His features twisted in alien pleasure, he released the ball of fiery heat in a colossal blast, obliterating the last of the survivors and the hovering drones which had escaped his icy onslaught.
Standing now in a small crater, the supervillain slowly levitated himself up to the level of the Pylon, now unguarded. The time for stealth was past, anyway. His final objective was in sight.
---
Sgt. Jameson yawned as he checked his watch toward the end of his fourth hour of patrol on the walls of Point du Hoc in the Rikti War Zone. The Rikti seemed content to leave the Vanguard defenders alone this morning, for which the young officer was thankful. He'd seen his fair share of combat, but he preferred a shift of boring guard duty to one where he might lose his life. About to turn and check if his replacement was on his way up to relieve him, he caught a flash of red light out of the corner of his eye from one of the Rikti defense pylons. He turned to get a closer look... and was shocked at what he saw.
All eighteen pylons had begun to glow with a sickly red light. It grew, like a flickering candle flame on an unsteady wick, spreading down the shafts of the Rikti structures. The guards posted at each reacted with surprise, some discharging their energy weapons at the strange light, their blasts dissipating harmlessly where they struck. In moments, the light had reached the ground, and engulfed the first of the defenders. They screamed, the sound alien and horrifying to those that heard it. Jameson was too far away to see precisely what happened, but if he had been closer, he might have seen the Rikti soldiers' flesh merge with their powered armor, as the futuristic Indoctrination Device rapidly converted them into mechanical servants of Autosaurus Wrecks' horrible Autocracy.
As the last of the Rikti guards were converted, another energy build-up began to occur within the pylons. The red light brightened, and began to increase steadily until it hurt to look at. With an ear-splitting screech, all eighteen pylons seemed to explode at once, each one firing a concentrated beam of the Indoctrination Field directly at the Rikti Mothership. In seconds the shield was overwhelmed and it shattered, the energy field dissipating as the beams blasted past, engulfing the enormous spacecraft in the crimson glow.
"Oh @%#$..." was all Jameson could think of to say.
---
Within minutes, all the Rikti in the Mothership had been converted or slain, and their weaponry modified to incorporate the Indoctrination Device's conversion field. As the cybernetic soldiers scurried about the ship and prepared for battle, Ges'Talt sat in the captain's pod on what passed for the ship's bridge, and smiled. Now, mockingly wearing the form of the fiery-haired Infernia, he issued mental commands to his new army of robotic converts as he prepared for an invasion of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, the likes of which hadn't been seen since the Second Rikti War. Or ever, he mused, since his new army would not be coming to kill... but to convert. Armed with rifles capable of turning their targets into robotic forms like his own and empowered by their new mechanical upgrades, the Rikti would attack again and again throughout the city, undaunted by defeat and relentless in their efforts.
And he smiled as he realized that nothing would be able to stop them.