Once again, we venture into the Big Easy, where things for our superhero protagonists are rarely easy! (Though they're often big.)
Last time, they rescued a bunch of kids from a shadowy other-realm, to which they (the kids) had been spirited by some wonk in a fur cape, but they didn't get any info out of the dude before Magnus blew his head off with explosives. While taking some spa time to help Styx recenter, Levee, Toby, and Styx herself discuss Magnus.
They decide they do need to talk to him, largely because whatever the morality of just killing a dude might be, the BCRA might hold them responsible for what he's doing, and he hasn't been terribly careful or considerate about his actions. Also, they're concerned that his endless dimension-skipping is making him numb, and perhaps he should stay in this reality a while and reconnect?
So the next day, they all four meet up at a restaurant and get some oysters and drinks. Levee arranges a VIP Room (Wing Diesel waits out on the patio, forlornly looking in the window). They talk with Magnus about what happened in the shipyard and why it might be a problem for them, and offer friendship and a place to belong.
Magnus isn't initially interested; he's been through so many different realities and seen so many different versions of people, and has been in the liminal places between realities where everything happens at once. That much death and tragedy is numbing for anyone, and Magnus doesn't really see the point in staying here (or anywhere). Toby points out that through all of that, there must have been good moments, too, and focusing on the tragedy is shortchanging everything else. Plus, they are real and their lives matter to them, and Magnus is making those lives difficult.
Magnus says he was planning to move on soon anyway, and the others try and convince him to stay, not because they need him to, necessarily, but because he's headed for a bad end if he can't find a way to connect to others. He says that what he's really after is novelty, and that's what leads him into superhero-ish situations. Things get a little tense for a bit - Levee notes that if he can't keep himself from violence and he's not willing to try and meet them halfway, maybe it's better if he does leave.
Magnus notes that he was expecting a lecture, but he thought it would be about the morality of killing, not this (Levee notes that no one is going to shed any tears over whatever that thing in the warehouse was). Magnus walks out and vanishes...and finds himself up above the city in a gale force wind. He realizes that he's gone through a multiversal gate of some kind, along with the storm, and isn't sure exactly how that happened.
Meanwhile, at the restaurant, the heroes' phones sound an alert and the lights flicker. They go outside and see floodwaters rising, the sky black, Driving Rain, and Flying Debris. This storm isn't quite a hurricane, but it's getting there.
Over the next couple of hours, the heroes mitigate damage. Magnus pulls out a device to zap debris away before it can do too much damage. Levee sends the rain out the lake, improving conditions, and Wing Diesel takes to the skies to become a Rescue Dragon. Styx pushes against the waters to help people get to safety. A building collapses, a helicopter crashes, and the heroes are there to put out fires and make sure people don't get swept away.
And then Levee focuses all of the power she has, and pulls every bit of moisture out of the clouds, sends it to Lake Pontchartrain, and dumps it. And then she collapses, exhausted, but also enlightened. The waters told her where the storm came from.
Once she gets on her feet, she informs the others, and then make their way into the southern part of the city, to an apartment building, heavily damaged by the storm. Amidst the residents (now outside being tended to by rescue workers because in this universe the government is actually kind of functional), they see a Black family - a young boy of about 6, a man in his 30s (probably the boy's dad), and a woman in her 60s (probably his grandmother). Magnus immediately realizes, upon laying eyes on the boy, that he is a Magnus-type breakthrough...which isn't supposed to be a thing. Magnus just came up with that classification when he learned how supers were categorized here.
The heroes approach the family and introduce themselves (rather, they introduce Styx and Magnus, since the family obviously knows Levee and Wing Diesel). The man (DeMarcus Stone), his son (DeCarlo), and his mom (Jacqueline) all live here in the building, and when this storm blew up out of nowhere, their place was damaged a bit.
Magnus leans down and asks DeCarlo to pull something out of his hat, if he can, just whatever he's thinking about. DeCarlo (after glancing up at his dad to make sure it's OK), reaches in and pulls out a rabbit (because what else do you pull out of a magician's hat?). Magnus gets a little wide-eyed, and says that yep, that's his assistant Fluffles...but Fluffles was back at the Hat (Magnus' interdimensional lair). The fact that DeCarlo reached in and found him make the little boy a phenomenally powerful being.
They get to talking a bit more, and DeMarcus mentions that DeCarlo was just talking about hurricanes because hurricane season is coming up, and he was feeling scared about it. Magnus asks if there's been anything else he's been scared of lately, and DeMarcus says that one of his classmates brought a book called Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark to school and read a story about alligators, and after that DeCarlo got real scared about monsters in the water. That was right around the time that the heroes fought the Gator Man. And, his school recently did a "stranger danger" presentation...after which several of his classmates vanished. DeCarlo is, apparently, reaching into the multiverse and finding whatever is scaring him, and then pulling it here.
Toby pulls the others aside and gives them a quick reality check - they are required by law to inform the authorities about DeCarlo under the Breakthrough Collective Responsibility Act. If they do, what happens to the kid? Will the government disappear him? Try to control his powers? Train him? There are too many variables. Levee has an idea. She suggests unveiling DeCarlo to the world, having him become a hometown celeb like her. Yes, it means putting a lot of pressure on a very young boy, but it'll also mean he'll have enough eyes on him that he can't just disappear.
They bring this up to DeMarcus, and he's not convinced - he knows what that might do to his family. The heroes say they'd need to train DeCarlo anyway, because he has to learn to control this power; it's far too dangerous to let him just figure it out. And then Styx glances down the road and notices police APCs approaching.
Toby has Wing Diesel take DeMarcus and DeCarlo for a ride, and they flee the scene just as the APCs pull up. Sgt. Guidry gets out, along with another breakthrough in a similar outfit but with a computerized gauntlet on one arm. Guidry asks the characters what they're doing here, and the other guy (Wireless) says that he's been tracking the dimensional anomaly and it led him here.
Magnus tries to convince Wireless that his device isn't calibrated properly or it's just reading him, but Wireless is smarter than that and isn't convinced. Guidry tells Levee that if they're covering for someone, it's going to go badly for her - under the BCRA she needs to come clean. Levee says that obviously if there was an anomaly here, it's not here now, and Wireless gets his machine to work and decides he was just reading Magnus. Guidry is unconvinced, and lets Levee know as much before he leaves (Styx suggests these uniformed dudes go and help some people, since, y'know, there was this storm).
The cops leave, and the heroes are left with a bit of a dilemma. But Magnus, for his part, remembers anew that although we may ultimately be dust, The Multiverse is Vast.
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