What is a "hero," after all? Here's last time.
Our heroes are standing in front of an abandoned warehouse (cue The Tick: "That's a place good always fights evil!"). Styx picks the lock on the door and they enter, and find that the place is empty. There's a little debris here and there, but not even enough to qualify for a Situation Aspect. There are, however, Confusing Shadows and Echoing Sounds..
Wing Diesel crashes through the skylight (adding Broken Glass to the proceedings), while the others try to figure out what's going on. Magnus pulls an interdimensional detector thingie out of his hat that goes "widdly-wee" when it...well, detects something interdimensional. Specifically, there are rifts in reality here, but they're hidden behind something. The shadows in the room seem to move when someone gets close, so Magnus tries to catch on in a device designed for such, but it just oozes away like warm jello through fingers.
Clearly the shadows are the problem, so Magnus pull out a big ol' flashlight and lights the place up. The moving shadows retreat, and light seems to come in from the skylight where it wasn't before, but now there are a few persistent shadows that just linger there. Magnus ponders what to pull out of his hat next, but Levee is getting impatient (she is a Local Celebrity and there are local kids missing).
Levee calls up water from the pipes and asks it for help finding the kids, asking it to find the water in them in a kind of "like to like" sort of arrangement. The water indicates that they are in a place with no water ("Well, that sounds awful"), beyond those shadows. Levee asks how to get through, the water says that with enough time and pressure, water cuts through anything. She aims the water at a rift and forces it into a water jet, and punches through. Styx follows, attuning herself to the otherworldly gateway in order to get past the barrier.
Toby aims the light at Wing Diesel and makes him Shiny, and then powers through the barrier. Magnus just teleports there, since no one's watching him.
The heroes wind up in a vast, featureless plain. The ground seems to be black glass, the sky is a weird amber color, and there's nothing, no topography, no people, No Point of Reference, just Endless Nothing. Levee forms the water she brought with her into a water-puppy and has it try to seek out the kids, but it collapses after it gets a few feet away from her (and she gathers it up; no way she's leaving it here). Styx listens carefully and hears distant whimpering, and just goes with her gut and follows it, while Wing Diesel takes to the sky and surveys.
Magnus, meanwhile, is contemplating what to pull from the Hat that might help, and fixates on the laws of reality around here (What Were the Rules Again?). He finally gets annoyed and pulls up a quest-log from some universe that runs by video game logic, selects the "find the missing kids quest," and follows the icon on the map.
The heroes find the children sitting in a circle, swaying, and not responding to attempts to get their attention. Levee spritzes a little water on one of them to help him come out of it, and he does. He explains that he sneaked into his pantry to get a Sno-Ball and the door close behind him and something yanked him in here and made him sit in a circle, but that's all he remembers.
Magnus wonders if this is a summoning circle of some kind, but the others aren't in the mood to find out. Wing Diesel and Toby engage in a game of duck-duck-goose and eventually get the kids to snap out of it ("Duck...duck...duck...duck...WING DIESEL!"). As they come out of it, the ground cracks, the sky brightens, and they wind up back in the warehouse...but there's a man standing in the middle of the circle.
Is it a man? He's wearing a fur cloak and black boots, but they can't see his face and vision seems to slide off him. He snidely says that he'll be putting the kids back in a minute and prepares to do something magical, but Toby jumps into action and rallies all the kids over to one side of the warehouse to keep them safe. Magnus reaches into his hat and pulls out a mini-sun to produce Blinding Light (and though he doesn't know it, invalidates one of the bad guy's stunts, which requires shadows to work). Styx jumps in and punches the guy in the jaw, and Levee calls up a huge Water Dome to shield the children and Toby.
The man grits his teeth (maybe) and gathers shadows from everywhere, snuffing out the Light that Magnus created. He then turns his attention to Styx, bringing shadows in from everywhere until she is boxed in (and remember she's Claustrophobic). She staggered back, horrified, nearly Catatonic, but Wing Diesel steps in and, well, steps on the guy, rendering him Grappled.
And then things get a little intense. Magnus, tired of this guy and firmly of the opinion that We Are All Dust, so who cares if any of these people die, reaches into his hat and grabs a handful of gray putty and plants it on the man's face. He steps back and hits a detonator...
The Water Dome shields the kids both from shrapnel and from seeing the worst of this, and Levee whips up a shield in front of herself. Styx dives behind Wing Diesel's leg, and the dragon's chrome armor absorbs the damage. But the mysterious man is now a shadowy smear on the ground. The others turn and stare at Magnus, but there's no time for a conversation now - the building is collapsing. The heroes rush the kids out, and Magnus hurls down a smoke bomb and vanishes.
Outside, it's not long before the authorities show up. Once again, Levee runs interference for the press, while Wing Diesel guards the kids and provides hugs as necessary until their parents show up. A familiar looking pickup truck arrives and Swamp Rat leaps, frog-like, over the crowds to find Emil, and embraces him.
Sgt. Guidry finds the heroes and warns them that Magnus is rapidly becoming a potential scapegoat and test case for the Breakthrough Collective Responsibility Act, and he might not care about the rules, but this is all going to bounce back on the others if they're not careful. The three of them realize they're going to have to stage an intervention; Magnus is skating the line between hero and anti-hero at best. For the moment, though, they need to tend to Styx' mental trauma, so they take her out shopping and for a spa day, putting her severe consequence into recovery. Levee also buys her some body armor so she doesn't get beat up quite so much. Toby, for his part, is feeling no longer Stuck in the Stacks, but he's still a Nervous Sidekick to Wing Diesel.
And Magnus lounges on a hammock in the Hat, deciding whether to go back to this universe or move along.
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