She arrives in a soybean field, about fifteen minutes of the Earth's rotation west of where she left!

There's a non-urgent email from Minerva saying there's a lot of reporters who want to know who she is and asking if she wants to do interviews, there's another one with details on her new bank account so they're easily accessible to her and not just Ceru, the Tyrant is not bothering her again yet and so far her email has not leaked to the wider world.

The headlines do in fact involve rather a lot of "new super who can do ridiculous healing and de-aging has appeared and can do LOTS of ridiculous healing and de-aging!!!" There's a lot of wild speculation about what she wants to do, which has apparently concluded that a lot of the answer is "be very, very rich." Where the news is not just unambiguously positive, worries in right-wing articles are mostly that she'll turn out to be a supervillain, while worries on the left are mostly speculation that this will lead to immortal billionaires and nothing changing for the people under them.

A common theme is regretting she didn't show up twenty-five years ago, back when the first Smith and Veritas were alive.

-oh god does she need to hire a PR manager...

she has HOW MUCH MONEY?????

<Um. Let's give 99% of that to Minerva? ...Maybe publicly?>

<I think probably we should wait on doing anything public for now, but other than that, I don't see any reason not to  donate 90% of your earnings? I'll ask Minerva if she has PR-related advice.> 

She sets up the transfer for Musoka to approve, and then sends a non-urgent message to Minerva asking about superhero PR.

Musoka, meanwhile, has just realized that she has HER OWN COMPUTER with INTERNET ACCESS that she can INSTALL SOFTWARE ON, for the first time since she arrived in this universe!

She approves the transfer, and then opens up the web browser to do some important research.

Namely; what are video games like, here?

In broad outline, they are about the same; first-person shooters, real-time strategy games, RPGs, 4X games, and so forth and so on, though superhero and supervillain games are a lot more popular than they were in her timeline. In individual details, on the other hand, they have been butterfly-effected to the moon; there are a few franchises that are vaguely recognizable (Sid Meier's Civilization, for instance, exists, though none of the sequels look the same), but while she can find people arguing about the difference between player-choice-intensive western RPGs and follow-the-story-they-wrote eastern RPGs, nobody's heard of Bioware or Squaresoft.

Or, just to make that a little more explicit, there is an entire world of games that she has never played before out there.

YESSSSSSSSSSS!!! This is the best news she's gotten since she arrived here.

She does some research on this world's RPG trends and starts downloading something that looks like it has her preferred combination of unhinged worldbuilding, really good music, and stupidly overcomplicated gameplay systems, wriggling with excitement the whole time.

D'awwwww. She waits until Musoka has picked out a few games to try before saying anything.

<Musoka, I definitely support you taking some time to relax and have fun, but I think standing in a field of soybeans in a suit of power armor is probably not the best place to do that. Minerva has a laptop you can use, back at the compound.>

-right, she's wearing a suit of power armor in the middle of a field of soybeans.

She sighs. <Yeah, good call. Internet at Minerva's is faster than what I'm getting out here anyways.>

Musoka takes flight once more, powered by her intense hope about all the delicious new video games she now has access to.

On the way back, she'll send a quick reply to Minerva, saying that she'd be happy to do an interview or two. (Ceru does some research on new superhero interviews to try and figure out what they should expect.)

Most new superhero interviews are fairly softball things with people going "so, what's your name?" and "who are your personal heroes" and "what's the inspiration for your costume" and "is there anything you want to say about your powers," where the fundamental objective is good publicity for both sides.

Most new superhero interviews are not with the world's new most powerful healer, and most people who are so quickly rocketed into the public eye are not as famous as she is. She can try reading Radiant's trainwreck of an interview (which ended when Radiant was attacked by ninjas, one of whom took the interviewer hostage) or Octavian's (he and the interviewer Did Not Get Along; the interviewer wanted to do a story about a New Leading Black Superhero and Octavian wanted people to stop asking him for interviews) but those were both... unusually un-socially-gifted... heroes? Maybe it'd go better with her? Most superhero interviews do?

It's not a very long flight for her! There's lots of corn and soybeans, and then there's the house; woods (the area does grow trees whenever you don't stop it), cleared space with woods occasionally encroaching, electric fence ("It's to deter deer"), nice large lawn with a collection of decorate stone ledges just above tripping height suitable for putting plants on (with a power-nullifying band built into it sized to cover the house), more lawn, and then "just a perfectly ordinary farmhouse," made of wood, two stories and an attic and a bomb shelter basement, with an attached two-car-sized garage that does, in fact, have one car in it.

She lands her car power armor in the driveway outside the garage, popping the hatch open and zipping out with a burst of flight.

(Musoka is aware that the Proper thing to do here would be to open the garage door, pilot her armor inside, close the garage door, and then do a full power-down and armor inspection. However, that would involve a lot of steps, including a lot of waiting (garage doors are SLOW), and if she's going to be waiting she will do it after she starts downloading her delicious video games!)

And then suddenly the world is moving much, much faster than she's used to -

- And the shadows fade, and there's five people in the garden, two women and three men. They're all wearing normal clothes - jeans, jackets - and unnaturally realistic animal masks, clearly not actual animals but not something you could just buy from a costume store.

One of the women is wearing the mask of a spider, terrifying maw distended and jaws dripping venom, and her hands are alight with a horrible flame - she slams them into the ground and a pentagram of fire springs up around the entire estate and strands of flaming webbing start crawling upwards to form a dome, and it would be very slow but so's she -

One of the men is wearing all grey and a rat's mask and he looks so very, very thin and the flowers near him are wilted and he's staring at her and the wilting is traveling along the ground towards her - 

Another has a bull's mask and is really huge and muscular and he's charging at her and the ground seems to support and buoy his movements and he shouldn't be able to go that fast - 

A fourth man is balding, looks exhausted, has a sagging raven's mask and is sitting back, just in front of the spider-masked woman, and he's glaring at her, too, and her entire body feels heavy -

- And the last woman has the mask of a hungry vulture and the claws of a lion and is hovering in midair directly above the center of where the dome is going to be, talons trailing the same unnatural smoke as the first woman's fire -

- And they're all attacking her at once.

What's she going to do about it?

Freak out! 

She's confused (Who are these people? Why are they wearing those freaky masks? Why are they attacking her? How did they know she'd be here? Why does she feel so slow?) and scared (Minerva just told her that people attacking her wouldn't do so if they didn't expect to be able to win. Someone was willing to pay three billion dollars to kill her!) and- 

can things STOP HAPPENING (No time for feelings, put them in a box, later later later)

- she's already messaged Minerva, highest priority, there hasn't been enough time for a response yet but she's had one of her bodies nearby all day, she can't be that far.  Musoka just needs to hold out for a bit -

(need to tell her that, give her something to hope for)

<Musoka, I've called for help. Minerva should be here any moment>

- she's tried to look up their attackers based on their powers in the databases Minerva let her copy into her internal memory, but nothing is coming up; so they're either new or have really good opsec -

-- new seems more likely, especially since Bull-mask's charge is going to put him in the line of Rat's attack. though maybe he's immune? She'll have to pay attention to that, might be an exploitable weakness --

--- wait, Bull-mask has charged through the power-suppression field and whatever he's got going on is still active, that means it's not a genetic power ---

- Okay, 5 supers attacking them all at once, non-genetic power on at least one of them, probably new; primary hypothesis is that this is a hit squad sent by a power-granter, secondary hypothesis is that this is a highly trained covert assassination team with at least 1 granted power, tertiary is "anything else" -

-- What power granters could grant powers at this level / with this range of effects, do any of them have obvious reasons to want Musoka dead --

- something (it must be a power of one of the assailants; maybe the Raven mask, he's staring at them and nothing else seems to be happening (maybe he needs line-of-sight? something to try)) is slowing them down. It's affecting Ceru, too; input from the outside world is coming in about 4 times faster than it was before now. She's still way faster than anyone else here, but the change is overwhelming, Musoka should -

-- Musoka should get away, if possible, before the fire dome closes above their heads and their mobility becomes a whole lot less valuable.

<I suggest you try to disengage. Only one of them is flying; we should be able to make some space, and get into a better position to counterattack when Minerva shows up>

Ceru's right, she just has to hold out until Minerva gets here. Make some space, then go after the flying one. She jets away (Ceru suggests a direction, away from the charging Bull and halfway between the Vulture and the current edge of the expanding fire dome) as fast as she can manage- 

Ordinarily, she'd be able to make it, no problem, but the dome is climbing much faster than she's used to, and the Vulture is flying to intercept -

- And there's fire on her claws and there's something badwrongoff about the fire, on her claws and on the Spider's web, that increases as she gets close to it, everything about it makes the world seem rotten; all threats terrifying, all evil to be put off - despair that cannot be ignored, fear that cannot be faced, pain that weakens and the pettiest but longest-lasting of hates - 

- And she couldn't notice it on the ground but the closer she gets the more intense it is -

(Meanwhile, below, the Bull alters his direction as she takes off, stopping short right before the ripple of decay as it withers the grass where she stood down to rotting husks)

(The Raven is still looking at her; the slowing might have decreased for a moment when she took off, but it didn't last long.)

Unfortunately, she's going far too fast to notice the badwrongoff ramping up -

- until it becomes overwhelming. 

<aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA>

- overwhelmed by fear, her ring cuts out, and she starts to fall out of the sky

What the fuck

oh no oh no oh no

- ok, focus, she needs to get Musoka to regain her hope before she hits the ground -

- wait, they practiced this -

- The sound of a train's horn, loud enough to blot out everything else, fills Musoka's ears!

and that, plus the sensation of falling, is enough to jolt her mind back to the practice Ceru made her do before letting her fly. 

Just gotta hold out until Minerva gets here, shouldn't be long now...

-She catches herself just before hitting the ground, and pops back up, hovering just above the surface.

<...Thanks.>

phew.

<Of course.> 

...what are their assailants up to?

Reacting.

See, that's the point when the concealed stunner-ports inside some of the house's "decorative" stonework open up and stunner-beams catch all five of the attackers. For a moment she feels faster - but then they don't look more tired, they look angrier; each bolt is only distracting them for a moment. Still enough to make the Bull go straight after them to smash them, though, while the Vulture lunges at Musoka with flaming claws, and the Spider has finished her web, trapping everyone except her inside.

Rat is walking towards Musoka, and his expression becoming more angry with every stunner-bolt that hits him and the ripple of his decaying attack is moving much too fast -

ETA four seconds comes over Musoka's new headphones' speakers (and is directly messaged to Ceru.)